Kiss of Death

IT WAS NEARLY eleven o’clock when I got out of the cab at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and Eighty-fifth Street, half a block south of the Woodburn Academy. I would have called Matt to tell him where I thought Didi might be, but Arnold was with him, and I wanted to talk to Didi before Arnold could stop me.

The street was pretty quiet. Some vehicle traffic, but the majority of the cars I saw were snug in their precious parking spaces. The few businesses on the block were closed for the night. I passed a trio of teenage girls, giggling, their arms linked. They were talking about a boy named Jerry and didn’t seem to notice me.

Most of the wide, three-story building that housed the Woodburn Academy was dark, but light shone through the slats of two shuttered windows on the top floor. Cautiously, I made my way across the front of the building, looking for an entrance that would lead to the residence above the stables. I found it on the north side: a small alcove with an unmarked door. Easy to miss unless someone was looking for it.

I tried the door, but it was locked. There was enough illumination from the street lamp at the corner of Amsterdam and Eighty-sixth to see a button just below a wall speaker. I pressed it, heard a faint buzz from deep inside, and waited. No response. I pushed the buzzer again, holding my finger against it longer this time. Another moment, and a woman’s raspy voice came through the speaker.

I made a calculated bluff. “Didi Rose is missing. I think she’s with you. If you don’t let me talk to her, I’ll tell the police you kidnapped Didi.”

Mrs. Woodburn stood in the doorway, waiting for me. She was in a long terry cloth zip-up robe and fuzzy slippers instead of jeans and riding boots, but her hair was still held back from her face by a yellow headband.

“I did not kidnap Didi.” She was keeping her voice low, but there was an angry snap in her tone. “No matter how much Mr. Rose pays me to let her ride, I didn’t sign on for this.”

She stepped back to let me into her living room. It was decorated like a tack room, with bridles and harnesses on the walls, along with dozens of photographs from horse shows. At the far end of the room, next to a closed door, stood a display case that held an assortment of award plaques, first-place ribbons, and a few engraved silver prize cups that could use a polish. A painting of a handsome black horse hung above a gas fireplace.

To me, the most interesting thing in the room was the big leather couch beneath the window. Interesting, because it was made up like a bed, with sheets, a blanket, and a pillow. I guessed Mrs. Woodburn was sleeping here.

Copies of Young Rider magazine covered the coffee table in front of the couch. On top of one issue was a short glass half full of amber liquid. I was close enough to Mrs. Woodburn to catch a faint whiff of liquor on her breath.

Mrs. Woodburn nodded toward the closed door. “I gave her the bedroom. She got here about four hours ago, just after I closed up. Crying so hard she could barely see. I said I wanted to call her father, but that just made her more hysterical. I gave her a glass of milk—she wouldn’t eat anything—and then I tried to persuade her to go to sleep. She said she would, and she was quiet for a while, but a few minutes ago I heard her turn the bedroom TV on. I was trying to figure out what to do, when you came, accusing me of kidnapping.”

I knocked lightly on the door, waited a few seconds. Knocked a little harder, to be heard over the sound of a television show. No response. I opened the door.

Carrying on the horse-world theme, Mrs. Woodburn’s bedroom was decorated like a bunkhouse—or what I imagined a bunkhouse looked like from the old western movies I’d seen. A simple wooden bed with a bright blanket folded at the bottom of it. Walls covered with photos of horses and people standing beside or riding horses. A bedside lamp made from a carved statue of a horse. A bureau. Only two objects didn’t belong in this decor: a big-screen TV set, and the slender figure lying on the bed, with the sheet pulled up to her neck. Didi’s face was buried in a pillow.

“Nobody can help me.” Her voice was partially muffled by the pillow, but her words were clear enough to understand.

“I think I can, if you’ll let me.” She didn’t reply, but at least she didn’t scream and order me away. I sat down on the edge of the bed, careful to keep at least a foot of space between us, so as not to crowd her. “Didi, your dad came to see me tonight. He’s very worried about you.”

She sat up and turned toward me. Her eyes were red and swollen from hours of crying. “I want to go far away, but I don’t have enough money to buy a ticket. You could get a ticket for me—I’ll pay you back. I can’t go home—Daddy’s going to hate me!”

“He won’t love me when he finds out what I did.” The tears started again, filling her eyes and rolling down her pale cheeks.

There was something else in Didi’s eyes: guilt. When I reached out to comfort her, she threw herself into my arms, sobbing against my chest. I stroked her hair, murmuring words meant to soothe. Slowly, the gasping sobs that made her thin shoulders tremble began to subside.

She drew her head away from my chest and rubbed her running nose with the back of one hand. Keeping an arm still around her, I reached over and plucked several tissues from the box on the bedside table. I gave them to her and she blew her nose.

While Didi was wiping and blowing her nose, a picture began to form in my mind. It was an ugly picture, but the fragments of it that I’d seen up to this moment at last fit together into a coherent whole. If my guess was right, it would save Nancy’s life, but it would devastate Didi’s.

“No,” I said. “He’s in the hospital, but he’s going to be all right.” I made my voice strong, to sound sure, even though this answer was more my hope than the truth.

She responded to my words by lifting her head to look at me. “He wasn’t killed? He was just injured. That’s not so bad . . . When somebody injures somebody, they just have to pay money for it, right?”

“That’s true a lot of the time,” I said, to encourage her to go on. Now I was sure I knew what had happened, but she had to tell me the details. Turning slightly away from her, pretending to reach for another tissue, I slipped my right hand into the pocket of my jacket and turned on the little tape recorder.

“When one person injures another, often the problem can be solved by settling some money on the one who’s hurt.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, but I wanted Daddy to live with Mummy and me again.” She swallowed, but went on. “I told Daddy that Jay . . . tried to . . . you know . . . kiss me.”

She shook her head. “No. But Daddy got soo mad! He went running out. I think he was going to see Jay, to tell him not to come near us again. A little while later, Millie—that’s our housekeeper—asked me to go downstairs and ask Mummy what time she wanted her to serve dinner.” Her eyes began to fill with tears again. “But when I got there, Nancy had killed Mummy. I never got to tell her . . .” She couldn’t finish. Her breath started to come in little gasps.

I cradled her in my arms until her breathing normalized. When she was calm again, I said softly, “So your daddy hurt Jay, because of what you told him.”

“Yes. I woke up really early this morning. Daddy was coming home. He didn’t see me, but I saw him putting his gun back in the safe. Then later it was on TV that Jay had been shot and I just knew that’s where Daddy had been. But it’s going to be all right, because Jay didn’t die, and Daddy will pay him.”

“When Jay is better, I think things can be worked out. What you need to do right now is get some rest. Do you think you can sleep?”

She nodded. “Will you tell Daddy, about what I did? Tell him I did it so he could be happy with us. We’d be a family again . . .” Her eyes were starting to close. “Morgan, can you turn off the light, but leave the TV on?”

Leaving the academy building, I turned south. The Twentieth Precinct was less than four blocks away, on West Eighty-second. Matt and Arnold were probably still there.