As did I, Robby admitted, sneering down at the picture of Gordie Amory, the plastic surgery kid. Mr. Cover Boy himself. Yesterday, during his walk, he’d looked up Gordie’s house and saw that it had been totally renovated. Originally an odd shade of blue, it was now twice the size and sparkling white—like Gordie’s new teeth, Robby thought.
Gordie’s first house had burned down when they were juniors. The joke in town was that it was the only way it could be thoroughly cleaned. Gordie’s mother had kept the place looking like a pigpen. A lot of people thought that Gordie deliberately set the fire. I wouldn’t have put it past him, Robby thought. He was always weird. Robby reminded himself to call Gordie “Gordon” when they met at the cocktail party. Over the years he’d run into him a few times—uptight as they come and another one who’d been crazy about Laura.
So was Mark Fleischman, the other guy being honored. At school Mark had never said boo to anyone, but you got the feeling there was a lot going on inside him. He’d always been in the shadow of his older brother, Dennis, who’d been an all-around big man at Stonecroft, top student, outstanding athlete. Everyone in town knew him. He’d been killed in a car accident the summer before their class began its freshman year. Different as day and night, the two brothers. It was well known around town that if God had to take one of their sons, Mark’s parents would have preferred that he and not Dennis had been chosen. He had so much resentment built up inside him that it’s a wonder the top of his head didn’t come off, Robby thought grimly.
He reached for his room key, finally ready to face the crowd below, and then opened the door of his room. I either disliked or hated just about all of my classmates, he thought. Then why did I accept the invitation to come here? He pushed the button for the elevator. I’ll get plenty of new material for the act, he promised himself. There was another reason of course, but he quickly pushed it out of his mind. I won’t go there, he thought as the elevator door opened. At least not now.
9
As they arrived at the cocktail party, Jack Emerson, the chairman of the reunion committee, invited the honorees to step into the alcove at the end of the Hudson Valley Suite. A florid-faced man with the look of a drinker, indicated by the broken capillaries in his face, he was the only member of the class who had elected to stay in Cornwall and therefore was in place to do hands-on planning for this weekend. “When we introduce the class individually, I want to save you and the others for last,” he explained.
Jean walked into the alcove in time to hear Gordon Amory observe, “Jack, I gather that we have you to thank that we’re the ones to be honored.”
“It was my idea,” Emerson said heartily. “And you deserve it, one and all. Gordie, I mean Gordon, you’re an outstanding figure in cable television. Mark is a psychiatrist with a reputation for being an expert in adolescent behavior. Robby is an outstanding comedian and mimic. Howie, I mean Carter Stewart, is a major playwright. Jean Sheridan—oh, here you are, Jean, so good to see you—is a dean and professor of history at Georgetown, and now she’s a best-selling author. Laura Wilcox was the star of a long-running sitcom. And Alison Kendall became head of a major talent agency. As you know, she would have been the seventh recipient. We’ll send her plaque to her parents. They are very pleased to know that she is being honored by her graduating class.”
The hard luck class, Jean thought with a stab of pain as Emerson rushed over to plant a kiss on her cheek. That had been the term that school reporter Jake Perkins had suggested when he’d grabbed her for an interview. What he’d told her had been a shock. I lost track of everyone except Alison and Laura after graduation, she remembered. The year Catherine died, I was in Chicago, supposedly choosing to work for a year before college. I knew that Debby Parker’s plane crashed, but I didn’t know about Cindy Lang and Gloria Martin. And only last month, Alison. Dear God, we all used to sit at the same table.
And now only Laura and I are left, she thought. What kind of karma is hanging over us?
Laura had phoned to say she’d meet her at the party. “Jeannie, I know we were talking about getting together earlier, but I’m not nearly ready. I have to make an entrance with all flags flying,” she’d explained. “My object for the weekend is to woo and win Gordie Amory so that I can play the lead in his new TV series.”
Instead of being disappointed, Jean realized she had been relieved. The respite had given her time to phone Alice Sommers, who had been their next-door neighbor years ago. Mrs. Sommers now lived in a townhouse near the parkway. The Sommerses had moved to Cornwall about two years before their daughter Karen was murdered. Jean never forgot the time when she’d been picked up at school by Mrs. Sommers. “Jean, why don’t you come shopping with me?” she’d suggested. “I don’t think you should go home right now.”
That day she’d been spared the cringing embarrassment of seeing a squad car in front of her house and her parents being handcuffed. She never knew Karen Sommers well. Karen had been in Columbia Medical School in Manhattan, and the Sommerses kept an apartment in Manhattan. That was where they spent time with their daughter. In fact, until the night of her death, Karen had rarely come to Cornwall.
We’ve always kept in touch, Jean thought. When they came to Washington, they always called to invite me to dinner. Michael Sommers had died years ago, but Alice had learned about the reunion and called to say that Jean must come over for a ten o’clock breakfast before the scheduled visit to West Point.
In the time she might have visited with Laura, Jean had made up her mind. Tomorrow when she saw Alice, she would tell her about Lily and show her the faxes and the original letter with the hairbrush and strands of Lily’s hair. Whoever knew about the baby must have seen Dr. Connors’ records, she thought. It has to be someone who was around here at that time or who knew someone from around here who could get hold of the records. Alice might help me find the right person to talk to in law enforcement here. She had always said that they were still trying to find her Karen’s murderer.
“Jean, it’s good to see you again.” Mark Fleischman had been speaking to Robby Brent, but now he came over to her. “You look lovely, but upset. Did that kid reporter grab you?”
She nodded. “Yes, he did. Mark, I was shocked. I didn’t know about anyone’s death except Debby’s and then, of course, Alison’s.”
Fleischman nodded. “Neither did I. In fact, I hadn’t heard about Debby. I’ve never bothered with any of the stuff that came from Stonecroft until Jack Emerson contacted me.”
“What did Perkins ask you?”
“Specifically, he wanted to know if since none of the five died together in some sort of multiple accident, wouldn’t I, as a psychiatrist, find that many deaths in so small a group an unusually high number? I told him I didn’t have to look up anything to know that the number was out of the ball park. Of course it was.”
Jean nodded. “He told me that according to his research, that kind of statistic is much more likely to happen in wartime, but he said there are examples of families or classmates or members of a team that seem to be jinxed. Mark, I don’t think it’s jinxed. I think it’s eerie.”
Jack Emerson had overheard. The smile he’d worn while listing their accomplishments vanished and was replaced by a look of irritated concern. “I asked that Perkins kid to stop showing that list around,” he said.
Carter Stewart came into the alcove with Laura Wilcox in time to hear Emerson. “I can assure you, he’s showing it around,” he said shortly. “My suggestion to anyone who has not yet been pounced upon by that young man is to tell him you do not wish to see it. It worked for me.”
Jean was standing to the side of the entry, and Laura did not spot her when she walked in. “OK if I join you?” she joked. “Or have I wandered into the men’s club by mistake?”
Smiling, she moved from one man to the other, closely examining their tags, then kissing each one of them on the cheek. “Mark Fleischman, Gordon Amory, Robby Brent, Jack Emerson. And, of course, Carter, whom I used to know as
Howie and who hasn’t kissed me yet. You all look marvelous. You see, there’s the difference. I was at my peak at sixteen, and after that it was all downhill. You four and Howie, I mean Carter, were just starting up the hill in those days.”
Then she spotted Jean and rushed to embrace her.
It was the icebreaker they needed. Mark Fleischman could see the notable relaxation as polite expressions became amused smiles and the better wines they’d put aside for the honorees began to be sipped.
Laura’s still a knockout, he thought. Thirty-eight or -nine like the rest of us, but could pass for thirty. The cocktail suit she was wearing was clearly pricey, very pricey. The television series she’d been on had been cancelled a couple of years ago. He wondered how much work she’d had since then. He knew she’d had a messy divorce, with claims and counterclaims; he’d read about it on Page Six of the New York Post. He smiled to himself as she kissed Gordie a second time. “You used to have a crush on me,” she teased him.
Then it was his turn. “Mark Fleischman,” she said breathlessly. “I swear you were jealous when I was dating Barry Diamond. Am I right?”
He smiled. “Yes, you’re right, Laura. But that was a long time ago.”
“I know, but I haven’t forgotten.” Her smile was radiant.
He had once read that the Duchess of Windsor had the capacity to make every man she spoke to feel like the only man in the room. He watched as she turned to another familiar face.
“I haven’t forgotten either, Laura,” he said quietly. “Never for one minute have I forgotten.”
10
It amused him to note that at the cocktail party Laura was, as usual, the center of attention, even though she was the least deserving of all the honorees. On the television series that had been the one feather in her cap, she had played a shallow blonde who only cared about the person she saw reflected in the mirror. The ultimate in typecasting, he thought.
There was no denying that she still looked damn good, but she was enjoying that final bloom before the change begins to take place. Already there were fine lines around her eyes and mouth. He remembered that her mother had that same papery skin, the kind that ages fast and hard. If Laura lived another ten years, even plastic surgery could only do so much for her.
But of course, she wasn’t going to live another ten years.
Sometimes, even for months at a time, The Owl retreated to a secret spot deep inside him. During those times he was almost able to believe that all the things The Owl had done had been a dream. Other times, though, like now, he could feel it living inside him. He could see The Owl’s head, its dark eyes surrounded by pools of yellow. He could feel how its talons grasp the limb of a tree. He could feel the touch of its soft velvety plumage, causing him to shiver inwardly. He could feel the rush of air beneath its wings as it swooped down on its prey.
Seeing Laura had brought The Owl rushing from its perch. Why had he waited so long to come to her? The Owl demanded to know, but he was afraid to answer. Was it, he wondered, because when Laura and Jean were finally destroyed, The Owl’s power over life and death would vanish with them? Laura should have been dead twenty years ago. But that mistake had liberated him.
That mistake, that accident of fate, had transformed him from the stuttering crybaby—“I ammm th-th-the oooooowwwwwlllll and I livvvvve in aaaa . . .”—into The Owl, the predator, powerful and unflinching.
Someone was studying his ID, a guy with glasses and thinning hair, dressed in a reasonably expensive dark gray suit. Then the man smiled and held out his hand. “Joel Nieman,” he said.
Joel Nieman. Oh, sure, he had been Romeo in the senior play. He was the one Alison had written about in her column: “To everyone’s surprise, Romeo, a.k.a. Joel Nieman, managed to remember most of his lines.”
“Did you give up on acting?” The Owl asked, smiling back.
Nieman looked surprised. “You have a good memory. I thought the stage could do without me,” he said.
“I remember the review Alison wrote about you.”
Nieman laughed. “So do I. I was going to tell her she did me a favor. I took up accounting, and it was a better way to go. Terrible shame about her, isn’t it?”
“Terrible,” The Owl agreed.
“I read that initially there was some question of a possible homicide investigation, but the police now pretty much believe that she passed out as she hit the water.”
“Then I think the police are stupid.”
Joel Nieman’s expression became curious. “You think Alison was murdered?”
The Owl realized suddenly that perhaps he looked and sounded too vehement. “From what I read, she made a lot of enemies along the way,” he said carefully. “But who knows? The police are probably right. That’s why they always say that no one should go swimming alone.”
“Romeo, my Romeo,” a voice squealed.
Marcy Rogers, who had been Juliet in the school play, was tapping Nieman’s shoulder. He spun around.
Marcy still wore her chestnut hair in a mass of tangled curls, but now it was highlighted with random streaks of gold. She struck a theatrical pose. “And all the world shall be in love with night.”
“I can’t believe it. It’s Juliet!” Joel Nieman exclaimed, beaming.
Marcy glanced at The Owl. “Oh, hi.” She turned back to Nieman. “You’ve got to meet my real life Romeo. He’s over at the bar.”
Dismissal. Just the way he’d always experienced it at Stonecroft. Marcy hadn’t even bothered to look at his ID. She simply wasn’t interested in him.
The Owl looked around. Jean Sheridan and Laura Wilcox were standing next to each other on the buffet line. He studied Jean’s profile. Unlike Laura, she was the kind of woman who got better looking as she aged. She looked decidedly different, although her features certainly hadn’t changed. What had changed was her poise, her voice, the way she held herself. Oh, sure, her hair and clothes made a difference, but the change in her was more interior than outward. Growing up, she had to have been embarrassed by the way her parents carried on. A couple of times the cops had been exasperated enough to cuff them.
The Owl walked over to the buffet line and picked up a plate. He realized that he was beginning to understand his ambivalence toward Jean. During the years at Stonecroft, a couple of times, such as when he didn’t make the football team, she’d gone out of her way to be nice to him. In fact, in the spring of senior year he’d actually considered asking her for a date. He had been sure she wasn’t going out with anyone. Sometimes, on warm Saturday nights, he would hide behind a tree in lovers’ lane and wait for the cars to drive there after the movies. He never saw Jean in one of them.
Positive thoughts aside, it was too late to change course now. Only a couple of hours ago, seeing her come into the hotel, he’d finally made up his mind to kill her, too. At this moment he understood why he had made that irrevocable decision. His mother used to say “still waters run deep.” Jeannie may have acted nice to him a couple of times, but she was probably just like Laura underneath, snickering about the poor dope who had wet his pants and cried and stuttered.
He helped himself to salad. And so what if she hadn’t been in lovers’ lane with one of the jerks in their class, he reflected. Instead, Miss “Butter-Wouldn’t-Melt-in-Her-Mouth” Jeannie had been romancing a West Point cadet—he knew all about that.
Fury lashed through him, alerting him that soon he would have to release The Owl.
He skipped the pasta, selected poached salmon and green beans with ham, and looked around. Laura and Jean had just settled at the honoree table. Jean caught his eye and waved him over. Lily looks just like you, he thought. The resemblance is really striking.
The thought sharpened his hunger.
11
At two o’clock, Jean gave up the attempt to sleep, turned on the light, and opened a book. But after reading for an hour and realizing that she had not absorbed one word, she restlessly put the book down and turned off the light again. Every musc
le in her body felt wired and taut, and she had the beginning of a headache. She knew that the effort to socialize all evening, despite the constant gnawing worry that Lily might be in danger, had exhausted her. She realized that she was counting the hours until ten o’clock when she would visit Alice Sommers and tell her about Lily.
The same thoughts kept racing through her mind. In all these years I’ve never mentioned her to a soul. The adoption was private. Dr. Connors is dead, and his records were destroyed. Who could have found out about her? Is it possible that her adoptive parents know my name and have kept track of me? Maybe they told someone else, and that person is the one contacting me now. But why?
The window facing the back of the hotel was open, and the room was getting cold. After a moment’s debate Jean sighed and pushed back the covers. If I have any hope of getting some sleep, I’d better close it, she thought. She got out of bed and padded across the room. Shivering as she cranked in the open panel, she happened to glance down. A car without its lights on was pulling into the self-parking area of the hotel parking lot. Curious, she watched as the figure of a man stepped out and began walking quickly toward the back entrance of the hotel.
His coat collar was up, but when he opened the door to the lobby, his face was clearly visible. Turning away from the window, Jean thought, I wonder what in the name of God one of our distinguished dinner partners found to do until this hour of the night.