“Shame,” said Milo.
“Nice lady,” said Mattingly. “It really is. Anyway, you want to know my opinion, there was mucho blood around the knife wound. Copious, as they say. And just a little tiny trickle around the bullet hole, more plasma than red stuff.”
“Her heart was pumping hard when she got stabbed.”
“If I was a betting man,” said Mattingly.
“Small-caliber gun?”
“From the looks of it. Koppel, she’s that psychologist, right?”
“You know her, Arnie?”
“My wife listens to her when she’s on the radio. Says she talks common sense. I say if it’s that common, why do people have to pay her?” He shook his head. “The wife’ll have a fit when I tell her—it’s okay to tell her, right?”
“Go for it,” said Milo. “Call the networks for all I care. Any other ideas?”
Mattingly said, “What, this is guess day?”
“It’s a crappy day. I’m open to suggestions.”
“Humble civil servant like me.” Mattingly scratched his head. “My guess would be her line of work, maybe she got on the wrong side of some crazy person.” He seemed to notice me for the first time. “That make sense, Doc?”
“Perfect sense.”
Mattingly grinned. “That’s what I love about my job. I get to make sense. Then when I get home, I’m an idiot.” He collected his gear and left.
I said, “Call the networks. Maybe this is the hook you need.”
*
It took a while for the techies to finish printing the house, searching for shoe imprints, blood or other body fluids in remote rooms, signs of forced entry or struggle.
No prints on the letter opener. Nothing else revelatory except for the obvious fact that the opener, antique, bone-handled, with a sterling silver shaft, had come from the desk set in Mary Lou Koppel’s home office.
When the house cleared, Milo began the demeaning rummage that murder victims undergo.
A search of the medicine cabinet in Koppel’s private bathroom produced the usual toiletries along with birth control pills, a diaphragm and condoms (“Careful gal”), OTC allergy medicine, a salve for yeast infections, Tylenol, Advil, Pepto-Bismol, and physician samples of the sleeping pill Ambien.
“All that advice for everyone else, and she has trouble sleeping,” said Milo. “Something on her mind?”
I shrugged.
Her bedroom was a cozy, soft-edged study in sage green and salmon. The quilted spread on the bed was tucked tight, the room perfectly composed.
Milo rifled through a closet filled with red and black. In dresser drawers he found sleepwear that ranged from sensible flannel to skimpy pieces from the Hustler Emporium. He held up a pair of crotchless panties in faux leopard skin.
“You don’t buy this for yourself. Wonder who her love interest is.”
At the bottom of the underwear drawer, he found a silver vibrator nestled in a velvet bag.
“All kinds of love,” he muttered.
I hadn’t liked Mary Lou Koppel much, but exposing the archaeology of her life was depressing.
We left the bedroom and headed back to the office so that Milo could sift through her papers. It didn’t take long for things to get interesting.
*
Like the rest of the house, the study was tidy. A squared stack of papers sat atop the dainty French revival desk, weighed down by a red crystal paperweight shaped like a rose. Just off center, next to a gilded leather blotter and below the sterling desk set from which the murder weapon had been lifted.
Milo attacked the drawers first, found Mary Lou Koppel’s financial records and tax forms and a stack of correspondence from people who’d tuned in to her media interviews and had strong opinions, pro and con.
Those he bundled together and stashed in an evidence envelope.
He said, “She declared 260 grand a year from treating patients, another 60 from public appearances and investments. Not too shabby.”
Court documents in a bottom drawer summarized a divorce twenty-two years ago.
“The husband was some guy named Edward Michael Koppel,” he said, running his finger along lines of print. “At the time the papers were filed he was a law student at the U. . . . irreconcilable differences, splitting of assets . . . the marriage lasted less than two years, no kids . . . onward.”