A Clean Kill

Thirty-seven

At noon, Eloise closed the door of her office,sat down at her desk, and rewound the taped interview of Alison Perkins. Then she took out a pad of paper and started listening to the first cassette. After a few minutes, it was clear to her that April Woo really knew her stuff. She had led Alison through a detailed history of her friendship with the woman everyone had called Maddy. Alison and Maddy had met in a gym long before they had children. They'd planned their pregnancies together, used the same obstetrician and hospital. They'd had babies at the same time, almost to the month, attended natural-childbirth class together, and traveled to health spas out West. They'd shopped together, and used the same employment agency to get their baby nurses and nannies. It was at the point in the narrative when Alison began talking about the nannies that her voice became more agitated.

"These girls. They come from nowheresville, never lived in a good house. For a few weeks they're nice as can be—cheerful, helpful. The kids are happy. It seems like everything's finally going to be peachy. Then they start ganging up." Sound of nervous laughter.

"What happens?"

"They start wanting everything, our houses, our clothes, our jewelry, our husbands. They bring their friends around. . . . What time is it? I have to go."

"In a minute. Tell me more about these nannies."

"Oh, some of them are lazy. They start slacking off, and you have to negotiate what they'll do and won't do. You think they want to please you, but then they start faking it. And then little things go missing—and big things, too. One of them stole my tennis bracelet—seven carats of diamonds. It wasn't as big as Maddy's, but I loved that bracelet. I threw her out fast. It was too bad—that one had been really nice. But Jo Ellen always has a replacement. The better ones cost more, of course, and every time it's a new contract."

"What kind of contract?"

"We pay twenty percent of the salary for a year. If they leave before a year, then I'd get a discount on the next one, but they never leave. I have to fire them. Then we start over. It's a racket."

Eloise made a note. Anderson placing unacceptable girls? At the same time she heard Woo's voice asking, "Did you ever try another agency?"

"No. Anderson is the best. Jo Ellen vets the girls. She gives them personality tests, and does background searches. Of course they have to be legal, have driver's licenses and everything. I wouldn't trust anybody else to be that careful."

"How about Remy? Did she come highly recommended?"

"Oh, that was not a good match for Maddy from the get-go. Maddy wanted a first-class nanny, pure and simple. She was not interested in food. Wayne wanted a chef for the boys because Maddy didn't cook. Conflict right there. Remy needed a place to stay while she finished cooking school. They made a deal."

"She's a pretty girl. Was that a problem for Maddy?"

"No, of course not. You wouldn't want unattractive people in your house, would you?"

Not a smart girl, Eloise thought. She fast-forwarded a number of times, listened to the cocaine questions, and turned off the machine. She found Hagedorn in front of his computer. "Want to go for a drive?"

His pale blue eyes came alive as if she'd just offered him a joyride in a Ferrari. Then he said, "I'm the computer guy. Why me?"

"Everybody needs a friend, Charlie," she said.

He nodded slowly, smiling a little at being invited to the party for the first time. He wasn't used to being anyone's partner, even for a day. "Okay, but we have to be back for Lorna Dome at two," he said.

"We'll be back. I never forget a stripper." She laughed.

They hurried downstairs, and he took the wheel of the unmarked Buick. They crossed town at a snail's pace, and their personal interaction was a replay of the night before. He drove carefully and didn't initiate any conversation.

"You ever do an interview?" Eloise asked him after a while.

"Back when I was on patrol," he replied.

"Where was that?" Eloise asked.

"Staten Island."

"No kidding?" Eloise had been to Staten Island only a handful of times. She lapsed into silence for several blocks. Then she asked him how he liked working for the lieutenant.

"She's very determined," he replied after a pause.

"Is that a good thing?"

He shrugged. "It is what it is."

"Very profound," she said as he parked in a bus zone.

The Anderson Agency was on the second floor of a fine old Lexington Avenue building on Sixty-third Street. The building had a pricey antique shop downstairs and a discreet entrance with a brass plaque that looked as if it belonged on Madison Avenue. The elevator was wood paneled and marble floored. When they got out, without appearing to be aware of doing it, Hagedorn stood up a little straighter. He reached for the office doorknob to open it for the sergeant, but the glass door of the Anderson Agency was locked. He rang the bell for entry, the lock clicked, and they went into a place that looked like an apartment. The reception area was a large waiting room with French chairs and leaded windows with velvet drapes.

A reed-thin middle-aged woman with a bun and no makeup sat at a long table loaded with magazines—Town & Country, House & Garden, and Avenue. She looked them over. "Do you have an appointment?"

"I'm Sergeant Gelo from the New York City Police Department. This is Detective Hagedorn. Is Miss Anderson available?"

"One moment." Staring at them as if they were wild animals, she got on the phone and pushed a few buttons. "Miss Anderson, some people from the police department are here to see you. Yes, Miss Anderson." She hung up the phone. "She's just finishing something up. Will you follow me?"

The receptionist stood up and led the way through curtained French doors into another room. This one looked like the antique shop downstairs. It had fabric on the walls, an ornate desk, a number of French-looking gilt armchairs with brocade seats and backs, a fireplace, and the kind of small tables and decorative objects that couldn't easily be copied. They gawked for no more than thirty seconds.

"Oh, good, you've found the parlor. I'm Miss Anderson. "

A rather frightening woman who looked as if she came from another era entered through a different door. She wore a suit that hadn't been seen out on the street since the 1930s. The tweed was old-fashioned. The jacket was long, the shoulders were padded, and the skirt came down to the middle of Anderson's sturdy calves. Under the jacket was a paisley blouse that matched the paisley turban that made her head look like a small beach ball. Miss Anderson looked like the psychic in a Noel Coward play Eloise had been in a long time ago in high school. No lipstick or rouge softened her stern countenance. Eloise found it difficult to believe this was the woman Maddy Wilson and Alison Perkins relied on for their household help.

Although normally she was not daunted by anyone, she actually deflated a little at the powerful beam of disapproval Anderson sent her way. She was wearing the clothes from her locker—tight blue trousers, a revealing sweater, and a leather jacket that did not even try to hide the Glock at her waist. Her hair was in its usual seductive disarray, and she had to remind herself her makeup was perfect.

"I'm Sergeant Eloise Gelo, and this is Detective Charles Hagedorn. We're from the New York City Police Department," she said.

"Yes, I know. You're the sergeant?" Anderson replied.

"Yes, ma'am," Eloise told her.

"Humph. Well, appearances can be deceiving." She sat in the chair that most resembled a throne, crossed her ankles, and gestured for the two detectives to arrange themselves around her.

"One of your customers was murdered yesterday."

"Clients," Anderson corrected. "Yes, Mrs. Wilson."

"And another one of your clients was murdered this morning."

' Oh, who?" Miss Anderson tilted her head to one side as if this were a rude bit of gossip.

"Alison Perkins."

"My, my! That is a startling coincidence, isn't it?" She looked shocked.

"You placed the nannies in their houses," Eloise told her.

"We've been working with those two clients for years." She frowned and tilted her head the other way. "It's hard to believe. . . ."

"How were they to work for?"

"You know how young mothers are these days." She smiled with no warmth, as if that covered the subject.

Eloise took out her notebook and Charlie followed suit. With no further preliminaries, she said, "We need your files on Remy and Lynn."

"Dear me, I know they have no part in this. I checked them out myself." Miss Anderson clasped her hands together.

"It's routine."

"I don't think you understand. The Anderson Agency has been in business in this very room for over a hundred years. No employment agency in the country has a longer or more distinguished history. We've staffed the great homes of America— the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Fords, the Kennedys, the Roosevelts—royal families all over the world use our services. Queens, princes!"

"We still need the files," Eloise said before Miss Anderson got too wrapped up in her speech.

"They come because I'm discreet. I understand their needs. They sit in the chairs where you're sitting. They tell me the intimate details of their lives because they know that I will keep their secrets. All these years I have kept the secrets, and I will not change that for anything." Although she did not look that old, Miss Anderson gave the impression of being nearly a hundred years old herself, stuck somewhere between World War I and World War II with her turban and mannish shoulder pads.

Eloise glanced at Hagedorn. He was taking notes at a furious pace and she wondered what he was writing. "Do you have secrets to keep about Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Perkins?" she asked.

"I will not desecrate their memories," Anderson said flatly.

"How well did you know them?"

"Well enough to know that they were difficult to staff. Young people are different these days. But I try to be understanding." She shut thin lips and lifted her eyebrows. "This is the exodus, you know."

"The exodus?"

"The time they leave for the summer. Every year it's a problem. The husband in one place, the wife and children in another. And they're never happy, are they?"

"They weren't happy?"

She raised her eyebrows. "These were not the best families," she. said after a dramatic pause. "You know how that is."

"Ah," Eloise murmured knowingly, although she had no idea what the woman was talking about.

"I see the whole idea is foreign to you." She tapped a sensible shoe.

"Are you talking about the Social Register?" El-oise said as if she finally got it.

" No, no. Nobody cares about the Social Register anymore. Quality goes deeper than that"

"So Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Perkins were not high-class people. Is that a major flaw?" Eloise asked.

"Don't misunderstand me. I have all kinds of clients. Some of them are people one wouldn't sit down to dinner with."

Eloise smiled, aware that she would be one of them.

"That's not what I mean in this case, though. These were the new school—ungrateful young women who have everything in the world but are never pleased with what they have or the service they receive from others," she said sternly.

"So they fired everybody."

"Everybody."

"I imagine that would be a good thing for you. You get a commission for each placement."

"I can't comment on that."

"Mrs. Perkins said that you get twenty percent of a year's salary. That can add up if you have several in a year."

"Indeed. "

"So maybe you didn't always place the very best girls with them. Did they have previous employment problems?"

"There's no need to be challenging. I will give you the files, if you want them," Anderson said suddenly. "That will be all for now." She stood up and ushered them to the door.

Gelo and Hagedorn were used to every kind of behavior. They cooled their heels with the chilly receptionist until a younger woman brought them a manila envelope. Relieved that they didn't have to get out the big guns, they took it and bolted.