On the uptown number 1 train Rannie stood and glared down at a man reading the Post, his knees spread so far apart that he took up almost three seats. Rannie could tell he saw her; still he didn’t budge. What was with these guys? Were they trying to tell you their balls were so ginormous that it was physically impossible for them to sit like a normal human being?
Undaunted, Rannie wedged herself next to him. The front page of the Post was practically in her face, the headline story something about an attack that morning in Central Park. A woman dead. How swiftly Ret Sullivan had been knocked off the top spot in the tabloid hierarchy. Rannie wondered how long the Post would even bother to keep running articles on her murder without any breaking news.
It wasn’t until the train was pulling into her stop at 110th Street that Rannie thought about the snippet of conversation she’d overheard at S&S. Ellen’s assistant had been talking to a Larry. All Rannie could think of was Larry Katz. Of course, there were other Larrys in the universe. Yet the assistant’s tone of voice, annoyed yet entertained, was exactly the reaction Larry elicited from women.
Strange that Ellen, Larry Katz, and Rannie herself were all a mere one degree of separation from Ret. Of course, no world was smaller than that of publishing. And on the surface, the connections among them seemed perfectly innocuous, as plain as overlapping circles in a Venn diagram.
Walking home, Rannie made a stop at Gristedes and soon was lugging three heavy grocery bags down 108th Street when her cell buzzed. Weighed down as she was, Rannie waited until she was in her apartment to retrieve the message. Nate. Reminding her that he had a long yearbook meeting after school and wouldn’t be home for dinner.
Rannie speed-dialed Tim. “How does dinner for two sound?”
It sounded fine to him, and as promised he arrived on the dot of six, tulips in hand. “Found a spot right in front of your building!” he crowed, his parking karma being something he continually bragged about. Rannie set the flowers in a green pottery pitcher on her dining table. Then, while water boiled for linguine and white clam sauce simmered on the stove top, emitting a pleasant garlicky aroma, they watched the local news. The top story echoed what Rannie had glimpsed on the front page of the Post, the Central Park attack.
A reporter in a down coat, a wool scarf knotted noose-like around her neck, intoned solemnly into her mic, “Living in New York City, crime is no rarity. Yet a brutal murder shocks us all.” The mangled grammar caused Rannie’s nose to wrinkle involuntarily, as if she’d smelled something rotten—“crime” didn’t live in New York City, people did.
“A bike rider discovered the body around ten thirty this morning. The police are still not saying how the victim died,” the reporter continued, brushing away a strand of blond hair blowing across her mouth. “The attack took place only a few yards from where I am standing, here in Central Park by the Ross Pinetum.”
Rannie knew the area well from when Nate was in Little League; the Pinetum was a half-acre stand of evergreens bordering the northwestern edge of the baseball fields.
“According to police, the victim was white, dark haired, in her thirties. She was wearing a red running suit. If anyone has information, please call this NYPD hotline number or go to WABC.com.”
The Pinetum was not a secluded spot, although the heavy rain in the morning would have kept away everyone except fanatic joggers. Still, had no one been nearby to hear screams? Rannie turned to Tim with questioning eyes, but he shook his head. “Sorry. All I know is what we’re hearing right now.”
Rannie had been the victim of a mugging herself, at knifepoint. Her purse was taken as well as her father’s Rolex wristwatch, one that she’d worn every day since he’d died. Still, she had to count herself lucky, especially since she’d been foolhardy enough (“fucking insane” was Tim’s blunt assessment) to be walking alone down her sketchy block late at night. This woman was out during daylight hours when Central Park was considered an urban playground. After the reporter mentioned that no identification was on the body, Rannie turned to Tim again. “You think this was a robbery?”
“No. Who goes for a run loaded with cash?”
Rannie nodded, acknowledging the logic. “But isn’t mid-morning a little early for violent crime?”
“Go figure what sets off some whack job.” Tim reminded her of a similar attack in the park, years earlier. “Nice spring day, a woman is out for a walk, enjoying the weather, and suddenly she gets her head bashed in by some psycho who’s off his meds. It was right near a playground, filled with kids, mothers, nannies. No one heard anything. Horrible but it happens.”
Over dinner, Tim turned to more mundane topics and recounted his recent trip to Amherst with his son, Chris, a good student and an even better basketball player, who was applying there. Tim had tuition worries and was contemplating part-time security work to bring in more money. “I’ve already got a second mortgage, and the bar is way down for the year.” He smiled ruefully at Rannie. “I mean, you know the middle class is hurting when cops are cutting back on their booze. . . . Amherst better come through with a nice hefty scholarship.”
Rannie nodded and held up crossed fingers.
Tim was about to take another forkful of linguine. “You can uncross your fingers. I got something way better going. My mom’s at Mass every day, lighting a candle to St. Aloysius. He’s the guy who looks out for students.”
“Chris doesn’t need a miracle. He’ll get a good package.” Then Rannie remembered Daisy Satterthwaite’s miracle and, while Tim finished off a second helping of linguine, she told him about the painting of St. Godelieve.
“Saint who?”
“She’s the patron saint of sore throats.”
“Hold it right there. That’s St. Blaise’s gig. After twelve years of parochial school, one thing I know is my saints. And I never heard of this—”
“Godelieve. Her mother-in-law strangled her.” Rannie started clearing the plates. Tim followed her into the kitchen with the glasses and silverware. “Daisy seemed very sure of her facts. She believes praying to St. Godelieve cured her throat cancer.”
“Probably some Protestant saint,” Tim said dismissively.
“And what? That means she’s a knockoff, like a handbag?”
“Exactly.” He said it with such finality that Rannie had no choice but to slap him, except that he caught her wrists before she could land a blow. “Uh, uh, uh. We don’t hit. We use our words, Miranda.”
Then after swatting her with a dishcloth, Tim returned to the dining room where he wiped crumbs off the table. “You make a decent clam sauce,” he said.
“Grazie, signore.” Rannie curtsied and blew out the candles. Cleaning up after dinner—it was all so ordinary and yet somehow a turn-on. Tim was relaxed in a way that few men were, or at least the ones Rannie knew. He wasn’t out to prove anything. He was what he was—utterly himself.
Since her son would not be returning anytime soon, Rannie was all ready with a corny come-on—“And now for dessert—moi!”—when the phone rang.
“Rannie, listen, it’s Dina.”
Dina? A couple of synapses fired. Dina—that was the name of Ellen’s assistant. “Oh, hi!”
“I need you to tell me I’m being crazy.”
“What about?”
“I’m worried about Ellen. After you left the office, I tried reaching her. I texted, called, e-mailed. I swore I’d let her know as soon as you handed in the manuscript. I left like a zillion messages.”
“Maybe she didn’t think a reply was necessary.” Or else Ellen may have hooked up with a cabana boy tout de suite and the manuscript was no longer her number one priority. “Where is she? Martinique?”
“Yeah. Look. I called the B&B. She never checked in. Her flight landed on time. So she should have arrived an hour later, an hour and a half tops.”
“You’re sure about the name of the B&B?”
“No, I wasn’t. So I tried googling anything that sounded even vaguely like Island Winds and called the places.” Dina’s voice rose an octave. “And then after work I was at a bar and something came on TV about a woman who got killed in the park this morning. It would be like Ellen to make sure she got in a run before a long flight. . . . Rannie, please, tell me I am being crazy.”
“Everything okay?” Tim asked from the couch, where he was leafing through the newspaper, but Rannie batted away the question with her free hand. Suddenly she could feel a couple of clammy sweat beads trickling down her armpits. Anxiety was the most contagious disease, bar none. As for whether it was crazy to worry about Ellen, Rannie was not the best judge. Leaping to worst possible consequences was the only sport at which she excelled. Years ago, whenever one of her kids disappeared from sight at the playground for more than a moment, she’d instantaneously picture their face on the milk carton and herself on TV tearfully pleading for their return. Nevertheless, she took a calming breath now and tried to think rationally. Ellen could certainly be at some other, ungoogled B&B or maybe Ellen had gone to Martinique with a guy—the unnamed insignificant other—and the room was registered under his name. She tried out that one on Dina.
“I don’t think so.”
“Or maybe Ellen never left the city. Maybe she felt she deserved a week of mental health days and is holed up in her apartment as we speak, watching DVDs, eating ice cream from the carton, and blissfully ignoring all communication from the outside world.” Rannie was on a roll now. “Have you called her building?”
“Yeah. The guy on duty buzzed up but got no answer and I felt weird asking him to check the apartment. Maybe I should have. You think I should have, Rannie?”
“I think there is probably some perfectly innocuous reason to explain all this.”
“The body was found around ten thirty. On nonworkdays that’s when Ellen would be out for a run. The woman had dark hair. They said she was in her thirties.”
“Look. I’ll call Ellen’s building. Maybe somebody has seen her since you called. If not, I’ll ask the doorman to ring her bell.”
“Would you? Oh, Rannie, thanks! I know it’s probably nothing. But after Ret Sullivan . . .”
“We’re absolutely not going there.” Rannie had to hand it to herself: she really could pull off sounding like a soothing voice of reason, and happily Dina couldn’t see how Rannie’s hand was sort of trembling as she took down her number.
“What’s up?” Tim asked. She could see he’d started filling in the Monday crossword. After hearing the gist of the conversation, all he said was “Call her building.”
Rannie did. The four-to-twelve P.M. guy hadn’t seen Ellen, and when he called back a few minutes later, the news was not what Rannie had hoped to hear. He’d checked the apartment. It was empty and he found a half-packed suitcase in her room. Even more upsetting, a neighbor had reported seeing Ellen that morning. She was heading out for a run.
“What now?”
Tim didn’t answer. He was at her laptop. He scribbled down something and handed it to her. “The hotline number. Look. In all likelihood your friend is okay. But call and put your mind at rest.” Rannie took the piece of paper. “Think of things that’ll disqualify her as the victim. A chipped tooth, an odd birthmark, scars, a tattoo, a piece of jewelry with initials. Anything like that.”
Rannie nodded. Disqualify. Up until this very moment, the word had always carried a strictly pejorative meaning. Like “exile,” it seemed harsh, punitive. Now disqualification was the hoped-for goal, although Rannie found herself hard-pressed to list Ellen’s singular physical attributes: she was the sort of woman whose looks were pleasantly unremarkable. Okay, Ellen had brand-new boobs. But would they count? Who knew how many brunettes in their late thirties had the same silicone accessories. “She always wore one of those Irish rings with clasped hands,” she told Tim.
“A claddagh; I gave one to all my high school girlfriends. You need to do better than that.”
“Okay, she used to wear a nose ring. But she stopped when she turned thirty-five. You could still see a tiny hole. And she had a whitish scar over one eyebrow. She told me her brother bashed her with a badminton racket when they were kids.”
Tim sat beside her on the couch while she dialed the hotline number.
“My name is Miranda Bookman and I am calling about the murder in Central Park this morning. I’m hoping to rule out any possibility that the victim is a friend of mine.” Then she launched into a long-winded, roundabout, and overly detailed account of what prompted her worry, only to be interrupted and told, “Please hold while I transfer you to the hotline.”
After robotically repeating everything to a cop, Rannie was comforted—somewhat—when told that calls to the hotline had been pouring in all evening. “It’s unlikely, ma’am, that your friend is the victim. So,” he said crisply, “what I need is for you to describe her as best you can, anything unusual about her, a scar, a birthmark, tattoo, things of that nature.”
Rannie did. She completed her description of Ellen, adding one more detail that suddenly came to her: the nail on Ellen’s left thumb had a permanent split in it. There was a second of silence; the moment seemed to stand still and stretch out interminably, like the second before you heard the results of a scary medical test. Rannie’s throat began to close, almost in a gag reflex, as the cop in a much graver tone said, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll need you to make an identification.”
A street address was supplied, but Rannie didn’t fully register anything except that the word “morgue” was uttered. Tim must have taken her cell because he was speaking into it, saying, “Yeah, she’ll be down there as soon as possible. Yeah, I know where it is.”
He got her coat and helped her into it; both her feet felt like they had fallen asleep and her arms didn’t seem to be working properly. “I don’t want to do this.”
“Nobody does.”
Tim’s Toyota was, true to his earlier claim, parked smack-dab in front of the Dolores Court. Rannie climbed in on rubbery legs and, as soon as the engine was running, turned on the heat full blast, which did nada to stop her teeth from chattering.
Rannie didn’t say a word during the entire car ride. Instead she played pointless obsessive-compulsive games—Neurotics’ Solitaire—with herself. . . . If Tim could drive ten blocks before having to stop for a light, if she could hold her breath until he spoke to her, if her cell phone rang before they reached their destination—the NYU Hospital complex—well, then the body she was about to see would belong to somebody other than Ellen.
The medical examiner’s offices were housed in a building on First Avenue and Thirty-Third Street. The viewing room was on the second floor, which seemed odd to Rannie: Didn’t a subterranean tomblike location seemed more fitting for the activity at hand? A large picture window, with a shade-like contraption pulled across it, was cut into an interior wall. Rannie clutched Tim’s hand as a doctor, a light-skinned black woman with freckled cheeks and a space between her front teeth, came in to explain what Rannie would see—a body lying on a stretcher with a sheet draped over it to the neck—and emphasized that it was important for Rannie to take a careful look. “I understand why folks want to get this over with fast, but you want to be sure when you say yes or no. Okay?”
Rannie nodded obediently. Tim told her to take a couple of deep breaths and then said, “She’s ready.”
The doctor pressed what appeared to be a doorbell button by the window. The shade began to open. Involuntarily, Rannie’s eyelids snapped shut. But then she forced herself to look.
Ellen. It was Ellen. Rannie was 110 percent, beyond-a-shred-of-doubt sure. Ellen had been an angsty, antsy person, her hands always in motion, her face continually changing expression, registering any slight degree of emotional change. Now, under pitiless fluorescent light, her features were arranged in an imperturbable, solemn expression, immobile in a wholly permanent way; there was no rise and fall of the sheet covering her body.
“Yes,” Rannie managed. Her eyes fixed on the small beauty mark on Ellen’s upper lip, something that Rannie had forgotten in her list of possible “disqualifications.” “Yes. I’m sure.”
Rannie sank into a chair. Tim, squatting down next to her, awkwardly wrapped an arm around her. Rannie shrugged him off. She didn’t want to be touched, comforted. She wanted to be left alone. A tall, pleasant-looking guy—someone her dad might have described as a “long drink of water”—entered the room, flashed a badge, and identified himself as Sergeant William Grieg. As he questioned her, carefully taking notes, Rannie realized that for all the years she and Ellen had worked together, for all the umpteen million hours they’d spent in each other’s offices or over sandwiches, dissecting and analyzing the smallest bit of drama at S&S, she could actually provide few facts about Ellen. Rannie had to take a pass on Ellen’s exact date of birth, middle name. Still, the effort to supply answers postponed thinking about the only question that really mattered. Why was Ellen dead?
“I know Ellen grew up in Ann Arbor and has an older brother,” Rannie told Grieg. “As far as I know, both her parents are alive. I think they live in Connecticut now. Beyond that”—Rannie shrugged—“I’m sorry.”
When he was done, he said, “I don’t want Ms. Donahoe’s identity released until we’ve notified the family, understood?”
Rannie nodded obediently. “How did she die?” There were no bruises on Ellen’s face.
“She was stabbed. Death occurred almost immediately.”
Maybe she was supposed to say “Well, that’s a blessing.” All she did was nod again.
“Ms. Bookman, I’m going to let you go home in just a minute. But first, can you tell me if your friend received threats of any kind recently? Any bad breakup? A jealous ex?”
“A long-term romance ended a few months ago. But the guy ended it, not Ellen.”
Grieg asked for the name anyway. “Now take your time on this—is there any reason, no matter how far-fetched you think it might be—for Ms. Donahoe to be worrying about her own safety?”
Ooh, that was tricky. “Well, she was the editor of a new book by Ret Sullivan that will be published very soon.”
He kept on writing but cocked an eyebrow.
“Ret’s murder really shook up Ellen. . . . Me, too,” Rannie added. First Ret. Now Ellen. Bad luck came in threes. How good were the odds that sometime in the near future she’d be lying in state on the other side of that fake window? “I was the one who discovered Ret Sullivan’s body on Saturday.”
The writing stopped. “You?” Maybe it was all in her head, but suddenly he seemed to be giving her the hairy eyeball.
“Yes. I was sent to Ms. Sullivan’s apartment to pick up a book manuscript. I’m a copy editor.” Rannie pressed her lips together, recalling Ellen’s frightened voice messages. “Ellen worried that Ret Sullivan was murdered because of something in the book. Ellen was scared that perhaps she was in danger too. But I don’t—”
The cop cut her off. “What’s the book about?”
“I’m not supposed to say.”
The idiocy of her reply struck Rannie even before Tim said, “Rannie. Come on.” Homicide, after all, trumped a confidentiality agreement, so she divulged the subject of the book. “But believe me, the—the book is quite flattering. Nothing like Ret Sullivan’s other books. A lot about Charlotte Cummings’s social life and her jewelry and her dogs.” Suddenly a passage from the book describing Charlotte’s beloved doxies, Himsy and Hersy, at their weekly beauty parlor appointment caused a loony giggle to erupt from Rannie. All she could picture were the dogs under tiny metallic helmet-shaped hair dryers. She clapped a hand over her mouth and bit down on her lower lip, but that only made things worse. More convulsive tittering. Oh, God!
Tim placed both hands firmly on her shoulders. “It’s okay. You’re in shock. It’s natural. Can I take her home now?” he asked the cop.
The cop nodded. He gave them each a card. “We’re going to want to question you again, Ms. Bookman. But it can wait.”
“You don’t think that the two murders are linked?” The childish plaintiveness in her voice embarrassed Rannie. But she wanted to be offered some kind of escape hatch.
“They are being treated as separate investigations.”
Would what Rannie had just told him change that?
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.” Tim maneuvered her into her coat and steered her to the elevators.
“Ellen, poor Ellen. She just got new boobs. They were still under warranty.” Rannie started sobbing loudly in the elevator. Why remembering this set off a crying jag, Rannie couldn’t fathom, except that people like Ellen didn’t get murdered.
After her first visit to the plastic surgeon, Ellen had called Rannie. “I can’t believe I’m doing this! But I’ve always hated my body and I’m going for it, Rannie.” Before hanging up, Ellen had giggled and then warbled off-key, “BORN TO BE W-I-I-I-LD!”
Back in the car, his eyes on the traffic, Tim said, “I want to stay over tonight.”
It would be a first. In all the years since her divorce, no man had ever spent the night.
“Chris is staying at a friend’s tonight, working on some physics project.”
Rannie remained silent. After their linguine dinner, she’d wanted nothing more than to see who could get naked the fastest. Now all she wanted was to swallow an Ativan and see how quickly it knocked her out. Of course she understood that Tim wasn’t looking for a night of go-for-broke fucking, but—perversely—knowing that his intentions were selfless made her defensive, contrary, and irritable. On the other hand, what if Nate was still out? Did she really want to go back to an empty apartment?
“So?” They had reached 107th and Amsterdam. “Do I drop you off or look for a spot.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Look for a spot, I guess,” she muttered ungraciously.