"Maybe your dad had a plan for you, too," she said. "Maybe the check was supposed to be in the mail and just didn't get to you."
"He would have told me," she said quietly. "He was a careful man. I'm sure he would have told me."
April had planned to save this for a time when the two of them were sitting face-to-face, but she went ahead because she didn't know when that time would be. "He didn't tell you everything, Kathy. He had your mother cremated."
"Oh, Jesus. That's a crock, too. Where did you hear that?"
"We know he did," April said softly. She didn't have to offer proof. It was in the computer if Kathy cared to look.
"Oh, sure, and where are the ashes? She had a funeral. I saw her buried. She didn't have an open casket because of how bad she'd looked. But I did see her buried."
"I know you did. What did you see her buried in?"
"A casket, of course. Where are you going with this?" Kathy was furious, but she sounded nervous, too.
"Okay, good. She was buried in a coffin. Maybe our information is wrong. Look, Kathy, I'm sorry about all this. We'll straighten it out, okay?" Lorna was buried in a coffin? April shivered. Something wasn't right; she could feel it.
"Where are you going with this, April? I need to know what you're doing," Kathy demanded.
"I'm doing whatever I have to, Kathy. Your father was a friend of mine." April was puzzled. What picture was she seeing?
"Fuck you. It doesn't sound like it," Kathy muttered before she hung up.
Thirty-eight
April's stomach knotted up as they continued north on Park Avenue. She felt bad about Kathy. Something was way off between her and her dad, also between her and her brother. It appeared that Kathy had been out of the loop as far as the family finances were concerned, and she sounded concerned about the murder rap threatening her brother. But April knew her distress went a lot deeper than that. Now she had to worry about her mother's ashes. What was that all about? April was getting a creepy idea, but she pushed it away as traffic slowed them down in Midtown.
By the time they got to Fiftieth Street, she'd stopped brooding about the Bernardinos. Ten minutes later, when she and Woody got to the tenth-floor Bassett apartment, she had other things to be concerned about. For one thing no uniform was there to secure the victim's home. Here was another unsettling parallel with the Bernardino case. The heirs had gotten here first.
"Okay, okay. I heard you. Come in if you're coming in." Brenda Bassett opened the door for the two detectives, then quickly turned her back on them.
April stepped inside and was stopped dead by the magnificence of a rose-colored marble floor in a gallery hung with oil paintings of horses and dogs in various hunt modes and dead animals in small still-lifes. Also portraits of richly dressed people picnicking on flawless lawns in front of grand houses. A huge chandelier lit the hall. Under the chandelier was an ornate table inlaid with tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, and brass. Under that was a thick Oriental carpet in bright blues and reds. Way over the top, it was just the sort of place to which a cop from a string-decorated house in Queens could really relate. It was the kind of display that only big money could swing.
Brenda Bassett walked around the center table to a mahogany door on the other side. She was a tall woman, probably close to six feet in high heels, and thinner than a healthy person should be. Ms. Bassett had no bosom and no fanny, and it struck April as perverse that someone with so much money wouldn't eat. To the Chinese, food was pretty much everything. Most memories of luxury and excess were of eating, never of going hungry.
April blew her breath out as Brenda led the way through a door into a dark wood-paneled library where the walls were lined with a collection of books that looked as old as the paintings in the hall. Ms. Bassett turned and seated herself in one of several leather wing chairs, and April got to see her face. Her features were all angles. She had a long, straight nose, slab-sided cheekbones, a sharp chin, and razor-blade lips-the kind that couldn't be improved with lipstick. Her hair was black and blunt-cut.
The man, who stood near the desk, was five-eight, and had a heavy build, no chin, little hair, and moist pink lips set in soft round cheeks. April didn't have to examine him closely to catch the dazed look of an all-night drinker who'd been forced out into the daylight way too early. Boyfriend, brother, lawyer? A messy pile of papers and other small items on the desk indicated that a search had been in process. The man put some space between himself and the desk and sat gingerly in another wing chair.
"I'm Sergeant April Woo. And this is Detective Baum," April said. Woody took his at-ease position by the door, and she waited for a cue to sit. It didn't come.
"Well, this is my brother, Burton Bassett, I'm Brenda Bassett. What do you want?" the woman asked bluntly.
Burton put a hand to his head. "Gently, sister," he said in a pained tone.
Not a lawyer. Brother and sister. April quickly formed the impression that the genders of the Bassett siblings had been reversed. Brenda was the strong and pushy yang; Burton was the passive, yielding yin. Neither appeared to be in mourning for their father or stepmother. Suddenly new links between the Bernardino and Bassett murders occurred to April. Both victims' names began with B, both spouses of the victims had the money and had died first of natural causes. Both had two adult children, a boy and a girl. What else?
What, boss? Woody's body language told her he was trying to read her orders. "Do you need something to drink, Sergeant?" he asked out loud. Their code for, Do you want to separate them?
"Thank you, Detective. In a minute," April replied.
Neither Bassett offered her any water.
"I was at home last night," Brenda said, "if that's what you want to know." She smirked.
"I was out with friends, till… quite late." Burton actually yawned.
Brenda glared at him suddenly. "Birdie was a nice woman. She didn't deserve to die like that." Her mouth shut like a clamshell, then opened again. "Do we need a lawyer? You're not reading us our rights, are you?"
April smiled. People always jumped to conclusions. "We just need some background about your stepmother."
"Well, I don't know how much we can help you. We weren't close."
"When was the last time you saw Mrs. Bassett?"
"Dad's funeral. She was pretty out of it." This came from Burton, who looked pretty out of it himself.
"That would be when?"
"A month ago, something like that."
April frowned. Lorna died a month before Bernie was killed. What did the length of time between the natural death and the murder tell them about the perpetrator? "What day?"
"I don't remember." Brenda turned to her brother. "What day did Daddy die? I'm so upset with this-"
Burton shrugged. "Thursday? No, I was playing golf Thursday. It had to be Friday."
"Yes, it was Friday. But I can't remember the date." Brenda Bassett's mouth made an astonished O. "I've lost track of time."
"We'll need the time frames," April told her, as if they wouldn't know pretty much everything about them by dinnertime. Hagedorn would hack into their lives until nothing was secret.
"For God's sake, why?" Brenda made some noise with her breathing.
"How was she doing with your father's death?" April didn't bother to answer the question.
"I have no idea," Brenda said indignantly. "It's not like I knew her. I didn't know her. I mean, I'd seen her a couple of times a year. At family events. Thanksgiving, things like that.." Her voice was strong and angry. Maybe she hadn't liked being excluded.
"Did you speak to her after the funeral?" April asked.
"About what?" Brenda made a face, then lifted a shoulder.
"Your father's will, arrangements for…" April let her hand reference the rifled desk, the contents of the apartment.