Not enough of an impression, she decided as she continued reading. Not compared to the district attorney trying the case.
He had shown Barney a picture of Sarah’s body taken at the scene of the crime. “Do you recognize this woman?”
“Yes. I used to see her sometimes in the park when she was having her lunch or walking home after work.”
“Did you ever talk to her?”
“She didn’t like to talk to me. But her friend was so nice. She was pretty, too. Her name was Catherine.”
My grandmother, Jenny thought.
“Did you see Sarah Kimberley the night of the murder?”
“Was that the night I saw her lying in front of Klein’s? Her hands were folded, but they weren’t folded nice like they are in the picture. So I fixed them.”
His attorney should have called a recess, should have told the judge that his client was obviously confused! Jenny raged.
But the defense lawyer had allowed the district attorney to continue the line of questioning, hammering at Barney. “You arranged her body?”
“No. Somebody else did. I only changed her hands.”
There were only two defense witnesses. The first was the matron at the YMCA where Barney lived. “He’d never hurt a fly,” she said. “If he tried to talk to someone and they didn’t respond to him, he never approached them again. I certainly never saw him carry a knife. He doesn’t have many changes of clothes. I know all of them, and nothing’s missing.”
The other witness was Catherine Reeves. She testified that Barney had never exhibited any animosity toward her friend Sarah Kimberley. “If we happened to be having lunch in the park and Sarah ignored Barney, he just talked to me for a minute or two. He never gave Sarah a second glance.”
Barney was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life without parole.
Jenny read the final paragraph of the article:
Barney Dodd died at age sixty-eight, having served forty years in prison for the murder of Sarah Kimberley. The case of the so-called Five-Dollar Dress Murder has been debated by experts for years. The identity of the father of Sarah’s unborn baby is still unknown. She was wearing the dress she had modeled that day. It was a cocktail dress. Was she having a romantic date with an admirer? Whom did she meet and where did she go that evening? DID JUSTICE TRIUMPH?
I’d say, absolutely not, Jenny fumed. She looked up and realized that the shadows had lengthened.
At the end, Gran had ranted about Vincent Cole and the five-dollar dress. Was it because he couldn’t bear the sight of it? Was he the father of Sarah’s unborn child?
He must be in his mid-eighties now, Jenny thought. His first wife, Nona Hartman, was a department store heiress. One of the article clips was about her. In an interview in Vogue magazine in 1952, she said she had first suggested that Vincent Cole did not sound exotic enough for a designer, and she urged her husband to upgrade his image by changing his name to Vincenzia. Included was a picture of their over-the-top wedding at her grandfather’s estate in Newport. It had taken place on August 10, 1949, a few weeks after Sarah was murdered.
The marriage lasted only two years. The complaint had been adultery.
I wonder … Jenny thought. She turned back to the computer. The file on Vincent Cole—Vincenzia—was still open. She began searching through the links until she found what she was looking for. Vincent Cole, then twenty-five years old, had been living two blocks from Union Square when Sarah Kimberley was murdered.
If only they had DNA in those days. Sarah lived on Avenue C, just a few blocks away. If she had been in his apartment that night and told him she was pregnant, he easily could have followed her and killed her. Cole probably knew about Barney, a character around Union Square. Could Vincent Cole have arranged the body to throw suspicion on Barney? Maybe he saw him sitting in the park that night?
We’ll never know, Jenny thought. But it’s obvious that Gran was sure he was guilty.
She got up from the chair and realized that she had been sitting for a long time. Her back felt cramped, and all she wanted to do was get out of the apartment and take a long walk.
The charity pick-up truck should be here in fifteen minutes. Let’s be done with it, she thought, and went back into the den. Two boxes were left to open. The one with the Klein label was the first she investigated. Wrapped in blue tissue was the five-dollar dress she had seen in the picture.