business and cannot be disturbed.”
“Did you meet Courtney’s family?”
“Yeah. They’re what you’d expect. Lukshen comes from lukshen.”
“Where do they come from?”
“Washington. The state. Olympia. It’s somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
“Are both parents alive?”
Fancy Phil gave an exaggerated sigh of boredom. “You want to call that alive, then they’re alive. The old man’s a comptroller of some two-bit lumber company. The old lady designs flowers. Puts them in bowls or something.”
“Did they come east to the funeral?” He nodded. Not one of his fleshy features moved, yet I sensed a change in his expression. “How did they act?” He shrugged. “Phil, I’d like to get a sense of the people Courtney came from. Was the finding of the body a shock to them? Or do you think they had a sense she was dead in the months before, when she was missing?”
“They think it had something to do with me,” Fancy Phil said, his tone so flat it might have been one of those computer-generated voices. “At the funeral. Episcopal. But I go over to the mother and try to hug her.” He lowered his arms so they were rigid against his sides. “She goes like this. It was like hugging a little block of cement. She’s short, like Courtney. And neither of them—her or the husband—would look in my direction. And not one word.”
“What made them think you had something to do with it?”
“Just—you know, what I was supposed to be.”
“You never had any arguments with Courtney? Or with Greg about Courtney?”
“No!”
“Did they think Greg had anything to do with it?”
“I don’t know. At least they talked to him.”
A night breeze blew through the open kitchen door and gave me a chill. One of my neighbors’ dogs began that hysterical staccato bark you hear from nutsy dogs or from dogs with nutsy owners. Fancy Phil glanced at his beer bottle and seemed surprised to find it empty. “Did they put up any kind of a fuss about Greg having custody of the children?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, annoyed. Then he answered his own question: “You mean, if they thought Gregory did it, they would want to get the kids away from him. No. They didn’t say a peep about custody.”
“Right. Okay, the first few days after Courtney disappeared: Did the cops ask Greg to see if anything of hers was missing?”
“Yeah, and as far as he could tell, nothing was. The only money that was touched was the money Gregory took out of their joint account two weeks before. The sapphire earrings he got her for her thirtieth birthday were where she kept them, in a little safe they have in a closet. Some other jewelry. Her mink was in the closet.”
“Did she have an engagement ring?”
“Yeah, sure. She was wearing it, you know, when they found her. And her Rolex, too.”
“So all that was missing was the twenty-five thousand she’d taken from the money market and stock brokerage accounts months before she disappeared?”
“Right,” he agreed.
“So now what I’ve got to do is find out if she paid out twenty-five thousand dollars for video equipment and advertisements.”
“And if she didn’t?”
“Then I’ll need to figure out what was going on in Courtney’s life right before her death.”
Chapter Five
S TAR B ABY’S VIDEOGRAPHER, Z EE Friedman, bent over the railing on the landing outside her fifth-floor walk-up. “Just one more flight!” she called out encouragingly. She lived in a run-down neighborhood just north of the grand, high-ceilinged apartments around Columbia University and south of the renovated brownstones of Harlem’s latest renaissance. The stairwell of her building exuded that Old New York smell which has nothing to do with Henry James and lavender; for nearly a hundred years, the yellow-brown walls had soaked up garlic and onion vapors from the various ethnic groups that had used the place as their first step up from New York’s bleakest tenements.
“Did you meet Courtney’s family?”
“Yeah. They’re what you’d expect. Lukshen comes from lukshen.”
“Where do they come from?”
“Washington. The state. Olympia. It’s somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
“Are both parents alive?”
Fancy Phil gave an exaggerated sigh of boredom. “You want to call that alive, then they’re alive. The old man’s a comptroller of some two-bit lumber company. The old lady designs flowers. Puts them in bowls or something.”
“Did they come east to the funeral?” He nodded. Not one of his fleshy features moved, yet I sensed a change in his expression. “How did they act?” He shrugged. “Phil, I’d like to get a sense of the people Courtney came from. Was the finding of the body a shock to them? Or do you think they had a sense she was dead in the months before, when she was missing?”
“They think it had something to do with me,” Fancy Phil said, his tone so flat it might have been one of those computer-generated voices. “At the funeral. Episcopal. But I go over to the mother and try to hug her.” He lowered his arms so they were rigid against his sides. “She goes like this. It was like hugging a little block of cement. She’s short, like Courtney. And neither of them—her or the husband—would look in my direction. And not one word.”
“What made them think you had something to do with it?”
“Just—you know, what I was supposed to be.”
“You never had any arguments with Courtney? Or with Greg about Courtney?”
“No!”
“Did they think Greg had anything to do with it?”
“I don’t know. At least they talked to him.”
A night breeze blew through the open kitchen door and gave me a chill. One of my neighbors’ dogs began that hysterical staccato bark you hear from nutsy dogs or from dogs with nutsy owners. Fancy Phil glanced at his beer bottle and seemed surprised to find it empty. “Did they put up any kind of a fuss about Greg having custody of the children?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, annoyed. Then he answered his own question: “You mean, if they thought Gregory did it, they would want to get the kids away from him. No. They didn’t say a peep about custody.”
“Right. Okay, the first few days after Courtney disappeared: Did the cops ask Greg to see if anything of hers was missing?”
“Yeah, and as far as he could tell, nothing was. The only money that was touched was the money Gregory took out of their joint account two weeks before. The sapphire earrings he got her for her thirtieth birthday were where she kept them, in a little safe they have in a closet. Some other jewelry. Her mink was in the closet.”
“Did she have an engagement ring?”
“Yeah, sure. She was wearing it, you know, when they found her. And her Rolex, too.”
“So all that was missing was the twenty-five thousand she’d taken from the money market and stock brokerage accounts months before she disappeared?”
“Right,” he agreed.
“So now what I’ve got to do is find out if she paid out twenty-five thousand dollars for video equipment and advertisements.”
“And if she didn’t?”
“Then I’ll need to figure out what was going on in Courtney’s life right before her death.”
Chapter Five
S TAR B ABY’S VIDEOGRAPHER, Z EE Friedman, bent over the railing on the landing outside her fifth-floor walk-up. “Just one more flight!” she called out encouragingly. She lived in a run-down neighborhood just north of the grand, high-ceilinged apartments around Columbia University and south of the renovated brownstones of Harlem’s latest renaissance. The stairwell of her building exuded that Old New York smell which has nothing to do with Henry James and lavender; for nearly a hundred years, the yellow-brown walls had soaked up garlic and onion vapors from the various ethnic groups that had used the place as their first step up from New York’s bleakest tenements.
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