“Not at all,” Bergman replied, shaking his hand. “We have a mutual interest in Sarah’s safety. Good day.”
“Good day.” Stone turned toward the door, reaching in his pocket for the phone. “Hello?”
“It’s Dino. We need to talk.”
“How about lunch? I’m just down the street from La Gouloue.”
“Ten minutes,” Dino said, then hung up.
Stone put the phone back in his pocket, walked outside, and headed uptown.
25
LA GOULOUE WAS A FASHIONABLE MADISON Avenue restaurant with a clientele of beautiful people and people who wished to be seen in the same restaurant with beautiful people. Stone wasn’t a regular, but he got a decent table. Dino arrived a minute later. When they had ordered drinks and lunch, Stone looked at his friend, who seemed concerned.
“What’s up, Dino?”
Dino sipped his mineral water. “You remember Eloise Enzberg?”
“Who?”
“Mitteldorfer’s regular correspondent, a woman he used to work with.”
“Oh, yes; you had her checked out after our meeting at Sing Sing, didn’t you?”
“Yeah; she told us nothing, and neither did her neighbors.”
“What’s up with her?”
“Nothing, anymore.”
“What?”
“They pulled her body out of the East River this morning. She was once a government employee, so her prints were available.”
“Any suspects?”
“Just the one.”
“Why would he kill her?” Stone asked.
“Maybe he used her, then dumped her.”
“Used her for what? He was in prison, remember?”
“Yeah, I know, and I don’t have an answer to your question.”
“How did she die?”
“Her throat was cut.”
“That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
“All too familiar. There’s something else.”
“What?”
“She was wearing a Chanel suit.”
“Maybe she was a wealthy lady?”
Dino shook his head. “She apparently took early retirement from her job last year, and she lived on her pension. I don’t see how it could have been very much.”
“So a Chanel suit would have been out of the question?”
“Yes, unless she got lucky in a secondhand shop.”
“Who’s to say she didn’t do just that? I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t make sense for Mitteldorfer to kill a woman who had been kind to him for years. And if you’re right about her income, money couldn’t have been a motive.”
Their lunch arrived, and they ate the food in silence, each lost in his own thoughts.
“So, tell me about this new car,” Dino said finally.
Stone related his buying experience.
Dino laughed. “I’ve never known you to own a car, and right out of the gate, you buy
Stone shrugged. “Sarah said to get something nice.”
“A fucking
“Lightly armored. And anyway, right now seems a pretty good time to have an armored car, wouldn’t you say?”
“You got a point,” Dino admitted.
Stone put down his fork. “Have you been to Eloise Enzberg’s place?”
“No, the detectives who caught the homicide have, though; they say it’s unremarkable, just what you’d expect.”
“Let’s go take a look at it,” Stone said.
“The key is in my pocket,” Dino replied, signaling for a check.
The building was an undistinguished row house in the East Eighties, near York Avenue, in what used to be Germantown. Eloise Enzberg had lived in a second-floor, rear apartment. Dino removed the crime-scene tape and let them into the place.
Stone looked around. It was fairly plain, with a lot of heavy Germanic furniture – respectable, with a kind of seedy elegance. Stone went to a small desk in the living room and began opening drawers. “Here’s her checkbook,” he said, removing it from a drawer and opening it on the desktop. He began leafing through the stubs. There was nothing out of the ordinary – checks for utilities, rent, groceries, liquor, and household repairs. “Nothing here,” he said. He looked through the old bills. “She apparently had only one credit card, and the balance was less than five hundred dollars.”
Dino was going through the bedroom drawers. “Very neat,” he called, “but nothing from Victoria’s Secret.”
Stone walked into the bedroom and opened the closet. “Suitcases still here,” he said. “She didn’t seem to be going anywhere.” The closet was full of clothes, not expensive and very nearly dowdy.
“Not much in the way of family pictures,” Dino said, pointing to the top of a dresser, where two framed photographs sat. One was an old photograph of a woman, apparently in her thirties, wearing severe black clothes; the other was of the same woman, holding a baby wearing a lace communion dress. “My guess is, it’s Ms. Enzberg in her mother’s arms.”
Stone nodded. “The clothes and shoes are nothing special,” he said. “Any jewelry?”
Dino took a padded box from a dresser drawer. “Here we go.” He opened the box. “Nothing expensive; looks European.”
“Probably her mother’s. Have you located her next of kin?”
“A nephew,” Dino said, “lives in Jersey. We found some correspondence with him. He came in late this morning; didn’t know anything; hadn’t seen her for months.”
“Let’s check the kitchen,” Stone said. The kitchen was well stocked with pots, pans, knives, and implements. “She was a pretty serious cook,” Stone said. He bent over and opened a cabinet door. As he did, half a dozen neatly folded shopping bags slid off a shelf to the floor. “Look at this,” he said, placing the bags on a countertop. “Chanel, Saks, Bergdorf’s, Ferragamo. They clash with the lifestyle, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’d say so,” Dino agreed. “Were there any payments to any of those stored in her checkbook or credit-card receipts?”
“No, nothing.”
“Then she’d have been paying with cash.”
“Or someone was paying for her.”
“Mitteldorfer? What would a prisoner in Sing Sing be doing with that kind of money?”
“Good question. Where did Mitteldorfer work? You remember?”
Dino took out his notebook and flipped through some pages. “Ginzberg and O’Sullivan, accountants, on West Forty-seventh Street.”
“Let’s talk to them.”
Dino picked up a phone and, consulting his notebook, dialed a number. “Hello, may I speak to Mr. Ginzberg? Yes? How about Mr. O’Sullivan? I see. I’m looking for information on someone who worked there more than a dozen
