couldn’t help giving him points for his reasonableness, and even Diana Lomax seemed to think again.
“Okay,” she said finally. “But you’ll have to stay in my office. I won’t have you intruding on the privacy of the residents.”
“Fine,” he said, and she then let them in, locking the front door behind them before leading them down the hall to the office. Before Kate went through the door, she glanced ahead into the kitchen, source of a rich fragrance of Italian herbs, and spotted Crystal Navarro standing before a huge bowl of lettuce and tomatoes, looking in alarm at their passing. Kate raised her hand as a greeting, and followed Lomax and agent Marcowitz through the door marked office.
“May I ask what this is about?” Lomax demanded as soon as the door was shut. Marcowitz took his time in perching on the arm of the sofa, where he crossed his arms in a display of authority that Kate knew from experience left his right hand just inches from the butt of his gun, and met Lomax’s angry gaze.
“Three nights ago while she was here for dinner, Emily Larsen’s wallet disappeared from her purse.” He paused for reaction, of which there was none. “Yesterday the identification taken from that wallet was used in the commission of a crime.”
Lomax waited, then asked, “Is that all?”
“It’s enough to tie this shelter to three murders and one attempted murder.”
Lomax stood without moving for a long moment, then reached for the phone on the desk (Marcowitz’s hand twitched, but he did not draw his gun). She dialed seven digits, and said to whoever answered, “Inspector Martinelli is in my office with evidence that links the shelter to a series of murders. I think Carla should be here.” She waited for the response, said “Thanks,” and then hung up.
She did not seem very upset, concerned rather than worried. She left her hand on the telephone for a minute as she stared unseeing into space, then gave herself a shake and walked around the desk to sit in her chair. Had she pulled open a drawer and reached inside, Kate knew that the agent would have drawn on her, but she merely played with a pen that lay on top of the desk and chewed at her lip. Kate shifted on her feet near the door, and Lomax’s eyes immediately came up.
“I don’t know if I need a lawyer or not while I’m talking to you, but Carla will want to be here, just in case. Do you two want a cup of coffee or something while we’re waiting?”
Before Marcowitz could refuse, Kate said, “That’d be nice.”
“Crystal’s in the kitchen, she’ll show you where the cups are. I have to ask you not to question her, however.”
“Nothing more urgent than where to find the milk,” Kate agreed with a smile. No reason not to keep this friendly. Marcowitz might doubt, but Kate knew, as surely that the sun was going down outside the house, that Diana Lomax would not produce a gun—or cause others to produce theirs—in a house filled with her women and children. Marcowitz was safe on his own, and in the few minutes they had before Carla Lomax arrived with her legal objections, Kate might nose something out. Ignoring her temporary partner’s glare and keeping her voice and stance as casual as she could, she said, “Marcowitz, you want anything?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Kate paused at the door to ask Diana, again with great care to be offhand, “You mind if I take a look around? I didn’t really get a chance to see it the other day.”
To her surprise, Lomax nodded. “Sure, look around. Not in the residents’ rooms, though. Not without a warrant.”
If they’d had enough evidence to back up a warrant, the FBI man wouldn’t be sitting on the arm of the sofa. A missing wallet would only made a judge laugh. But being given permission to roam opened the place up—not to a full search, perhaps, but to a close scrutiny. She ducked out of the room and did actually go into the kitchen for coffee, keeping one eye on the hallway the whole time so she could see if the office door opened, but it did not, and Kate nonchalantly thanked Crystal before going back up the hall to look into the other three rooms that opened off it.
Leaving the kitchen, the office was the first room on her left. She turned to the door directly across the hall from it, marked training, and found behind it a tiny windowless room with two long folding tables, two computers (one so old she wondered if it was compatible to anything at all), and an electric typewriter. If this was the shelter’s sole job training, she decided, it was a miracle that any of the residents found employment.
The next room, behind the sign meeting room, was much larger. Although it, too, had no outside windows, since the building was attached to neighbors on both sides, it did have a piece of stained glass set into the end wall that separated it from the entrance foyer. The pseudo-window, combined with several airy watercolor prints on the pale green walls, added to the impression of space, and the room’s random assortment of love seats, armchairs, backless hassocks, and a couple of wooden rocking chairs were arranged against the walls in a wide circle around an oval braided rug that reminded Kate of her grandmother. Kate didn’t need the disproportionate number of tissue boxes to tell her this was the room used for group therapy. It was functional but comforting, the color and prints on the wall so similar to those in Roz’s church offices that they might have been chosen at the same time.
Kate went back out into the hallway, checked the office door to be sure it was still closed and silent, glanced into the entrance vestibule with its hodgepodge of outdoor clothing, children’s equipment, message board, and stairs leading up to the bedrooms, then reached for the fourth doorknob, the room adjoining the office. She turned the knob, and stepped into the shelter’s chapel.
This was no ordinary chapel, however, with an altar at one end and pews all in a row. This one looked more like a teenager’s bedroom, had the teenager been tidy and interested in religion and spirituality instead of handsome actors and rock bands.
The wall to Kate’s right represented more or less the Roman Catholic faith. Its central figure was the Virgin Mother rather than a bleeding Christ, but the steadily burning candles in tall amber glasses were those of Kate’s childhood, and the inspirational pictures pinned up all around the Virgin were those she remembered from Sunday school and from the edges of her mother’s dresser mirror. Sayings, scraps of prayer, and biblical quotations fluttered gently in the air rising off the candles, and on the floor at the Virgin’s feet stood a large pottery bowl spilling over with small pieces of paper, folded or crumpled into thumbnail-sized wads. Feeling far more guilty than any police investigator should, she glanced at the empty doorway before reaching for one of the scraps.
Four backless benches of polished oak had been arranged in an open square in the center of the room, facing the four walls. The Virgin Mary’s shrine wall was to the right of the door; the wall with the door in it bore only a plain wooden cross with a tall candle in front, dignified and simple to the point of starkness. The left-hand wall, across the room from the Virgin, was mounted with a deep wooden shelf about six feet wide, roughly three feet off the floor. On the shelf was propped a painting done on cheap canvas-board, a crudely done landscape of hills, trees, and river, with an angel flying in the clouds over it. The angel did not appear aerodynamic nor the landscape very probable, but there were half a dozen other pictures leaning against the wall to choose from, and Kate put her empty cup down on one of the benches and went to flip through them. They included an intricate mandala, a Star of David, the enlarged photograph of a tropical island, and three framed prints: a Berthe Morisot mother and child, an old-fashioned painting of children splashing in a river, and a famous Eva Vaughn study of three children, the original of which Kate had actually seen in the artist’s studio. She greeted it like a friend and thought about putting it up in place of the nonaerodynamic angel, but resisted the temptation.
This left the fourth wall, which was completely concealed by a heavy, dark red velvet curtain that stretched
