The Sins of the Fathers

The medicine cabinet told me that Wendy had taken birth-control pills. They came in a little card with a dial indicating the days of the week so that you could tell whether you were up-to-date or not.

Thursday's pill was gone, so I knew one thing she had done the day she died.

She had taken her pill.

Along with the birth-control pills I found enough bottles of organic vitamins to suggest that either or both of the apartment's occupants had been a believer. A small vial with a prescription label indicated that Richie had suffered from hay fever. There was quite a bit in the way of cosmetics, two different brands of deodorant, a small electric razor for shaving legs and underarms, a large electric razor for shaving faces. I found some other prescription drugs-Seconal and Darvon (his), Dexedrine spansules labeled For Weight Control (hers), and an unlabeled bottle containing what looked like Librium. I was surprised the drugs were still around. Cops are apt to pocket them, and men who would not take loose cash from the dead have trouble resisting the little pills that pick you up or settle you down.

I took the Seconal and the Dex along with me.

A closet and a dresser in the bedroom filled with her clothes. Not a large wardrobe, but several dresses had labels from Bloomingdale's and Lord & Taylor.

His clothes were in the living room. One of the closets there was his, and he kept shirts and socks and underwear in the drawers of a Spanish-style kneehole desk.

The living-room couch was a convertible. I opened it up and found it made up with sheets and blankets. The sheets had been slept on since their last laundering. I closed the couch and sat on it.

A well-equipped kitchen, copper-bottomed frying pans, a set of burnt-orange enameled cast-iron pots and pans, a teak rack with thirty-two jars of herbs and spices. The refrigerator held a couple of TV

dinners in the freezer compartment, but the rest of it was abundantly stocked with real food. So were the cupboards. The kitchen was a large one by Manhattan standards, and there was a round oak table in it. There were two captain's chairs at the table. I sat at one of them and pictured cozy domestic scenes, one of them whipping up a gourmet meal, the two of them sitting at this table and eating it.

I had left the apartment without finding the helpful things one hopes to find.

No address books, no checkbooks, no bank statements. No revealing stacks of canceled checks. Whatever their financial arrangements, they had evidently conducted them on a cash basis.

Now, a day later, I thought of my impressions of that apartment and tried to match them up with Martin Vanderpoel's portrait of Wendy as evil incarnate. If she had trapped him with sex, why did he sleep on a folding bed in the living room?

And why did the whole apartment have such an air of placid domesticity to it, a comfortable domesticity that all the blood in the bedroom could not entirely drown?

Chapter 9

When I got back to my hotel there was a phone message at the desk. Cale Hanniford had called at a quarter after eleven. I was to call him. He had left a number, and it was one he had already given me.

His office number.

I called him from my room. He was at lunch. His secretary said he would call me back. I said no, I'd try him again in an hour or so.

The call reminded me of J.J. Cottrell, Inc., Wendy's employment reference on her lease application. I found the number in my notebook and tried it again on the chance I'd misdialed it first time around. I got the same recording. I checked the telephone directory for J.J. Cottrell and didn't come up with anything. I tried Information, and they didn't have anything, either.

I thought for a few minutes, then dialed a special number. When a woman picked up, I said,

"Patrolman Lewis Pankow, Sixth Precinct. I have a listing that's temporarily out of service, and I have to know in what name it's listed."

She asked the number. I gave it to her. She asked me to please hold the line.

I sat there with the phone against my ear for almost ten minutes before she came back on the line.

"That's not a temporary disconnect," she said. "That's a permanent disconnect."

"Can you tell me who the number was assigned to last?"

"I'm afraid I can't, officer."

"Don't you keep that information on file?"

"We must have it somewhere, but I don't have access to it. I have recent disconnects, but that was disconnected over a year ago, so I wouldn't have it. I'm surprised it hasn't been reassigned by now."

"So all you know is that it's been out of service for more than a year."

That was all she knew. I thanked her and rang off. I poured myself a drink, and by the time it was gone I decided that Hanniford ought to be back in his office.

I was right.

He told me he had managed to find the postcards. The first one, postmarked New York, had been mailed on June 4. The second had been mailed in Miami on September 16.

"Does that tell you anything, Scudder?"