The April Fools' Day Murder (18 page)

Mrs. Benzinger brushed her sister’s forehead and patted her hand. Amelia did not move. “She’s come to see you, dear. Chris has come to see you. You asked for her, remember?” When there was no response, she turned around and shook her head.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Can I get you something to eat or drink? There must be a cafeteria.”

“Yes, downstairs. I could use a cup of coffee and a Danish. I don’t like to leave her, in case she wakes up.”

“I’ll be right back.”

I took the elevator down and got coffee and pastry for both of us. It didn’t bother me at all that I had missed
Amelia’s confession. What difference did it make now? She was not Willard Platt’s killer. I got on the elevator and went back up. Mrs. Benzinger smiled when she saw the food. I had to be firm about her not paying me.

I sat in the second chair and we opened the bags. The coffee was better than I expected and the pastry was just what I needed, something sweet to give me a lift.

“I’m sorry you missed her,” Mrs. Benzinger said, obviously believing that Amelia had lapsed into a coma.

“I’m sorry she’s in such distress. This must be very painful for you too.”

“She’s my only sister.”

There was a sound and I looked toward the bed.

“Reen?” It was faint and breathy but it was Amelia.

“She’s awake!” Maureen Benzinger got up and went to the bed. “Amelia? Did you have a good sleep, dear? Chris is here to see you.”

I couldn’t hear what the response was but Mrs. Benzinger turned and motioned me to the bedside. Amelia’s eyes were open and she fixed them on me.

“Mrs. Chester? I’m Chris. You asked to see me.”

“Chris.” She moved her hand so it touched mine. “Chris. I want to tell you. About the gun. About Will.” It was a struggle for her to put the words together.

“Yes. I’m listening.”

“—shot Will.”

“Who?” I asked. The first word had been little more than a puff of air.

“Harry,” she said, pushing the word out. “Harry Franks … Harry … shot Will.”

“Harry Franks shot Will,” I repeated, stunned by the revelation.

“Harry. Yes. Harry.” She closed her eyes.

“She’s fallen asleep again,” her sister said. “I don’t think you’ll get any more out of her today. She really exerted herself.”

“She told me what she wanted to tell me.”

“Did you understand her?”

“Yes I did.” I looked back at the sleeping woman, then at my watch. It was time to go.

Downstairs, I called Jack. “His best friend shot him?”

“That’s what she said. I don’t think we even talked about Harry on Saturday so she wouldn’t know I’d ever heard of him. I’ll have to talk to him, Jack, but I can’t do it today. I don’t have his address and I don’t have the time. I think he lives in Manhattan, and that’s quite a drive from here. What I want to know is whether he owns a car or has a license.”

“I’ll find out before I leave today. You don’t honestly think he came out to Oakwood to settle a fifty-year-old score, do you?”

“No, but I have to check it out now that Amelia has told me her story.”

“OK, honey. I’ve got my orders.”

I drove back to Oakwood and went straight to Melanie’s house without picking up Eddie.

When she opened the door, she said, “What happened to you? You look terrible.”

“That’s why I’m here. I need some tea and sympathy.”

“I’ve got plenty of both. Come on in.”

I almost collapsed when I got to her sofa. I had the feeling I had been running on pure momentum, and when I came to a stop, I was totally without energy. I sat and rested while Mel made the tea, nearly falling asleep in those few minutes. The whiff of tea brought me back.

“Tell me,” Mel said. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

I told her, consuming two cups of tea and more cake than I usually eat in a week. But as it went down and warmed me, it revived me. I finished the story of the hospital in the Bronx, in the room of the dying woman who had been Willard Platt’s first wife.

“You don’t really think this little old man came and stuck a knife in his friend on April Fools’ Day, do you?”

“No. Jack is checking on whether he has a car or a license, just to cover all bases, but I don’t think he had anything to do with it. I don’t think this was a planned murder. I think it happened because Willard and the killer argued about something. No one would come from New York or anywhere else to kill Willard Platt with the victim’s own cane.”

“His wife could,” Mel said. “She knew the cane would be there in the garage. She kills him with it, takes it in the house, brings it down to the basement, opens the window a crack, and goes upstairs to discover the body. It’s the simplest solution.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said.

“Neither do I. Have another piece of cake. Your color is coming back. I just don’t see seventy-year-old women offing their husbands by pushing a knife into them. Does that make me politically incorrect?”

I laughed. “The son could have done it almost as
easily. He could have scooted around the front of the house and—”

“How would he know to go around the front?” Mel asked.

“Good question. Maybe he knew his mother always sat in the back. Or maybe he went around the garage, saw his mother through the window, and retraced his steps. But there’s another possibility. He could have tossed the cane in his car and driven back when no one was home, like during the funeral.”

“Which would explain why he wasn’t at the funeral. Good point, Chris. And he has a key, so he goes inside, dumps the cane, and goes home. Was anyone in the house during the funeral?”

“I don’t think so. I went back to the house with Willard’s friend Harry when the service was over. We needed a key to get in.”

“So who else is there?”

“Mr. Vitale, the nurseryman.”

“Well, he had it easy,” Mel said, as though she were a great expert on carrying out a homicide. “He could take the cane with him, maybe even hide it in the woods across the road from the Platts’, and just shove it through the window when he saw everybody leaving the house. You said the Platts thought the window might have been open a crack.”

“Yes. But why did he wait years to do this?”

“Maybe Willard made his life miserable in a million little ways that built up his anger. Maybe he reached the breaking point. Those things happen, you know. You should have seen what you looked like when you came in. You were on the verge of collapse. Maybe for Vitale it wasn’t a
physical thing so much as a mental one. Maybe Willard needled him about things. You never know.”

I was almost laughing as I listened to her. She was concocting a great scenario for murder. “Maybe you’re right. He certainly didn’t tell me the whole truth about that land deal, assuming Roger did.”

“So you’ve got two men with long-standing grievances against Willard Platt. The wife has the best opportunity, it seems to me. What’s her motive?”

“Just living with a difficult man for almost fifty years.”

“That’d do it for me,” Mel said cheerily. “But I hope I wouldn’t wait fifty years and I hope I wouldn’t think that murder is a better solution than divorce.”

“Maybe it’s a generational difference,” I said. “Anyway, I just can’t see that nice, grandmotherly woman doing what was done to her husband. Thrusting a knife in someone’s body cannot be an easy thing to do.”

We sat quietly for a minute or two. “It was the hospital that did it to me,” I said. “I’m not even sure that poor woman was alive when I left the room.”

“It was brave of you to go to her, Chris. She’s not a friend or a relative. I bet she was pleased you came.”

“I only went for the information.”

“But you went. How many people do you think visited her?”

There couldn’t have been too many. Besides her sister, who else was nearby? I looked at my watch. “I’d better get Eddie. He’s at Elsie’s and it’s been a long day for both of them. I just wanted to revive myself a little before picking him up.” Mel walked me to the car and said the kind of nice things that she is famous for. I gave her a hug before I drove away.

The call came while we were eating dinner. It was Mrs. Benzinger to say that Amelia had passed away that afternoon. She wasn’t sure exactly when but she was grateful that her sister had been able to say whatever it was she had told me.

I said a few phrases of condolence, surprised at how hard this death was affecting me. A few days ago I had never heard of this woman; today I had listened to a deathbed statement. I had the feeling she had kept herself going until I got there.

“Amelia?” Jack asked as I hung up.

I nodded. Eddie was at the table, and we would not talk about this till later.

Jack had the coffee made when I came down from putting Eddie to bed. He’d had a good time today, starting with nursery school where they had made something out of clay that he would bring home when it dried and got painted. Then Elsie had taken him for a walk and taught him the names of some trees. I read to him and he fell asleep.

“Your friend Harry Franks doesn’t own a car and has no valid license,” Jack said.

“I didn’t think so. I called Winnie when I got home and she gave me his phone number and address. He lives on the West Side of Manhattan. I’m going to see him tomorrow.”

Jack looked at me with a twinkle and some detective humor slipped into what he said. “You’re not afraid he’ll shoot you?”

“Honestly? No. I just want to know what it’s all about.”

“He’s had a lot of time to polish up his story.”

“Everybody in this case has. I think I’m most disappointed in Mr. Vitale. I was really on his side till Roger told me what Vitale had left out.”

“What do you suppose Winnie Platt has left out?”

“A life full of annoyances. And still, the high school kids loved him. The drama teacher thought the world of him. I don’t know, Jack.”

Before nine I called Sister Joseph and told her what had happened with Amelia, which she found interesting, and also that I had talked to a neighbor about the accident.

“Keep at it,” she said.

I promised I would.

21

Harry Franks lived in a prewar apartment house in the West Nineties between Broadway and West End Avenue. I had a terrible time finding a place to park, eventually sliding into a metered space on Broadway as a car pulled out. I fed the meter all it would take, which gave me an hour, and hoped I could conclude my conversation with Harry in that length of time.

He was expecting me and buzzed me into the lobby a second after I rang his bell. There were strange food smells in the hall and I wondered what ethnic background they represented. You could probably write a history of New York on the kitchen smells of its apartments.

Harry opened his door and ushered me in. It was a dark apartment and he didn’t turn any lights on. The furniture had become shabby over the many years it had been in the living room. I imagined that when his wife died, the apartment simply froze. He would never change anything.

“So what can I do for you?” he said when we were sitting.

“Harry, you’re not going to believe this, but I found Will’s first wife.”

“Amelia? No kidding. How’d you do that?”

I told him and he seemed impressed.

“Now refresh my memory,” he said. “Why were you going to try to find her in the first place?”

“To find out who shot Willard Platt fifty years ago.”

“Oh, yeah, right. He got shot. You talk to her?”

“I went to visit her last Saturday but she wouldn’t tell me. Then I got a call that she was in the hospital and wanted to see me. I went there yesterday.”

“She say anything?” He seemed eager for an answer.

“She said you shot Will.”

“Nah. She got a bug in her head.”

“Harry, I need to know the truth.”

He looked away from me. I wasn’t sure whether he had done it or if Amelia had named him just to clear herself. Maybe it wasn’t a deathbed confession; maybe it was an old woman with a grudge putting the blame on an innocent man. Maybe, I thought, they had done it together.

“That Amelia,” he said, still looking away. “What’s she look like now? I bet she’s still a beautiful woman, even if she’s got a few gray hairs.”

“No gray hairs that I could see, but she’s a woman who takes care of herself.”

“She always did. What a body that woman had. Will should’ve taken better care of her.”

“What are you saying, Harry?”

“He married her for the wrong reasons. He didn’t love her. He was in love with himself. He’d been in the war, he’d got out in one piece, he wanted a good time. He met this gorgeous girl and swept her off her feet. They do that anymore? Sweep a girl off her feet?”

I smiled. “I think it still happens, Harry.”

“So they got married. Went down to City Hall with two witnesses and tied the knot. I gave them a bottle of champagne for a wedding present. The marriage didn’t last much longer than the champagne.”

“That’s a lovely gift.”

“They went away, they came back. Next thing I know, they can’t stand each other.”

I listened, hoping this was leading somewhere.

“He wasn’t nice to her, you know? She didn’t deserve how he treated her. She was a nice girl. I think she really loved him when she married him. She called me once or twice.”