“You know what? I have taken enough advice from you in the last twenty-four hours to do me for the foreseeable future. You be the lifeguard. I want the water temp to be a hundred degrees, and I want my wine. Feel free to stay behind.”
“Well, maybe a little wine. I’ll join you in five.”
I changed into my suit, grabbed a towel along with the wine bottle and glasses, and walked down through the dewy night grass to the corner of the pool with the Jacuzzi, dialing it up to a very warm temperature. Vickee wasn’t far behind.
“Did you talk to Mercer?”
“Phone tag all day and evening.”
“He didn’t tell you anything about Mike?”
“I’m saying we didn’t talk.”
I tested the water with my toe, turned on the bubbles, and sat down inside with my glass.
“Then bury this till you hear it from Mercer, okay?”
“What?”
“Mike’s getting jammed up. Big time.”
“Mike who?”
“Last night you had me engaged to the guy. Now it’s ‘Mike who?’”
“Our Mike?”
The warm water and cold wine were taking the edge off. So was confiding in Vickee.
“You must have known-you and Mercer-that he was involved with a woman a few months ago?”
“I’m not all up in his business, Alex. What woman?”
“Jessica Pell.”
“You’re talking hot,” Vickee said. “Good for Mikey.”
“Turns out it’s not so good for him at all.”
“Why? ’Cause you were expecting him to have saved himself for you all these years? You’re twisted. So I’m not handing you a virgin. Is that your issue?” Vickee tipped her drink in my direction. “You’ve been some places I wouldn’t exactly suggest you claim on your résumé, babe.”
“I have no quarrel with you there.” I steadied my wineglass on one of the granite pieces of the pool’s coping and refilled it. “What I mean is that Pell went all bunny-in-the-boiling-pot on Mike when he ended their brief romance. Puts me smack in the middle of it by saying I pulled him off her bodyguard duty ’cause I was jealous.”
“Always knew those green eyes would get you in trouble, Alex.”
“Be serious, Vickee,” I said, lifting myself up onto the side of the hot tub and wrapping a towel around me. “She’s made a beef to Sergeant Chirico, and probably to Battaglia, too. Pell wants Mike transferred out of homicide. Out. Gone. Stripped of his shield if she has her way. Back in uniform. Maybe the rubber gun squad.”
Vickee’s mood changed immediately. She got to her feet and wrapped the towel around her like a sarong. “I’ve got to call Mercer. This can’t be happening.”
I turned off the Jacuzzi settings and lights, and we practically ran back to the house. Vickee grabbed her phone from the counter. “I’m going upstairs. I promise you I’ll get Mercer on this. Maybe he can spend tomorrow with Mike. Try to find a solution.”
“Why don’t you call him from here?” I said, longing to hear Mercer’s response, but Vickee was halfway up the stairs.
“Doing it my way, Alex. I need some privacy.”
I went to my room to shower and get ready for bed. I felt shut out of everything. I was so disconnected from what had been going on in Mike’s life, and excluded from the intimacy that was a hallmark of Mercer and Vickee’s marriage.
It was another night of tossing and turning for me, an early trip to the store for newspapers, and what seemed like an eternity until Vickee came down the stairs at eleven o’clock and carried her coffee mug out onto the deck.
“Good morning,” she greeted me. “I hope you feel better than you look.”
“Not so much. Any luck?”
“Mission accomplished. Mercer is going to make an intercept at church. Figured he could corner Mike when he comes out of Mass with his mother,” Vickee said. Mike tried to take his widowed mother, who was devoutly religious, to Sunday Mass every week. “Take her home first and then find some quiet time together to talk, while Mike’s in the mood to atone.”
“Nice. Thanks.”
“What are you doing, working out here when we’re supposed to be thinking no further ahead than our next meal?” she asked, seeing several sheets of paper spread out over the table, held down by rocks so they didn’t blow away.
“Just trying to keep my overwrought little brain occupied,” I said, lowering my sunglasses to avoid the glare. “Did you see these things at Primola, or were you on the phone when Mike showed them to us?”
“I didn’t see anything Friday night,” Vickee said, lowering herself into a chair and pulling the closest page toward her.
“It’s a printout of the shot I took with my cell. Looks like an antique model of Belvedere Castle, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not so familiar with Belvedere. Does it have something to do with the dead girl?”
“Who knows? Mike says cops were just picking up everything in sight.”
“Well, Logan would have a swell time with this, wouldn’t he?” she said. “Just throw a few of his little knights on the parapet up here. And this one? Ah, it’s the Obelisk.”
I pushed the third printout over to her, and she picked it up to study the image.
“An angel,” Vickee said, pushing her sunglasses on top of her head to look more closely. “A dark little figure, isn’t she?”
I nodded.
“Mike didn’t say this was part of this other stuff, did he?”
“No,” I said, pointing out the differences in scale and substance to her. “Just somewhere northwest of the Lake. She’s unusual, isn’t she?”
Vickee sighed. “Not if you grew up in my neighborhood, Ms. Alex. We’ve got our own angels, just like we’ve got our own devils.”
“Well, it’s an odd find in Central Park in the West 70s. Forget the murder case, this precious little object just makes me wonder about the child she belonged to.”
“Exactly where did the cops pick it up?” Vickee wasn’t joking around now. “Where does the bridle path cross near the Lake?”
I pulled the large map Mike had given me closer to us. “There, right below the transverse.”
“So 78th Street? 79th? Not far from Central Park West?”
“About there. What are you thinking?”
“That maybe this angel’s a relic from Seneca Village. Maybe that has something to do with the girl-or the man who killed her.”
“What’s Seneca Village?” I asked. “Where’s that?”
Vickee sat back to tell me. “It used to be right close to that area, say 80th Street up to 89th Street.”
“Near Central Park?”
“Not just near it. It’s inside what became the Park-a stone’s throw from where this figurine was found. There was no Park when the village existed, in the mid-1800s. Seneca was the first significant community of African American property owners to be created in Manhattan.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“And it wasn’t a ghetto, Alex, but a stable settlement of working-class people.”
“Houses-and…?”
“Houses and schools, all seized by the government in 1857. An entire thriving village simply destroyed to create the great Park.”
No doubt the state had authorized the legal doctrine of eminent domain to take the private property for public purposes.
“Your landscapers-those Olmsted and Vaux guys-they just displaced two hundred fifty people and knocked down their houses.”
“I had no idea.”
“Not many people do,” Vickee said, holding up the picture of the ebony statuette. “They even destroyed three churches that served the little village. And one of them was called All Angels’.”
EIGHT
“How do you know about this?” I asked. “I mean, maybe it’s nothing-our victim’s Caucasian-but what if it’s related to the perp or the scene?”
I picked up my cell phone and dialed Mike’s number. It went to voice mail immediately, and I left a message for him to call me.
“It’s called black history, Ms. Cooper. Just like that graveyard you stumbled into near City Hall. And this place has a special connection to my family. So you know that Logan is named for my great-granddaddy Logan Bateman?”