Murder at the Falls (15 page)

“What did he do when he came out here?” asked Charlotte.

“He didn’t drive himself. He had a chauffeur. Usually, but not always. A gray Mercedes Benz, it was. New York plates. The chauffeur parked the car under the street light right across the street.” She waved an arm at the picture window. “Then he would get out and walk down the road. He always carried binoculars with him.”

“He was spying on them, then?”

“Well, I assume he was. He wasn’t bird-watching, I can tell you that. And quite an eyeful I imagine it was that he got. That diner Goslau bought for her, the Short Stop”—she smiled at the name—“was all windows. And there weren’t any curtains on them, either.” She studied Lumkin’s picture again. “Quite a distinguished-looking man. I imagine he’s quite rich. Who is he, anyway?”

“We’d prefer to keep that confidential,” said Charlotte.

“Of course,” she agreed readily, puffed up with the thrill of being involved in a police investigation.

“How often did he come out here?”

“He was here a lot. Always at night. I imagine he could see more then. Also, there was less likelihood that they would see him. He only came when she was here, of course. She was here at least one evening a week, usually Wednesdays. He came maybe every other Wednesday.”

“Did she come out here at other times as well?”

“Oh yes. She often came out during the day. Once she stayed for a whole week. That’s when she decorated the place. I didn’t see him at all then. I figured he must have been away.” She paused for a moment and then went on: “I can’t say that I’m terribly sorry that that Goslau man is dead,” she said. “When he had all those neon signs turned on, it looked like the carnival had come to town. I always thought there must be a law against signs like that, but I never got around to looking into it. Won’t need to now,” she added brightly. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“I don’t think so, thank you,” said Martinez. He looked over at Charlotte. “Is there anything else you wanted to ask?”

She said, no, and they thanked Mrs. Blakely, and left.

“Yeah, Lumkin was hanging around the Gryphon Mill too,” said Voorhees. He was standing behind his desk, holding the telephone to his ear. “Spying on his wife. The jealous husband bit. But we’re forgetting about him for the moment.”

Charlotte and Martinez had just finished relating the tale of their excursion, which had included a subsequent visit to the caretaker, who had confirmed everything that Mrs. Blakely had said.

“Why forgetting him?” asked Charlotte once Voorhees had hung up the phone, apparently giving up on whoever it was he had been holding for.

“We’ve got another suspect with a stronger motive.” He picked up a piece of paper and handed it to Charlotte. “We found this when we went through the papers in Goslau’s desk.”

It was a Contract of Sale agreement between Nikos Andriopoulis and Randall Goslau for the sale of the Falls View Diner, for two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.

“I don’t get it,” Charlotte said. “Who’s the suspect and what’s the motive?”

“The suspect is John Andriopoulis, and the motive is the preservation of the Falls View. Here’s a guy who started working at the Falls View when he was ten. Since his brother bought it out from the uncle forty years ago, he’s worked there seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.”

“It’s his life,” offered Martinez.

“Exactly. He’d always dreamed of leaving it to his daughter. But his brother, Nick, had a different dream. Nick’s dream was to get rid of the old diner, and open up a tablecloth restaurant on the site. Then Goslau comes along and offers Nick two hundred and seventy-five grand for it.”

“Wait a minute,” said Charlotte. “Didn’t John own a share?”

“Yes, but his brother owned the controlling interest. As the older brother, he had bankrolled the buy-out from the uncle.” Voorhees continued: “It was an offer that Nick couldn’t refuse. He signed the Contract of Sale agreement. Then John found out, and hit the roof.”

“
When
did John find out?”

“On Sunday night, just before the party. John was furious that Nick hadn’t discussed it with him first. There was an argument: a lot of yelling, some of it in Greek, some pushing and shoving. Finally Nick walked out. Everybody in the diner saw it.”

“But what would be the point of killing Randy?” Charlotte asked. “If Randy was willing to pay two hundred and seventy-five grand for the diner, then somebody else would eventually have been willing to pay that too. It would only have been a matter of time.”

“Wrong. I’ve checked this out with your friend Plummer. The diner was only worth twenty, maybe thirty thou. If the right buyer happened to come along. The reason that Goslau was willing to pay the inflated price was that he wasn’t footing the bill.”

“Who was, then?”

“Xantha Price. Nick Andriopoulis said she was buying it as a present for him. It was going to be the showpiece of his collection.” He shook his head in amazement. “I’d like to know what that guy did for her to earn himself that kind of present.”

Charlotte remembered Randy talking at the opening about having a Silk City in mind for his collection. “That explains the freshly cleared lot at Randy’s camp,” she said.

Voorhees nodded. “Anyway, to continue with my story. Randy leaves the diner at about eleven. He throws up in the bamboo, then passes out. John leaves a few minutes later for a break before reopening the diner to the regular trade at twelve. He’s gone for about forty-five minutes. I figure it happened this way: John comes across Randy lying unconscious in the bamboo, and figures, here’s his chance. If he tosses Randy in the drink, who’s going to know? He goes back to the diner for the aprons. Then he wraps Randy up to keep him from swimming if he regains consciousness, and tosses him in. But he doesn’t count on one thing—that the body wouldn’t go over the Falls, as he had planned. Instead, it ends up in the raceway system.”

“Why John, though?” she asked. “Couldn’t it have been anyone who tossed Randy in? There were enough people who didn’t like him. And most of them were at the diner that night.”

Voorhees picked up two brown paper bags that were sitting on a chair. “Here are the aprons that were wrapped around the body,” he said, pulling two aprons out of the first bag. “We just got them back from the drying room.” He spread them out on the surface of his desk.

They were stiff and dirty from the mud of the raceway, and smelled of algae. Or was it putrefaction? Charlotte wondered.

Lifting the edge of one of them, Voorhees showed them the spot at the waist where the laundry service’s logo had been stamped in indelible blue ink, like the USDA stamp on a cut of beef. “See this?” he said, pointing to an S in a circle, with the words “Supreme Linen Service” in another circle around it.

Charlotte and Martinez nodded.

Then Voorhees reached into the second bag and pulled out another apron, this one washed, starched, and folded, and pointed out the identical laundry service logo. “This one comes from the Falls View,” he said. “They were kept just inside the back door. Nobody would have seen John come back to get them.”

“But how do you know that the aprons used for wrapping up Randy’s body were from the Falls View?” Charlotte protested. “The same linen service must supply aprons to dozens of restaurants. They might have come from any one of them.”

“They might have,” Voorhees admitted. “But it’s unlikely. We’ve already checked with them. They said that they supply aprons to nine other restaurants in Paterson. The one that’s closest to the Falls View is the Madison Four, which is on the border of South Paterson.” “Is that far?” she asked.

Voorhees nodded.

Charlotte sighed. It just didn’t add up to her. “Why would John tie the body up in his own aprons?” she asked. “He isn’t stupid. He must have realized that the aprons would link the body to the diner, and therefore to him.”

“He probably thought the body would end up in Newark Bay. In any case, far enough away not to be linked to the Falls View. He’d had enough experience with rescue squad searches to know that bodies don’t always come up where they go down.”

“But could he have counted on that? After all, a lot of bodies—if not most of them—
do
come up where they went down, or pretty close to it. Wouldn’t it have been smarter to weight the body down so that it wouldn’t have come up at all?”

“Yes, but murderers aren’t always the clearest thinkers in the world, especially if they’re taking advantage of a chance opportunity. Remember, we’re not talking about a premeditated murder here.”

Charlotte leaned back in her chair, deeply disturbed by Voorhees’ revelations. They didn’t add up, mainly because she couldn’t imagine John Andriopoulis as a killer. “Have you confronted him?” she asked.

Voorhees nodded. “He says the aprons probably came from the laundry bin, which he had put out back for the linen service collection on Monday morning—that anyone could have come along and taken them out of the bin.”

His tone indicated that he thought John’s explanation was a feeble one. But Charlotte thought otherwise.

Tom came over to Charlotte’s house that evening, and they sat in Charlotte’s library, talking about the investigation. Voorhees’ case against John rested on the aprons; that, and his forty-five minute absence. But if the aprons had really been in the laundry bin out back, then anyone could have taken them, as John claimed. Arthur Lumkin, for one. It seemed to them that Arthur was another person who wasn’t likely to be happy about Xantha’s plan to buy the Falls View. Especially if he was footing the bill. Which they imagined he was. Though Xantha’s work as a boutique fashion designer probably brought in a tidy income, Charlotte guessed that it wasn’t enough to go tossing money around in hundred-thousand-dollar increments. And she was familiar enough with Xantha’s background to know that she didn’t have any family money. As Xantha herself readily admitted, she had worked herself up from the bottom, her Cockney accent, which to her credit she had never tried to alter, testimony to her East End origins. Finally there was the question of exactly why Xantha had decided to buy the Falls View. Was it just to demonstrate her love? Or, was she planning to use it for a bigger and better love nest? Even perhaps a more permanent country residence? Any of these reasons might have served to inflame Arthur’s already considerable jealousies.

As a murder suspect, they concluded, Arthur seemed to be an all-around better bet than John. Not only was John’s motive too slim, his constant presence at the diner made him entirely too obvious as a suspect.

8

Two events of the next morning only served to confirm Charlotte’s belief in the weakness of Voorhees’ case against John. The first occurred as she was sitting at her kitchen table, eating her customary cinnamon toast, and drinking her customary cup of coffee. She was reading a week-old
New York Post
that Vivian had left lying around. The
Post
wasn’t her usual breakfast fare, much less a week-old one, but the
Times
hadn’t been delivered that morning, and her morning routine demanded newsprint, however dated, as much as it did caffeine. It was an item on “Page Six,” the gossip page, that caught her eye. Sandwiched between a snippet about the pregnancy of a television sitcom star and the driving-while-intoxicated arrest of a talk show host, was an article featuring the names of Xantha Price and Arthur Lumkin in boldface type:

Our trusty Page Six spy spotted Wall Street investment banker,
Arthur Lumkin
at the office of divorce attorney,
Marvin Margulies
. “Everyone is saying that their marriage is on the rocks,” said our source, of Lumkin’s marriage to British fashion designer,
Xantha Price
. Our source noted that Ms. Price had been seen wearing a new emerald ring. She has been keeping steady company with a young photorealist painter. Could it be that wedding bells are about to ring for the third time for the fuchsia-haired, dynamo?”

After reading this, Charlotte set her coffee cup down with a clunk. If Arthur was as jealous as his spying activities seemed to indicate, the fact that Xantha was planning on dumping him for Randy would certainly have been sufficient to drive him over the edge. To say nothing of the notoriety of a much-publicized divorce, which, as a gentleman of the old school, he would have abhorred. Adding to his discomfiture would be the expense of a divorce. He wasn’t likely to be thrilled about shelling out another ten or fifteen million in alimony, and Xantha didn’t strike her as the type who was willing to walk away from a marriage to a rich man without any pecuniary demands.

The second event was the telephone call from Patty Andriopoulis.

The phone rang just as Charlotte was finishing her breakfast. Patty’s story was punctuated by sharp, wracking sobs: John had been arrested for the murder of Randy Goslau. He was being arraigned now, and would be taken immediately afterward to the bail unit.

“We’re all afraid that this is going to kill him,” Patty said, her voice even more raspy than usual. “He has a bad heart. He had a triple bypass three years ago. I know he didn’t do it. He wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

Charlotte had heard that before, but she tended to believe it of John. She wondered why Patty was calling, to raise bail money, perhaps?

Then she revealed the purpose of her call: “Bill Martinez told me the other day that you’d been helping him and Marty. Bill’s the one who gave me your phone number. We went to Kennedy High together.”

Charlotte had wondered how Patty had gotten her number.

“I have some information that may help Daddy out. I wonder if I could talk with you. I know I should probably go to Marty, but I just can’t bring myself to do that. Right now, I hate the man.”

“I understand,” said Charlotte. “Would you like me to come to the diner?”

“Could you?” Patty replied, pleadingly.

“I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

Though the diner wasn’t crowded with customers—it was the lull after the breakfast rush—it was crowded with people, all of them Greek and all of them men. It appeared as if every male Andriopoulis within a hundred miles had rallied to John’s cause. They were huddled together at one end of the diner with grim expressions on their swarthy faces, talking earnestly in Greek.