Murder at the 42nd Street Library Read online

  Johnny’s mother smiled again, though her expression soon grew wistful. She looked past Adele down Ninth Avenue. Most of the buildings in that block were three or four story with shabby facades that belied their true worth to the developers encroaching with high-rise luxury buildings from the north and the south. She turned and looked west toward the river somewhere in the distance. “You live in the neighborhood?”

  Adele said she did.

  “Maybe we’ll get together for coffee. My name’s Emily.”

  “I’m Adele.” She watched them walk away. Johnny hadn’t said a word.

  * * *

  Dominic was mad at Johnny’s mom for something; that was for sure. He wouldn’t say what. All the same, she knew what he was mad about and kept telling him it was none of his business. When she told him about meeting the lady from the library, he got mad all over again.

  “You should know better than that.”

  This time, Mom didn’t yell. Her voice was quiet. “It’s funny. I wasn’t going to talk to her. I told her to leave Johnny alone and walked away. Then after she crossed the street after us, something in her face got to me. She was nice. She likes Johnny. She was nice to me. I mean she was interested in me. No one’s ever interested in me.”

  “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave her alone.” He smashed out his cigarette in the ashtray and stood up. Dominic had a way of standing over you that was meant to scare people. It certainly scared Johnny. He towered over you and leaned toward you, closer than you’d want him to be. “Laura Lee told me Max wants to hire a private detective to find you. Now you tell someone from the library your name. Why don’t you go sit in his lap?”

  “I only told her my first name.”

  Mom wasn’t afraid of Dominic. She laughed at him most of the time when he yelled at her like that. She didn’t care what anyone did to her. She’d dare someone to hit her—and some of the men did—but she went nuts if anyone touched him … right for the carving knife or the baseball bat. When something like that happened, Johnny was more afraid of what she’d do than he was of what anyone might do to him. That’s how she was. Mom would watch out for him no matter what. Now, she met Miss Adele from the library and she liked her. He knew better than to ask about it. He’d just hope and maybe they’d be friends.

  * * *

  “I trust everything is going well with your work, despite the turmoil,” Harry said to his uninvited guest, forcing a smile. He didn’t like that Max Wagner found his way to his apartment. The studio on the top floor of a brownstone on a quiet tree-lined street off Eighth Avenue in Chelsea was his refuge, his retreat, and had been for twenty years. It wasn’t that he was antisocial. It was that he needed space that was his alone. Maybe it was the years of communal life as a Jesuit.

  He never invited people from work, preferring to meet them at a neighborhood restaurant or café, and had only twice in the years he lived there had an overnight visitor and each time regretted it. His present partner understood. They slept together when they traveled; at home, each man lived in his own apartment and slept at night in his own bed. Max’s visit was a violation of his privacy. This, of course, would mean nothing to Max. His needs, everyone knew, came first.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have anything to offer you.” Harry looked around his own apartment, as if he were a stranger in it. A couch, a bed, two wooden folding chairs at the glass dining room table no more than a couple of feet from the couch, that was it. At the moment, his laptop computer rested on the table. He offered Max a seat on the couch, hoping he’d refuse and say what he had to say while standing up, and leave. Instead, Max chose one of the wooden chairs, so Harry sat on the couch.

  “This must be important to bring you out in the evening … and to my apartment.” Harry waited. Max seemed to have left his bluster behind.

  “I needed to speak with you privately. Ray Ambler thinks he’s investigating these murders.”

  Harry shrugged. “That’s what he does.”

  “Don’t you think he’s going to be looking into the past also? Aren’t you worried about that?”

  “I try not to worry about things I have no control over.”

  “You’re his boss. You could tell him to stop.”

  “I don’t see that doing any good. Why would he stop?”

  “Never mind.” Max waved off the question. “It can’t be helped, in any event.” He scrutinized Harry. “The police, I imagine, have spoken to you?”

  “More than once. A detective, Mike something, seems to think I know more about the killings than I do.”

  Max leaned forward. “Cosgrove. He’s the one who’s questioned me. He makes you feel like he knows you’re guilty. What have you told him?”

  “I told him what I saw.”

  “What did you tell him about us … about the past?”

  Harry hesitated. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Stop pussyfooting around, Harry—or Father Larkin. What a joke. You throw the whole fucking thing over and jump ship with everyone’s confidences in your tote bag.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re saying.”

  “Yes you do. A lot happened during that time; some of it, none of us are proud of.” Wagner’s expression was a mixture of contempt and ridicule. “We were young and stupid. You sprinkled pixie dust on Nelson, and we followed him like a herd of lemmings. We told you everything and asked forgiveness.”

  Harry put his hands to his face, fingers against his cheeks, jaw resting on his palms. He gazed into Max Wagner’s eyes.

  Wagner started to say something until Harry’s unwavering expression caused him to pause. “Look, all I want is to be sure. You know—”

  “I’m sure this is difficult for you. But you needn’t have bothered. I’m no more at liberty to talk about what I heard in the confessional now than I was then.”

  “Yes.” Wagner shifted his weight awkwardly on the small chair. He waited a moment and stood, looked around the small apartment as if he’d misplaced his hat. “I imagine there’s much about that time you don’t want bandied about either.”

  Harry watched him, seated in the same position, his chin resting on his palms, his fingers against his cheeks, his eyes trained on Wagner.

  “Well, I’ll be going then. Sorry to have bothered you at home. I should have known…” He headed toward the apartment door, stopped, and turned to face Harry. “It’s those murders. I have this feeling of dread. You don’t think?… I mean Jim Donnelly and then Nelson. You don’t think—”

  Harry’s expression didn’t waver. “I’m not who you should be speaking with about this, Professor Wagner.”

  “I only wanted—”

  “Let me put this another way. You’re not in a confessional. I’m not your spiritual advisor now. Do you understand?”

  Wagner nodded, murmured a quick thank-you, and left. Harry sat on the couch staring into the empty space in front of him while a flood of painful memories cascaded through him. When he’d endured them for as long as he could, he rose, got down on his knees, leaned his arms on the couch he’d been sitting on, and prayed.

  Chapter 13

  Nelson Yates’s memorial service took place in the Earl Hall auditorium at Columbia University, where Yates once taught creative writing. The auditorium, with high ceilings, tall windows, white walls, might be called plain. Stately in its simplicity, it was a fitting venue for Nelson’s farewell. More than a hundred, possibly two hundred, mourners paid their respects. Adele and Ambler sat together, she wearing the black dress she wore to her mother’s funeral, he his black suit.

  Harry came alone, looking priestly in his black suit. Benny Barone, wearing a decidedly unpriestly, tight fitting black satin suit, accompanied Kay Donnelly, also dressed in black. Mike Cosgrove and another detective sat in the back row. Ambler spotted Max Wagner and Laura Lee arriving late and pointed them out to Adele.

  “That’s a cocktail dress,” Adele whispered, “not a dress for a funeral.” He smiled, feeling her b
reath brush his ear. Her wool dress hugged her body, the hem slipping along her slim thigh as she crossed her legs. “It’s not a party.” She turned to face Ambler and noticing him looking at her legs, pulled the hem of her dress down closer to her knee. He looked up at the speaker.

  After nearly an hour of remembrances, mostly from Yates’s fellow writers, there was a short eulogy from his son, who spoke well of his father despite his having had little presence in his life. The young man’s mother, Nelson’s first wife, sat with him but didn’t speak. Mary Yates, his last wife, did speak. She said Nelson tried to do good in the world. The last years were difficult, she said, but he spoke often of his friends and his editors, those he taught with, and his students. He was always glad when he heard from a former student. And of course he was always happy to hear from his readers. She seemed nervous, avoiding eye contact with the audience. Strangely, she spoke dispassionately, as if disconnected from what she was saying, and longer than she should have, seeming unable to find a way to end—and because of her obvious difficulty finding an ending, putting everyone in the audience on edge. Finally, she just stopped, turned an exasperated expression on the assembled mourners, and strode from the podium.

  Yates’s longtime editor spoke last. He spoke softly and had an unassuming manner, though he’d risen to the executive level of what was once a small, family-like publishing company and was now part of a mammoth entertainment conglomerate. His eulogy, tinged with bitterness for the author, seemed appropriate given Yates’s years of neglect by the literary world followed by his violent death. The service ended on a somber note, fitting for a writer whose work was characterized by bleakness.

  “I guess you wouldn’t expect a service like this to be cheerful,” Adele said, taking Ambler’s arm as they followed the crowd down the steps of St. Paul’s Chapel. “This was dismal.”

  When they reached the esplanade in front of Low Library, Adele tightened her grip on his arm, pulling him to a stop as she watched a line of people walking away from them toward Broadway. “I think that’s Johnny’s mother.”

  Ambler glanced around him. “Who?”

  “Did you see that young woman?”

  “Which one?”

  “Dark hair. Pretty. She was wearing jeans.”

  Ambler strained to look across the plaza in the middle of the campus but couldn’t pick anyone out of the crowd. Everyone wore jeans. “How do you know Johnny’s mother?”

  “I met her on the street the other day when she was with Johnny.”

  “Why would she—”

  “I’m going to try to catch her.” Adele headed down the stone steps.

  In her tight dress and high heels, she got off to a slow and wobbly start, and the descent was tricky. As she reached the brick walk at the bottom of the steps, she broke into something of an awkward trot but stopped when she came upon a woman also standing on the walk looking toward the iron gates at Broadway. She shook hands and spoke with the woman for a few seconds. When the woman began walking away, Adele looked wistfully after her before turning and heading back to join Ambler.

  “That was Mrs. Young,” she said.

  “Who’s she?”

  “From the library board of trustees. She donated the funding—” Adele slapped her hand across her mouth. “Oops…” Her eyes pleaded with him. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

  “You didn’t actually tell me.”

  “Please?”

  “You have my word.”

  “Oh my God, I’m an idiot. She’s such a nice woman, too. There were tears in her eyes.”

  “I wonder why she came to the service.”

  “She said someone from the Board of Trustees should attend because the library houses his papers.”

  “Why the tears?”

  “I didn’t ask her, Raymond. For God’s sake, a man died. It’s a funeral. People who have hearts cry at funerals.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did, too. You didn’t notice.”

  At the small reception following the service in the foyer of Dodge Hall, they ran into Mike Cosgrove. He stood a bit inside and a few steps away from the door, watching everyone come in.

  “Let me know if you see anyone from the library I should know about,” he said.

  “Everyone I’ve seen from the library you already know,” Ambler said.

  Kay Donnelly hustled in with Benny in tow, trying to avoid eye contact with the detective and meeting Ambler’s gaze instead. He tried to look sympathetic. She looked scared. Benny glanced about the room, ready for anyone who wanted to take him on.

  “Who are we looking for?” Adele asked. Neither man answered right away, so she nudged Ambler. He shrugged his shoulders.

  Cosgrove shot her an irritated glance. “We’re looking for a murderer.”

  “The only person from the library you don’t know is a woman from the Board of Trustees,” Ambler said. “She didn’t come to the reception.”

  “Oh?” Cosgrove took out his notebook. “Her name?”

  Before Ambler could answer, Adele elbowed him. “I don’t think you should tell him. She doesn’t have anything to do with what happened.”

  Cosgrove cleared his throat. “Miss Morgan—”

  “Miss Morgan, is it? My name’s Adele. I’ve met you before. No need for formality here.”

  Cosgrove took a step back. His eyes met hers. “The more information we have, the more likely we figure out what happened. This person came to the memorial service; maybe it means something; maybe it doesn’t.”

  Adele looked to Ambler. He nodded.

  “Mrs. Lisa Young.”

  Cosgrove wrote it down.

  What at first seemed like a murmur of crowd noises became the unmistakable sound of an altercation on the far side of the room. Ambler turned to see a hysterical Mary Yates leaning into Kay Donnelly; she’d boxed her into a corner, and was upbraiding her, like an irate manager to an umpire. Just as Ambler looked toward the commotion, Benny Barone stepped between the two women. As he tried to steer Kay Donnelly away from her tormentor, Mary Yates reached around Benny, and slapped her in the face. Kay Donnelly stopped in shock for a split second before shoving Benny in the chest and lashing out with a right cross toward the Yates widow. She saw it coming and leaned back out of the way. At that moment, Max Wagner joined the fray, stepping in front of Mary Yates and putting both hands on her shoulders. She crumbled into his arms, sobbing against his chest. Benny put his arm around Kay and walked her toward the door.

  As he watched the drama unfold, Ambler noticed Laura Lee watching also, with a strangely smug expression, as if someone had gotten his or her comeuppance—and if he were pressed to say who it was she thought got this comeuppance, he’d have to say, given whom she was looking at, it was her husband.

  * * *

  Mike Cosgrove liked to know something about witnesses before he interviewed them. In the case of Mrs. Young, the first bit of information he came across gave him pause. Her husband, Edward, was a partner in a Wall Street law firm.

  “What that means,” he told Ambler over a beer at the Library Tavern late in the afternoon the day after Nelson Yates’s funeral, “is that she’ll ask her husband, and he’ll tell her not to talk to me, or if she does, he’ll want to be with her.”

  “So you want me to question her?”

  “Not question. Talk; an informal conversation; get to know one another.”

  “Why would she get to know me? I’m a librarian. She’s a socialite.”

  “You have Nelson Yates in common. She was at the funeral.”

  “I could talk to her about the plan to close the crime fiction reading room, I guess. If she likes Nelson Yates, she might want it to stay open.” He knew he should tell Cosgrove about her anonymous donation that enabled the library to purchase the Yates collection. He couldn’t because he’d promised Adele he wouldn’t. “Anything else?”

  “That’s enough.”

  “Have you thought about the spat between Nelson’s grieving wido
w and Donnelly’s widow?”

  “I thought about it. I told you funerals are always good for something. I talked to Mrs. Yates. I’m not telling you what she told me. I’ll talk to the other combatant.”

  “Kay Donnelly is one direction. I’d be more interested in Max Wagner.”

  “You always seem to be.” Cosgrove stood, waving to McNulty for the check.

  “I’ll get the check,” Ambler said.

  * * *

  Ambler was waiting in the hallway outside the Wertheim Study, around 7:45 on the evening he spoke to Cosgrove. Kay Donnelly came along lugging a heavy book bag. She stared at him like he’d popped out of a box.

  “Sorry to bother you, Kay.”

  “I know what this is about, and I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t have to. Someone’s waiting for me.”

  “Benny? He’s waiting for us at a bar down the street.”

  “He can keep waiting. I’m going home.” Her angry tone was contradicted by the expression in her eyes, which suggested innocence and vulnerability you wouldn’t expect in a woman her age. He felt an urge to put his arms around her and hug her.

  He spoke softly. “You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?”

  She stiffened. “Why should you care what I go through?”

  “To be honest, I want to find out who killed your ex-husband and Nelson Yates. Finding out might help you. It might not.”

  She shifted her heavy bag from one shoulder to the other. By her stance and a kind of smirk, she made clear she was too busy to deal with such a silly idea. “Why should it help me or not help me?” There was a kind of wildness in her expression, not panic but something seeking release, a desire to let go.

  “You want to trust me. I can see it in your eyes. What have you got to lose?”

  “A lot. As I told you before, my career.” Her gaze shifted to look beyond him and the color drained from her face.

  He turned to see Laura Lee walking toward them. The scowl on her face changed quickly to her brilliant smile.

  “Well, well, my favorite librarian. What do we have here, a tryst? You both look so guilty.” Her eyes locked on Ambler’s, flirtatious and challenging at once. Beside him, he could feel Kay Donnelly’s embarrassment and rage.