Full Frontal Murder (6 page)

Marian left the questioning to Perlmutter and O'Toole. She walked down the hall to Captain Murtaugh's office. “Jim? Got a moment?”

He waved her in. “How's it going?”

“About as expected. She accused him, he's accusing her.” She sat down and took a deep breath. “I don't think he did it.”

“Reason?”

“I don't believe he would endanger his own son. The little boy's just too important to him. Hugh Galloway is probably every bit the son of a bitch his wife says he is—he's tried to
buy
Bobby from her, for one thing. He offered her the house and god knows what else if she'd give the boy up. But if he was going to heave a Molotov cocktail through the window, he'd do it at a time Bobby wasn't there.”

Murtaugh nodded. “Sounds reasonable. What about the wife? Could she have done it?”

Marian shifted in her chair. “I don't think so. And for just about the same reasons. Even if she is the coldhearted liar Hugh claims she is, Bobby provides the only leverage she has over her husband. She wouldn't risk losing that.”

“You've seen them together, Rita and Bobby. Anything there?”

She shook her head. “Looked like a normal mother-child relationship to me. Bobby's a sweet kid. He doesn't know what's going on between his parents—Rita has shielded him from that.”

“If we rule out both of them,” the captain said, sitting up straight, “then it looks as if old Walter Galloway was right. Kidnapping for ransom.”

Marian agreed. “And it's somebody who's new at the game. An amateur. The man who grabbed Bobby on the street … an experienced criminal would have dropped the kid and run the minute he heard the police siren. But this guy not only held on, he even struggled with the bluesuit over possession of the boy. A pro would never have run that risk.”

“Why set the house on fire?”

She shrugged. “Planning to grab Bobby when he and his mother came running out of the burning house? But he didn't figure on the alarm system being so noisy. It woke up the entire neighborhood … witnesses all over the place. Another amateur mistake.”

“Yeah,” Murtaugh mused, “it could have happened just like that.”

“There's only one piece that doesn't fit,” Marian said. “There are lots of little rich boys in New York. After the first attempt failed, why didn't the kidnapper just move on to an easier target? Why did he come back a second time for this particular little rich boy?”

“I think you'd better find out,” the captain said.

6

“Mrs. Galloway wasn't sure of the exact date her brother caught the cleaning woman going through her checkbook,” O'Toole said. “But she's sure it was a Tuesday either two or three weeks ago.”

“Why Tuesday?” Marian asked.

“Because Bobby wasn't home when it happened. The cleaning service comes twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. And Bobby doesn't go to preschool on Fridays.”

She nodded. “Go on.”

“The cleaning woman was Puerto Rican, first name Consuela. About five five, hundred-fifty pounds, in her forties. Mrs. Galloway doesn't remember ever seeing her before. Mrs. Galloway didn't report the incident to the cleaning service herself—she said her brother took care of it.”

“What about the cleaning service?”

“Maids-in-a-Row, on Lex,” O'Toole said. “They've just been bought by Galloway Industries, and they're gonna be merged with two other cleaning services. The owner, name of Gordon Egrorian, says he don't know nuttin' about no complaint, his words. Could be lying, but he cooperated in checking the payroll.”

“And?”

“And Tuesday three weeks ago he had a new employee on the crew that went to Mrs. Galloway's house, a Consuela Palmero with a home address on West 177th Street. I haven't had time to check it out yet, I'll get to that next. Egrorian said one of his regular crew quit without notice, and the Palmero woman showed up looking for work that same day. He put her on the Galloway crew without checking her references.”

“Whoa. Aren't those cleaning services all bonded?”

“He said she already was—she had the papers. That was good enough for him, in a pinch. He'd planned on adding her to his own bond later, but he never saw her again. He tried to call when she didn't show up the next day, but the phone number she left wasn't a working number.”

“Uh-huh. And what do you want to bet that her name isn't Consuela Palmero and she doesn't live on 177th?”

O'Toole grimaced. “Not even a penny. But I'll check it out anyway.”

“Talk to the others on the Galloway cleaning crew. See if this Consuela let anything drop about herself. Slim chance, I know—but this woman's our only link to whoever's behind the trouble. Let's get that owner of Maids-in-a-Row … Gordon Egrorian? Get him in here for a session with the graphics tech. Set it up, O'Toole.”

“Okay.” He scribbled a note to himself. “And I asked Mrs. Galloway if her husband was in therapy, like you said. She says no, Hugh looks upon needing a therapist as a sign of weakness. She says that's one reason he insisted on
her
going into therapy. An insult. That lady's very bitter, Lieutenant.”

“I know.”

“What about her therapist?”

“Perlmutter's at his office now. I don't expect he'll tell us much. All right, O'Toole, go check on the elusive Consuela.”

“Right, Lieutenant.” He hurried away.

Marian looked in the case file and found the West Side address for Alex Fairchild that Perlmutter had put there. She had legitimate police business with Fairchild and his sister, but mostly she wanted to see how Bobby had weathered this newest trauma in his young life.

Alex Fairchild was standing there waiting for the elevator as the doors slid open to let Marian out. “Lieutenant Larch!” he said, surprised. “I hope you've come to tell us that Hugh Galloway is safely under lock and key.”

“I'm sorry, no. How's Bobby doing?”

“Oh, Bobby's doing fine. He's the only one of us who is. He told his bodyguard that he's staying here while his own house gets ‘fixed.' He doesn't understand what happened.”

“He must know there was a fire.”

“Only because we told him. All he remembers is that his mother woke him up before he was ready and carried him out-of-doors in his pajamas. He didn't see much of anything.” Fairchild peered into the elevator she was holding open. “Where's the professor?”

He meant Perlmutter; with his wire-rim glasses and bush of wiry black hair, the detective did have a scholarly look to him. “He's at home grading papers. Are your sister and Bobby in?”

“Yes—Rita's afraid to go out. Look, I'm due at a shoot. If you want to talk to me, do you mind coming along?”

“Just one question and I'll let you go. Who reported the cleaning woman to the service, you or your sister?”

“I did. Why?”

“The owner denies ever getting the complaint.”

Fairchild made a
tsk
sound. “The charitable interpretation of that would be to say he forgot about it. But he's lying, Lieutenant. He's going to deny any of his employees ever did anything wrong.”

Everybody lies
. “What's the owner's name?”

A smile played around his mouth. “A test?” But he concentrated on remembering. “It was an odd name.” He frowned. “Why am I thinking of a calendar … Gregorian?”

Marian nodded. “Close enough. It's Egrorian. All right, Mr. Fairchild, I won't hold you any longer.”

He stepped into the elevator. “Don't forget Thursday,” he said just as the doors closed.

Thursday? Then she remembered: a private showing of his photographs at the Something-or-Other Gallery on Fifty-seventh Street. Marian walked down the hall and rang the doorbell of apartment number 1404.

A male voice came through the door. “Who is it?” One of the bodyguards.

Marian held her badge up to the eyehole and waited. The door was opened by an unsmiling man in a conservative business suit. “I'm Lieutenant Larch, Midtown South. I need to see Mrs. Galloway.”

He stepped back to let her enter, and then led her down a white staircase to an open area on a lower level where a television was playing with the sound low. Rita Galloway sat looking at the set with a glassy-eyed stare that suggested she wasn't seeing what was on the screen. She jumped when Marian spoke her name.

“Oh, Lieutenant!” She clicked off the TV. “Any news?”

“A little.” She sat down on what looked like a pile of deep-blue pillows but turned out to be a chair. Alex Fairchild's apartment was so ultra-modern it looked like the set of a futuristic movie. Airy and open, no clutter. The bodyguard took another chair near the foot of the stairway; he hadn't spoken once. “Where's Bobby?”

“In the next room, with his guard. What's the news?”

“It looks as if you were right about the cleaning woman being a plant.” Marian went on to explain about Consuela Palmero. “It's not her real name. But she's a lead.”

“To Hugh?”

“Or to someone who's after Bobby for the ransom. I know—you're convinced it's your husband. But until we find something that links him directly to these things that have been happening, we can't arrest him.”

“This is insane! Hugh tried to kill us last night and—”

“Mrs. Galloway, stop and think. Does your husband want Bobby dead?”

“No! He wants
me
dead!”

“So how could he expect the same homemade bomb to get you but not Bobby? It doesn't make sense. Fire is always dangerous, but neither of you was hurt, were you? That bomb was meant to badger you, not kill you.”

Rita Galloway was silent a moment and then said, “That stained-glass dragon is irreplaceable, you know. It was one of a kind. The artisan who fashioned it died last year.”

A door opened and Bobby rushed in, followed by another unsmiling man in a business suit. “Mama! I wrote my name!” He held up a sheet of paper on which “Bobby” had been drawn in green crayon.

“Why, honey, that's wonderful!” Rita fussed over him a few minutes and then shot a questioning look at Bobby's bodyguard.

The man spread his hands. “He wanted to know.”

Rita gave him a big smile, the first Marian had ever seen on her face. Marian leaned forward toward the boy. “Hi, Bobby. Remember me?”

He turned shy. “Mary Ann,” he said in a tiny voice.

“Hey, you remember!” She leaned back in her chair: less threatening. “Good for you.”

“I drew a cow,” he volunteered.

“You did? Cows are hard to draw.”

He nodded soberly. “I never see a cow.”

“That should make it even harder.”

“I see monkeys, and goats, and, and, and snakes—”

“Bobby,” his mother interrupted gently. “Ah, Mary Ann and I need to talk right now. Okay?”

“Okay.” Bobby dropped to his hands and knees and started chugging away like a choo-choo.

Rita watched a moment to make sure he was absorbed in his play and then turned back to Marian. “Are you having Hugh followed?” she asked in a low voice.

Marian had been afraid she'd ask that. “There's no point. He spends most of his day at the office, doesn't he? There are a dozen ways out of the Galloway Building. We can't watch them all. And if he is guilty, he's hiring someone to do his dirty work for him. He didn't … ah …” She remembered just in time that Bobby was in the room. “He didn't do the job outside the church himself. And it's unlikely he ran the risk of being seen in your neighborhood last night.”

Rita sighed. “That's true.” Bobby had crawled under an end table that looked like an exhibit from the Museum of Modern Art, playing hide-and-seek with himself.

“But accomplices … that's another matter. We have a line on one of them, the Palmero woman. And we have the face of the other, the man you described for the computer portrait. And you seem well protected here.” Marian glanced over at Bobby's guard. “What agency are you with?”

“Vinni Security,” he said.

Marian nodded. A reliable rent-a-cop outfit; no elderly retirees armed with guns they could barely lift. “Mrs. Galloway, I'd like you to consider seriously the possibility that your husband isn't behind this.”

“What do you mean? Of course he's behind it! How can you—”

“Please, hear me out. Your husband's feeling as beleagured as you are, and you're both accusing the other of being responsible for what's happening.”

Rita Galloway made a sound of disgust.
“Hugh
wasn't the one who was firebombed last night!” Then she suddenly remembered Bobby was there and jerked her head around to see if he was listening.

The boy was paying no attention to them; he was too busy trying to pull open a shallow drawer in the art museum end table. “It's stuck,” he complained.

“No, Bobby,” his mother said. “It's locked.”

“Why?”

“Uncle Alex always keeps it locked.”

“Oh. Okay.” Back to being a choo-choo.

Rita returned her attention to what Marian had been saying. “Look, I know how convincing he can be. I fell for his line once myself. But I'm telling you—”

“Mrs. Galloway, please listen. We have to investigate the possibility that an outsider is responsible.” Marian's eyes traveled back to the locked end table drawer. “It might even be someone you know.” The other woman frowned. “He's made two attempts. I'd like you to think over all the people you know—not just your friends but casual acquaintances and enemies too, if you have any. Try to isolate those who need money, those who might want to hurt you.” The end table drawer was shallow, not more than four inches deep.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant, but that would be a waste of time. I
know
who's responsible.”