Read Online Seven Kinds of Death by Kate Wilhelm - Free Book Online Page A

right. We left here right after seven and drove over there. We went up to Six and I got my briefcase, and we went down again. The watchman came over and we talked a minute or two. I remember that it was ten after seven when I went up to check out the other units, to make sure the painters hadn’t left anything. That couldn’t have taken more than a minute or two, and then we drove into Washington.”
    “We who?”
    Johnny gave him Debra Saltzman’s name and address, and the names of her friends whose addresses he did not know. Gruenwald looked very unhappy. “Our report from yesterday says no one saw Ms. Leeds after about four forty.” He looked them all over again, as carefully as he had done before; Toni and Janet had come down, and his gaze rested on them.
    “Ms. Cuprillo?”
    Janet nodded.
    “Right. You were still talking to Ms. Leeds, I understand, after the others left to change their clothes. Is that right?”
    She nodded again. Her eyes were very large.
    “Fine. Did she say anything about meeting anyone? Did she mention an appointment or anything of that sort?”
    “No,” Janet whispered.
    Toni looked from her to Paul. “She got a letter, remember?” she asked Paul. She said to the sheriff, “I showed them their rooms and there was a letter for her, in Paul’s room.”
    Patiently Sheriff Gruenwald asked Toni to elaborate. When she led them into Paul’s room, there had been a letter propped up on one of the pillows, addressed to V. Leeds, typed. She and Victoria had not gone into the room with Paul. He found the note and brought it to the door and handed it over. Toni didn’t remember what he had done then, only that Victoria had opened it, glanced at it, crumpled it, and put it in her pocket as they walked towards the room she was to have used.
    “Okay, Ms. Townsend. Did you get a glimpse of it? Hand written, typed? Half a page of type, full page, a few lines? What did you see?”
    She hesitated, thinking. “Not much. A few lines, typed, I guess.”
    “Good. Was there a signature? Ink? Blue? Black? Felt tip? What did you see? Could there have been a map of the area?”
    Constance watched this with admiration. He was very good, but Toni could add no more to what she had already told him. If there had been a signature, she had not seen it. If there had been a map, she had not seen that, either. She had gone up with Tootles and Ba Ba before four thirty to do Tootles’s hair, and she had not seen Victoria again.
    “When did you miss her?”
    Toni looked at her hands, tightly squeezed together in her lap. Her voice was nearly inaudible. “Not until after six. I was so busy. And I didn’t look in the bedroom and see that she hadn’t even unpacked until after that, six thirty maybe, when Paul told me he couldn’t And her.”
    “I see. Thank you.”
    He took them back over their movements of yesterday. Constance had gone up while the group was still talking and laughing, about four thirty, she said. Johnny had left right after he saw Constance go upstairs; he had gone back to the condos to send home a few guys who were still painting in the sub-basement and to shower and change his clothes. Then at five, he had gone to meet Debra’s train and they had come to the party.
    “Did you set the air conditioner at the minimum setting?” Constance asked. “It was freezing in the apartment,” she added to the sheriff.
    Johnny shook his head. “We keep it around eighty,” he said, shrugging. “I didn’t touch it.”
    Sheriff Gruenwald had looked surprised at her question, but he nodded very slightly, as if to say message received. Fingerprints, she wanted to suggest, might be on the controls. He turned to Paul Volte.
    Paul said he had gone up soon after Johnny left, leaving Janet and Victoria.
    “She said she wanted to step outside for a cigarette,” Janet said. “I didn’t see her again. I had my other clothes in the studio and I went in there to change.”
    Paul said, “She quit smoking three