The Silent Bride (8 page)

"Where did you learn to make such good coffee,
queridal"
He couldn't help changing the subject, wanting the credit for having taught her himself. The case could wait three seconds, just three.

"I worried all night. You got home late, wouldn't talk." The sound of her complaining like her mother was enough to make him laugh some more. She wouldn't let up.

"Thank you for the coffee," he said.

April dipped her head in acknowledgment. She didn't drink coffee in the morning. Hot water with lemon. Or just hot water. He was grateful for her making the effort for him and gave up a little information.

"Tovah Schoenfeld had a malformation in her brain. That was about it." The autopsy on the young bride had given Mike a squirmy feeling.

Before Dr. Gloss, the ME, peeled back Tovah's scalp and sawed off the top half of her skull as if it were nothing more than the cap of a boiled egg, the girl had been lovely, a real stunner. It had been creepy to discover that had she lived, she might have died prematurely anyway.

"Really, what kind of malformation?" April asked.

"A little thing, like an aneurysm. It could have popped at any time. Weird, huh?"

"But that wasn't the COD?" April sat on the bed again and took his hand because she could see that he felt as bad as she did. Shit, a bride! This case was personally upsetting to both of them.

Mike shook his head. "You know how Gloss likes coming up with the special touches. He thought the brain thing was an interesting anomaly, since it might have caused her a problem at a later date. She'd had her appendix out. She wasn't pregnant." He swallowed the last of the coffee. "She was still a virgin. That's about it."

He gave her hand a last squeeze, then reached for his watch on the table and snapped it on his wrist. His three seconds of normal life were over. Now he was charged. His business was to catch a killer. It was his primary focus, and he was ready to go.

"That's one theory out the window." April took the empty cup to the kitchen.

"Boyfriend/girlfriend? Well, maybe."

"Would a spurned lover kill a virgin?"

"Maybe," Mike said again, disappearing into the bathroom.

"How many hits? What about the gun?" April fired questions at him through the door.

"I'll tell you in the car," he called out.

He stood under the hot water in the shower, scrubbing with the rough green seaweed soap April said purified his skin and increased his
qi.
He didn't know what his
qi
was. He suspected it was one of those things he had enough of already. In any case, he didn't think it was stimulated by laceration. He preferred soothing sensations, so he finished up quickly, jumped out, shaved, trimmed the ends of his lush mustache, and doused himself in aftershave. Then he put his clothes ori in a hurry because April always complained it took him longer than a girl to choose his outfits. He changed his tie only three times, preoccupied by plans for the investigation. He was determined to clear this awful case in a day, two at the most.

Eight

W
endy Lotte's phone started ringing off the hook before seven. The phone was so persistent it felt as if the whole world was out to get her, not just a client this time. She pulled her beautiful duvet over her head and lay in bed, sniffing the stale scent of fear that emanated from all the pores in her body. Seven rings, then silence when voice messaging picked up. Then it started again. Wendy was frightened. Who else could it be but that detective again? This might be her busy season, but please. No one called this early.

She knew enough about cops to be afraid. She didn't want to go through another ordeal. Her life was good now. She'd stayed out of trouble all these years. But yesterday she almost lost it when the detective with the mustache started pushing her around. The bastard wouldn't let her leave, wouldn't believe her story and let her just go home, even though she was a pro at lying. He even searched her
car.
It freaked her out.

All night in a seriously inebriated state Wendy worried about the questions people would ask today. She worried about having to attend the funeral. Just the thought of a second funeral in less than a year made her puke. She puked a lot during the night and didn't sleep at all. Hanging over the cool porcelain bowl in her bathroom, she agonized over her past and future and gagged in equal proportions.

This morning she was so dizzy she couldn't get up. She writhed under the covers, trying to calm down and overcome the worst hangover she'd had since high school. She'd dreamed this exact thing so many times. Only weeks from the big four-oh, she was the only person in the world who wasn't being celebrated, wasn't getting a party, wasn't married with children.

How many brides had she married over the years? A generation of them. Literally hundreds of times she'd worked through every single reception thing: from the lists, to the invitations, to the gowns, to the organization of registries in the appropriate stores, the categorizing of gifts when they arrived, the thank-you notes. The prewedding dinners, often with their impossible blending of bride-and-groom ill-fitting families. The tantrums over flowers and ballrooms and bands. The bridesmaids who got so drunk they couldn't stand up (and worse). The seating plans, the timing of everything so it all went off each time just like a NASA space shot. Now she was doing the sweet sixteens and the debutante parties for the children of couples whose weddings she'd worked on twenty years ago. Some of them were on their second marriages. From sea to shining sea Wendy had walked in brides' shoes through every single phase of it. Every phase but one. She was almost forty years old and she hadn't pulled it off herself.

Practically all her life she'd dreamed of being a bride—the center of attention—feted and endured in all her demands and jitters. A big diamond sparkling on her finger. She'd dreamed every detail, the dress, the room, the flowers. Other girls found men—or their mothers found them—why not her? Sometimes, when she had to smile for hours and hours at other girls' weddings, it was so painful that her face felt like a pinched nerve.

Tovah Schoenfeld's death was a cautionary tale in a way, because she didn't deserve to be a wife. She didn't want to be a wife. The marriage would have been a flop, another fake. Wendy was sorry about the resulting chaos, though. The last thing she needed was to be questioned, to attend the funeral, to have her name in the newspapers.

Wendy had a firm rule: She never drank on the job. Never! A bottle of leftover celebratory Veuve Clicquot
might
find its way into her large carryall after an event and she
might
sip it slowly at home. But last night after police had checked her bag for the gun that had murdered poor Tovah, she'd been so upset that she'd slipped back into the party room and taken two bottles. Two were all she'd been able to rescue. No gifts had been on display, and she didn't want the trinkets in the little Tiffany boxes. There had been nothing else to rescue. It turned out that the Schoen-felds, who looked as if they were throwing money all over the place, were actually careful to the extreme about getting ripped off. The expensive gifts had always been elsewhere.

The phone rang seven times and was silent, seven times and was silent. Wendy's selfish assistant, Lori, had taken a vacation so there was no one to answer the phones and be her buffer against the world.

Wendy hated having no cover. Now she had to do a second event by herself. It wasn't fair. Reluctantly, she turned her thoughts to the wedding of Prudence Hay, who happened to be another undeserving, spoiled brat with a mother who doted on her. Wendy had no choice but to get a move on. With an aching head, she dragged herself out of bed, put Tovah behind her and Prudence to the fore.

Nine

T
he Long Island Expressway was already jammed by the time Mike and April hit the road at seven.

"You mind telling me where we're going?" April asked.

"One PP."

"Oh, yeah. I thought we were going to the Bronx."

"We're meeting Inspector Bellaqua first. Know her?"

"Not personally," April said.

"Good woman."

Satisfied for the moment, April pulled out her cell phone and called into Midtown North to get her messages. Then she roused her boss, Lieutenant Iriarte, on his cell while he was on the road driving in from his home in Westchester. He yelled at her for about ten minutes.

'Trouble?" Mike asked as soon as she finished the call.

"The usual bullshit." She dialed Woody Baum, her protege and sometime driver, and talked to him for a while. When she finished that call she was quiet.

"Quenda,
you okay?" Mike asked after a minute or two.

Her response was a Chinese silence he didn't try to decipher. He took the Midtown Tunnel, then the

FDR down to the bridge exit. The traffic wasn't too bad. At eight-oh-nine, he flashed his gold at the patrol officer guarding the triangle around headquarters. The uniform waved them through the many barriers into the fortress of One Police Plaza, otherwise known as the puzzle palace. A number of department vehicles, black Crown Victorias, blue-and-white cruisers, and vans were parked inside the triangle. There was no place for Mike's ancient Camaro. At the ramp leading down to the garage in the building, he flashed his shield again, then drove in and found a parking place far from the elevators. From the garage they went straight up on a slow elevator that filled on the way. Mike said hello to a few people with whom he'd worked over the years, but he and April stood well apart and didn't speak to each other.

Everybody knew the elevators had ears, and theirs was a situation ripe for gossip. On the eleventh floor they got off and turned right. The Hate Crimes Unit was on the southwest corridor, last door on the left.
Bias Unit
read the outdated sign on the frosted glass-topped door. Mike went in first.

The area was set up just like dozens of other special units in the building. The main room was an open space crammed with desks and computers, filing cabinets, a few narrow lockers. On the far end a bank of windows faced downtown, where the sun was streaking in from Long Island. Narrow pathways between islands of four pushed-together desks barely allowed navigation through the room. Mike followed the path to the inspector's office. Bellaqua had a corner office with windows on two sides, a bookcase, an attractive desk, a small circular conference table, all the accou ferments of a modern business executive. She was on the phone. As soon as she saw Mike, she finished up and waved him in.

"Hey, Mike. Right on time," she said. "Some night last night, huh?"

"Yes, it was. Inspector, this is Sergeant April Woo from Midtown North." Mike turned to April, who was right behind him.

"My old precinct. I've heard about you, April. Is Iriarte still in command over there?" Inspector Bel-laqua was one of the higher-ranking women in the Department. She was about April's height, with a fuller, womanly figure and a round, youthful face. Dark hair, sharp eyes. Fresh lipstick, well applied and not too red. She regarded April with interest.

"Yes, ma'am." April responded with a no-frills answer. She always took things real slow with new people.

"Let's see, Arturo took over from me, what, four years ago?" Bellaqua mused.

"More." Mike jerked up his chin with a little smile. "The place was never the same after you left."

"Thanks." Bellaqua went on reminiscing. "That's right, almost four and a half now. We had some good times, busy place. How are you dom' over there, April?" The inspector gave April a long, speculative look, trying to read her.

"Good," April replied, flat as a pancake.

"It's a good command. You want some coffee, doughnuts?" Unperturbed, Bellaqua moved right on.

Hospitality at NYPD meant offering the official food of the department any time of day. Twenty-four/seven, doughnuts were highly acceptable.

"I sent out for a box. What kind do you like?" she asked.

"Thanks, we like them all," Mike said.