“Did these homicides have anything to do with the vandalizing of Little Lizzie’s Place on Old Mill Lane, and does the prosecutor’s office have any leads?” the Asbury Park Press stringer demanded.
Jeff cleared his throat. Choosing his words carefully, he said, “Charley Hatch, a landscaper, was shot sometime between one forty and two ten this afternoon. We believe his assailant was known to him, and possibly had arranged to meet him. No one reported hearing the shot, which was not unusual since there was a power mower in use on a neighboring property on Valley Road.” He had not intended to say anything more, but then changed his mind, realizing that he could not stop without giving some additional information to the media. “We believe the deaths of Charley Hatch and Georgette Grove were connected, and also may be linked to the vandalism on Old Mill Lane. We are pursuing several leads, and will keep you informed.”
He made his way back to his office, aware that his frustration and irritation were landing squarely on Clyde Earley. I’ll bet anything that he didn’t wait to go through Charley Hatch’s garbage until it was off the premises, he fumed. I’ll bet Charley knew it had been disturbed and panicked. If Earley was suspicious, he should have waited until the garbage got to the dump to go through it. Then we could have put a tap on Charley’s phone and found out who he was working for. That way, we wouldn’t have the guy who picked up the garbage blabbing about it to everybody.
And where does that sexy receptionist from Grove’s office, who claims to be Charley Hatch’s half sister, fit into the picture? he wondered.
At six o’clock, Robin Carpenter, escorted by Sergeant Earley, arrived at Jeff’s office. Walsh, Ortiz and Shelley sat in on the meeting, and Jeff was sure that all of them were aware that Robin was the kind of woman who could get whatever she wanted from a man. Funny, Jeff thought. She kept herself fairly low-key last week when we talked to her, after Grove’s body was found. Now she’s openly playing to the field. And to my staff, he thought, noticing that Ortiz could not keep his eyes off her.
“Ms. Carpenter, I’d like to extend my sympathy at your brother’s death. I’m sure this has been quite a shock for you.”
“Thank you, Mr. MacKingsley, but I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I am very sorry about Charley, but I must explain that I never even knew he existed until a year ago.”
Jeff listened intently as Robin explained that at age seventeen her mother had given birth to a baby. In a private adoption, she had signed him over to a childless couple to raise. “My mother’s been dead for ten years. Then one day last year, Charley showed up on my father’s doorstep and introduced himself. He had his birth certificate and pictures of himself in my mother’s arms, so there was no doubt he was who he said he was.
“My father’s remarried, so he wasn’t at all interested in Charley. In all honesty, he may be my half brother, but the little I got to know him, I didn’t much care for him. I mean he was always whining. He complained that he had to pay too much to his wife when they were divorced. He said he hated landscaping, but that once he got into that business, he was kind of stuck with it. He couldn’t stand most of the people he worked for. He just wasn’t the kind of person anyone would seek out to try to make a friend.”
“Did you have much contact with him?” Jeff asked.
“Quite frankly, I didn’t want any. Occasionally he’d call and ask me to have a cup of coffee with him. The divorce was fairly recent, and he was at loose ends.”
“Ms. Carpenter, we have reason to believe Charley Hatch was the person who vandalized the house on Old Mill Lane.”
“That’s absolutely impossible,” Robin protested. “Why would Charley do that?”
“That’s exactly what we want to know,” Jeff replied. “Did Charley ever come into your office to see you?”
“No, never.”
“Did Georgette know he was related to you?”
“No. There was no reason to talk about him.”
“Would Georgette or Henry have had any contact with him?”
“Possibly. I mean sometimes the people who are selling houses are away, and of course the houses and properties must be maintained. Charley was a landscaper and also had a snow-plowing service in the winter. If Georgette had an exclusive listing on a property, she’d be the one making sure that it was being kept up, so it’s entirely possible that she knew Charley if he was working on one of those properties. But his name never came up in the year I worked with her.”
“Then that would be true of Henry Paley as well?” Jeff asked. “He might have known Charley before last week.”
“Of course.”
“When was the last time you spoke to your half brother, Ms. Carpenter?”
“It was at least three months ago.”
“Where were you between one forty and two ten this afternoon?”
“In the office. You see, Henry was having lunch with Ted Cartwright. When he came back a little after one o’clock, I ran across the street to get a sandwich and bring it back in. Henry had an appointment at one thirty to take a client out.”
“Did he keep that appointment?”
Robin hesitated, then said, “Yes he did, but Mr. Mueller, the potential buyer, phoned to say he was delayed, and couldn’t meet Henry until two thirty.”
“Then Henry was in the office with you until that time?”
Robin Carpenter hesitated. Her eyes moistened, and she bit her lip to keep it from quivering. “I can’t believe that Charley is dead. Is that why . . . ?” Her voice trailed off.
Jeff waited, then slowly and deliberately said, “Ms. Carpenter, if you have any information that would assist this investigation, it is your obligation to reveal it. What did you just start to say?”
Robin’s composure broke. “Henry has been trying to blackmail me,” she burst out. “Before I went to work for Georgette, I dated Ted Cartwright a few times. Of course, when I realized how much she despised him, I didn’t mention it. Henry’s been trying to twist everything around to make it sound as if I was undermining Georgette. That wasn’t true, but what is true is that Henry Paley was not in the office today from the time he left at one fifteen until nearly four o’clock. In fact, he had just gotten back minutes before Sergeant Earley came in and told us Charley was dead.”
“His appointment to show a house had been changed from one thirty to two thirty?” Jeff confirmed.
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Ms. Carpenter. I know this has been very trying for you. If you wait just a few minutes until your statement is ready to sign, Sergeant Earley will drive you home.”
“Thank you.”
Jeff looked at his assistants, each of whom had been quietly taking notes. “Any one of you have a question for Ms. Carpenter?”
“Just one,” Paul Walsh said. “Ms. Carpenter, what is the number of your cell phone?”
50
At quarter of three, Dru Perry received a call from her editor, Ken Sharkey, telling her about the report that had come over the police band. Charley Hatch, the landscaper of the Holland Road house where Georgette Grove had been murdered, had been shot to death. Ken was dispatching someone else to cover the story at the location, but he wanted Dru to attend the press conference MacKingsley was sure to call.
Dru assured Ken she would wait around for the press conference, but she did not share with him the stunning information she had just uncovered. She had been busy tracing back three generations of Liza Barton’s maternal ancestors. Liza’s mother and grandmother had been only children. Her great-grandmother had three sisters. One of them never married. Another married a man named James Kennedy and died without issue. The third great-great aunt married a man named William Kellogg.
Celia Foster Nolan’s maiden name is Kellogg. One of the New York reporters referred to that fact when he wrote about the vandalism, Dru remembered. I just wrote that she was the widow of the financier Laurence Foster. I think it was the guy from the Post who gave the background about her—that she had met Foster when sh
e was decorating his apartment, that she had her own design business, Celia Kellogg Interiors.
Dru went down to the courthouse cafeteria and ordered a cup of tea. The cafeteria was almost deserted, which suited her well. She needed time to think, and was only just beginning to realize the ramifications of what she had learned.
As she held the tea cup with both hands, she stared ahead unseeingly. Maybe the fact that her name is Kellogg is merely the wildest of coincidences, Dru thought. But no, I don’t believe in that kind of coincidence. Celia Nolan is exactly the right age to be the grown-up Liza Barton. Is it really a coincidence that Alex Nolan just happened to buy that house as a surprise? It’s a one-in-a-million chance, but it could happen. But if he bought it as a surprise, it has to mean that Celia never told him about her true background. My God, I can only imagine how shocked she must have been when he drove her up to the house on her birthday, and she had to pretend to be thrilled.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the day she moved in she was greeted by that writing on the lawn, and the paint on the house, and that doll with the gun, and the skull and crossbones carved into the door. No wonder she fainted when she saw all the media charging at her.
Did it cause her to become unbalanced? Dru wondered. Celia Nolan had been the one who found Georgette’s body. Is it possible she was in such a frenzy about being in the house and all that terrible publicity that she would kill Georgette?
It was a possibility Dru did not relish considering.
Later at the press conference she was uncharacteristically silent. The fact that Sergeant Earley had confiscated the murdered landscaper’s jeans and sneakers and carvings meant only one thing to her. They were looking to tie Charley Hatch to the vandalism.
Dru found herself hoping that Celia Nolan had an ironclad alibi for the thirty minutes between one forty and two ten that afternoon, and then feeling with increasing certainty that she would not have any alibi at all.
It had been a long day, but after the press conference, Dru went back to the office. On the Internet she found a number of articles about Celia Kellogg. One of them was an interview in Architectural Digest that had taken place seven years earlier. When the established designer she had been working for retired, Celia had gone out on her own, and the magazine was calling her one of the most innovative and talented of the new crop of designers.
It gave her background as the daughter of Martin and Kathleen Kellogg. She didn’t let on that she was their adopted daughter, Dru noticed. She had been raised in Santa Barbara. Reading further, Dru found the information she wanted. Shortly after Celia moved east to go to the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Kelloggs had relocated to Naples, Florida.
It was an easy matter to get their telephone number from the directory. Dru copied it in her notebook. It’s not time to call them yet, she decided. They’re sure to deny that their adopted daughter is Liza Barton. The next thing to do is to get Liza’s picture computer aged, then I have to decide if I should share my suspicions with Jeff MacKingsley. Because, if I’m right, Little Lizzie Borden is not only back, but she’s very possibly unhinged and on a killing spree. Her own lawyer said he wouldn’t be surprised if she came back someday and blew Ted Cartwright’s brains out.
And I’ve got to find out who Zach is. If his name sent her into spasms of grief when she was in detention, maybe she has a grudge against him, too.
51
Even as Ted Cartwright was being introduced to me I was sure that seeing me was triggering something inside him. He could not take his eyes off my face, and I am certain that in looking at it, he was seeing my mother. I knew that for some reason tonight I looked very much like her.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs. Nolan,” he said.
His voice was jarring—hearty, resonant, commanding, confident, the same voice that rose to an ugly jeer as he shoved my mother at me.
Over the twenty-four years since then, I have heard his voice in my mind at times when I would have done anything to forget it, and at other times when I wanted desperately to reconstruct those last words he and my mother shouted at each other before I reached them.
And all these years my last words to him have echoed in my soul: “Let go of my mother!”
I looked up at him. I did not touch his extended hand, but neither did I want to raise questions by being overtly rude. I murmured, “How are you?” and turned back to Alex. Alex, unaware of what was going on, did what most people do when there is an awkward silence. He covered it with polite conversation, telling me that Ted is also a member of the Peapack Club, and that they’d run into each other occasionally.
Of course, Marcella Williams could not leave without trying to find out why I had been dabbing at my eyes. “Celia, is there anything at all I can do to help you?” she asked.
“Perhaps minding your own business would be a start,” I said.
Marcella’s sympathetic smile froze on her face. Before she could say anything, Ted took her arm and pulled her away.
I looked at Alex and saw the distress in his face.
“Ceil, what was that all about? There was absolutely no reason to be so rude.”
“I think there was,” I said. “We were having a private conversation. That woman saw that I’m upset, yet couldn’t wait to find out what is upsetting me. As for Mr. Cartwright, you saw as well as I did that long interview he so happily gave the newspapers, raking up that lurid story about the house you want us to live in.”
“Ceil, I read what he said,” Alex protested. “He answered a few questions a reporter asked him, that’s all. I barely know Cartwright, but he’s very well thought of at the club. I think Marcella was genuinely trying to be helpful. My God, she drove you home yesterday when she learned I had a time problem.”
“You told me Zach saw you!”
My mother’s voice was shouting in my mind. I was sure that was part of what she had said that night. Hearing Ted’s voice again had verified the flash of memory I had this past week. Mother had spoken Zach’s name, and now I had a few words more: “You told me Zach saw you!”
What did Zach see Ted do?
And then I said aloud, “Oh, no.”
“Ceil, what is it? You look pale as a ghost.”
A possible answer to the meaning of my mother’s words occurred to me. The day my father died, he had ridden ahead of Zach, and then taken the wrong trail. At least that was the story Zach had told me and everyone else. But Zach had also bragged to me that he was a longtime friend of Ted Cartwright. Had Ted Cartwright also been riding those trails that day? Did he have anything to do with my father’s accident? Had Zach seen it?
“Ceil, what is it?” Alex insisted.
I had literally felt the blood drain from my face, and quickly searched my mind for a plausible explanation. At least I could tell Alex a half-truth. “Before Marcella barged over, I was about to tell you that I had been talking to my mother. She tells me that my dad is in bad shape.”
“Is the Alzheimer’s getting worse?”
I nodded.
“Oh, Ceil, I’m so sorry. Is there anything we can do?”
The “we” was so comforting to hear. “I’ve told Kathleen to hire a full-time aide immediately. I told her I’d take care of it.”
“Let me do that.”
I shook my head as I thanked him. “That’s not necessary, but I love you for wanting to help.”
“Ceil, you have to know that I’d give you the world on a platter if you’d take it.” He reached over, took my hands, and entwined our fingers.
“I just want a tiny piece of the world,” I said, “a nice, normal piece of it, with you and Jack.”
“And Jill and Junior,” Alex said, smiling.
Our check came. As we got up, Alex suggested that we stop by Marcella and Ted’s table and say goodnight. “It wouldn’t hurt to smooth things over,” he urged. “Marcella is our neighbor and she meant well. When we start going to affairs at the Peapack Club, you’ll be bumping into Ted, like it o
r not.”
I was on the verge of an angry reply, but then something occurred to me. If Ted had recognized me, he might be worried that I would remember what my mother had shouted at him. If he had not recognized me, but I had stirred something in his subconscious, there might be a way I could force a reaction from him.
“I think that’s a good idea,” I said.
I was pretty sure Marcella and Ted had been looking over at us, but when we turned in their direction, they looked at each other and acted as if they were deep in conversation. I walked over to their table. Ted was holding an espresso cup that looked lost in his powerful right hand. His left hand was on the table, the long, thick fingers splayed out over the white surface. I had felt the strength of those hands when he had flung my mother against me like a weightless toy.
I smiled at Marcella even as I realized how thoroughly I despised her. I had a clear memory of how she had always flirted with Ted after he married my mother, then rushed to support his version of my mother’s death with her own recollections of me. “Marcella, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I got very bad news about my father today. He’s quite ill.” I looked at Ted. “I’ve been taking riding lessons from a man who claims he’s a great friend of yours. His name is Zach. He’s a wonderful teacher. I’m so glad to have lucked onto him.”
Later, when we were home and getting ready for bed, Alex said, “Ceil, you looked so beautiful tonight, but I’ll be perfectly honest. The way you went so pale, I thought you were going to faint. I know you haven’t been sleeping well lately. Is it this Detective Walsh guy who’s upsetting you, as well as your dad being sick?”
“Detective Walsh hasn’t helped,” I said.
“I’ll be on the prosecutor’s doorstep at nine o’clock. I’ll go straight to the airport from there, but I’ll call and tell you how it went.”
“Okay.”
“As you well know, I’m not much for sleeping pills, but I do think you’d do yourself a favor to take one now. A decent night’s sleep makes the whole world look different.”