An Accidental Corpse Page 14

  “Good,” said Nita. “We haven’t said anything to TJ, either. So let’s keep the dinner conversation to other topics. I’m sure you can entertain us with tales of your exploits in local law enforcement—but please stick to the solved crimes and closed cases.”

  Earl agreed with a nod and a grin, and they shook hands on it.

  Thirty-seven.

  Thursday, August 16

  “Toll of Ten Lives in Motor Crashes, One Murder, Saturday,” read the front-page headline in the weekly edition of the East Hampton Star, the local paper of record. The article led with the story of Pollock and his passengers, including the fact that one of them was dead before the crash.

  “Dammit,” growled Harry Steele as he slammed the paper down on the breakfast table. In answer to his wife’s raised eyebrows, he explained, “Somebody blabbed. Now the cat’s out of the bag.” He read down the column:

  Sunday morning’s radio announced that ten people were dead in three Saturday automobile accidents in East Hampton and Southampton, but one victim, a passenger in a car driven by Jackson Pollock, 44, an internationally known artist, was later determined to have been dead when the car ran off Fireplace Road into the woods and overturned.

  The victim, Miss Edith Metzger, 25, the assistant manager of a beauty salon in New York City, was visiting Mr. Pollock, who made his home at The Springs, about a mile from the accident scene. Another passenger in his car, Miss Ruth Kligman, 26, an art gallery assistant in New York City, was taken to Southampton Hospital, where she is recovering from multiple injuries. Mr. Pollock’s wife, Lenore Krasner Pollock, also an artist, was in Europe at the time of the accident, which occurred at about 10:15 p.m. on August 11.

  Miss Metzger was originally thought to have died of a broken neck at the scene, but was later found to have been fatally strangled not long before the crash. Her death is being investigated as a homicide by the East Hampton Town Police Department, assisted by Captain Brian Fitzgerald and his wife, Detective Juanita Diaz, of the New York City Police Department, who are vacationing here at the Sea Spray Inn.

  The article went on to describe the accident scene and paraphrase the police report, although not the Metzger autopsy results. Apparently the reporter didn’t get the document itself, but the leak must have come from someone in the coroner’s office. And someone at the inn must have given up Fitz’s and Nita’s names. There was also a description of the funeral tacked onto the end of the article, evidently just before the paper’s Wednesday evening deadline. At least they don’t have anything on the skin fragments, thought Steele. Small blessing.

  He decided to drive over to the Sea Spray with a copy of the paper, and found the Fitzgerald family relaxing on the cottage deck. Another perfect summer day about to be spoiled, he said to himself as they waved enthusiastically at his approach.

  “Morning, Harry,” called Fitz. “To what do we owe the pleasure? Any new developments?”

  “I’ll say. Take a look at this.” He handed over the Star.

  “Oh, boy, that tears it,” said Nita. “I’d better try to get to Kligman before someone at the hospital spills the beans. I know Doc Abel said to wait for his call, but I think we should drive over there now.” She looked at Fitz and TJ, who agreed reluctantly to sacrifice their morning on the beach.

  “No, you boys stay here, I’ll do the honors,” offered Steele. “I can pull rank on Doc Abel if necessary. It’s time we got to the bottom of this, at least find out what Kligman knows, which I’m sure is plenty.”

  “I’ll just get my handbag,” said Nita, “and a piece of evidence you haven’t seen yet. Our junior detective here found it yesterday afternoon. I’ll explain on the way.”

  They arrived at the hospital to find Abel conferring with the head nurse at the second-floor charge desk. He saw them coming, and moved to head them off before they could get to Kligman’s room.

  “Iris is in with her,” he explained. “She’s sitting up, and she ate a good breakfast. I don’t see any reason why you can’t talk to her, but I think only Detective Diaz. She might be put off by your uniform, Harry.”

  Steele chuckled. “Yeah, you’re right, Bill. My bedside manner is nonexistent. Besides, Nita here doesn’t need any help from me. By the way, who’s Iris?”

  “Believe it or not, Kligman has an identical twin sister. That’s Iris. She looks just like her, at least before the crash. Don’t be concerned by the way Ruth looks now—it’s just the progression of the bruising. The scrapes on her face are healing nicely. I doubt there’ll be any scarring, but she’s still somewhat swollen and livid.”

  Abel asked them to wait while he went to collect Iris.

  “Ask her to come see me out here,” said Steele. “I’ll question her about Ruth’s family and friends, get some background, just to keep her occupied for a little while. She may actually have some helpful information she’s not aware of. Like who might have had it in for Edith.”

  Nita greeted Iris with genuine concern as she emerged from the room.

  “I’m so glad to learn that your sister’s condition has improved,” she said. “I hope she’ll soon be well enough to go home. I’m sure your mother will be relieved.”

  “Poor Mamma is in a state,” said Iris. “I call her every morning and evening. She needs constant reassurance that Ruthie is on the mend. I haven’t told her about Edie—that would be too much for her to take right now. I haven’t told Ruthie, either. I just want this nightmare to be over. Besides, I have to get back to work.”

  “What do you do?” asked Nita.

  “I’m a music teacher. I live with Mamma in Newark and work at home, but I have regular students who come in every week. I took a week off, and I hope it won’t be too much longer or they’ll find someone else to teach them piano.”

  With assurance from Abel that he would release Ruth in just a few days, Iris went to join Steele in the hall while the doctor and Nita entered Ruth’s room.

  Certain that Ruth would have no recollection of their earlier conversation, Nita reintroduced herself and took a seat beside the bed. She could tell that, in spite of her appearance, Ruth was indeed much improved. The IV drip had been removed from her arm, and the back of the adjustable bed had been raised so she could sit in a more comfortable position for meals and conversation.

  Before launching into her interrogation, Nita asked Ruth how she was feeling. She wanted to get a sense of how coherent she was, and to put her at ease as much as possible. A little sympathy could go a long way toward encouraging cooperation.

  “They’re giving me pain pills, but I ache all over. I wish they’d put the drip back in. It made me numb. And they won’t let me look in the mirror, but I can feel how cut and bruised my face is. Just look at my arms, all yellow. My whole body’s like that—it’s horrible!”

  Well, thought Nita, she can talk in complete sentences, and she has a clear idea of her condition. She decided to reassure her.

  “The doctor tells me you’re making excellent progress. He says you’ll be out of here in no time, but it could take a while for you to get back to normal. You know you had a concussion, right?”

  “Yes, he told me. That’s why I can’t remember what happened.”

  “When I was here before, you did remember a little. You had a flashback to the moments just before the crash, when the car swerved off the road. Has anything else come back to you? Take your time.” Nita held her breath.

  Ruth closed her eyes and laid her head back on the pillow. She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Suddenly her eyes opened wide.

  “My hair! Edie! I need her to do my hair; it’s a mess. Where is she? She was in the car with us. She came out with me for the weekend. We were going to the concert. Oh, God, everything is so jumbled up.” She covered her eyes and winced as her hand touched her injured cheek.

  Nita decided that this was the moment. She reached into her handbag, removed
the necklace, and held it out so Ruth would see it when she opened her eyes.

  “Do you recognize this?” she asked.

  Ruth saw it and gasped. “That’s Edie’s! Nick gave it to her. Where did you get it?”

  “From the accident scene,” answered Nita, then asked a question of her own. “Who is Nick?”

  “Her boss at the Beautique Salon. He’s also her boyfriend, but he’s married, so Edie’s going to break it off.” Suddenly she stopped short.

  “But she can’t. Because she’s dead.”

  Thirty-eight.

  Dr. Abel stepped forward, concerned that Ruth might become agitated, but instead she looked at him calmly, her eyes showing more comprehension than he had seen so far. He nodded encouragement to her and returned to the sidelines.

  Nita laid the necklace on the bed, where Ruth could reach it, and prompted her. “Would you like to tell me how you know that?” She held out a hand, and Ruth took it gratefully.

  “Yes, it’s coming back. I’m still a bit hazy, but seeing Edie’s necklace made me remember when I saw her wearing it after she got dressed to go to the concert. I told her how pretty she looked, in her blue dress and the necklace, blue like her eyes. That’s what Nick said when he gave it to her—blue to match your eyes. She told me everything about their affair, and of course I understood her problem, since I was seeing a married man, too. We were both in the same boat, except that Jackson said he was going to divorce Lee and marry me. Not like Nick, who wasn’t about to leave his wife and kids.”

  Nita wondered if Edith had been putting pressure on Nick, maybe threatening to rat him out to his wife if he didn’t ask for a divorce. Could Nick have decided to solve that problem once and for all?

  Ruth reached out to the necklace and ran her fingers over the beads.

  “She was all ready to go, but Jackson was taking a nap and I had to get dressed, so I told her she should wait for us downstairs. When I went in to wake Jackson up, he . . . ah . . . didn’t want the coffee I brought him.” Her look softened, and she glanced at Abel before confiding in Nita, one woman to another. “He wanted to make love.” She hesitated, and her gaze turned inward.

  “I loved him so much, I couldn’t refuse him anything. Certainly not that, even though Edie was waiting. I knew we’d be late for the concert, but I didn’t care. It was beautiful, and afterward we lay in each other’s arms and swore we’d never let each other go.”

  She spoke directly to Nita again. “And I won’t. He’ll be with me forever, for all eternity.” Despite her condition, her gift for self-dramatization was intact.

  Nita continued to encourage her. “But you decided to go to the concert after all?”

  “Yes. We washed up and got dressed and went down to collect Edie. By then it was ten o’clock. We figured that even if we missed the music we could go to the reception after, and she could see Alfonso’s fancy mansion and meet some of his famous friends. That’s how I sold her on the idea of going. At first she said she wanted to stay home.”

  “Why? Didn’t she like music?”

  “Well, the truth is she was afraid to go in the car with Jackson because he’d been drinking. But I convinced her that he’d be okay after he’d had some sleep, so she agreed to go after all.”

  “So you started out for the concert. Then what happened?”

  Ruth frowned and shook her head slowly. The fog was lifting, as if daylight had broken through.

  “No, that’s not what we did. When we went down, the radio was on but Edie wasn’t there. I went into the parlor and turned off the radio, and I knocked on the powder room door in case she was in there, but she wasn’t. The back door was open. Jackson said she’s probably in the yard, so we . . .”

  She broke off. A look of distress crossed her face.

  “We didn’t see her at first. It was really dark out. She was lying on the ground, over by the studio, clutching at her throat, gasping for breath. Jackson thought she was choking on something. He pushed on her chest a few times, like a lifeguard would do, but nothing came up. He said we’d better get her to the hospital, so he picked her up and carried her to the car. I locked up the house and got in the backseat with her, and Jackson drove off even faster than usual. But he was cold sober, I swear.

  “When we got down to the end of Fireplace Road there was a streetlight, and I saw bruises on her neck. She gagged, then she stopped breathing. She died with her head in my lap! Oh, God, I was so scared! I screamed at Jackson to stop the car. He pulled over, and I told him. He looked at her throat, with the pretty blue necklace and ugly red welts around it. We were both just dumbfounded.

  “I climbed into the front seat with him and we sat there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do. Too late to go to the hospital, and if we did, how would we explain what happened to her? We didn’t say it out loud, but we both knew somebody had strangled her. If we took her body to the hospital, they’d think Jackson did it. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to think straight.

  “I told him we should take her home and put her back in the yard, maybe somewhere more hidden than where we found her. Then call the police and tell them she’s missing. That way when they found her, they’d think someone outside assaulted her while we were in the house. We didn’t hear anything because the radio was on. And anyway, that’s what we thought did happen.

  “So Jackson turned the car around and headed home. But he was driving way too fast, and he lost control on that curve.” With a theatrical gesture, she put her hands to her ears and closed her eyes tight. “I can still hear the tires squealing, and the branches snapping as the car crashed through the woods!”

  Ruth sighed deeply, lowered her hands to her lap, and seemed drained of emotion. Apparently her recollection had been a cathartic experience.

  “After that,” she concluded, “I don’t remember anything until I woke up here.”

  “Of course not,” said Nita. “You were thrown out of the car and hit your head. You were in shock and nearly unconscious when we found you on the road. My husband and I saw the accident happen. We stopped, and I gave you first aid at the scene until Dr. Abel arrived and took charge.”

  “You did? Oh, thank you. But are we finished? I feel a bit faint.” Her eyelids fluttered, and Abel stepped up to the bedside and checked her pulse.

  “You’re doing fine, Ruth,” he said, “in fact you’re doing extremely well. You’re making progress every day. The very fact that your memory has returned is a sign that your brain is healing rapidly.” He patted her hand reassuringly. “Now, you get some rest, young lady. Would you like Iris to come back in, or would you rather sleep for a while?”

  “I think I’ll take a nap now. Please ask Iris to come back later. And tell her I love her,” she added as Abel handed her a Percodan tablet with water, cranked down the bed, and adjusted her pillows and blanket.

  “Of course. I think she knows how much she means to you, especially now.”

  Nita stood, and took Ruth’s hand again. “You’ve been extremely helpful, Ruth. I can’t thank you enough. We already knew that Edith didn’t die in the crash. Now we need to find out who killed her, and why.”

  Thirty-nine.

  “Did Iris say anything to you about Edith’s boyfriend Nick?” asked Nita as she and Steele headed back to East Hampton.

  “No, all we talked about was Ruth. I don’t think she knows that much about Edith, just that she and Ruth were roommates and the two of them got on really well. She did say that Ruth was going to a psychiatrist in the city, and that he told her it was okay to be seeing Pollock even though he was married. Iris thought that was bad advice, but of course it was just what Ruth wanted to hear. Her boss at the art gallery had given her the summer off—according to Iris, they close in August anyway—and Ruth couldn’t wait to start her ‘trial marriage’ with Pollock.

  “But after a few weeks she was having second thoughts
, which is why she went back to town for a couple of days last week. She told Iris she was afraid Jackson was cracking up, and she was having a hard time dealing with his moods.”

  “I can understand why,” said Nita. “According to Jim Brooks, he was really depressed. How would a twenty-six-year-old girl know what to do about that? Cooped up all alone with him in the house, then snubbed by his friends when he took her out, it’s no wonder she needed a break. And why she wanted company. Someone her own age she could talk to when her boyfriend was down in the dumps.”

  “Or in his cups, more like,” observed Steele with a smirk. “From what the neighbors tell me, the man wasn’t fit to live with, not lately, anyway. Dan Miller says he’d go through a case of beer every two or three days, and that’s not all he was drinking.”

  “Well, drunk or sober, if we accept Ruth’s account, he wasn’t responsible for Edith’s death,” said Nita. She had filled Steele in on their conversation.

  “Think she’s telling the truth?”

  “Yes, I think she is. She could be covering up for Pollock, but in my experience it would be hard for someone to make up such a complicated and detailed story and not give something away, especially after suffering a concussion. Doc Abel is convinced that her amnesia was real, that she wasn’t just playing for time so she could come up with a plausible alibi for Pollock. Iris said she didn’t tell her Edith was dead, and she seemed genuinely shocked when she realized it on her own. Then it all came back to her.

  “Edith’s necklace was the key that unlocked her memory, thanks to my son and his canine partner. And to a lucky break. Imagine the trail behind the Finches’ house leading right to the accident scene.”

  “Yep. Walking straight through the woods, you cut off the corner from Gardiner to Fireplace. Good thing Sally’s got a sharp nose and TJ’s got sharp eyes.”