Where was Meghan? Bernie ordered another beer, then wondered if the bartender, Joe, wasn’t starting to look at him with the kind of expression the cops had when they’d stop him and ask what he was up to.
All you had to do was say, “I’m just hanging around,” and they were all over you with questions. “Why?” much?” “Who do you know around here?” “Do you come here
Those were the questions he didn’t want people around here to even start thinking.
The big thing was to have people used to seeing him. When you’re used to seeing someone all the time, you never really see him. He and the prison psychiatrist had talked about that.
Something inside him was warning that it would be dangerous to go into the woods behind Meghan’s house again. With the way that kid had been screaming, someone had probably called the cops. They might be keeping a watch on the place now.
But if he never ran into Meghan on a job because she was on leave from Channel 3, and he couldn’t get near her house, how would he get to see her?
While he sipped his second beer, the answer came to him, so easy, so simple.
This wasn’t just a restaurant, it was an inn. People stayed here. There was a sign outside that announced VACANCY. From the windows on the south side you should have a clear view of Meghan’s house. If he rented a room he could come and go and no one would think anything of it. They’d expect his car to be there all night. He could say that his mother was in a hospital but would be getting out in a few days and needed a quiet place where she could take it easy and not have to cook.
“Are these rooms expensive?” he asked the bartender. “I need to find a place for my mother, so she can get her strength back, if you know what I mean. She’s not sick anymore, but kind of weak and can’t be fussing for herself.”
“The guest rooms are great,” Tony told him. “They were renovated only two years ago. They’re not expensive right now. It’s between seasons. In about three weeks, around Thanksgiving, they go up and stay up through the skiing season. Then they get discounted again until April or May.”
“My mother likes a lot of sun.”
“I know half the rooms are empty. Talk to Virginia Murphy. She’s Mrs. Collins’ assistant and handles everything.”
The room Bernie chose was more than satisfactory. On the south side of the inn, it directly faced the Collins house. Even with all the electronic equipment he’d bought lately he wasn’t near the limit on his credit card. He could stay here a long time.
Murphy accepted it with a pleasant smile. “What time will your mother check in, Mr. Heffernan?” she asked.
“She won’t be here for a few days,” Bernie explained. “I want to be able to use the room till she’s out of the hospital. It’s too long a trek to drive back and forth from Long Island every day.”
“It certainly is and the traffic can be bad too. Do you have luggage?”
“I’ll come back with it later.”
Bernie went home. After dinner with Mama he told her the boss wanted him to drive a customer’s car to Chicago. “I’ll be gone three or four days, Mama. It’s an expensive new car, and they don’t want me to speed. They’ll send me back on the bus.”
“How much are they paying you?”
Bernie picked a figure out of the air. “Two hundred dollars a day, Mama.”
She snorted. “I get sick when I think of the way I worked to support you and got paid next to nothing and you get two hundred dollars a day to drive a fancy car.”
“He wants me to start tonight.” Bernie went into the bedroom and threw some clothes in the black nylon suitcase that Mama had bought at a garage sale years ago. It didn’t look bad. Mama had cleaned it up.
He made sure to bring plenty of tape cassettes for his video camera, all his lenses and his cellular telephone.
He told Mama goodbye, but didn’t kiss her. They never kissed. Mama didn’t believe in kissing. As usual, she stood at the door to watch him drive away.
Her last words to him were, “Don’t get in any trouble, Bernard.”
Meghan reached home shortly before ten-thirty. Her mother had cheese and crackers and grapes on the coffee table in the living room and wine chilling in the decanter. “I thought you might need a little sustenance.”
“I need something. I’ll be right down. I’m going to get comfortable.”
She carried her bag upstairs, changed into pajamas, a robe and slippers, washed her face, brushed her hair and anchored it back with a band.
“That feels better,” she said when she returned to the living room. “Do you mind if we don’t talk about everything tonight? You know the essentials. Dad and Annie’s mother have had a relationship for twenty-seven years. The last time she saw him was when he left to come home to us and never arrived. She and her lawyer are taking the 11:25 red-eye tonight from Phoenix. They’ll get to New York around six tomorrow morning.”
“Why didn’t she wait until tomorrow? Why would anyone want to fly all night?”
“I suspect she wants to be in and out of New York as fast as possible. I warned her that the police would certainly want to see her and there’d probably be extensive media coverage.”
“Meg, I hope I did the right thing.” Catherine hesitated. “I told Tom Weicker about your trip to Scottsdale. PCD carried the story about Annie on the six o’clock news and I’m sure they’ll repeat it at eleven. I think they were as kind to you and me as possible, but it isn’t a pretty story. I might add I turned the ringer off on the phone and turned on the answering machine. A couple of reporters have come to the door, but I could see their vans outside and didn’t answer. They showed up at the inn, and Virginia said I was out of town.”
“I’m glad you gave the story to Tom,” Meg said. “I enjoyed working for him. I want him to have the exclusive.” She tried to smile at her mother. “You’re gutsy.”
“We might as well be. And, Meg, he didn’t call you yesterday. I realize now that whoever did call was trying to find out where you were. I called the police. They’re going to keep an eye on the house and check the woods regularly.” Catherine’s control snapped. “Meg, I’m frightened for you.”
Meg thought, who on earth would have known to use Tom Weicker’s name?
She said, “Mom, I don’t know what’s going on. But for now, the alarm is set, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then we might as well watch the news. It’s time.”
* * *
It’s one thing to be gutsy, Meg thought, it’s another to know that a few hundred thousand people are watching a story that makes mincemeat of your private life.
She watched and listened as, with appropriately serious demeanor, Joel Edison, the PCD eleven o’clock anchor, opened the program. “As reported exclusively on our six o’clock newscast, Edwin Collins, missing since January 28th and a suspect in the Manning Clinic murder case, is the father of the young victim, stabbed to death in mid-Manhattan twelve days ago. Mr. Collins . . .
“Also the father of Meghan Collins of this news team . . . warrant for arrest . . . had two families . . . known in Arizona as husband of the prominent sculptor, Frances Grolier . . .”
“They’ve obviously been doing their own investigation,” Catherine said. “I didn’t tell them that.”
Finally a commercial came.
Meg pushed the Off button on the remote, and the television went dark. “One thing Annie’s mother told me is that the last time he was in Arizona, Dad was horrified by something he’d learned about Victor Orsini.”
“Victor Orsini!”
The shock in her mother’s voice startled Meg. “Yes. Why? Has something come up about him?”
“He was here today. He asked to go through Edwin’s files. He claimed that papers he needed were in them.”
“Did he take anything? Did you leave him alone with them?”
“No. Or maybe just for a minute. He was here about an hour. When he left he seemed disappointed. He asked if I was sure that these were all the files we’
d brought home. Meg, he begged me for the present not to say anything to Phillip about being here. I promised, but I didn’t know what to make of it.”
“What I make of it is that there’s something in those files that he doesn’t want us to find.” Meg stood up. “I suggest we both get some sleep. I can assure you that tomorrow the media will be all over the place again, but you and I are spending the day going through those files.”
She paused, then added, “I only wish to God we knew what we’re looking for.”
Bernie was at the window of his room in the Drumdoe Inn when Meg arrived home. He had his camera with the telescopic lens ready and began taping when she turned on the light in her bedroom. He sighed with pleasure as she took off her jacket and unbuttoned her blouse.
Then she came over and tilted the blinds but didn’t completely close them, and he was able to get glimpses of her moving back and forth as she undressed. He waited impatiently when she went downstairs. He couldn’t see whatever part of the house she was in.
What he did see made him realize how clever he’d been. A squad car drove slowly past the Collins house every twenty minutes or so. Besides that he saw the beams of flashlights in the woods. The cops had been told about him. They were looking for him.
What would they think if they knew he was right here watching them, laughing at them? But he had to be careful. He wanted a chance to be with Meghan, but he realized now it couldn’t be around her house. He’d have to wait until she drove away alone in her car. When he saw her going toward the garage, all he had to do was get downstairs quickly, get into his own car and be ready to pull out behind her when she passed the inn.
He needed to be alone with her, talk to her like a real friend. He wanted to watch the way her lips went up in a curve when she smiled, the way her body moved like just now when she took off her jacket and opened her blouse.
Meghan would understand that he’d never hurt her. He just wanted to be her friend.
Bernie didn’t get much sleep that night. It was too interesting to watch the cops driving back and forth.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
51
Phillip was the first one to call on Thursday morning. “I heard the newscast last night and it’s all over the papers this morning. May I come by for a few minutes?”
“Of course,” Catherine told him. “If you can pick your way through the press. They’re camped outside the house.”
“I’ll go around to the back.”
It was nine o’clock. Meg and Catherine were having breakfast. “I wonder if anything new has developed?” Catherine said. “Phillip sounds upset.”
“Remember you promised you wouldn’t say anything about Victor Orsini being here yesterday,” Meg cautioned. “Anyhow I’d like to do my own checking on him.”
When Phillip arrived it was clear that he was very concerned.
“The dam has burst, if that’s the proper metaphor,” he told them. “The first lawsuit was filed yesterday. A couple who have been paying for storage of ten cryopreserved embryos at the Manning Clinic have been notified there are only seven in the lab. Clearly, Petrovic was making a lot of mistakes along the line and falsifying records to cover them. Collins and Carter have been named as codefendants with the clinic.”
“I don’t know what to say anymore except that I’m so sorry,” Catherine told him.
“I shouldn’t have told you. It isn’t even the reason I’m here. Did you see Frances Grolier being interviewed when she arrived at Kennedy this morning?”
“Yes, we did.” It was Meg who answered.
“Then what do you think of her statement that she believes Edwin is alive and may have started a totally new life?”
“We don’t believe that for a minute,” Meghan said.
“I have to warn you that John Dwyer is so sure Ed is hiding somewhere that he’s going to grill you on that. Meg, when I saw Dwyer Tuesday, he practically accused me of obstructing justice. He asked a hypothetical question: Assuming Ed had a relationship somewhere, where did I think it would be? Clearly you knew where to look for it.”
“Phillip,” Meghan asked, “you’re not suggesting that my father is alive and I know where he is, are you?”
There was no evidence of Carter’s usually cheerful and assured manner. “Meg,” he said, “I certainly don’t believe you know where to reach Edwin. But that Grolier woman knew him so well.” He stopped, aware of the impact of his words. “Forgive me.”
Meghan knew Phillip Carter was right, that the assistant state attorney would be sure to ask how she knew to go to Scottsdale.
When he left, Catherine said, “This is dragging Phillip down too.”
An hour later, Meghan tried calling Stephanie Petrovic. There was still no answer. She called Mac at his office to see if he had managed to reach her.
When Mac told her about the note Stephanie had left, Meghan said flatly, “Mac, that note is a fraud. Stephanie never went with that man willingly. I saw her reaction when I suggested going after him for child support. She’s mortally afraid of him. I think Helene Petrovic’s lawyer had better report her as a missing person.”
Another mysterious disappearance, Meghan thought. It was too late to drive to southern New Jersey today. She would go tomorrow, starting out before daylight. That way she might evade the press.
She wanted to see Charles Potters and ask him to take her through the Petrovic house. She wanted to see the priest who had conducted the service for Helene. He obviously knew the Rumanian women who had attended it.
The terrible possibility was that Stephanie, a young woman about to give birth, might have known something about her aunt that was dangerous to Helene Petrovic’s killer.
52
Special investigators Bob Marron and Arlene Weiss requested and received permission from the Manhattan district attorney to question Frances Grolier late Thursday morning.
Martin Fox, her attorney, a silver-haired retired judge in his late sixties, was by her side in a suite in the Doral Hotel, a dozen blocks from the medical examiner’s office. Fox was quick to reject questions he felt inappropriate.
Frances had been to the morgue and identified Annie’s body. It would be flown to Phoenix and met by a funeral director from Scottsdale. Grief was carved on her face as implacably as it would be in one of her sculptures, but she was composed.
She answered for Marron and Weiss the same questions she had answered for the New York homicide detectives. She knew of no one who might have accompanied Annie to New York. Annie had no enemies. She would not discuss Edwin Collins except to say that, yes, she did think there was a possibility he chose to disappear.
“Did he ever express any desire to be in a rural setting?” Arlene Weiss asked.
The question seemed to penetrate Grolier’s lethargy. “Why do you want to know that?”
“Because even though his car had been recently washed when it was found in front of Meghan Collins’ apartment building, there were traces of mud and bits of straw embedded in the tread on the tires. Ms. Grolier, do you think that’s the kind of place he might choose to hide?”
“It’s possible. Sometimes he interviewed staff members at rural colleges. When he talked about those trips, he always said that life seemed so much less complicated in the country.”
Weiss and Marron went from New York directly to Newtown to talk to Catherine and Meghan again. They asked them the same question.
“The last place in the world I could see my husband is on a farm,” Catherine told them.
Meghan agreed. “There’s something that keeps bothering me. Doesn’t it seem odd that if my father were driving his car, he’d not only leave it where it was sure to be noticed and ticketed but would also leave a murder weapon in it?”
“We haven’t closed the door to any possibilities,” Marron told her.
“But you’re concentrating on him. Maybe if you take him out of the picture completely, a different pattern will start to emerge.”
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“Let’s talk about why you made that sudden trip to Arizona, Miss Collins. We had to hear about it on television. Tell us yourself. When did you learn that your father had a residence there?”
When they left an hour later, they took the tape containing the Palomino message with them.
“Do you believe anyone in that office is looking beyond Dad for answers?” Meghan asked her mother.
“No, and they don’t intend to,” Catherine said bitterly.
They went back into the dining room where they’d been studying the files. Analysis of the California hotel charges pinpointed year by year the times Edwin Collins had probably stayed in Scottsdale.
“But that isn’t the kind of information that Victor Orsini would care about,” Meg said. “There’s got to be something else.”
On Thursday at the Collins and Carter office, Jackie, the secretary, and Milly, the bookkeeper, conferred in whispers about the tension between Phillip Carter and Victor Orsini. They agreed that it was caused by all the terrible publicity about Mr. Collins and the law suits being filed.
Things had never been right since Mr. Collins died. “Or at least since we thought he died,” Jackie said. “It’s hard to believe that with a nice, pretty wife like Mrs. Collins, he’d have someone on the side all these years.
“I’m so worried,” she went on. “Every penny of my salary is saved for college for the boys. This job is so convenient. I’d hate to lose it.”
Milly was sixty-three and wanted to work for two more years until she could collect a bigger social security check. “If they go under, who’s going to hire me?” It was a rhetorical question that she frequently asked these days.
“One of them is coming in here at night,” Jackie whispered. “You know you can tell when someone’s been going through the files.”
“Why would anyone do that? They can have us dig for anything they want,” Milly protested. “That’s what we’re paid for.”
“The only thing I can figure is that one of them is trying to find the file copy of the letter to the Manning Clinic recommending Helene Petrovic,” Jackie said. “I’ve looked and looked and I can’t put my hands on it.”