“All right,” Humphries said, straightening up and then burrowing once more into his bag. “I’m going to give you a couple of remedies, and I’m sure you’ll be fine by tomorrow morning.”
Now it was Caroline who frowned. “What kind of remedies?”
“Homeopathic,” Humphries replied. Seeing the doubt in Caroline’s eyes, he tried to reassure her. “I can guarantee they won’t hurt Laurie,” he said. “And I’m not going to promise you they’ll cure her, either. But I don’t think anything is seriously wrong with her, and I believe these will help. I’ll look in on her again tomorrow, and if she isn’t any better, we can decide what to do next. And do you mind if I talk to Dr. Hunicutt about her?”
Caroline gazed at him in surprise. “You know Dr. Hunicutt?”
“I wouldn’t say I know him, but medicine’s a smaller community than you might think. I’ve heard of him. And if you don’t mind, I’ll just give him a call, let him know what’s going on, and see what he thinks.” Then his eyes narrowed slightly. “And if I’m not out of line, I have to say you’re looking a bit worn out, too.”
“I–I guess I overslept this morning. Something happened yesterday, and… ” Her voice trailed off as Tony slid an arm around her.
“Something happened yesterday,” he said, not wanting to say too much in front of Laurie. “It was pretty upsetting. I’m sure she’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
Once again Ted Humphries dug into his bag, this time producing a rectangle of cardboard with four pills neatly bubble sealed to its surface. “If I were you, I’d take a couple of days and just try to relax.”
“I wish I could,” Caroline sighed. “But I have two children and a job and they won’t take care of themselves.”
“And you have a husband who can look after the children. As for the job, I’ve never heard of one yet where everything collapsed if someone took a day or two off.” He handed the card containing the four pills to Caroline. “It’s up to you, of course, but if you have trouble sleeping, these should help. And they won’t hurt. That, I can guarantee you.”
Ten minutes later, as she stared at herself in the mirror over the bathroom sink, Caroline suddenly wondered if maybe Dr. Humphries was right: the circles under her own eyes were every bit as dark as the ones she’d seen under Laurie’s, and as she once again thought of Andrea Costanza, her eyes brimmed with tears.
With a swallow of water, it went down her throat.
Going back to her bedroom, she picked up the phone and dialed the shop. “Claire?” she said. “It’s Caroline. I’m afraid I won’t be in today.”
Without the least hesitation, Claire’s voice came back over the wire. “Take whatever time you need, darling. You know how much you mean to me.”
Dropping the phone back on the hook, Caroline slid into bed and pulled the covers up to her neck. Amazing, she thought as the pill began to do its work. Six months ago, she would have fired me. But not anymore. And all because of Tony.
Giving herself over to the comfort of the pill, Caroline drifted back into sleep.
“How long is this gonna take?” Victor Balicki asked as Frank Oberholzer broke the police seal on the door to Andrea Costanza’s apartment.
“It’s going to take as long as it takes,” the detective growled. “What’s it to you, anyway? Suddenly you own the building?”
Balicki unlocked the door, pushed it open, then stood back, his hands rising defensively. “Hey, for all I care, you can move in here. But the owners want to know how long before we can clean it out.”
“Tell the owners to call me,” Oberholzer replied. “We’re in the book.” Closing the door before Balicki could say anything else, he gazed at the few hundred square feet that until a few days ago had been home to Andrea Costanza. Except for the window having been closed after it was dusted for prints — unsuccessfully — everything was still as it had been when they’d found Costanza’s body yesterday; nothing had been moved or taken away since she had died. Yet there was an emptiness to the apartment, a feeling of vacancy much deeper than that of rooms whose occupants may be gone, but will soon be returning. It was almost as if every object in the apartment — the pieces of furniture, the pictures, the knickknacks and tchotchkes — was somehow aware that the single person to whom it had value was forever gone, and that collectively they had suddenly become nothing more than detritus, just so much junk to be cleared out before someone else moved their own things in. It was ridiculous, of course; Frank Oberholzer was not one to ascribe feelings to inanimate objects. Still, in the twenty-odd years he’d been working homicide he’d never yet come into an apartment whose sole occupant had died without feeling the peculiarly hollow emptiness than now imbued Andrea Costanza’s tiny studio, and he felt a slight shiver come over him even though the apartment was not only stuffy, but overheated as well.
Lowering himself onto one of the two straight-backed chairs that flanked Andrea’s tiny dining table, he opened the copy of the Medical Examiner’s report and studied it once more, even though he could have recited the details from memory if need be. Her attacker had apparently come through the window, probably getting his arm around her even before she was aware he was even there. Assuming, of course, that it was a “he” who attacked her, which was an assumption Oberholzer had long since learned to guard against. Still, in this case he was leaning toward a man’s having committed the crime simply because of the strength necessary to break the neck of a human being. As he went over the report, Oberholzer kept glancing at the sofa, and the window behind it, trying to visualize the crime. This one wasn’t hard: she’d probably been sitting on the sofa, her back to the window. Maybe she’d even fallen asleep, which would have made the killer’s work easy — one arm around the neck, the other hand shoving hard on the side of the head.
Just a second or two, and not much of a struggle. No struggle at all, in fact, except possibly a futile attempt to escape that resulted in a few strands of fiber being found under Costanza’s fingernails. Though the labs hadn’t yet come up with an ID on the fibers, Oberholzer would have bet a year’s worth of retirement money that they came from some kind of man’s coat. Maybe an overcoat.
It didn’t look like anything had been stolen, but it didn’t look like there had been anything worth stealing, either. But that was why Oberholzer was here — to try to find something that might give a hint as to the motivation for the killing. It hadn’t been rape, and given that the killer hadn’t even taken her purse, it didn’t look like robbery, either. Ex-husbands and former boyfriends usually slapped their victims around before killing them, which hadn’t happened in this case.
But something was nagging at Frank Oberholzer’s mind, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
His eyes drifted to the notebook computer that was still sitting on the table where Costanza had left it, and which no one had touched since he’d entered the apartment yesterday. A Dial-Up Network program was on the screen, along with a box that had popped up indicating that the Internet connection had been broken, and offering a button to reestablish it. Frowning, Oberholzer searched for some kind of log, and finally found one, indicating that the last web connection had been established at 8:32 p.m. last Friday night, and lapsed an hour later.
So Costanza had been alive at 8:32, and though there was not yet any way to prove it, Oberholzer’s gut was telling him that the reason the connection had lapsed was that the person who’d made it was no longer alive.
Saving the log, he stared at the familiar clouds of the Windows Desktop, then double clicked on the Outlook icon.
The Contacts directory on Costanza’s computer was as empty as the one on his own, and he found himself smiling as he realized that there had been at least one person other than himself in New York who hadn’t jumped on the computer bandwagon. The smile faded as he realized he might now be alone.
He checked the calendar folder of Outlook, and found it as empty as the Contacts.
Sighing heavily, he heaved himself to his feet and moved over to the telephone table by the door. Propped against it was the big tote bag that had served as Andrea Costanza’s purse. Taking the purse back to the dining table, he carefully began removing its contents: a comb and brush, a compact and a lipstick, a half-empty packet of Kleenex along with a crumpled handkerchief, a wallet bulging with pictures of children but containing only a couple of credit cards, a cellular phone whose battery had died, and a worn Day-Timer that had not yet been replaced by Outlook’s calendar. Buried at the bottom of the bag was a thick address book, its cover as worn as the Day-Timer’s, but not yet replaced by some kind of handheld computer.
