The Red Queen Dies Read online

  Greer St. John sighed. “I make puppets,” she said. “I’m a professional puppeteer.”

  McCabe wasn’t sure how to respond to that. The question she had asked was about the last time Greer had communicated with her mother.

  “That must be interesting,” she said.

  “What I meant was that my mother and I were working on a puppet show for a fund-raiser. We do the show together every year in D.C. at Thanksgiving for the children of soldiers.”

  “Oh, I see,” McCabe said. “So you and your mother spoke about the puppet show that you—”

  “On Wednesday afternoon, when she called.”

  “Was this going to be an Alice in Wonderland puppet show?” Baxter asked.

  Greer shook her head. “We always do something Alice, but this year we had planned to do scenes from Through the Looking Glass instead of Wonderland. I’ve been working on flower puppets and insects. Mom … my mother called to see how they were coming along.”

  She twisted her hands in her lap and looked as if she was about to burst into tears.

  McCabe said. “If you don’t mind my asking … Greer is a lovely name. It makes me think of Greer Garson. But I would have thought that you mother would have named you—”

  “Alice?” Greer St. John smiled through her tears. “That would have been overkill, even for Mom. But Greer is an Alice reference. Greer Garson starred in Mrs. Miniver, and if you’ve ever seen the movie—”

  “I have,” McCabe said. “But it’s been so long ago that I don’t remember—”

  “There’s a scene when Mrs. Miniver and her husband, Clem, are in the bomb shelter with their children. She—”

  “Oh, of course, I had forgotten that. She reads Alice in Wonderland to the children to get them to sleep.”

  “And by naming me Greer when everyone would have expected her to name me Alice, my mother provided herself with endless opportunities to point out the influence of Lewis Carroll on popular culture. Luckily, I do happen to like the name.”

  “So do I,” McCabe said. “When you spoke to your mother on Wednesday, did anything seem to be bothering her?”

  “No, she was really upbeat … upbeat in a creative person’s way. She said she was ripping her hair out by the roots over one of Henrietta’s monologues in the play. But she was excited about how it was all coming together.”

  “Did your mother mention any plans that she had for the rest of the day?”

  Greer shook her head. “I had a minor crisis on my end. We have a new German shepherd puppy and he’d gotten one of the baby’s shoes. And I told my mother that I needed to go … to get…”

  “The shoe from the puppy?”

  Greer nodded. “I told her I would call back later, but then there was one thing after another. And … I was going to call her back the next day when I had more time to talk. I … oh God…”

  Her husband held her. “Detectives, I think that’s about all my wife—”

  “Yes,” McCabe said. “Just one more question, Mrs. St. John.”

  Greer raised her head and swiped at her eyes. “Yes, I’m sorry. Please, what do you need to know?”

  “Did your mother mention an Albany collector who offered her a Dalí edition of Alice in Wonderland?”

  “Yes, she did mention that. You don’t think that man—”

  “We don’t know who he is at this point. Your mother’s ORB is missing, and her publicist deleted the tag that she forwarded to your mother. Forensics will try to recover the tag, but did your mother happen to tell you the man’s name? Or anything else that might help us to locate him?”

  Greer shook her head. “No, she just told me about being contacted and that she was trying to arrange to see the Dalí volume and the stamp case.”

  “That was what she told you on Wednesday afternoon?”

  “We didn’t talk about that on Wednesday. We really didn’t cover anything other than the puppet show and her update on her play … and then I said good-bye and went to chase the puppy.”

  McCabe said, “I’m sure she understood that. Normally, it would have been nothing that either of you would have thought twice about.”

  Greer St. John straightened and nodded. “Thank you for saying that.”

  “It’s true,” McCabe said. “Things happen and you do what seems the right thing to do at that moment.” She stood up. “If you should think of anything else, please give us a call. Here’s my card.”

  She and Baxter said their good-byes and stepped into the hallway.

  A woman as elegantly fine-boned as Greer St. John was voluptuous, her pale blond hair in a chignon, rose from a bench and put the funeral home brochure she had been reading back in the rack.

  “Amazing how many different options there are for coffins,” she said. “Hello, I’m Lisa. Ted had to step out for a moment.”

  “Thank you for waiting, Ms. Nichols,” McCabe said. “We won’t take up much of your time. Let’s go in here.”

  They went into one of the other two meditation rooms.

  The interview looked as if it was going to be both short and routine. Lisa Nichols confirmed everything her fiancé had said about their travel between Albany and New York City. She had, she said, known Vivian only a short time. They had first met about six months ago in New York when she and Ted encountered Vivian at a gallery opening. Ted had introduced the two of them.

  “Thank you, Ms. Nichols,” McCabe said. “We just have to make sure we’ve touched base with anyone who might be able to provide us with information.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. I really liked Vivian.”

  From the corner of her eye, McCabe saw Baxter shift in his chair. He probably wanted to ask Nichols the same question she did: “So you didn’t mind that your fiancé and Jessup might once have been lovers?”

  Instead, McCabe said, “You and Ms. Jessup did have a lot in common.”

  Lisa Nichols blinked. A flutter of long lashes over hazel eyes. “A lot in common?” she said.

  “What should I call it? Being creative people … understanding the creative process. Ms. Jessup was an actor. You’re a photographer. I wanted to tell you how incredible I thought your photographs were.”

  “You’ve seen some of my photographs?”

  “In Mr. Thornton’s gallery. The wall display. The action shots of people engaged in dangerous sports.”

  Nichols smiled. “That was how Ted and I met. I was a last-minute replacement for the photographer who was supposed to go along on one of his mountain-climbing expeditions.”

  McCabe said, “So you climb mountains, too?”

  Nichols laughed. “No. Not for a major exhibit or any amount of money.”

  “Afraid of heights?” Baxter said.

  “Terrified. But with telephoto lens, I was able to get the shots Ted wanted. He had to do without the shots from the helicopter that the other photographer had planned to do.”

  “But you go up in his airship,” McCabe said.

  “I was heavily medicated the first time. Three glasses of champagne. And I’m actually okay in large planes when I only have to see the ground going up and coming down. The airship is like that when you’re not up in the cockpit. Is there anything else I can—”

  With perfect timing, the door opened and Ted Thornton stuck his head in. “All done?’

  “Yes, we are,” McCabe said. “Thank you, Mr. Thornton, for arranging this. And thank you for your time, Ms. Nichols.”

  “Even though I haven’t been that much help,” Lisa Nichols said.

  Baxter said, “But now we can cross you off our list of people to interview.”

  “We’ll be in touch if anything should come up,” McCabe said.

  She and Baxter were out in the hall when something else occurred to her. The question they had forgotten to ask. Feeling like Peter Falk in an old Columbo episode, she retraced her steps.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Thornton … one more thing … the other two victims … and this is a question for you, to
o, Ms. Nichols. Did either of you come into contact with the other two victims?”

  Ted Thornton raised an eyebrow, “To the best of my knowledge, Detective McCabe, I’ve never met either of the young women.”

  Lisa Nichols shook her head. “I saw their photos on the Web yesterday, along with Vivian’s. I don’t recall ever having seen them before.”

  “And the names weren’t familiar, either?”

  “No,” she said.

  “No,” Thornton said, “and no need to ask … to ask Greer and Ron. We were all looking at the photographs together.”

  “Thank you,” McCabe said. “Just thought I’d check.”

  “Now, Detective McCabe,” Thornton said, “did you really think we wouldn’t mention something like that?”

  “Not really, Mr. Thornton. But sometimes if you ask a question, it sets off another related train of thought.”

  * * *

  “What did you think?” Baxter said when they got back to the car.

  “About what?” McCabe said. “Or should I say who?”

  “Lisa Nichols,” he said.

  “I’m not sure,” McCabe said. “Interesting that she was the one who wore a black dress to the funeral home. Maybe she just has a well-developed sense of the traditional.”

  Baxter said, “Or maybe she knows blondes look hot in black.”

  McCabe took out her ORB and began to make her interview entries. “I wonder what Vivian thought of Lisa.”

  “The daughter didn’t mention anything.”

  “No. And I guess if her mother had been seriously bad-mouthing Ted Thornton’s fiancée, Greer and her husband would have stayed at a hotel, no matter how many reporters were hanging around.”

  Baxter glanced over at her ORB. “Do we have anything yet on whether the first two vics were in any plays?”

  McCabe shook her head. “No notations in the master file.”

  “Guess no one’s been able to catch up with anyone who knows yet.”

  * * *

  They got back to the station in time to see the last news van pull away.

  “Jacoby’s press conference must be over,” Baxter said.

  “Glad we missed it,” McCabe said.

  They met Lieutenant Dole in the hallway. He gestured for them to go into his office.

  When he followed them in and closed the door, McCabe said, “Is something wrong, sir?”

  “Your partner was right, McCabe. Your car was transmitting.”

  “So someone wanted to know my whereabouts.” McCabe swallowed. “Could they tell anything about who might have installed it?”

  “They sent it to the lab. Could be a few days before anything comes back.”

  “And in the meantime? What—”

  Knuckles rapped and the door opened just wide enough for the commander to stick his head into the room.

  His gaze, not at all turtlelike, fastened on McCabe. “You want off the serial killer case, Detective?”

  “No, sir, I don’t,” she said.

  “Then stay alert out there. And get me some results.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He drew back his head and closed the door.

  “You heard the man,” Lieutenant Dole said. He sat down at his desk and looked up at McCabe and Baxter. “We’re going to have another task force meeting on Monday morning. Keep working on whatever you have until then.”

  Back out in the bull pen, Baxter said, “Want to go over what we have again now or come in tomorrow morning and give it another shot?”

  McCabe dropped down in the chair at her desk. “May as well give it another run-through now. We might find something we should follow up tomorrow.”

  “Who said Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest?”

  “What I’m hoping,” McCabe said. “Is that our killer thinks three is the perfect number. No more victims before we can figure out what the connection is between the first three.”

  “Hey, Hannah,” Yin said as he came in. “I got that information you wanted from the families. I just entered it in the MF.”

  “Thanks, Walt,” McCabe said, and swung toward her monitor.

  Yin snagged his thermo jacket from his desk chair. “Call me if you need me to explain my notes. Got to run. Tonight’s our anniversary. Casey made dinner reservations at that fancy French restaurant down on Pearl Street.”

  “Happy anniversary,” McCabe said.

  “Have fun,” Baxter called after him.

  “This is interesting,” McCabe said.

  “What do we have?”

  “Nothing on playing Alice or anything with an obvious connection to Jessup. But Sharon Giovanni was an angel in a Sunday-school pageant. Bethany Clark’s sister says Bethany was in the chorus in a high school production of Oklahoma.”

  “Which means they were both on a stage at some point.”

  “Yeah, but there’s something else that’s more interesting. Something that Sharon’s mother remembered. Yin talked to her first. When he called Bethany’s sister to ask her about plays, he followed up with another question. She remembered something, too.”

  “What?” Baxter said.

  “That Bethany had taken part in the student presentations at the end of a summer science program. Both girls did. They were both in a two-week summer science camp for twelve- to fourteen-year-year old girls.”

  “But we checked their school records. There was nothing—”

  “The program wasn’t sponsored by their schools. To get in, the participants submitted essays about why they wanted to attend the camp. It was sponsored by a women’s group that wanted to encourage girls to go into science-related fields.”

  “That’s it?” Baxter looked over her shoulder at Yin’s notes. “That’s the link between the two of them? Why didn’t one of the families remember this before?”

  “They didn’t go to the same schools. They weren’t friends. I guess neither family thought about a science camp.” McCabe frowned. “Look at this. Yin says he thinks there was something else that Sharon’s mother remembered about the camp. Something she was holding back.”

  “Why would she have brought it up in the first place if she was going to hold something back?” Baxter said.

  “Don’t know,” McCabe said. “Maybe it was something she hadn’t thought of in years and when she began to remember, she decided it wouldn’t reflect well on her daughter.”

  “Yin looked up the year of the camp. Sharon would have been what … twelve years old that summer? What could a twelve-year-old girl—”

  “Hate to break it to you, Mike, but twelve-year-old girls are not—”

  “Forget I asked that. I grew up with two kid sisters.”

  “Are you up for a couple of more interviews before we call it a day?”

  “Let’s do it. And maybe we should find out where Yin and his wife are having dinner and order the guy a bottle of wine.”

  “For a lead like this, amen,” McCabe said. “Wanna bet that fancy French restaurant he mentioned is Chez André?”

  19

  Sharon Giovanni’s mother said, “She wanted to be a doctor … with NASA, if you can believe that. When she was a kid, she was always watching reruns of that Enterprise show … you know, the one with the lady doctor … Presser?”

  “Crusher,” McCabe said. “Dr. Crusher.”

  “That’s it. The show with that Luke guy with the bald head playing the captain. Anyway, that’s the kind of doctor she wanted to be.” Mrs. Giovanni looked up from the box she was going through. “I kept telling her that we weren’t going to get up in space like that anytime soon, but she said she could be a NASA doctor anyway. God, that girl was jumping up and down when that UFO thing happened. I was scared to death, and here she was, going, ‘Mom, if a ship came here, that means we might decide to go out there.’”

  McCabe looked at the assortment of items Mrs. Giovanni was taking from the box and placing neatly on her daughter’s bed. She said, “Sharon’s adviser at Hudson Valley told us that Sharon wou
ld have had an excellent chance of getting a scholarship when she transferred to a four-year school.”

  “She had applied to UAlbany and a bunch of other schools. She was worried that she wouldn’t get into medical school if she couldn’t get into a really good university to finish up.”

  Baxter said, “If you want to just dump all of that out, it would be faster.”

  Mrs. Giovanni shook her head, “Sharon was so careful of her things. We didn’t have much. That’s why she had to go to community college first and take a job. But that girl was particular about what she did have. Everything in its place … I know if she saved it, it’d be here in one of these boxes from her closet.”

  McCabe said, “I don’t remember seeing it when we were here before. We did go through both boxes—”

  “But you weren’t looking for it then,” Mrs. Giovanni said. “If you aren’t looking for something, you can look right over it.”

  “That’s true. While you’re looking for the program for the presentations, could we talk a little about the camp?”

  “Like I told that other detective who called, it lasted two weeks. They went every day for classes taught by these science teachers the group had hired. And they would go on field trips to different places. Like the Museum or that Art Institute … you know, the one on Washington Avenue. They went there to see the mummies. And they … I know it’s here somewhere.… Sharon always saved things like that.… She was always meaning to put all her odds and ends into scrapbooks when she had time.”

  McCabe looked over the woman’s head at Baxter.

  She said, “Detective Yin thought you might have recalled something else, Mrs. Giovanni? Maybe something Sharon told you about the camp?”

  Mrs. Giovanni put the New Year’s Eve 2017 napkin she was holding down on the pile. “I don’t think the program’s here. Maybe she didn’t save it after all.”

  “That’s okay. We’ll see if we can find a copy from the group that sponsored the camp,” McCabe said. “Mrs. Giovanni, do you—”

  “She told me about how this girl was making fun of this other girl. And then the girl who was being teased, she ran away when the teaching assistant stepped out of the room. And they couldn’t find her. Sharon was really upset when she told me about it.”