In the preceding weeks, there were notations of dates with names of men unfamiliar to Darcy. They were usually scheduled between five and seven o’clock. Most of them had the meeting place listed: O’Neal’s, Mickey Mantle’s, P. J. Clarke’s, the Plaza, the Sheraton . . . all hotel cocktail lounges and popular pubs.
The phone rang. Let it be Erin, Darcy prayed as she grabbed it. “Hello.”
“Erin?” A man’s voice.
“No. This is Darcy Scott. Erin’s friend.”
“Do you know where I can reach Erin?”
Disappointment, intense and overwhelming, swept over Darcy. “Who is this?”
“Jay Stratton.”
Jay Stratton had left the message about the Bertolini jewelry. What was he saying?
“. . . if you have any idea where Erin is, please tell her that if they don’t get that necklace, they’ll file a criminal complaint.”
Darcy’s eyes flickered to the pharmaceutical cabinet. She knew that Erin kept the combination in her address book under the name of the safe company. Stratton was still talking.
“I know Erin kept that necklace in a safe in her studio. Is there any possibility you can check to see if it’s there?” he urged.
“Hold on a minute.” Darcy put her hand over the speaker, then thought, What a dumb thing to do. There’s no one here I can ask. But in a way she was asking Erin. If the necklace wasn’t in the safe, it might mean that Erin had been the victim of a robbery when she attempted to deliver it. If it was there, it was almost certain proof that something had happened to her. Nothing would have kept Erin from delivering the necklace on time.
She opened Erin’s address book and turned to D. Next to Dalton Safe was the series of numbers. “I have the combination,” she told Stratton. “I’ll wait for you to come here. I don’t want to open Erin’s safe without a witness. And in case the necklace is here, I’ll want a receipt for it from you.”
He said he’d be right over. After she replaced the receiver, Darcy decided that she’d ask the superintendent to be present as well. She didn’t know anything about Jay Stratton except that Erin told her he was a jeweler and the one who got her the Bertolini commission.
While she waited, Darcy went through Erin’s files. Under “Project Personal,” she found sheets of personal columns torn from magazines and newspapers. On each page a number of the ads were circled. Were these the ones Erin had answered, or had thought about answering? Dismayed, Darcy realized that there were at least two dozen of them. Which, if any of them, had been placed by Charles North, the man Erin was to meet on Tuesday evening?
When she and Erin agreed to answer the personal ads, they’d gone about it systematically. They’d had inexpensive letterheads made with only their names at the top. They’d each chosen a favorite snapshot to send when requested. They’d spent a hilarious evening composing letters they had no intentions of sending. “I love to clean clean clean,” Erin had suggested, “my favorite hobby is doing the wash by hand. I inherited my grandmother’s scrub board. My cousin wanted it too. It caused a big family fight. I get a little nasty during my period, but I’m a very good person. Please call soon.”
They had finally come up with what they decided were reasonably alluring responses. When Darcy was leaving for California, Erin had said, “Darce, I’ll send yours out about two weeks before you’re due back. I’ll just change a sentence here or there to fit the ad.”
Erin didn’t own a computer. Darcy knew she typed out the responses on her electric typewriter but did not Xerox them. She kept all the input in the notebook she carried in her purse: the box numbers of the ads she answered, the names of the people she called, her impressions of the ones she dated.
* * *
Jay Stratton leaned back in the cab, his eyes half-closed. The speaker behind his right ear was blaring rock music. “Will you turn that down?” he snapped.
“Man, you trying to deprive me of my music?” The cabbie was in his early twenties. Wispy, snarled hair hung around his neck. He glanced over his shoulder, caught the look on Stratton’s face, and, muttering under his breath, lowered the volume.
Stratton felt sweat forming in his armpits. He had to pull this off. He tapped his pocket. The receipts Erin had given him for the Bertolini gems and for the diamonds he’d given her last week were in his wallet. Darcy Scott sounded smart. He mustn’t arouse the slightest suspicion.
The nosy superintendent must have been watching for him. He was in the foyer when Stratton arrived. Obviously, he recognized him. “I’ll bring you up,” he said. “I’m supposed to stay while she opens the safe.”
Stratton swore to himself as he followed the squat figure up the stairs. He didn’t need two witnesses.
When Darcy opened the door for them, Stratton’s face was set in a pleasant, somewhat-concerned expression. He had planned to sound reassuring, but the worry in Scott’s eyes warned him against banalities. Instead, he agreed with her that something must be dreadfully wrong.
Smart girl, he thought. Darcy had obviously memorized the combination of the safe. She was not about to let anyone know where Erin kept it. She had a pad and pen ready. “I want to itemize everything we find in there.”
Stratton deliberately turned his back while she twisted the dial, then crouched beside her as she pulled the door open. The safe was fairly deep. Boxes and pouches lined the shelves.
“Let me hand everything out to you,” he suggested. “I’ll describe what we find. You write it down.”
Darcy hesitated, then realized it was a sensible suggestion. He was the jeweler. His arm was brushing against hers. Instinctively, she moved aside.
Stratton looked over his shoulder. An irritated-looking Boxer was lighting a cigarette and glancing around the room, probably searching for an ashtray. It was Stratton’s only chance. “I think that velvet case is the one Erin kept the necklace in.” Reaching for it, he deliberately knocked a small box onto the floor.
Darcy jumped as she saw the glitter of stones scattering around her and scrambled to collect them. An instant later Stratton was beside her, cursing his carelessness. They searched the area thoroughly. “I’m sure we got them all,” he said. “These are semiprecious, suitable for good costume jewelry. But more important . . .” He opened the velvet case. “Here’s the Bertolini.”
Darcy stared down at the exquisite necklace. Emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, moonstones, opals, and rubies were set in an elaborate design that reminded her of the medieval jewelry she’d seen in portraits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Stratton asked. “You can understand why the manager at Bertolini’s was so upset at the prospect of something happening to it. Erin is remarkably gifted. She not only managed to create a setting that made those stones look ten times their own considerable value, but she did it in the Byzantine style. The family who commissioned the necklace was originally from Russia. These gems were the only valuable possessions they were able to take when they fled in 1917.”
Darcy could visualize Erin sitting at this worktable, her ankles around the rungs of the chair, the way she used to sit when she was studying in college. The sense of impending disaster was overwhelming. Where would Erin willingly go without delivering this necklace on time?
Nowhere willingly, she decided.
Biting her lip to keep it from quivering, she picked up the pen. “Will you describe this for me and I think we should identify every precious stone in it so there’s no question that any are missing.”
As Stratton removed other pouches, velvet cases, and boxes from the safe, she noticed that he was becoming increasingly more agitated. Finally he said, “I’m going to open the rest all at once, then we’ll list them.” He looked directly at her. “The Bertolini necklace is here, but a pouch I gave Erin with a quarter of a million dollars worth of diamonds is gone.”
* * *
Darcy left the apartment with Stratton. “I’m going to the police station to file a missing-person report,” she t
old him.
“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “I’ll take care of getting the necklace to Bertolini’s immediately and if we haven’t heard from Erin in a week, I’ll contact the insurance company about the diamonds.”
It was exactly noon when Darcy entered the Sixth Precinct on Charles Street. At her insistence that something was terribly wrong, a detective came out to see her. A tall black man in his mid-forties with military bearing, he introduced himself as Dean Thompson and listened sympathetically as he tried to allay her fears.
“We really can’t file a missing-person report for an adult woman simply because no one has heard from her for a day or two,” he explained. “It violates freedom of movement. What I will do if you give me her description is check it against accident reports.”
Anxiously, Darcy gave the information. Five feet seven, one hundred and twenty pounds, auburn hair, blue eyes, twenty-eight years old. “Wait, I have her picture in my wallet.”
Thompson studied it, then handed it back. “A very attractive woman.” He gave her his card and asked for hers. “We’ll keep in touch.”
Susan Frawley Fox hugged five-year-old Trish and guided her reluctant feet to the waiting school bus that would take her to the afternoon session of kindergarten. Trish’s woebegone face was on the verge of crumbling into tears. The baby, firmly held under Susan’s other arm, reached down and pulled Trish’s hair. It gave the needed excuse. Trish began to wail.
Susan bit her lip, torn between annoyance and sympathy. “He didn’t hurt you and you’re not staying home.”
The bus driver, a matronly woman with a warm smile, said coaxingly, “Come on, Trish. You sit right up here near me.”
Susan waved vigorously and sighed with relief as the bus pulled away. Shifting the baby’s weight, she hurried from the corner back to their rambling brick and stucco home. Patches of snow still covered isolated sections of the lawn. The trees seemed stark and bloodless against the gray sky. In a few months the property would be lush with flowering hedges and the willows would be heavily laden with cascades of leaves. Even as a small child Susan had studied the willows for the first hint of spring.
She shoved the side door open, heated a bottle for the baby, brought him to his room, changed him, and put him down for a nap. Her quiet time had begun: the hour and a half before he woke up. She knew she should get busy. The beds weren’t made. The kitchen was a mess. This morning Trish had wanted to make cupcakes, and spilled batter was still lumped on the table.
Susan glanced at the baking pan on the countertop and half-smiled. The cupcakes looked delicious. If only Trish wouldn’t carry on so about kindergarten. It’s almost March, Susan worried. What’s it going to be like when she’s in the first grade and has to be gone all day?
Doug blamed Susan for Trish’s reluctance to go to school. “If you’d go out more yourself, have lunch at the club, volunteer for some committees, Trish would be used to being minded by other people.”
Susan put the kettle on, sponged the table, and fixed a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich. There is a God, she thought gratefully as she reveled in the blessed silence.
Over a second cup of tea, she permitted herself to face the anger that was burning inside her. Doug hadn’t come home again last night. When he stayed in for late meetings he used the company suite at the Gateway Hotel near his office in the World Trade Center. He got furious when she called him there. “Damn it, Susan, unless there’s an earth-shattering emergency, give me a break. I can’t be called out of meetings and by the time they’re over it’s usually well past midnight.”
Taking the tea with her, Susan got up and walked down the long hall to the master bedroom. The antique full-length standing mirror was in the right-hand corner opposite the wall of closets. Deliberately, she stood in front of it and appraised herself.
Thanks to the baby’s exploring fingers, her short, curly brown hair was disheveled. She seldom bothered with makeup during the day but really didn’t need it. Her skin was clear and unlined, her complexion fresh. At five feet four she could certainly afford to lose fifteen pounds. She’d been one hundred and five when she and Doug were married fourteen years ago. Sweats and sneakers had become her daily wardrobe, especially since Trish and Conner were born.
I am thirty-five years old, Susan told herself. I could lose some weight, but contrary to what my husband thinks, I am not fat. I’m not a great housekeeper, but I know I’m a good mother. A good cook, too. I don’t want to spend my time outside the house when I have young children who need me. Especially since their father won’t give them the time of day.
She swallowed the rest of the tea, her anger building. Tuesday night when Donny came home from the basketball game, he had been in the never-never land between ecstasy and misery. He had sunk the winning shot. “Everybody stood up and cheered for me, Mom!” Then he added, “Dad was practically the only father who wasn’t there.”
Susan’s heart had wrenched at the pain in her son’s eyes. The babysitter had canceled at the last minute, which was why she hadn’t been able to be at the game either. “This is an earth-shattering event,” she’d said firmly. “Let’s see if we can reach Dad and tell him all about it.”
Douglas Fox was not registered at the hotel. There was no conference room in use. The suite kept for personnel of Keldon Equities was not being occupied.
“Probably some dumb new operator,” Susan had told Donny, trying to keep her tone even.
“Sure, that’s it, Mom.” But Donny wasn’t fooled. At dawn, Susan had awakened to the sound of muffled sobs. She’d stood outside Donny’s door, knowing that he wouldn’t want her to see him crying.
My husband doesn’t love me or his children, Susan told her reflected image. He lies to us. He stays in New York a couple of nights a week. He’s bullied me into almost never calling him. He’s made me feel like a fat, frowsy, dull, useless clod. And I’m sick of it.
She turned from the mirror and analyzed the cluttered bedroom. I could be a lot more organized, she acknowledged. I used to be. When did I give up? When did I become so damn discouraged that it wasn’t worth trying to please him?
Not hard to answer. Nearly two years ago, when she was pregnant with the baby. They’d had a Swedish au pair, and Susan was sure that Doug had had an affair with her.
Why didn’t I face it then? she wondered as she began to make the bed. Because I was still in love with him? Because I hated to admit my father was right about him?
She and Doug had been married a week after she was graduated from Bryn Mawr. Her father offered her a trip around the world if she’d change her mind. “Under that schoolboy charm, there’s a foul-tempered sneak,” he had warned her.
I went into it with my eyes open, Susan acknowledged, as she returned to the kitchen. If Dad had known the half of it, he’d have had a stroke, she thought.
There was a pile of magazines on the wall desk in the kitchen. She riffled through them until she found the one she was looking for. An issue of People with an article about a female private investigator in Manhattan. Professional women hired her to check out the men they were considering marrying. She also handled divorce cases.
Susan got the phone number from information and dialed it. When she reached the investigator, she was able to make an appointment for the following Monday, February 25th. “I believe my husband is seeing other women,” she explained quietly. “I am thinking of divorce, and I want to know all about his activities.”
When she hung up she resisted the temptation to simply sit and continue to think things through. Instead, she attacked the kitchen vigorously. Time to shape up this place. By summer, with any luck, it would be on the market.
It wouldn’t be easy raising four children alone. Susan knew that Doug would pay little if any attention to the kids after the divorce. He was a splashy spender but cheap in hundreds of little ways. He’d balk at adequate child support. But it would be a lot easier to live on a tight budget than to go on with this farce.
&n
bsp; The telephone rang. It was Doug, complaining again about the damn late meetings these last two nights. He was exhausted today and they still hadn’t settled everything. He’d be home tonight, but late. Real late.
“Don’t worry, dear,” Susan said soothingly. “I understand perfectly.”
The country road was narrow, winding, and dark. Charley didn’t pass a single other car. His driveway was almost hidden by brush at the point where it intersected the road. A secret and quiet place, removed from curious eyes. He’d bought it six years ago. An estate sale. Estate giveaway was more like it. The place had been owned by an eccentric bachelor who as a hobby renovated it himself.
Built in 1902, the exterior was unpretentious. Inside, the renovation had consisted of turning the entire first floor into one open room, complete with a kitchen area and fireplace. Wide plank oak flooring shone with a satiny finish. The furniture was Pennsylvania Dutch, austere, handsome.
Charley had added a long upholstered couch covered in maroon tapestry, a matching chair, an area rug between the couch and fireplace.
The second floor was exactly as he’d found it. Two small rooms made into one decent-sized bedroom. Shaker furniture, a carved headboard bed and tall chest. Both made of pine. The original tub, freestanding on claw feet, had been left in the modernized bath.
Only the basement was different. The eight-foot freezer that no longer held an ounce of food, the freezer where, when necessary, he left the bodies of the girls. Here, ice maidens, they’d waited for their graves to be dug under the warming rays of the spring sun. There was a worktable in the basement as well, the worktable with a stack of ten cardboard shoe boxes. There was only one left to decorate.
A charming house nestled in the woods. He’d never brought anyone here until two years ago when he’d begun to dream about Nan. Before that, owning the house had been enough. When he wanted to escape, this was his retreat. The aloneness. The ability to pretend that he was dancing with beautiful girls. He’d play old movies on the VCR, movies in which he became Fred Astaire and danced with Ginger Rogers and Rita Hayworth and Leslie Caron. He’d follow Astaire’s graceful movements until he could step with his every step, mimic the way Astaire would turn his body. Always he sensed Ginger and Rita and Leslie and Fred’s other partners in his arms, their eyes worshipful, loving the music, loving the dance.