Mortal Friends Read online

  “They found a body in the park,” he said, and quickly moved on.

  I walked off in search of Violet. She emerged from the middle of a small crowd, trotting toward me in a state of high excitement.

  “The Beltway Basher has struck again!” she cried breathlessly. “He’s killed another woman. They cordoned off the whole park!”

  “Oh, my God! Are they sure it’s the same guy?”

  “It’s gotta be him. The police aren’t talking, but I just ran into this reporter who gave me the scoop,” she said.

  I was pretty sure she hadn’t just run into a reporter who voluntarily gave her the scoop, as she put it. I was pretty sure she’d mowed down some poor hack and tortured the details out of him. When Violet wanted something, she got it. And there was nothing she wanted more than info on a good, juicy homicide.

  Violet was a serial killer buff. It was her hobby, after gardening. She watched every single forensic show on television and read anything she could get her hands on that involved murder, although true crime books were her favorite. Some people read passages of poetry and prose aloud to friends. Violet read me descriptions of gruesome deaths and twisted minds.

  Thanks to her, I knew more about sado-sexual psychopaths than I ever wanted to. The fact that one was now on the loose in Washington was music to her ears. If the Beltway Basher had indeed struck again—and in our very own neighborhood, of all places—nothing would stop Violet from ferreting out every last grisly detail of the crime.

  Apparently, a dog off its leash went snuffling around in the woods and exposed the body. According to Violet, whose account I took with a pillar of salt, the victim was lying facedown in the dirt. Her head was “split open like a ripe melon oozing pulp,” and her bare buttocks were peeking out from a pile of rotting leaves, “like a pair of moons.” Her words. The rampant glee in my friend’s voice was vaguely disconcerting but not unexpected. Violet had absorbed every scrap of information that was available pertaining to the prior murders. She was convinced we had a “local Ted Bundy” on our hands. Ted Bundy was Violet’s all-time favorite serial killer because he was so “talented.” Also her word.

  “Ted pioneered so many of the clever ruses they all use now—like feigning an injury and removing the door handle from the passenger side of his car so the victim can’t escape,” she said with disconcerting admiration.

  But what seemed to intrigue her most about him was that his persona was the exact opposite of who he really was. “Ted Bundy was handsome, charming, and lethal—just the kind of man you’re always attracted to,” she once said to me, much to my dismay.

  Violet, who had miraculously transformed herself from an ugly duckling into a swan, hated it when people were judged solely by their looks. Ted Bundy confirmed her view that you never really know who people are. “Very often, the prettier the person, the uglier the inner monster,” she asserted.

  I must admit that I too was fascinated by these current crimes. However, Montrose Park was a little too close to home for me, if not for Violet. It was shocking and scary to think that a killer had come so near. This was Georgetown, for heaven’s sake—fashionable, gentrified Georgetown—the social heart of our nation’s capital! Things like this just didn’t happen here. Except now they did.

  “Just think, Rev, that could have been us!” Violet exclaimed, as though the idea titillated her more than it frightened her.

  The police weren’t letting anyone into the park. Television crews had arrived, and the crowd was growing. Naturally, Violet wanted to stick around. She was like a rubbernecker at the scene of a traffic accident, desperate to get a glimpse of the gore. But I saw no point in all this crepe-hanging. I figured I’d hear all about it on the evening news. And, frankly, the evening news was as close as I wanted to get.

  Chapter 4

  Lynch Antiques occupied three floors of an old brick building on Wisconsin Avenue between P and Q Streets. My aim was to create the kind of chic, eclectic environment where one could either find the perfect little gift for a special occasion or furnish a whole house in one fell swoop. The front rooms on the first floor were like drawing rooms, crammed with furniture, paintings, chandeliers, and bric-a-brac of all different styles and periods—everything from seventeenth-century Russian icons to a Tony Duquette paper screen with coral finials. The stock ranged from good quality to decorative junk. The second floor was mainly dedicated to tableware and fine linens displayed on antique dining tables and beds. My office was there too—a small back room overlooking a small back garden. The third floor was storage.

  The front door bell tinkled as I walked into the shop. Rosina Alvarez, my manager, looked up from her computer. She didn’t even wait for me to take off my coat before she said, “Bad news.”

  “You heard about it already?” News really did travel fast these days.

  She held up a sheaf of bills and fanned them in front of me. “These are way past due.”

  Rosina had the face of a madonna and the sales skills of P. T. Barnum. She was nothing if not direct.

  “I take it you don’t know there’s been a murder in Montrose Park,” I said.

  “There’s gonna be one right here if you don’t pay these bills today.”

  “Did you hear what I just said? They found another woman murdered right up there in Montrose Park. I jog there all the time.”

  She shrugged. “See why I don’t exercise? It’s too dangerous.”

  “That’s five women he’s killed now. Montrose Park is right around the corner. You don’t think this is serious? This is really serious.”

  “Don’t obsess. It’s bad for your blood pressure, and it doesn’t help anything.”

  Rosina could be so irritating at times, mainly because she was the most unflappable person I knew. She wasn’t an obsesser like me. She took life one step at a time and didn’t waste energy worrying about the future or regretting the past like I did on an almost daily basis. But she was also young.

  “Obsessing comes with age, like wrinkles. One day you’ll obsess, just like I do,” I told her.

  “I doubt it,” she said flatly, handing me the stack of bills.

  I gave them a cursory glance.

  “You know what? I’m just not going to worry about these right now. It’s a gorgeous day out there—murder notwithstanding—and guess what? I’m happy!”

  Rosina shook her head. “Oh-oh…I hope he’s rich and he has a house he wants you to decorate.”

  She knew me so well. She knew I had a new man in my sights.

  “Don’t be such a smart-ass,” I said.

  “Why not? Someone around here has to be smart about something.”

  She went back to the books, and I poured myself a cup of muddy coffee from the communal pot. I headed upstairs to my office on the second floor. Sitting behind my desk, I sipped my coffee and stared out at the back garden, dotted with wrought-iron furniture and whimsical stone statuary—the outdoor stuff I couldn’t fit inside the store. It usually looked like a graveyard to me. But today it seemed as amusing as a country fair.

  I started sifting through the bills. They weren’t so amusing. Lynch Antiques was always in the red. I was born with a good eye, and I could never resist a beautiful piece of furniture or a wonderful old painting. I referred to myself as the Grand Acquisitor, and I was always broke. Plus, the whole antiques business had been in the toilet lately, which made things twice as bad. All the dealers were complaining about it. I felt like ripping up the whole bunch of bills and just throwing them into the air like confetti. But instead, I began the tedious process of arranging them according to which of my creditors was less likely to put a contract out on me if I stiffed them yet another month.

  About a half an hour later, Rosina buzzed me and told me to come downstairs.

  “I can’t. I’m in the middle of committing suicide,” I told her.

  “You will want to live when you see what’s down here.”

  When I got downstairs, Rosina was playfully peeking out fro
m behind a monstrous vase filled with red roses, which she had placed on the center table.

  “He must be rich,” she said in a singsong voice, handing me a card.

  I opened it with great anticipation. The note read: “Loved being with you last night. Bob.” It wasn’t handwritten. It was typed on a florist’s card. But I didn’t hold that against him. I knew he was a busy man. If I’d held anything against him, it would have been the bright red roses, because they are so prosaic and predictable. But you can’t have everything.

  Rosina wanted to know who they were from, and when I told her they were from Bob Poll, she immediately said, “What happened to Melody Hartford?”

  Rosina faithfully read the Reliable Source column in the Post, and social magazines like the Washingtonian, Capitol File, and Washington Life. Bob was always in them, usually with Melody on his arm—but sometimes not. I told her that they’d broken up.

  “He’s available now. He took me home from the Symphony Ball last night,” I said.

  Rosina rolled her eyes. Her reaction was predictable. She’d lived with me through so many boyfriends, she was entitled to be a little skeptical. I seemed to have a knack for finding guys who were either newly divorced, getting divorced, or fresh out of some torturous long-term relationship that had left them scarred and unable to commit. Though this might be a description of half the men in the world, it was always the half I seemed to find.

  Since my divorce umpteen years ago, all my romances had had an oddly similar trajectory: a whoosh of enthusiasm followed either by a fast puncture or slow deflation. There was always a nail in the tire somewhere. But one must live in hope, and I was absolutely thrilled to get those roses—bloody red as they were. Quite frankly, I didn’t appreciate Rosina’s uh-oh-here-we-go-again face, dismissing me like I was a third-party candidate with no hope.

  I tried to explain to her that when you’re single and my age, you can’t be too choosy, that most of the men I met either were married or had been in some kind of relationship before me. It was almost unavoidable. But Rosina was twenty-four, not forty-three like me, and she was blissfully engaged to a twenty-eight-year-old contractor who was probably her first beau. What the hell did she know about life?

  “Don’t be such a pessimist,” I told her. “As my father used to say, ‘It only takes one.’”

  “And my father used to say, ‘Don’t drink at a poison well.’”

  What the hell that meant, I have no idea. Nor did I ask.

  I called Violet to tell her about the flowers.

  “Red roses and a typewritten card, right?” she said.

  “How did you know?”

  “Everyone knows Mr. Poll’s MO, darling. He sent my friend Linda Hawthorne red roses for twelve straight days. Get set for the onslaught. He’s after you.”

  “What happened with Linda Hawthorne?”

  “He dumped her. But she’s such a pain in the ass, who could blame him? That doesn’t mean he’ll dump you if you play your cards right.”

  “And how do I play my cards right, pray tell?”

  “Don’t sleep with him right away. Think of yourself as Anne Boleyn. Hold out as long as you can until you get the ring.”

  “And then what? He beheads me?”

  “At least you’ll have the crown…. Oh, and FYI, Miss Montrose—? I actually saw them take away her body. Someone told me they think she’s been dead for at least a week, and you know what that means.”

  “No, what?”

  “That we probably jogged past her a couple of times.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Don’t you just wish we’d found her? How exciting would that have been? Huh?”

  “You are so sinister,” I said.

  Rosina left work early that day to go on her endless hunt for the perfect wedding dress. I manned the front of the shop. A few people dropped in to browse or shoot the breeze, including a couple of my fellow shopkeepers. Everyone was talking about the murder. Toward the end of the day, a rather somber-faced African-American man with dreadlocks walked in the door while I was talking to another customer. He was kind of attractive. He wandered into the next room. I excused myself and followed him. He stood with his hands behind his back, gazing up at one of the paintings on the wall. He was dressed all in black—black suit, black shirt, black tie. A diamond stud twinkled in his left ear. He was not my usual customer.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “Thomas Wootten…helluva painter,” he said without looking at me.

  “I’m impressed. You know your art.”

  “No. But I can read,” he said, pointing to the small white card on a nearby table: “Horn, King George’s Stallion, by Thomas Wootten, 1795.”

  “Oh. My assistant must have just typed that up. It should be tacked up under the painting. Thanks for noticing,” I said, affixing it to the wall.

  “It’s my job to notice things…. Detective Gunner, D.C. Police Department,” he said, showing me his ID.

  “Reven Lynch.” We shook hands. “Gunner…Great name for a detective.”

  He shrugged as if he’d heard that one a million times before. “So this is your place. Very nice,” he said, nodding his approval.

  I was pretty sure he’d come about the murder. But I didn’t want to appear rude, so I said: “Are you looking for something special, or are you just browsing?”

  “You hear about that murder up in Montrose Park?”

  “Are you kidding? Who hasn’t? It’s all anyone’s talking about. I always go jogging in that park. It’s really scary. You think it’s that serial killer again?”

  He didn’t answer. “So how long have you had this shop?”

  “Uh…oh, I guess about eight years now.”

  “How’s business?”

  “These days not great. The whole economy is screwed. But I’m surviving.”

  “You from Washington originally?”

  “No, New York. Can’t you tell, darling?” I drawled, striking a pose. He looked a little mystified. I don’t think he found me all that amusing.

  Detective Gunner had the style of a hip-hop star. He was around five-ten, a little taller than me—a neat, compact man, who obviously took great pride in his appearance and the way he dressed. He looked a little worn out, though—kind of like his shirt, which was crisply pressed but faded from wear.

  “Well, I’m just kinda canvassing the neighborhood. You don’t get a lot of murders in Georgetown. You happen to remember anything odd or out of the ordinary in the past week or so?”

  “Nope. It’s all been just business and gossip as usual!” I said cheerily. “Hear a lot of gossip, do you?”

  “In this shop? Are you kidding? I hear everything. For some reason, when people are browsing around together and talking, they don’t think other people are listening. But, trust me, I am!”

  “If you hear anything interesting, give me a call, will you?”

  He took out a card, wrote his cell phone number on the back, and handed it to me.

  “Thanks for your time,” he said.

  We shook hands again. There was no arrogance about him, no swagger—only a hint of weariness in his lively dark eyes, as if nothing in the world could surprise him except perhaps an act of pure kindness.

  Chapter 5

  After that opening salvo of roses, I didn’t hear from Bob Poll again, which was a little surprising, not to mention disappointing. Every time the phone rang, I thought it might be him. It never was. Ten days later, I was upstairs working in my office when Rosina buzzed me and said in a coy voice, “You have a visitor.” I was sure it was Bob. I checked myself out in the mirror and took my time walking downstairs. I didn’t want him to think I was anxious. When I reached the ground floor, Rosina pointed to the back room, where Detective Gunner was examining a Japanese screen.

  “You didn’t tell me he was so cute,” Rosina whispered.

  I felt slightly deflated that it wasn’t Bob, but I didn’t let my disappointment show. I walked over and greete
d him warmly.

  “Detective! Good to see you again.”

  “Hey, Ms. Lynch. Nice screen. Edo period?”

  “Yes. You have good taste.”

  “I like Japanese art.”

  “I’ll give you a good deal. I’ve had it awhile.”

  “Nah…. Thanks anyway. Look, uh, is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

  “Follow me.”

  I showed him upstairs to my office. He sat down on the couch and declined my offer of coffee. I sat behind my desk, folded my hands primly, and said, “So what can I do for you?”

  He pulled a picture out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was a snapshot of a woman. It looked like the photo on a driver’s license.

  “You recognize her?”

  I studied the picture for a long moment.

  “No. Who is she?”

  “Her name is—was—Nancy Sawtelle.”

  “Oh, my God! Is that—? That’s not the woman who was murdered up in Montrose Park, is it?” He nodded. I took a closer look at the photo. “Wow. Poor woman.”

  “You never saw her around here?”

  “I don’t remember her. You can ask Rosina.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s the only shot we have of her. The autopsy pictures aren’t usable for identification.”

  “That bad?”

  “Yeah,” he said softly, sliding the picture back into his pocket.

  He slumped back on the couch. He seemed tired.

  “Sure you don’t want some coffee or something? Water? A soda?”

  “No, thanks. Know what I’d like?”

  “What?”

  “A tour of the shop.”

  “Really? Are you interested in antiques?”

  “Kinda. You mind?”

  “Are you kidding? I’d be delighted.”

  I had fun showing Gunner around. It wasn’t every day I met someone who was genuinely interested in learning about some of the pieces I had in stock—not to buy them, but just to know about them, what drew me to them, how and where I’d acquired them. Just when I was ruing the fact that I’d ever gotten into the antiques business to begin with because I was in such debt, Gunner came along to remind me how much I loved my little shop, and how proud I was of it. Besides, as we walked from room to room, I felt he was sizing me up as much as he was the furniture, and I felt kind of flattered. He was cute, like Rosina said.