Silent Stalker Read online

  “Connors,” he said. “He took one for me when I had that root canal that got infected. Remember?”

  “Oh, right.”

  Butts had spent much of January dealing with tooth problems. Though he was delighted to have dropped nearly ten pounds, he had missed a fair number of work days.

  “I owed him one, and he’s dealin’ with a sick mom right now, so I took this call. Whaddya think, Doc? Pretty weird, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is she his only vic, you think?”

  “She could be, but I wouldn’t put odds on it.”

  “That’s what I was thinkin’.”

  As the neighborhood stirred into life, the two men fell silent, contemplating the presence of a murderer among them in the city that never sleeps.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The tenant in apartment 1-A, Mrs. Chen, turned out to have a husband, Louie, though she did most of the talking. Together they ran a laundry business out of the ground-floor apartment across the hall, which meant that they were the only tenants on the floor. Butts had already interviewed Mrs. Chen briefly, but she seemed eager to talk to Lee as well, so he and Butts accepted an invitation to share a pot of tea and moon cakes.

  Louie Chen was a slight, wiry man with a long face and thick black hair. His wife was even smaller, with pale skin and large eyes behind thick glasses. Her graying hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a pink flowered dress. They both appeared to be in their seventies, but moved with a quick, youthful grace. Their apartment was shabby but comfortable, and very clean. A large golden statue of a smiling Buddha dominated the bookshelf across from the couch Lee and Butts sat on. The shrine was surrounded by tea candles and plates of fruit, nuts, and other food offerings.

  “Very good moon cakes,” Louie Chen announced loudly as his wife passed them around on a blue willow china plate. “Good, right?” he prodded as Butts took a bite.

  “Yes, very good,” the detective replied, though the look on his face suggested otherwise.

  Louie beamed. “My wife make. Excellent cook!” he declared proudly.

  Mrs. Chen—whose first name Lee hadn’t caught—gave her husband a disapproving look, but couldn’t hide her obvious pleasure.

  Louie thrust the plate in front of Lee. “You try! Very good—you try.”

  Lee complied, taking a large bite. It wasn’t bad—kind of dry, and not very sweet, but with a lemony flavor. He glanced at Butts, who was washing his down with gulps of tea.

  “Now then, Mrs. Chen,” the detective said. “You told me that Miss, uh—Lewis often came home late.”

  She nodded vigorously. “Yes. She works in restaurant, also as actress, so she come home late.”

  “But you didn’t hear her come in last night?”

  “No, we go to bed early, hear nothing.”

  “That means the attack was probably over quickly,” Lee remarked.

  “Yeah,” Butts said. “If they didn’t hear anything, I doubt anyone else in the building did.”

  “We find her this morning,” said Louie.

  “When you left your apartment to go to work across the hall?” Butts said.

  “Yes.” He looked as if he was about to cry. “She very nice lady, always friendly.”

  “You ever see anyone in the building who looked suspicious in any way, like they didn’t belong here?” the detective asked.

  Louie perched on the edge of a tattered brown armchair and stroked his chin. “I don’t think so. . . . Wait!” He looked at his wife. “You know Mrs. Mingelone, live upstairs? ”

  “Yes!” she said, clapping her hands together. “Mrs. Mingelone, she nice lady but old, you know?” She said this with sympathetic superiority, as if it were an unfortunate affliction.

  “Yes?” Lee said, being careful not to smile at elderly Mrs. Chen calling her neighbor “old.” He was reminded of his mother, who refused to join a local bridge club because “it was full of old ladies.”

  “Mrs. Mingelone sometimes forget to close door behind her,” Mrs. Chen continued. “We talk to her—everyone remind her—but she forgetful.” Mrs. Chen shook her head with gentle disapproval.

  Butts glanced at his watch. “It’s seven-thirty. You think Mrs. Mingelone will be awake yet?”

  “Could be,” Mrs. Chen replied. “Old people up early.”

  “Like us,” said Louie with a grin, displaying a set of broad, yellowing teeth.

  His wife gave a disapproving frown. “Not so old—run business, take care of grandchildren, work all day long!”

  Louie looked at the two men and shrugged, as if to say, Women—what can you do?

  To Lee’s surprise, Butts smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re not so old, not in my book.”

  After refusing another serving of tea and moon cakes, Lee and Butts left the Chens to interview the other tenants in the building. They began with Mrs. Mingelone, who lived on the second floor. Unfortunately, she was a rather addled person—kindly and eager to help, but forgetful and easily flustered. Perhaps the presence of the police in her apartment was too much for her—she offered them gingerbread cookies three times, apparently having forgotten that she had already done so. Lee thought her behavior indicated early stages of dementia.

  Sitting with them at her kitchen table, Mrs. Mingelone tried valiantly to be helpful. “Mindy only moved in about six months ago,” she offered, wringing her hands. Her knobby knuckles were swollen with arthritis, the skin dry as parchment. She wore a faded housedress and fuzzy pink slippers, but had slapped some bright red lipstick on her thin lips. From time to time she fussed with her hair, which she wore in a loose chignon. Lee felt sorry for this sweet, muddled old woman, alone in her Hell’s Kitchen apartment, and was glad to see family pictures stacked three deep on top of the bookshelf in the hall.

  “You ever see her with a boyfriend?” Butts asked after refusing a third offer of homemade cookies.

  Mrs. Mingelone shook her head slowly. “No . . . I don’t think I ever saw her with anyone. Except once, another woman—older, I think, another theatre type.”

  “How so?” asked Butts.

  “Well, she was dramatic, you know—the way they are. Looked like she had put her outfit together from bits and pieces of costumes she found in thrift shops.”

  “You get a name?”

  “It was exotic—Devonia, Camellia, Carlotta, something like that. Mindy introduced me. She thinks I’m lonely, but I’m not. I can’t stand it when people think just because you’re old it means you’re lonely. Know what I mean?”

  “Sure,” said Butts. “Anything else you remember that might be useful? Anyone in the building who looked like they didn’t belong, or who you’d never seen before?”

  Mrs. Mingelone broke off a piece of cookie and popped it in her mouth. Bits of crumbs clung to her mouth, brown punctuation marks on the cherry-red lips. “I don’t think so . . . only that nice young man who carried my grocery bags for me.”

  “When was that?” asked Butts.

  “Last night, when I got home from the store. I was struggling to get out my keys, and he just seemed to come out of nowhere. Very sweet, made sure I got up to my apartment.”

  The detective’s expression didn’t change, but Lee noted the subtle adjustment in body language indicating he was on high alert.

  “And you never saw him before?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “What time?”

  “It was late—I volunteer at the library, you know, and it’s open late on Thursdays. I had a bite to eat and did some shopping afterwards. It was after eleven.”

  Lee did the math in his head. Mindy was attacked between eleven and twelve, according to Okorie, which meant her killer would have had plenty of time to wait for her, behind the staircase, across from the Chens’ apartment.

  “Can you describe him?” Butts asked.

  Mrs. Mingelone looked puzzled. “Well, I suppose I can try, but I don’t think—I mean, he was such a nice boy.”

 
They always are, Lee thought, until they murder someone.

  “Sure,” Butts said, “but we have to check out every lead.”

  “Of course, Detective,” she said, blushing. For a moment the years fell away and Lee saw the shy young woman she had been—rather lovely, with her large, dark eyes and delicate nose, though she had the kind of bone structure that hadn’t aged well. “I’m afraid I didn’t get a very good look at him.”

  “Just tell us what you can remember.”

  “He wasn’t tall—solidly built, though. . . . He had strong hands.”

  “Any facial hair?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Eyes? Hair color?”

  “He was wearing a hat. Pale, though, I believe. Caucasian.”

  “Would you be willing to go down to the station and work with a police sketch artist?”

  “I don’t know how helpful it would be, but I suppose so.”

  “Thank you very much, Mrs. Mingelone,” Butts said, rising from the table.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cookie?” she asked, waving the plate in front of Lee.

  “Sure,” he said, taking one. “Thanks.”

  The other tenants were no more helpful. Shocked, stunned, and sad to hear the terrible news, but without insight into who might want poor Mindy dead. She seemed to be well liked but not very well known. No one had seen her with a boyfriend; she seemed to be a hardworking girl who was always on her way to work or rehearsals. Butts did manage to get the name of the company she acted with, a group specializing in classic revivals, the Noble Fools Theatre Troupe. They were residents of a little off-Broadway place just off Eighth Avenue, so Butts decided to make that their next stop.

  But the only thing they had approaching an actual lead so far was Mrs. Mingelone’s helpful grocery bag boy. As they ventured back out into the damp chill of February, Lee thought it didn’t seem like much.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Noble Fools performed in a tiny black box theatre on the second floor of a commercial building on West Fifty-fourth Street. As he trudged up the drafty staircase, Lee wondered what it was about theatre that lured people into a life that was anything but glamorous. The theatre was cramped and claustrophobic, with no windows. The bare brick walls were covered on one side with a black felt curtain, and a rickety-looking spinet piano listed to one side on the raised stage. Lee figured the place could fit fifty people on a good night. At least the seating looked comfortable—rows of old-fashioned plush movie house seats, probably snatched up during the demise of the revival movie houses that had bitten the dust in the last few decades.

  As they entered the theatre, a large red-haired woman in a purple flowered kimono swished toward them, trailing a cloud of sandalwood perfume. “Davillia Metcalfe-Smythe,” she purred, extending an extravagantly braceleted hand. “I’m the director. Can I help you?” Her accent was mid-Atlantic, artificially refined, reminiscent of film actors of the 1930s and ’40s.

  “Detective Leonard Butts, NYPD,” Butts said, shaking her hand. The jewelry on her arm jingled like tiny bells, and her large round hoop earrings bobbed like buoys stranded in a sea of henna.

  Everything about her was oversized, from her blowsy figure to the extreme shade of her abundant curly hair—bright crimson with purple overtones. Her skin was so white that Lee wondered if she was an albino, but the paint on her face made it impossible to tell. Her lips were a crimson Cupid’s bow, her arched eyebrows were penciled in an expression of permanent surprise, and mascara hung like Spanish moss from her eyelashes. Her nails matched her lipstick, and had been filed to a point, like talons. He imagined them ripping into flesh . . . actors probably watched their step around her. Even her name was too much. Davillia Metcalfe-Smythe. Who was she trying to impress?

  But Detective Butts seemed unimpressed, grunting as she led them to seats in the audience section of the theatre.

  “Now then, gentlemen, what can I do for you?” she asked, settling across from them in a canvas director’s chair. Lee wondered if her name was stenciled on the back.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” Butts said.

  “Dear me,” she replied, crossing her generous thighs under the purple kimono. “Is one of my cast members in trouble of some kind?”

  Butts cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to have to tell you there’s been a murder.”

  “That’s terrible!” she cried, but Lee sensed more glee than alarm in her response. This was a woman who fed off drama like a vulture off carrion.

  “Mindy Lewis was found dead early this morning in her apartment building.”

  “Oh my lord!” Davillia replied, her eyes wide, but she wasn’t a very good actress, and failed to hide the thrill in her voice. “The poor dear! How was—how did she—?”

  “We are not releasing the details of her death at the present time,” Butts said.

  “But she was definitely—murdered?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you any idea who—I mean, do you have any leads? Any suspects?”

  “We were hoping you and the rest of the cast might be able to help us with that.”

  “Of course!” Davillia proclaimed, rising from her chair. She swept a fleshy arm majestically over the auditorium. “Anything we can do. Feel free to look around, ask as many questions as you like. The others will be here shortly, and I will put them at your disposal.” She took a stance like a general commanding troops, and Lee had to admire her flamboyant self-assurance. “We will help you find Mindy’s killer!”

  Lee had seen a lot of responses to the news of murder, but never one quite like this. He glanced at Butts, but the detective’s face was impassive as he scribbled in the notebook he always carried with him. Butts had a memory like a steel trap, so he rarely needed to take notes on anything, but it was a departmental requirement. A detective’s notes could be called upon during a court testimony, so it was important to have them.

  “What can you tell us about the deceased?” Butts asked.

  “Oh, she was a lovely girl—talented, hardworking. Had a ways to go as an actress, but then, this is off-off-Broadway, after all. I don’t expect the young people I work with to be at the top of their game.”

  Butts plucked a flyer from the seat next to him and held it up.

  A Comedy of Errors

  by William Shakespeare

  “Is this what you’re rehearsing?”

  “Yes. I was lucky enough to find two sets of identical twins for the male leads and their servants.”

  “Twins?” said Butts.

  “It’s a comedy based on mistaken identity,” she explained.

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “This is New York, Detective. You can find anything if you look hard enough. We’re also double and triple casting the show to make the cast as small as possible. I’m even playing a couple of roles myself.”

  Butts looked at Lee. “You know this show?”

  Lee nodded. “I’ve seen it.” What he didn’t say was that he had played a minor role in a college production when he was at Princeton.

  “It’s one of Shakespeare’s earliest efforts, but he only wrote one other play that observed the Aristotelian unities,” Davillia remarked, her bangles jingling as she waved her arms to emphasize her point. “And that was The Tempest, the masterpiece of his old age. Interesting, don’t you think?”

  “The Aristo—what?” asked Butts.

  “Unities,” said Davillia. “The entire play takes place in twenty-four hours. It was one of Aristotle’s theories about theatre.”

  Though her extravagant personality and mannered language should have irritated him, Lee was finding Davillia Metcalfe-Smythe hypnotic. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the warmth of the stuffy room, but the sound of her voice was somehow soothing, and he felt his eyelids growing heavy as she rattled on. For all her artificiality and pretense, Davillia was a big, comfortable earth mother—everything his own mother wasn’t. Lee shifted in his seat, fighting to st
ay awake. The radiator at the back of the theatre clanked and moaned as steam rattled its aged pipes—a percussion section to the cadence of her voice as it rose and fell, gliding smoothly over the landscape of her speech. . .

  Lee felt an elbow in his ribs and jerked back into awareness.

  “. . . as I was saying, they should all be here soon. Poor dears—I hate to think how they’ll take this terrible news.”

  “You use any swords in this production?” asked Butts.

  “Why, yes. Why do you—”

  “Mind if I have a look at them?”

  “They’re just prop swords.”

  “Plastic?”

  “No, they’re metal, but the blades have been capped.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Here, I’ll show you.”

  She led them backstage to an umbrella stand full of metal swords—foils, épées, even a couple of rapiers. Lee recognized them from his days on the fencing team in high school. Butts put on a pair of latex gloves and pulled out one of the foils to examine it. A square metal cap had been soldered onto the tip to blunt the weapon.

  “Are they all like this?” Butts asked.

  “Of course. You can’t use real swords in a stage production. Someone might get hurt.”

  Butts grunted and examined the rest of the collection. “You notice any missing lately?”

  “No, but I don’t keep an exact count of how many we have. Props come and go here all the time, and other theatre companies use this space as well. Why do you ask?”

  Her question was interrupted by the arrival of two tall, good-looking young men who could only be actors—the New York variety, funkier and earthier than their California equivalents, but actors nonetheless. Their energy was unmistakable—boisterous, overly cheerful, and needy. Behind their eyes lurked a thirst for approval, the search for love and acceptance. What was more remarkable was that they were clearly identical twins. Dark-haired and lean, with deep-set brown eyes, they were almost a cliché of what a leading man should look like.

  “I did not!” one of them said as they entered the room, the metal door clanging shut behind them.