Chapter 78
I’m not superstitious, but seriously, there were too many sixes in this deal. Number 6 Ellsworth, Beethoven’s Sixth, and now the trail of sixes that ended on the sixth floor.
Six-six-six was an unlucky number, right? So what kind of nightmare was this “genius at work”?
I put Cindy behind me as Conklin knocked on the door and said, “Open up. This is the police.”
The music was turned off, then heavy footsteps came toward the threshold. A dark eye stared through the peephole.
A chain rattled and the doorknob turned, and then, standing in the doorway, actually filling it, was a very tall white woman, maybe six two, apparently unarmed. She was wearing a long and well-worn black velvet skirt and a knit gray top with batwing sleeves. Her gray-blond hair was twisted up in a topknot. She smiled broadly.
“Oh, hello! I know who you are. I’m Connie Kerr. Come in.”
I think maybe my mouth actually dropped open. I knew her. I didn’t know her personally, but about twenty years ago, Constance Kerr had been a kind of celebrity on the pro tennis circuit. She’d been a lanky girl with a powerful serve and a very long stride.
Conklin said his name and mine, introduced Cindy Thomas without identifying her role in this escapade, and all three of us stepped into Constance Kerr’s home.
It was a garret, a hidey-hole under the eaves of this Victorian house. The room had odd angles, and a closet and a small kitchen had been sectioned out of the ten-by-twelve-foot room. A fold-out bed was put up against the center of the longest wall, and there was a desk under the one window. A laptop computer was open on the desk and a three-foot-high stack of yellow manuscript boxes stood on the floor.
A heavy gray blanket was affixed to the top of the window frame and hung down over the glass, making a dense, light-blocking curtain.
I moved the blanket aside.
I could see the trophy garden and the back of the Ellsworth mansion, including the door that led from the kitchen and out to the brick patio where six days ago I’d seen a pair of skulls displayed like a monstrous art project.
The former tennis star was speaking to Conklin. “I watched you take charge of the crime scene, of course. I enjoyed that very much. I know you’re trying to help Harry.”
There was standing room only in Connie Kerr’s little flat, but she had the air of a Nob Hill dowager holding a tea party.
“May I get you refreshments?” she said.
Chapter 79
We turned down the offer of refreshments and arrayed ourselves around the small room.
I leaned against the kitchenette counter, Cindy grabbed the only chair, and Conklin took up a position against the door. Connie Kerr stood like a flagpole at the center of the room.
“How can I help you?” she said.
“Harry Chandler,” I said. “How do you know him?”
“Oh, well. Harry. I was his girlfriend a long time ago. He was a star and I was blinded by his light. It was just a fling,” she said, laughing, “but I really had fun and I have no regrets.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Don’t hold me to the exact day, but I’m sure I haven’t seen him in twenty years or more.”
“But Harry lets you live here?”
“He doesn’t know that I’m here. But he wouldn’t mind. I’m no trouble. I live like a little mouse.” She laughed again, a shrill, crazy kind of laugh. “I’m working on a book, you know. I’ve written ten novels so far and I’ve just started another. They’re thrillers. Murder mysteries.”
“Do you use your real name?”
Cindy asked. “Cindy, is it? I’ll use my name when I’m published. I think the story I’m working on now has a real chance of getting into print.”
Connie Kerr took us on a tour of her fairly wild imagination, showing us loosely connected plot diagrams that she’d drawn on brown butcher’s paper and taped to the walls.
As she talked about her characters, she used broad gestures, did pirouettes, clasped her hands to her chest as though she were still a young girl and not a fifty-year-old squatter in someone’s abandoned digs.
Had this eccentric mystery writer witnessed a crime through her window? Or had she gone beyond writing about murder and actually committed it?
“What can you tell us about the heads we found in the garden?” I asked.
“I know that they make a whopping good mystery,” she said.
She was grinning and clapping her hands when my partner broke her mood.
“We don’t like mysteries,” Conklin said. “Ms. Kerr, here’s the thing. We’re going to need you to come with us down to the Hall and make a statement. Officially.”
Kerr’s radiant smile left her face. “Oh no. I really can’t leave the house. I never do.”
“You never go outside?” Conklin asked.
Kerr shook her head vigorously.
“How do you get food?”
“A friend brings me what I need and leaves it for me on the back steps.”
“Who is this friend?”
“I don’t have to say.”
“Let me put it another way. Can this friend vouch for your whereabouts last weekend?” I asked her.
“You don’t understand. I live alone. Nobody ever sees me. You’re the first guests I’ve had here — ever.”
Conklin said, “We’ve got seven dead people, Ms. Kerr. Not fiction. Truth. I think you know what happened to them.”
“I did nothing. I saw nothing. What can I say to make you believe me? I’m the last person you should ever suspect, Mr. Conklin.”
Conklin said, “Do you have a coat?”
“A coat?”
“Here,” he said, taking off his jacket and putting it over her shoulders. “It’s raining outside.”
Chapter 80
Constance Kerr sat at the table in the interrogation room. She was tense, had her arms wrapped across her chest; she seemed like a trapped cat waiting for the door to crack open so that she could dart the hell out.
We knew very little about Kerr. She’d left the world stage long ago and could be anybody now: a certifiable dingbat, a witness, a killer, or all of the above.
I didn’t believe that she knew nothing about the crimes committed at the Ellsworth compound, and we were going to try to hold her until she told us something we could believe.
Conklin had a rapport with Kerr, so I just sat back and watched, thinking what a good guy he was and also that he was a really good cop.
He said, “Connie, look at me. I know you want to help us find out who did this heinous stuff at the Ellsworth compound.”
“If only I could. Honestly. The first time I knew anything was wrong was when the police showed up. But,
