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Saturday, August 17, 2013
7:13 a.m.
The house next door
The man unlatches the slider to the deck. He walks through the opening and closes it behind him. He breathes in the sea air. It is blessedly cool at this hour. He takes a swig of coffee from the mug in his hand. He squints into the bright sunlight coming off the water. He removes a pair of sunglasses from the breast pocket of his shirt and puts them on. He walks forward to the edge of the deck and places his mug on the rail. A neighbor jogging toward him at the water’s edge waves. The man waves back. He looks down to retrieve his mug and notices a brown bramble protruding up from the beach grass on the other side of the rail. The bramble has something glittering attached to it which catches the sun. He bends in for a closer inspection. The bramble is wearing a ring! A large diamond ring! And bangle bracelets! It’s not a bramble, it’s a hand. A woman’s hand! The man turns and runs to the slider and goes back into the house, leaving his coffee on the rail.
Three police officers from the Southampton police department respond to the man’s call within minutes. The man is quite shaken by his early morning discovery. One officer waits with him on the deck for Suffolk County homicide to arrive. The other two provide crowd control for curiosity seekers who have gathered on the beach. It takes almost an hour for the county detectives to come from Riverhead. Detective Mark DeMarco, alongside his partner Detective Angela Rooney, rings the front door bell. A woman who speaks halting English answers the door. The detectives show her their badges. She admits them and leads them to the deck, opening the slider for them. As they step out onto the deck, they can hear the man saying to the police officer in a loud voice, “This is Southampton for chrissakes not Gilgo!” DeMarco shoots his partner an amused look. She just seems confused. They approach the man and the officer. Yellow crime scene tape encircles the beach grass below. DeMarco and Rooney identify themselves and shake hands with the police officer.
DeMarco turns to the man, “You’re the one who found her, you called it in?”
“Yes.”
“Is it anyone you know?”
“I didn’t look. If it’s someone I know, I don’t want to know.”
The police officer hands DeMarco a driver’s license. “Her purse was in the grass near the body. Brandi Napoli. Lived here in Water Mill.”
“Have you seen any strangers around or heard anything suspicious recently?” DeMarco asks the man.
“No.”
DeMarco looks at the license in his hand. “So, she was killed here or elsewhere and her body was dumped in the grass, along with her ID.” He turns to Rooney. “Shall we have a look?”
The two detectives descend the steps to the beach. The body is lying where it was found. Under the body is a large blue tarp.
“Tarp indicates a body dump,” Rooney says. “She was brought here.”
DeMarco leans in for a closer look. “What the —! Look at her tongue!”
Rooney bends in to look. “Forked.”
“What’s the message? Liar?”
“Devil?”
“Both? What else do we have?” DeMarco asks.
“White female in her fifties. Took good care of herself. Nice manicure. Expensively dressed.”
“So, not sexually assaulted?”
“She could have been re-dressed.” Rooney continues with her assessment. “The neck wound is the apparent cause of death.”
“Ear to ear. I’d add ligature marks on her wrists indicate she was bound.” He looks down to her feet. “With zip ties just like her ankles.”
“But the tongue,” Rooney says. Then she adds incredulously, “Pinking shears?”
“Pinking shears?”
“They’re used by tailors and seamstresses. They cut a zigzag pattern. It keeps fabric from fraying. My aunt had her own tailoring business when I was growing up and I used to help her on weekends. I’d have to say that is definitely what caused those tongue wounds.”
“Let’s see what the ME has to say.”
Rooney calls up to the police officer on the deck. “Do you have her purse?”
He hurries down to the beach with the bag. He hands it to Rooney who starts to root through it.
“What are you looking for?” DeMarco asks.
Rooney pulls out a set of car keys. “Maybe she parked around here,” she says, hitting the red alarm button on the key fob. From somewhere a car horn beeps repeatedly. It sounds like it’s coming from the house next door. Rooney gives DeMarco a surprised and pleased look.
They trudge through the sand, following the blaring of the car horn which gets louder as they approach the other house. They follow it around the side of the house and come upon Brandi’s car parked in the driveway. Rooney presses the alarm button again, silencing it. They walk to the front door and Rooney rings the bell. They wait a few moments. She rings again. No one comes to the door.
Getting back into their car, Rooney asks, “What’s Gilgo?”
“Gilgo Beach. You never heard of that case?” DeMarco asks, surprised.
“Oh, wait a minute. Is that where all those bodies turned up a few years ago?”
“It started almost three years ago. I used to surf there when I was a teenager.”
“Prostitutes, mostly?”
“You got it.”
“They ever make an arrest?”
“Still an open case.”
Police don’t like open cases even ones that aren’t their own. It makes the killer or killers larger than life. It’s why horror movies that don’t show the monster are the scariest. Human imagination imbues them with gigantism. They stand just out of sight at the edges of existence, masked and at liberty. Taunting, taunting, always taunting. The two detectives drive in silence.
At forty-seven years of age, Mark has been with the Suffolk County homicide detective squad for eleven years. He began his career with the New York City police department where he served in the patrol unit for three years. He resigned from the NYPD and moved to the Suffolk County town of Wading River with his wife and young daughter, where they currently still live. He was hired by the Suffolk County police department where he was in patrol for nine years. In 2002 he joined the detective division where he serves today. He grew up on the upper West Side of Manhattan where both of his parents were professors at Columbia University. He is of Italian American descent on his father’s side and Jewish on his mother’s. He is six feet tall and solidly built with dark eyes and curly brown hair. His parents’ heritages tended to cancel out most of the stereotypes associated with each of those ethnic groups, although he admits to the occasional bout of unreasonable guilt. To help deal with the often gruesome murder scenes he encounters on his job, he loves getting out on Long Island Sound on his thirty-two-foot motorboat whenever he can.
Angela is new to the detective squad and Long Island. She joined the SCPD a little over a year ago having moved to Manorville, Long Island from upstate Syracuse after her divorce. She had served on the local police force there in the detective unit for thirteen years. She is thirty-seven years old and single. Her dark auburn hair and fair, freckled skin bespeak her Scottish-English background. Her father, who is deceased, worked for over thirty years for the local telephone company. Her mother and two older brothers all live in the Syracuse area. Her mother’s sister and Angela’s favorite aunt, lives as she always has, two doors down from the Rooneys. Angela misses being near her close-knit family but she likes her job with the homicide squad. She doesn’t have a boat to deal with her job-related stress; she plays on an amateur women’s basketball team. Go Court Stars!
A short, fit-looking man in his sixties answers the door in Water Mill. He is wearing suit slacks and a dress shirt open at the neck with a tie pulled down. “That was fast,” he says. “I just got off the phone with the precinct. Did you find my wife? Is she okay?”
In the living room, Mr. Napoli sits with his head in his hands. DeMarco and Rooney stand in the center of the room, at a respectful distance. DeMarco speaks. “I know this is a very difficult time but we would like to ask you a few questions, if we may.”
Mr. Napoli takes a deep breath. “Okay.”
“We found your wife’s car in the driveway of a house in Southampton. We rang the bell but got no answer. Do you know whose house that is or why your wife would have gone there?”
“Brandi is a…was, a real estate agent. She bought properties, upgraded them and sold them.”
“When did you discover she was missing?”
“I got home this morning from a business trip. She wasn’t here. I spoke to her yesterday and she wanted me to go with her this morning to look at some plantings.” Mr. Napoli pauses. He tears up. After a moment, he composes himself. He explains. “She was having rosebushes put in by the pool. I thought maybe she had changed her mind and gone in to the city instead. I called the number at our apartment but got the answering machine. I spoke with the management office and they said she hadn’t been in. I called a few of her friends but no one had seen her. That’s when I called the police.”
“Do you know of anyone who would have any reason to want to hurt your wife?”
“No.”
“Any recent arguments she had with anyone? Difficult business dealings?”
Mr. Napoli thinks for a moment. Then he gets up and crosses to the coffee table. He picks up a thin booklet. “Brandi co-chaired a charity event last month.” He hands the booklet to DeMarco.
DeMarco looks at the front cover. In bright pastel colors, there is a graphic in the foreground of a pair of flip flops next to a stemmed martini glass. In the background are suggestions of sand dunes. Above the graphic reads:
National Cancer Foundation
Presents
Inaugural Hamptons Summer Bash
Below the graphic:
FESTIVE IN THE DUNES
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Southampton Pool and Beach Club
1215 Spud Lane
Southampton, NY
DeMarco flips open the cover and on the left-hand page at the top reads:
Co-Chairs
Brandi Napoli
Gupta Ritter
Below are smiling headshots of each of the women alongside one another.
“Gupta is someone that Brandi knew casually through a mutual friend,” Mr. Napoli says. “Brandi recruited her to serve with her as a co-chair. It started out cordially enough but it soon became—how shall I say, contentious. My wife was a very success-driven woman. She relentlessly pushed herself and everyone around her. She had no patience for those who could not keep up.”
“They fought?”
“They had words, to my knowledge. Once, very publicly. It got quite unpleasant. I told her to back off. It’s a small community out here. Oh, she agreed with that. But she just couldn’t help herself.”
“You think this woman could have killed your wife?”
“I don’t know her that well. But you asked if there was anyone she had quarreled with.”
“Is she local?”
“She lives in Amagansett. I’ll get you her address.”
In Amagansett, a woman who is obviously a domestic answers the door. The detectives show their shields. DeMarco says, “Detective DeMarco, this is Detective Rooney. We’re with the Suffolk County detective squad. Is Mrs. Ritter at home?”
Gupta’s hand flies to her mouth as she sinks into a sofa in her living room. “Oh my God! That’s awful!” After a moment, “This is such a shock. I’m sorry, please sit down. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, water, iced tea?”
“No, thank you,” DeMarco says.
“I’m fine,” Rooney adds.
They take seats opposite Gupta. DeMarco leads the questioning.
“When was the last time you saw Mrs. Napoli?”
“At that event. Last month.”
“Festive in the Dunes?”
“It wasn’t,” is Gupta’s terse reply.
“We understand from speaking with Mr. Napoli that there was some friction between you and Mrs. Napoli?”
Thinking about it helps Gupta recover from her initial shock. “The way she treated me was unforgivable.”
DeMarco gives Rooney a look. “Enough to want to kill her?”
“Enough to threaten to sue the NCF!”
“National Cancer Foundation? Why?”
“They were complicit in the whole thing. They let her do whatever she wanted. The most outrageous behavior!”
“We understand that there was at least one public scene between you.”
“It was at the Princess Diner. If you don’t mind, I don’t want to go into the details. It was just wrong. You can ask Margo Schumacher about it.”
“And who is that?” Rooney asks.
“She’s with the NCF. She was there.”
“Where would we find her?”
“She lives in Westhampton Beach. I have her address around somewhere.”
“Don’t bother,” Rooney assures her. “We’ll look it up.”
Silence follows. Then DeMarco asks, “May I ask where you were yesterday?”
“Home.”
“All day?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“My husband was here.”
“Is there anyone else who can confirm that?”
Gupta sees where he is going. “It was the maid’s day off. Look, Detective, I despised that woman. I wouldn’t dial 9-1-1 if she were being mugged right in front of me. But I did not kill her.”
DeMarco and Rooney stand. “We may need to speak with you again,” DeMarco says.
Gupta reaches over and removes a card from a silver case on the end table next to her. She holds it out to DeMarco. “Please call first,” she says. “I’m not always home all day.”
The inner door opens in answer to their ring. Dimly, through the sun’s reflection off the screen of the outer door, the detectives can make out the head of a large dog. “May I help you?” intones a throaty voice. At first, it seems like the dog is speaking. Then, peering through the screen, they are able to make out the form of a diminutive woman. After looking at their IDs, Margo Schumacher opens the door and leads them back to a combination kitchen and great room. At the back of the room double French doors lead out to a deck overlooking the beach. “Would you like some water?”
“Yes please,” Rooney says.
“Me, too,” DeMarco adds.
Margo turns and opens a refrigerator. She removes two bottles of water and hands one to each of the detectives. “Sit down,” she says indicating a couch. She walks to a large, winged chair opposite and seats herself. Immediately, an Irish Setter appears and lies down at her feet. She and the Setter stare at the detectives. “You said that this is about Festive in the Dunes?” Margo says.
Looking at this tiny woman seated in a huge chair with a beautiful but cross-eyed dog at her feet, the phrase legend in her own mind flashes through DeMarco’s head. “We understand you had something to do with that event?”
“I had everything to do with it! I’m the senior vice president for development at the National Cancer Foundation,” she replies haughtily.
“Was it a success?”
“Absolutely. I achieved two hundred percent of net goal. In this business, Officer, that’s what you call success!”
“Detective.”
“What? Oh...yes, sorry.”
“But it was not without some unpleasantness?” Rooney probes.
Margo gives her a dark scowl. “You mean between Brandi and Gupta.” It’s not a question. “That was completely mismanaged! It should never have been allowed to get to that point,” she says hotly. “But not to worry. I’m handling this now and I’ll have those two back together playing nice for NCF very soon.” A puzzled look crosses Margo’s face. “Why does any of this concern the police?”
“Because you’re not going to be getting them back together. At least not Mrs. Napoli. Her body was discovered this morning on Southampton beach. She was murdered.”
Margo sits staring dumbly for a moment. Then her eyes pop open in horror as if she is suddenly being propelled headfirst into a vortex. “No!” she screams and leaps to her feet.
The Irish Setter follows suit. DeMarco and Rooney watch amazed as the dog runs to one of the French doors, opens it with a paw and bolts from the house. They exchange a look. He’s obviously done this before. Margo pays no attention.
“No! No!” Margo paces back and forth, her face a cauldron of not grief but raging fury. “Do you know who did it?” she directs at DeMarco.
“Not yet—”
“Well, I do,” she cuts him off. “Max Short!”
“Who’s Max Short?”
“He worked on the event. He hated Brandi. Too big for his britches. He didn’t know his place. Thought he could talk to her like he was her equal. I knew something bad was going to come from him. I could see it in his eyes. It was probably the sheets and pinking shears that sent him over the edge.”
DeMarco and Rooney exchange a long look. “Pinking shears?” Rooney asks.
“We’d gotten some sheets donated that we planned to cut into top cloths for the tables. Brandi had them at her house for most of the time. She was supposed to organize a party of her friends to cut them up. But she never got around to it so she sent them to Max to do. When something like that happens you just do it and forget about it. But not him.”
“Is he still with NCF?”
“God, no. There was no way to go forward with him. We got rid of him.”
“We may want to speak with him,” DeMarco says to Rooney.
“You may want to arrest him!” Margo snaps. “He lives somewhere in Westchester. Go find him and arrest him!”
DeMarco and Rooney share a glance.
Margo has moved on. Her body goes slack. She stands looking like a lost little girl. “What am I going to do now? Without Brandi I have no event. I have to start all over.”
DeMarco and Rooney stand. “We may need to contact you again,” DeMarco says.
Margo’s eyes blaze fiercely. “Yes, do keep me in the loop, Detective. I want to be on the other side of the glass when they plunge the needle in.”
Rooney squints at Margo. “New York no longer has the death penalty.”
“Maybe it’s time to bring it back.” She shakes her finger at the detectives. “Go arrest him! He’s your killer. Max Short!”