Midnight Voices

CHAPTER 30

Frank Oberholzer ignored the burning in his stomach as he shoved another bite of enchilada into his mouth, chewed for a moment, then reached for the Tabasco sauce that he’d already dosed his meal with three times. “You’re going to die of an ulcer and leave me a widow,” his wife had told him more times than he could remember, but now he was alone in their apartment up on 118th Street, and she was buried in New Jersey. Maybe he should’ve made a bigger deal out of her cigarettes, but hey — it was her life. And now the enchiladas — the microwavable kind that weren’t too bad if you put enough Tabasco sauce on them — were his main companions in the evenings. Those, and the files on whatever case he was working on. Sometimes he wondered why he even kept the apartment. There was a microwave in the squad room, and most nights he could sleep in the holding cell as easily as in his own bed. Sighing unconsciously, he shoved another forkful of enchilada into his mouth and began going over the report Maria Hernandez had typed up for him.

For a rookie, she hadn’t done too bad — left out a few questions maybe, but for the most part she’d gotten the information he needed: how well the people in the address book knew Costanza; when the last time they’d seen her had been; if she’d been upset about anything; and — the thing Oberholzer really wanted to know — if there’d been a boyfriend, either past or current, who might be the jealous type.

Only seven of the numbers in the book had been disconnected, every one of them out of state. With the local numbers, Costanza had apparently been very conscientious; there’d been either no answer or an answering machine on the numbers of the people Hernandez hadn’t been able to talk to, and not a single disconnect or change of number message. As for the people Hernandez had talked to, the answers were consistent, at least among those who claimed they knew her well enough to know.

There had been no boyfriend, jealous or otherwise. Andrea Costanza, at least according to her friends, had dated a bit in college and in the years afterward, but as time had gone on, the dating had dwindled away. Reading between the lines, Oberholzer saw his impression of her apartment being confirmed: Andrea Costanza was well on her way to becoming a cat-lady. Cat-ladies, though, were harmless.

Reaching for the Tabasco once more, he sprinkled a good dose onto the remaining few bites of now-cold enchilada, and turned back to his own notes on his interview with Dr. Humphries.

An interview that, in the end, hadn’t given Frank Oberholzer much more than he’d had when he arrived. And when he’d arrived, all he’d really wanted to do was get out. Of course, he’d seen the building all his life, brooding over Central Park West like some overdressed old harridan, glowering at a world that had long since passed it by. Nor had he ever understood its reputation for exclusivity; indeed, he’d always wondered why anyone would want to live in it at all. As far as he’d ever been able to see, it just looked gloomy, and when he’d gone in that afternoon, there’d been nothing to change his impression. The lobby obviously hadn’t been remodeled since the building was built, and the doorman looked as if he was the original as well. The elevator had looked dangerous enough that Oberholzer had actually considered climbing up the stairs, but in the end the results of his diet of pastrami sandwiches and enchiladas had prevailed, and he’d ventured into the elevator.

Dr. Theodore Humphries had been pretty much what Oberholzer had expected — not as old as the building, but far from young. Whitening hair that was starting to thin, and a suit almost as old-fashioned as the building he lived in. When Oberholzer had announced the reason for his visit, Humphries had nodded, his lips curving into a thin half-smile. “I can’t say I’m surprised to see you, given that I presume I am what you call ‘the last person to see her alive,’ and that my conversation with Miss Costanza wasn’t what anyone could call productive. In fact, it wasn’t particularly pleasant at all.”

He’d given an account of his meeting with Andrea Costanza that matched Nathan Rosenberg’s nearly perfectly. “I’m both an osteopath and a homeopath,” he sighed as he finished, “which I’m very much aware makes me a quack in some people’s minds. I don’t happen to agree with them, and since I have a license to practice medicine in the State of New York, I assume the state doesn’t either.”

Oberholzer had asked a few more questions, all of which Dr. Humphries had patiently answered, and when he’d asked the doctor if he had any objections to him talking to the patient involved, Humphries had shrugged. “It’s really not up to me, is it? I should think you’d have to talk to the Albions, up on the seventh floor — they’re her foster parents.”

Oberholzer had trudged up to the seventh floor, where he’d gotten no response when he knocked at the Albions’ door and rang their bell, then made a note to follow up on the girl tomorrow. Not that he thought either the girl or her foster parents would be able to shed any light on what might have happened to Costanza, since Oberholzer’s gut — now burning not only with the enchilada and Tabasco sauce he’d already inflicted on it, but with a couple of jalapeño peppers as well — was still telling him there was a boyfriend of some kind involved. Depressing as The Rockwell was and despite Oberholzer’s own reservations about the kind of medicine Humphries practiced, right now he’d be willing to bet his badge that the aging doctor hadn’t been the one to creep down Costanza’s fire escape in the dark, reach through her window, and break her neck. Aside from the fact that he didn’t look strong enough to have kept even a surprised victim from breaking free, his recounting of his interview with the victim added up. As far as Oberholzer knew, Costanza had been pushing her authority in demanding to see the Mayhew kid’s medical records, and Humphries had not only been within his legal rights, but might have exposed himself to a lawsuit if he’d opened the files to the social worker. Unless there was a lot more going on than he thought there was, Humphries wasn’t his man.

Belching loudly as the jalapeños did battle with the acid in his belly, he went back to Hernandez’s report, and the copy of Costanza’s address book she’d made for him, the request for which had earned him one of the poisonous glares she thought he didn’t know about, but that were visible enough in the reflective glass of the wire-reinforced window in the squad room door that he could see them as clearly as if he were facing her.

She’d glared, but she’d done as he asked, which would get her good marks on her first review. By then, he hoped, she’d have worked up enough trust in him to glare directly at him instead of waiting until she thought he couldn’t see.

Picking up his phone, he jabbed in the digits for the number listed for a Beverly Amondson, one of the people Hernandez had been unable to contact that afternoon. There were three of them, and Amondson’s name — along with Rochelle Newman’s — sounded vaguely familiar to Oberholzer, though he couldn’t quite place it. Beverly Amondson answered on the second ring, and she sounded genuinely upset that Costanza was dead. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard yesterday,” she told him. “We’ve been friends since college and it’s just so hard to imagine anyone would want to kill her.” As to the possibility of a boyfriend, she’d agreed with Rosenberg and everyone Hernandez had talked to. “She hadn’t had a boyfriend in years. In fact, we were joking about it at lunch a few months ago.”

A faint bell sounded in Oberholzer’s mind, and then he remembered. Reaching for the copy of Costanza’s Day-Timer that had gotten him yet another glare from Hernandez, he flipped through it quickly until he found the page from last spring with the lunch date notation. “Would that be the one at Cipriani’s?”

“How did you know that?” Bev Amondson asked, then answered her own question. “Never mind: the Day-Timer, right? Andrea wrote down everything. I bet she even had all our names, didn’t she?”

“Only initials. B being you, I assume, along with R and C.”

“That would be Rochelle and Caroline,” Bev supplied.

“Last names?” Oberholzer asked, but as both names were on the list Hernandez had given him of people she hadn’t been able to reach, he was pretty sure he already knew.

“Newman and Fleming,” Bev told him, confirming what he already suspected.

Another bell rang in Oberholzer’s memory, and he flipped through the calendar again. “Is Caroline Fleming the same Caroline who got married last month?”

“The very one. To the most fabulous man. We all adore Tony. And after what happened, we’re all so happy for Caroline.”

“I’m afraid I’m not following.” Oberholzer repeated. “Something happened to Caroline Fleming?”

There was an instant’s silence, then: “Her husband. Not Tony — her first one. He—” Bev Amondson hesitated a moment more, then finished. “He got killed in Central Park last year. One of those stupid things — he went running after dark and a mugger… ” Her voice trailed off for a moment, then picked up again. “Well, I’m sure I don’t have to spell it out for you, do I?”

Now the bell in Oberholzer’s mind was ringing loud and clear. “Was Caroline Fleming’s husband’s name Brad? Brad Evans?”

“Good Lord,” Beverly Amondson breathed. “How did you know that?”

“I’m a homicide cop,” Oberholzer replied. “It’s my business to know.”

After he’d hung up the phone a moment later, he went back to the report Maria Hernandez had made on her progress with the phone book. Next to Caroline’s name was a notation: Sick — will follow up tomorrow.

“Sorry, Detective Hernandez,” Frank Oberholzer said out loud to his empty kitchen. “I think I’ll take this one myself.”