“When they were dating?”
“Yeah.”
“So she put the bookcase up there?”
He didn’t reply immediately, then said, “I guess.”
Scott was a crappy witness. Typical of his generation, if I may be judgmental here. A little fuzzy in his thinking, his brain probably half-baked on controlled substances, educated far beyond his ambitions, marking time while he wrote the Great American Novel. But he did get to work early. So he had some ambition.
As for Mrs. Parker, I was concerned that she’d take it very badly if she was the person who bought that bookcase and failed to secure it to the wall. I mean, that would be hard to live with. Especially if she took those furniture wedges for another job…well, too early to speculate on that.
I asked Scott, “Was her business successful?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is this bookstore successful?”
“I don’t know. I’m just a clerk.”
“Answer the question.”
“I…I think he makes ends meet.” He let me know, “I get paid.”
“Does the rent get paid?”
“He owns the building.”
“Yeah? Who’s on the top three floors?”
“Nothing. Nobody. Loft space. Unrented.”
“Why unrented?”
“Needs heat, a new fire escape, and the freight elevator doesn’t work.”
And there’s no money to do the work. I was wondering what Mr. Parker was thinking when he bought this building, but then Scott, reading my mind, volunteered, “He inherited the building.”
I nodded. And he should have sold it to a developer. But he wanted to own a bookstore. Otis Parker, bibliophile, was living his dream, which was actually a nightmare. And Mrs. Parker’s decorating career could be a hobby job-or she did okay and had to support her husband’s book habit.
Motive is tricky, and you can’t ascribe a motive and then try to make it fit the crime. I mean, even if Otis Parker was worth more dead than alive-this building, or at least the property, was worth a couple mil, even in this neighborhood-that didn’t mean that his young wife wanted him dead. She might just want him to sell the building and stop sinking time and money into this black hole-this Dead End Bookstore-and go get a real job. Or at least turn the place into a bar.
Maybe I was getting ahead of myself. For all I knew, the Parkers were deeply in love and his death-caused by her bookcase-would cause the grief-stricken widow to enter a nunnery.
Meanwhile I made a mental note to check for a mortgage on the building, plus Mr. Parker’s life insurance policies, and if there was a prenup agreement. Money is motive. In fact, statistically, it is the main motive in most crimes.
I returned to the subject at hand and said, “So, after you called nine one one, you called her.”
He nodded.
“From upstairs or downstairs?”
“Downstairs. I ran down to unlock the door.”
“And you used your cell phone.”
“Yeah.”
“Her home number is in your cell phone?”
“Yeah…I have their home number to call if there’s a problem here.”
“Right. And you have her cell phone number in your cell phone in case…what?”
“In case I can’t get Mr. Parker on his cell phone.”
“Right.” And when I look at everyone’s phone records, I might see some interesting calls made and received.
The thing is, if a murder actually does appear to be an accident, there’s not much digging beyond the cause and manner of death. But when a cop thinks it looks fishy, then the digging gets deeper, and sometimes something gets dug up that doesn’t jibe with people’s statements.
It had taken me less than fifteen minutes to determine that I was most probably investigating a homicide, so I was already into the digging stage while everyone else-except maybe Officer Rourke-thought we were talking about a bizarre and tragic accident.
Scott-baked brains aside-was getting the drift of some of my questions. In fact, he was looking a bit nervous again, so I asked him bluntly, “Do you think this was something more than an accident?”
He replied quickly and firmly, “No. But that other officer did.”
I suggested, “He reads too many detective novels. Do you?”
“No. I don’t read this stuff.”
He seemed to have a low opinion of detective novels, and that annoyed me. On that subject, I asked him, “Is Jay Lawrence scheduled to come in today?”
He nodded. “Yeah. To sign his new book. He’s on a book tour. He’s supposed to come in sometime around ten a.m.”
I looked at my watch and said, “He’s late.”
“Yeah. Authors are usually late.”
“Where’s he staying in New York?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have his cell number?”
“Yeah…someplace.”
“Have you met him?”