anyone she feared?”
Orlando shook his head slowly. “No,” he said, his voice harder, more certain than his eyes.
Lydia nodded now, thoughtful. She was reaching, probing, looking for something that might give her a map of Julian’s life, something that might lead her eventually to find out how it had fallen so horribly apart.
“You said she was happy. She was happy with her husband?” said Lydia. “She loved him?”
He shrugged. Again the shade of something across his face.
“Yes, she loved him. He gave her the thing she wanted most in life, her children,” he said quietly. “Lola and Nathaniel-she loved them more than her art. She would
It was an interesting answer. Interesting because of what he didn’t say. She had expected to hear how wonderful Richard and Julian were together, that she loved him more than life, that she could never hurt him. But he didn’t say any of those things.
“Was there trouble in her marriage? Were they having problems?”
He raised his hands and stood. His face had flushed and now there was anger in his eyes. “That’s enough. What you are looking for here, you will not find. She’s innocent. This I know for a fact.”
“You could only know that for certain if you know who killed Richard Stratton.”
Orlando looked stricken for just a second. But then he just shook his head and grew quiet.
“I don’t need to know that. I know Julian.”
Lydia looked back at the monstrous face on Julian’s canvas.
“But her art is so violent. Is it possible that there’s a side of her you never saw?”
He followed her eyes to the canvas and didn’t answer for a second. “I suppose,” he said, looking from the canvas to the photo in his hand. “There’s a side to all of us that no one ever sees.”
The basketball courts on West Fourth Street were packed as usual with mostly young black guys and a couple of white guys either playing hard or hanging on the fence watching. Most of the players had their shirts off and were sweating like it was July even though the air was cool going on cold. The bouncing ball and the short shrieks of rubber soles on the asphalt echoed off the concrete buildings and an occasional cheer rose up like a wave over the traffic of Sixth Avenue. Jeffrey watched a young man fall hard on the concrete with a groan trying to block another player’s shot and then bounce right up like he was made out of rubber. He was back on his feet and running across the court.
“I remember what it was like to be young and in shape like that,” said Jeffrey.
“You’re not ready for life support yet, Grandpa,” said Lydia, patting his hard, flat abs.
“I’m just saying… you don’t get up from a fall like that and run a mile after forty, you know.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said with a smile. She liked to rub in their ten-year age difference whenever possible. He gave her a look.
Dax had left them suddenly after he received a mysterious call on his cell, so Lydia and Jeffrey proceeded to their meeting with Ford McKirdy alone. They entered the Yum Yum Diner on the corner and found a table toward the back of the converted trailer that stood next to a playground under the shade of trees. They slid into the same side of a red leather booth and Lydia started to flip through the mini-jukebox at the end of the table. The smell of coffee, grease, and cigarettes had worked its way into the walls and the leather seats. Lydia was suddenly ravenous, lost interest in the jukebox, and eyed the pie case, where cakes and pastries rotated enticingly on plastic shelves. The Yum Yum Diner was the kind of place that was just as packed at three A.M. when people were heading home from the clubs as it was on a weekday at lunchtime.
Jeffrey waved to Ford as he watched his old friend make his way through the crowd that was forming for lunch. Jeffrey stood up to shake Ford’s hand.
“It’s been too long, man,” Jeffrey said. “How’re you doing?”
“You look good, Jeff. You, too, Lydia. How are you?” said Ford, taking Lydia’s hand.
He sat down across from them, and placed on the table a manila envelope he had carried in his left hand. Ford McKirdy looked soft and pasty to Lydia. She knew him to be a little over fifty and he looked every second of it. The late nights, high stress level, and bad diet of a cop’s life were taking their toll. He had a light sheen of perspiration on his forehead and she noticed that his belly grazed the edge of the table as he slid with effort into the booth.
“How was your meeting with Eleanor Ross?” asked Lydia.
“Chilly,” said Ford, wiping his brow with a napkin. “That woman is a real piece of work. She was supposed to come with the nanny. But she claimed not to have anyone else to leave the children with; I’ll have to catch up with Geneva Stout later.”
“She give you anything?” asked Jeff.
“Claims she didn’t see or hear anything until Julian started screaming.”
“What did she tell you about their marriage?” asked Lydia.
“Said they were happy. She’d been with them three weeks and said they didn’t have so much as a tiff that she saw.”
“Where’s she visiting from?”
“She lives in Boca now part of the year, part of the year here with her daughter. Said she would have been with them through the holidays and then back down to the condo after the New Year.”
“So what was it like? The scene, I mean,” asked Jeffrey.
“You know, you asked me the same question ten years ago. My answer is the same. It was a fucking mess. Not the same struggle as last time, but Richard Stratton was taken to pieces, just the same as Tad Jenson. I brought you copies of the crime scene photos and my preliminary findings and notes,” he said, sliding the envelope over to them. “You guys are taking the case, right?”
“I haven’t called Eleanor Ross yet, but I think so. I want another shot at this and I know you do, too.”
“You’re damn right.”
“You think there was someone else there this time?”
“I don’t know… doesn’t look like it. On the other hand, it doesn’t look like she could have done it alone. There was blood on the ceiling… a twelve-foot ceiling, for Christ’s sake. The doorman said no one came or left from the front door. But we got no murder weapon. From the preliminary findings of the ME, he said it was a serrated knife, just like the last time. One other thing… don’t tell anyone about this. We’re keeping it from the press. Richard Stratton’s ring finger, and his wedding ring with it, are missing. Unless she swallowed the knife, the ring, and the finger or hid them very, very well, someone else took them from the scene. When I got to her, she was in no condition for a lucid action like hiding evidence.”
“Or so she’d have you believe,” said Jeffrey.
Ford shrugged, gave a quick nod. “Yeah. Tell you what. She’s faking it? Then she’s one hell of an actress.”
“Tad was missing his ring and ring finger, too,” Jeffrey explained to Lydia.
“Nice,” said Lydia with a shake of her head.
Lydia turned it over in her mind, what a thing like that might mean. Was it a symbol? Was she freeing herself from the bonds of marriage? Or was someone else freeing her from it?
“You said she wasn’t lucid when you found her?” asked Lydia.
“She was losing it. She wouldn’t leave the room where her husband had been killed. When the paramedics took her away, she was ranting. She said, among other things, ‘He’s come for me.’ ”
Lydia and Jeffrey exchanged a look.
“What?”
“We just came from her gallery. A couple of days ago she turned in a painting to Orlando DiMarco, her rep there. She’d titled it
Lydia described the painting to Ford. He took notes as she spoke, she could see him taking the information in, plugging it into the equation that was growing in his mind.
“I’ll head over there and check it out,” said Ford. “I remember Orlando DiMarco from the investigation ten years ago. He was a big cokehead then. Rumor was that they were lovers, on-again off-again… nothing serious. But I was never able to place him at the scene. Anyway I had him pegged for a lover… not a murderer. Bet he wouldn’t want to mess up all those pretty clothes.”
“It looked to me like there were some hurt feelings there. I would have put money on him being in love with
