11
As Laurie entered the lobby of her 94th Street apartment building, she gave a quick wave to Ron, the nighttime doorman.
“How’re you doing, Primo?” she asked, using his self-appointed nickname. He had previously explained that the word literally meant “cousin” in Spanish, but was also used to describe a close friend.
“Primo’s doing pretty good. I hope you weren’t stuck at work all this time. This is late for you.”
Laurie had moved to this building shortly after Greg was killed. It made sense to be near her father since he was helping so much with Timmy, but she had also been eager to leave downtown, where it seemed every day she had to pass the park where her husband had been shot.
“Not a work night,” Laurie said cheerfully. “I was out celebrating with my fiancé. He got some happy news.”
“Fiancé,” Ron said with a pleased smile. “I like the sound of that for you. I noticed you’ve had a little spring in your step lately. I hope he doesn’t take you and Timmy from us, though. We’d miss you around here.”
“No changes for now,” she promised, even as she realized how much she was going to miss the people who had helped make this place a home after she unexpectedly found herself a single mother.
Once she was inside her apartment, she kicked off her heels and slipped off her blazer, tossing it onto an unoccupied hook on the hallway coat rack. She could tell from the silence that Timmy must have gone to bed for the night.
She found her father in his favorite spot—leaning back in the leather recliner, the Time magazine resting on his lap, the television on ESPN, the volume muted. She had a feeling Timmy wasn’t the only one who had drifted off to sleep.
He must have sensed her presence, because he suddenly pulled the recliner upright. “How was dinner?” he asked.
“Don’t hate me, but I ordered your favorites—the seafood salad and steak.”
“Rare?”
“Just as you would.”
He grinned and flashed her a thumbs-up. “You’ve got a good life, kid. Speaking of which, your Realtor came by with that.” He gestured to an inch-thick binder on the coffee table. Laurie could tell it was another batch of real estate listings. “She said she happened to be in the neighborhood. I guess she just happens to walk around with your personalized listings.” The tone of his voice was sarcastic.
Charlotte had been the one to refer Laurie to Rhoda Carmichael. “She’s like the Energizer Bunny of real estate,” Charlotte had said. “She won’t stop until she finds a place that’s perfect for you, Alex, and Timmy.”
What Charlotte hadn’t told her was that Rhoda expected the same level of commitment from her clients. Last week, she had called Laurie at five in the morning to tell her about a place in the hours before it officially hit the market.
Laurie would flip through the documents at her office tomorrow, she thought, even though she knew Rhoda would be calling her first thing for her feedback. Laurie already had Brett Young’s impossible expectations to meet at work. She didn’t need a second boss in her personal life.
Her father started to stand, ready to make the three-block walk to his own apartment.
“Have you got a second?” she asked.
“Of course.” He eased back into the recliner.
She told him about the visit she’d had from Robert and Cynthia Bell, followed by her drop-in at Kendra’s townhouse. “I spent most of the day reading up on the case again. The press was scathing. I couldn’t find a single sympathetic article about Martin’s wife. But I didn’t see any official indication from the police department that she was actually a suspect.”
“But let me guess: The NYPD didn’t say anything to clear her name, either.”
She shook her head.
“Don’t quote me on this, but let me teach you how to read between the lines. The Martin Bell case was one where the newspapers were doing enough on their own to gin up public interest in the investigation.”
“There was no need for the police to hold press conferences and the like,” Laurie said, following his logic.
“Yes, but it’s more than the amount of coverage. It’s the angle. When I was working homicides, I had a case—a bad one. Kids were involved.” He frowned at the memory. Leo had loved his work as a police officer, but Laurie remembered the way certain types of crimes would zap her normally upbeat father and rob him of his smile. “One of the reporters got it in his head that the nanny did it. Something about being jealous that she couldn’t have children of her own. But here’s the thing: we knew she had an ironclad alibi, and we could see with our own eyes how much she mourned for those kids. So we put out a statement that made it clear that we considered the nanny to be a secondary victim of the crime. It shut down the negative press coverage about her in an instant.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis.
“But the NYPD didn’t do the same for Kendra Bell,” Laurie noted.
“Exactly.”
“So she’s a suspect.”
He shrugged. “I heard some things at the time.”
“Such as?”
“Remember how the press was calling her a druggie or whatever?” Leo asked.
As much as the public seemed convinced that Kendra had killed her husband, the sensational coverage didn’t appear to have been backed by facts. All the articles boiled down to one basic observation: Martin Bell had been a superstar with a big public career, married to a recluse who had failed to live up to the potential her husband had once seen in her. There were anecdotes about her appearing intoxicated the few times she’d been spotted with him socially in the months before his murder. And a couple of anonymous sources alleged that she’d been withdrawing more cash than a stay-at-home mom was likely to spend. But Laurie hadn’t seen anything close to a smoking gun.
“Stoner Mom,” Laurie said, recalling one of the headlines. “One of the neighbors—anonymous, of course—said Kendra seemed out of it sometimes. But other people made it sound more like she might just have a tendency to drink a little too much. Maybe if she was a drinker, she was hungover sometimes.”
“I think it was more than that,” Leo said as he gazed toward the ceiling. “It was never disclosed to the press, but word got out around the department. Her behavior was apparently very strange the night of the murder. She acted like she was in a daze. The responding officers weren’t even sure she was processing what was going on. In short, they asked if they could do a blood draw to make sure she wasn’t under the influence of anything. Her husband had just been shot in cold blood and she was throwing a fit about taking a drug test without a search warrant.”
“Wanting privacy doesn’t make someone a murderer,” Laurie reminded him.
“Yes, but then they started looking into the finances.”
“The cash withdrawals,” Laurie said. Kendra had been using her ATM card to make frequent cash-machine withdrawals from the couple’s joint savings account. “I wonder if the police leaked that to the press.”
“It was more than just the cash,” her father continued, getting a second wind. “After Martin was killed, the police got a tip that Kendra was a regular at a dive bar in the East Village.”
“I suppose it makes sense if she had a drinking problem. But she didn’t strike me as the dive bar type. . . .”
“Exactly. It raises the question why she’d be going there. Turns out that, in the days before Martin’s death, Kendra had met a tough-looking guy three or four times at the same spot. Even more suspiciously, neither of them went back to that fine establishment after the husband was shot.”
“So who was the tough guy?”
He shook his head. “They couldn’t trace him. Like Kendra, he always paid cash. And, from what I heard, Kendra wasn’t especially helpful when the police asked her about him.”
Laurie frowned, processing the new information. Kendra was in bed at the time of the shooting, so clearly she hadn’t committed the murder personally. Her detractors speculated that she had squirreled away cash from her frequent ATM withdrawals to pay a hit man. If Laurie could prove that Kendra had been meeting with a strange man prior to the killing, she’d have more than mere speculation for her television program. “Do you remember the name of the bar?”
“Not sure I ever knew it. But I’m sure I can find out.”
“Of course you can,” she said. Leo Farley had retired from the NYPD after Greg was killed, so he could help Laurie raise Timmy, but years later, even rookie police officers stood up straighter when he entered a room. Last year, he had accepted an invitation to join the department’s anti-terrorism task force on a part-time basis. As long as Leo was around, his reach within the department would remain wide.
She walked her father to the door and gave him a good-bye hug.
“You got what I meant about reading between the lines?” he asked.
“I did. Thanks for the tutorial, Professor. Maybe the chief judge of the Southern District of New York would find it an interesting subject over dinner.”
“Oh, don’t get any ideas. But I’m serious: Just because Kendra was never named a suspect doesn’t mean the whole NYPD doesn’t think she’s guilty.” His tone suddenly became troubled. “Her husband was killed while she had young children. It’s only natural that you’ll connect with her on some level. But she’s probably a killer. Be careful, Laurie.”