The Magnolia Palace(4)

He was about to speak when an older policeman showed up in the doorway.

“I’ll take over.” The older man barely glanced her way. “Miss Angelica Carter?” He consulted a small notebook and made a check mark on it before she’d even answered.

“Yes.” She sat down at the kitchen table and placed her hands in her lap. During the course of her modeling career, having dealt with dozens of capricious artists, she’d learned to pick up small cues from the curtest of commands. This police officer wished to dominate both her and the younger man. If her mother were here (if only her mother were here), Kitty would have done all the talking, as Lillian placated the man with a single look. She knew exactly the one. Chin down, eyes up, projecting a demure naughtiness that always worked like a charm to quash the mercurial temperament of whatever artist she was posing for.

“Is there something wrong with your neck?” the older police officer asked.

It clearly wasn’t working this time.

“I have some questions for you, Miss Carter. How well did you know Mrs. Watkins?”

They were probably asking questions of all the tenants. She would be as helpful as possible. “As well as any other tenant, I suppose. She was my landlord’s wife. They fought, often. I’m so sorry it’s come to this.”

“To what?”

“That she’s, you know, dead.”

“We haven’t released that information yet. How do you know that?”

“I saw, as I walked up the stairs,” she stammered. “The door was open. There was a hand.”

He scribbled something in his notebook.

She cocked her head, trying to see what he’d written. “Also, sir, you spoke of her in the past tense, just now. You said, ‘How well did you know Mrs. Watkins?’?”

“Well, aren’t you a smart one?” He didn’t mean it as a compliment. “How well do you know Mr. Watkins? You can assume by that question that he’s alive. Maybe you’ll be happy to hear that.”

“Happy?” Now she was confused.

“Answer my question.”

“He’s my landlord.”

“Nothing more than that?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“We found a note to Mr. Watkins from you in the pocket of Mrs. Watkins’s dressing gown. I assume you’re the only ‘Angelica’ in the building.”

Lillian’s stomach contracted, as if she’d been punched hard in the gut. She should have never written that note, should have put Mr. Watkins off in person. His wife must have found it and confronted him in a rage. Lillian tried to keep the panic out of her voice. “A note? My rent was due, so it was probably about that. Mr. Watkins was giving me time to raise it. You see, my mother died earlier this year, and ever since it’s been difficult.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” His face remained unchanged, cold. “So you’ve been living here alone since your mother died?”

“Yes.”

He glanced over at the door to the bedroom. “It appears that you and Mr. Watkins were arranging a rendezvous in the coming weeks. Did the two of you enjoy an intimate relationship?”

He was twisting the contents of the note around—that was not what she’d meant at all.

“Intimate?” In her horror, she almost laughed at the image of tubby Mr. Watkins in bed but caught herself. “No. Never.”

“Also, this was found in his desk.” The policeman reached into his pocket and pulled out a magazine clipping of some kind.

She recognized the black-and-white photograph immediately. In it, she wore a bathing costume, black, and had her hands lifted behind her head, like she was sunbathing at Coney Island, even though it had been taken on the roof of the Lincoln Arcade building. Her arms were bare, her legs exposed from mid-thigh down. The ad, hawking the latest in bathing costumes, had run in the back of a magazine. Kitty had never permitted Lillian to do photography sessions for ads—she considered it unseemly—but when one of the lesser-known photographers had approached Lillian in the lobby of the Lincoln Arcade building that first day she’d gone out seeking work, the lure of a quick paycheck had been too tempting to pass up.

Mr. Watkins must have seen it in one of his wife’s magazines and cut it out. The thought of him staring down at it, studying the lines of her shoulders and the curves of her knees, made her feel sick all over again.

“I don’t know why he’d have that.”

“If this is some kind of love triangle, and you had any knowledge that Mr. Watkins was going to murder his wife, it’s better for you to tell me now.”

A love triangle? How could she prove that something didn’t exist? “There’s nothing.” Even to her own ears, the denial came across as feeble.

“We’ll need to bring you in to ask you some more questions.”

The earlier excitement of a few months rent-free evaporated. This man was headed in the entirely wrong direction. “I’m just a tenant, like all the other tenants. Mr. Watkins imagined things in his head, probably. I never gave any impression that I was interested in him.”

He patted the pocket of his jacket. “The note tells me otherwise.”

“I was just trying to put him off politely, it’s simply a misunderstanding.”