House on Fire

53

Gabe’s apartment was a dump. It was on the top floor of a shambling triple-decker on Putnam Ave. that had once been painted red. The paint had peeled so badly you could barely tell the color anymore. In front of the house the trash containers were tipped over. Half a bicycle was locked to a parking meter. What looked like a discarded baby stroller blocked the front door. His name wasn’t on the bell, which read kowalczyk, the name of one of his roommates. It was around ten a.m., which meant Gabe was sleeping, but he wasn’t answering his cell. So I rang the doorbell.

A few seconds later the front door buzzed open — no one asked who I was — and I took the splintering wooden stairs up two flights. The stairway stank of boiled cabbage.

The door to Gabe’s apartment was marked with a cheap plastic gold-colored number three that had been nailed on with one nail. It rattled as I knocked.

The door came open, and some guy in his early twenties with a wild head of hair stuck his head out. The apartment behind him was dark. “Yeah?”

“Looking for Gabe.”

“Hold on,” he said, as unfriendly as possible, and he closed the door. I waited a beat. Gabe came to the door a minute or so later. Clearly he’d been asleep. “What’s up, Uncle Nick?” He was blinking in the light. “What time is it?”

I could smell beer and cigarettes and a strong note of weed. His breath was bad.

“You done with the Camry?”

“Oh, yeah, hold on.” He pushed the door closed.

“Am I not allowed to come in?” I said.

“It’s gross, Uncle Nick,” I heard him say behind the door. He came back a moment later with the car keys and dropped the ring in my outstretched palm. “Thanks again.”

“Sorry to wake you up,” I said. “Why did your grandfather want to talk to you?”

“Victor?” He put on an innocent look. “Because he’s my grandpa.”

“Did he want something from you?”

Gabe swallowed and looked away. He couldn’t have looked guiltier. “No. He just wanted to see me.”

“Victor wanted you to drive all the way from Boston because he wanted a visitor?”

“I’m not just a visitor. I’m his only grandchild. You know that.”

“Gabe, what are you not telling me?”

“Nothing. He just said, you know, I’m his only grandchild, and you’re never going to have kids, so I’m probably the only one he’s ever gonna have.”

“Yeah,” I said, “okay. Listen. About Victor — just be careful of him. He’ll ask you to do things; you’ve gotta be careful.”

“He’s behind bars, Uncle Nick. I mean, what can he do to me?”

I shook my head. “I just want you to be careful around Victor Heller.”

It took me three and a half hours to drive to Port Chester, New York. I took the Mass. Turnpike to 84 and then 95. My mind kept returning to Maggie Benson’s death. I realized I knew nothing about funeral plans for her or anything like that. I called Detective Goldman. “Did you find a next of kin for Maggie Benson?” I asked.

“She has a brother and a sister in Connecticut, along with her parents,” Goldman said.

“I’m just wondering if a funeral’s being planned.”

“Sorry, don’t know.”

I asked if he had any updates on Maggie’s murder, and he did not.

I thought about the houseful of suspects — the Agatha Christie aspect. I went through a mental list of Kimball siblings. Cameron? I remembered seeing him return to his room at four in the morning. The youngest Kimball kid seemed the most likely suspect in Maggie’s murder, but for what motive? That stumped me. He also seemed so slight and physically unprepossessing, it was hard to imagine him shoving a strong woman like Maggie. Though I suppose anyone can shove anyone else off the edge of a cliff if it’s done suddenly. Theoretically he could have pushed Maggie to her death. He just didn’t fit the profile.

Paul, the eldest, didn’t fit the profile either. He was a scholar, sort of a lost soul, and he seemed gentle. I wasn’t sure whether he’d talked with Maggie that night. I didn’t remember seeing them together. Hayden, the Broadway impresario — sure, she looked fit and maybe tough, but where was the motive? I couldn’t think of one. Same with Megan.

I continued to suspect Fritz Heston and was frustrated by his alibi. There had to be a hole in it somewhere. But everyone had seen him leave, and the only way he could have gotten back to the house was by driving. So he would have shown up on the video cameras driving up to the house or entering it. But according to Detective Goldman, he hadn’t. Whoever killed Maggie had to know how to work the video surveillance system, enough to switch off the rear-facing cameras in the house. Who else but Fritz Heston qualified?

Or one of his employees?

Simply put, Maggie had been killed by someone connected with Kimball Pharma. They’d done it for Conrad Kimball. In one way or another, Conrad Kimball now had killed two of the closest friends I’d had, Maggie and Sean. He’d just used different weapons.

And even if Sukie Kimball no longer required my services, I wasn’t done with my work. I would take down the old man’s company. If I managed to do that, I’d be making their deaths mean something.