A Little Night Murder Read online

  Krissie’s tiny apartment was jammed with clothing that hung on hangers and racks and lay folded over the furniture. Some of the items I recognized right away—elaborate silken costumes from the opera company’s coming production of Carmen, obviously sent to Krissie for alterations. The other pieces ranged from prom dresses to business suits and beautiful beaded gowns I’d no doubt see in the coming months at formal functions around the city. Despite her modest atelier, Krissie did quality work for quality clients.

  Her furniture consisted of folding chairs, several old sewing machines and a well-used ironing board, all crowded together so that there was little room to move except for a small cleared space in front of a three-way mirror. The room smelled faintly of machine oil as well as the cooking fragrances that floated up from Fu Manchu.

  From the half-open kitchen door waved Krissie’s tiny, smiling grandmother. The former proprietor of the long-gone laundry business downstairs, she was now a diminutive, wrinkled lady who always seemed to sit in Krissie’s cluttered kitchen reading a Chinese newspaper. Her gnarled fingers ran lightly across the printed symbols.

  Judging by the bare-bones nature of her apartment, I suspected Krissie sent money to support many relatives abroad.

  Krissie didn’t notice the mess around her and cheerfully asked, “How about some tea?”

  The idea of drinking hot tea in the hot apartment didn’t appeal, so I thanked her and declined. “How are my dresses coming?”

  “I wanted you to try on the St. Laurent one more time. I’m still not sure we have it right.”

  I slipped into the bathroom that served as the dressing room and pulled over my head a voluminous chiffon dress. When I came out, Krissie fastened the gown at the back and led me to the mirror. Together, we studied the mint green Yves St. Laurent design with critical eyes. I had inherited it from an actress who had battled her weight, so the dress had been intended for a larger woman. Its long, sweeping lines and wealth of fabric were intended to camouflage figure flaws. The elegant neckline was a simple silver ring that exposed my pale shoulders. The chiffon flowed over my belly in a graceful cascade of mint green and touched the floor at my feet. Krissie had lightly basted her alterations so that the dress fit my figure.

  But Krissie frowned at my reflection and finally shook her head. “It fits, and the color’s great on you, Nora, but it still overwhelms you, doesn’t it?”

  I sighed. “I look as if I’m swimming in key lime pie.”

  “I hate to suggest this, but what if we cut it short? If it were cocktail length, it wouldn’t be a St. Laurent anymore, exactly, but it would suit you better. And it would be more multipurpose.”

  It felt like a sin against fashion to change the spirit of the original St. Laurent design. On the other hand, I really needed something nice to wear during the next two months.

  Seeing my indecision, she said, “Let me pin it up, and we’ll look at it again.”

  While she worked, I stood still and let my gaze rove over some of the costumes hanging around the room. There were many saucy peasant dresses and bright military uniforms with plenty of braid. “Looks as if you have Carmen under control.”

  She laughed around the pins in her mouth. “I think so. I didn’t make the costumes, you know—I’m just altering pieces from the opera company’s costume shop. They send me work when their staff gets overwhelmed.”

  “Do you work on other kinds of shows? Musicals, for instance?”

  “Just alterations, never original designs. I have a rush job on my hands at the moment.”

  “Carmen? Or for a preview of Bluebird of Happiness, by any chance?”

  She blinked up at me. “Bluebird. How did you know that?”

  “I’ve been invited to see the preview on Monday night.”

  “I thought that preview was supposed to be top secret. Here, look again. What do you think?”

  The hem was bulky with extra fabric, but I could see what Krissie had in mind. With high heels, the dress might be flattering, and a little bit sexy, too.

  I said, “May God and Coco Chanel forgive me. Let’s hem it.”

  Krissie laughed, and I went back to the bathroom.

  Next up was an off-white Galanos gown that I’d been saving for years. It had been my grandmother’s when she was expecting my mother. Not for that reason alone did I hold the dress in special esteem. The designer had been born in Philadelphia, and my grandmother had known him well. Although she never said so, I had heard an aunt whisper that she had been one of the great designer’s muses.

  I slipped on the dress and caught my breath at my reflection. It was simple, elegant, very chic, with a slim silhouette that might have suited Claudette Colbert in an old movie. A pregnant Claudette, that is. The fabric was a creamy silk with satin ribbon that was embellished with tiny crystals. The shape of my belly was clearly visible, but was not an ungainly bulge. The designer had taken pains to minimize my grandmother’s pregnancy, and his extraordinary skills were clear. The neckline was demure, the bias cut feminine. The best part was that the very low-cut back of the dress featured an exquisite oval of rose-shaped satin cutouts that made a feature of my otherwise naked back. As if they had been cut out of the fabric, appliqued roses fluttered down the back of the dress into the slight train. The total effect was . . . romantic.

  I hadn’t planned on wearing white to the judge’s chamber, but the cream-colored Galanos masterpiece was the kind of dress in which a woman could start a new life, a new family. I looked at myself in the mirror and felt myself tear up. My dear grandmother might well have been standing at my shoulder, smiling at me. She had been the woman who most shaped my life, and I felt as if I honored her memory by wearing her beautiful dress to my wedding.

  Filled with happiness, I soon felt guilty for having yelled at Libby. Who was I to judge her situation? Maybe she saw something in Ox I hadn’t observed yet. I needed to apologize to my sister.

  “You need help in there?” Krissie asked from the other side of the closed door.

  “I’m fine. Just a sec.” I found my handkerchief and dabbed my eyes. Maybe my hormones were more out of control than I thought.

  “This is more like it!” Krissie said when I emerged from the bathroom. “Let me adjust the hem. And maybe I’ll tweak the fit of the bodice. This dress demands perfection.”

  Down on her knees, she began pinning the silk. “Since you’re going to the preview on Monday night, I wondered if there’s any chance you knew Jenny Tuttle?”

  Her question surprised me. “I knew her slightly. I was in her house just after her body was found.”

  Krissie sat back on her heels. “Maybe you can help me with a problem. In addition to the costumes I was altering for the show they’re working on, I have a couple of dresses that belong to Jenny.”

  “You do?” I was startled all over again.

  “Not like this.” She gave the Galanos a respectful tug. “Dresses she ordered online. She brought them here for alterations. Now that she’s gone, I don’t know who to send them to.” Krissie gestured at something hanging in a plastic bag from a doorframe. “A little blond lady brought the costumes, and I was thinking I could send Jenny’s dresses back with her, but—”

  “A blond lady with a baby voice?”

  “Yeah, that’s her. The one who looks like Shirley Temple and talks like she just took a hit of helium.” Nettled, Krissie said, “But she acts like a drill sergeant—giving orders and never saying thank you.”

  Poppy Fontanna. “I wouldn’t send Jenny’s dresses back with the drill sergeant. They could go to Jenny’s mother, I suppose. Krissie, did Jenny tell you what the dresses were for?”

  “Yeah, she said they were for the opening night of her musical. She couldn’t decide which dress would be best, so she left both of them here.”

  Her musical, I noted. “Could I see the dresses?”

  “
I guess discretion doesn’t matter anymore.” Krissie had finished crawling around me and clambered to her feet. “Right this way.”

  She opened the garment bag and showed me two long gowns on hangers—not couture pieces, but mother-of-the-bride dresses someone might pick up in a department store. They looked a little matronly to me, but elegant. One was black, one silver. Both with beading. They were showier than the clothing I had seen in Jenny’s closet. She had planned on making a splash.

  Krissie said, “Jenny thought the black was more slimming, but she was hoping to diet her way into the silver one.”

  “When was she going to pick them up?”

  “She said she wouldn’t need them for a few more weeks. Come to think of it, that was almost a month ago. When is her opening night going to happen?”

  “It’s not a firm date yet. Krissie, did Jenny actually call it ‘her’ show? Or her father’s show?”

  Krissie screwed up her face to think. “I’m pretty sure she said it was hers.”

  After dressing again, I thanked Krissie profusely for her hard work on my gowns and asked if I could pick them up on Wednesday. She agreed. I waved good-bye to her smiling grandmother and went back down the narrow stairs to the street.

  Outside, I almost didn’t hear my phone over the roar of a passing bus. I ducked into the lobby of a tourist hotel to answer.

  “Nora Blackbird, hello?”

  “Uh, Miss Blackbird? From the newspaper?”

  I plugged my other ear so I could hear the soft male voice on the other end of the line. “Yes, that’s me.”

  “It’s David Kaminsky. Sorry about playing phone tag. I was at band camp and had to wait until the kids were dismissed for the day.”

  Band camp? I made my way to a sofa in the lobby and sank down into its squishy softness. Too late, I realized I might have to flag down a passerby to get my bulky self out of the deep cushions.

  My momentary silence prompted my caller to add, “I’m the assistant high school band director this year.” He named a school district in nearby Delaware. “It’s only a few extra bucks, but I love it. Did you play an instrument in high school?”

  “The cello,” I said.

  “Oh, cool. Actually, my first love is strings. I play them all, give private lessons. Band camp is just something to do in the summer. I’m a music teacher, in case you didn’t guess.”

  “Mr. Kaminsky, my editor tells me that you called the newspaper this morning.”

  “Yeah, I did. Hey, I’m coming up the expressway, almost to the city. Can I meet you somewhere? For a drink or something? Just to talk, that is. Hey, that sounds like a Match-dot-com hookup, huh? But I’m not trying to pick you up, honest.”

  I hadn’t planned on taking any chances, but the voluble David Kaminsky sounded like the kind of callow youth I could be perfectly safe with.

  I was about to suggest he meet me in the hotel lobby, but I felt my stomach gurgle and instead asked if we could meet at the Reading Terminal—a kind of indoor food court popular with tourists. I walked a couple of blocks to get there and stood in line for a dish of Bassetts cinnamon ice cream. On such a hot day, the line was full of locals as well as out-of-towners. At a nearby stall, the Amish girls were packing up their leftovers. One of the coffee vendors was already closed for the day and had put a GONE FISHING sign on the counter. I passed it and went to the back of the terminal to find a semiquiet table to enjoy my treat, feeling only slightly guilty.

  When I finished the last creamy slurp, it felt good to do nothing for a while. Sitting quietly, I wondered if maybe I was pushing myself too hard. I had felt energized during my middle trimester, but now perhaps my body was telling me to slow down a little.

  My caller showed up in a rush. I recognized him instantly. Except for his front teeth, he didn’t look much different than he had in his childhood photograph—all elbows and the big chin and floppy brown hair. He wore nondescript khaki shorts with sneakers and a short-sleeved polo shirt with the name of the high school band embroidered on it. He took off a blue baseball cap and put his hand down for me to shake.

  “Wow.” He recoiled from me when I struggled to my feet. “I guess you’re having a baby soon.”

  “Yes.” I caught my balance on the back of my chair. Judging by his tone of voice, he thought my condition might be contagious. “Do you want to go somewhere for a drink? Or is this okay?”

  He looked around the busy space. “This is great. Can I get you something?”

  “How about a bottle of cold water?”

  “Coming up!”

  When he returned with two bottles of water, I said, “When you phoned the newspaper, Mr. Kaminsky, you asked to talk to me, personally. May I ask why?”

  He put his baseball cap on the table between us. “Call me David. My mother told me to phone you.”

  “Do I know your mother?”

  “Nah, she just reads your stuff in the paper. Even if the Intelligencer is getting a little wacko lately, she said I could probably trust you. She lives in Exton, right outside Philly. She says the picture in the paper is my first-grade photo. It just about gave her a heart attack, though, opening the Intelligencer and seeing my old picture there.”

  “I’m sorry about that. What makes her think it’s your photo?”

  He laughed. “Well, you know. Moms know everything. She recognized it. She has a copy at home, right there in the dining room. In one of those frames with all the circles and a picture for every year of school? Anyway, she said I should call you. So here we are. What’s this all about?”

  The ball was in my court. I had stewed about how to approach a potentially delicate subject. Cautiously, I asked, “Do you know who Jenny Tuttle is?”

  His smile was broad. “Sure. She’s my mother, right?”

  I must have looked flabbergasted, because he said quickly, “My birth mom, that is. I’m adopted. So I’m guessing she’s my real mother.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “That I’m adopted? Well, I don’t carry the papers with me, but—”

  “No, I mean can you prove that Jenny was your mother?”

  David cracked open his water bottle and took a thirsty slug before answering. “Mom was required to send my picture to the adoption lawyer now and then—we guess to keep my file updated, but maybe it was to send to the birth parents. That’s the only reason I can think why she had a copy. Mom always said she would help me look up my birth parents anytime I wanted, but I never did, you know? Because, hey, they were never really my parents. My adopted parents, they’re my real parents. Actually, I have two moms. Mom and Mimi. They’re lesbian,” David said the word without batting an eye. “Both of them are music teachers, too, like me. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings by digging around for anybody else. Does this make any sense?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “So I could find out, I guess. But why would that lady have my picture unless she was my mom?”

  “I don’t know.” I peered at David for a moment, trying to see any resemblance to Jenny Tuttle. But my last glimpse of Jenny now clouded my impressions of her physical appearance when she was alive. If David’s eyes were the same color as hers or if their noses matched, I couldn’t be sure. He was certainly shaped differently than she. He was lean and knobby, while her figure had been well padded.

  But his interest in music. Could that be hereditary?

  I said, “Do you know who the Tuttles are?”

  “Well, yeah. Toodles Tuttle?” David couldn’t hide the sparkle in his eyes. “Who doesn’t know who he is? The composer. ‘Begin with My Lips’? And ‘Usher in the New Year’? Great songs. I saw Kick Step Change when I was ten. Mom and Mimi took me up to New York for my birthday. I think I played the CD, like, a thousand times. Is it crazy to hope I could really be related to him?”

  I couldn’t hide a smile. This high school music tea
cher wasn’t dreaming of a big monetary inheritance. He was thrilled about the musical connection. “I don’t think it’s crazy.”

  “So what’s next?” he asked. “I know Toodles is dead, and Mom says that this lady is gone, too.”

  “Well, if you think it’s time, you should find out who your birth parents really are. From your end, that is.”

  “Mom says the lawyer who handled the adoption is still alive. He probably still has all the papers.”

  “That’s the first step, definitely.”

  David looked into the distance for a moment, letting his imagination fly. He was smiling. “How cool is this?”

  “Pretty cool,” I agreed.

  My cell phone rang. I checked the ID. Gus was on the line.

  I said good-bye to David Kaminsky and asked him to call me when he learned more about his adoption. Running late, I took my phone outside and flagged a cab before returning Gus’s call.

  He said, “Where the hell are you?”

  “I’m on my way to my first event.”

  “Come back to the office. I need to talk to you.”

  “I can’t. I’ll be late.”

  He growled. “I should meet you somewhere else, anyway. This is a personal matter.”

  My antenna went up. “What personal matter?”

  “Between you and me, of course,” he said with exasperation. “That’s what personal means. Plus I want to hear what you learned about Oxenfeld. What time will you be finished with whatever tea party you’re attending?”

  “An hour,” I said without responding to his tea-party crack. “What’s this about?”

  “I find it necessary to discuss it face-to-face.”

  “All right.” Curiosity on high, I said, “I’ll call you in an hour.”

  “Do that,” he snapped, then hung up.

  The tea party was exactly that—a children’s tea party in the sleek, modern entrance space of the new Barnes Foundation museum. I crossed over the moatlike reflecting pool and entered the blissfully cool lobby. Once I was inside the normally serene building, the party noise and mayhem practically hit me in the face.