Then, realizing that it was cooling down rapidly, she carried her empty cup into the house. She was barely back in the kitchen when Alvirah phoned.
“Mariah, I tried you on your cell phone and you didn’t answer. Are you all right?” Alvirah asked anxiously.
“Sorry. My cell phone is in my bag in the foyer and I didn’t hear it ring. Alvirah, have you heard anything?”
“Yes and no. I called Detective Benet and he was very interested. He wants to make a copy of Lillian’s message to Richard. In fact, he’s on his way in to our apartment now. Boy, that guy wastes no time! But here’s what he told me: Richard had an appointment with him in the prosecutor’s office this afternoon and he didn’t show up or call.”
“What does that tell you?” Mariah asked numbly.
“I don’t know what it tells me,” Alvirah said, “except to say that all of this is so out of character for the Richard I know. I can’t believe it’s happening.”
“Out of character for the person I know too.” Mariah bit her lip, afraid that her voice was breaking.
“Any word about Kathleen?”
“No. I’m going to call the hospital now, not that they really tell me anything,” Mariah answered, swallowing over the lump in her throat. “But as I told you, this morning they said Mother had slept reasonably well.”
“Okay. That’s about it for now, but I’ll call if I reach Lillian or hear from her doorman.”
“I don’t care what time it is. Please call me. I’ll be sure to have my cell phone in my pocket if I go out again.”
A few minutes later the doorbell rang. It was Lisa Scott.
“Mariah, we just got home. We saw your car in the driveway. Lloyd’s going out to pick up some Chinese food. Come on over and have something to eat with us,” she offered.
“Okay, but I’d better not read the fortune cookies,” Mariah said with a weak smile. “I’d love to be with you. This has not been the best day of my life, as I’ll explain to you and Lloyd. I’ll be over in a few minutes. First I want to call the hospital and check on my mother.”
“Sure thing. Maybe just this once we’ll have a glass of wine,” Lisa said jokingly. “Or two,” she added.
“Sounds good to me. See you in a bit.”
It was getting dark. Mariah switched on the outside lights, then went into the study and turned on the lamps on the tables at each end of the couch. She hesitated, then knew she did not want to make the call from her father’s study. She went back into the kitchen and dialed the hospital. When she reached the nurse at the desk on the psychiatric floor and inquired about her mother, she could sense from the pause that the nurse’s response was guarded.
“Your mother had a difficult afternoon and had to be given some extra sedation. She is resting quietly now.”
“What happened?” Mariah demanded.
“Ms. Lyons, as you know, there is an ongoing court-ordered evaluation of your mother and I am not at liberty to say very much. She was quite agitated, but I can assure you she is calm now.”
Mariah did not try to keep the frustration out of her voice. “As you can surely understand, I am sick with worry about my mother. Is there nothing else you can tell me?”
“Ms. Lyons, the judge has ordered that the report be faxed to his chambers by two o’clock Thursday afternoon. That’s tomorrow. My understanding from past experience is that the attorneys will get a copy of it. Your mother’s behavior and the doctor’s conclusions will be detailed in the report.”
Mariah knew she could not push any further. Thank you, I guess, she thought as she politely said good-bye to the nurse and hung up the phone.
A half hour later, over wonton soup, she filled Lloyd and Lisa in about everything that had happened since Lloyd had stopped by to see her that morning. “I feel as though this morning was a week ago,” she said. “And now we have every reason to believe Lillian went to the bank to get the parchment and that she was on her way to deliver it to Richard. If that’s the case, and if it’s proven that they have basically stolen it, can’t they both be charged with a crime?”
“You bet they can, and if it can be proven, they will be,” Lloyd replied emphatically. “It would seem that Jonathan gave the parchment to Lillian for safekeeping and Richard either knew that or figured it out. The one thing I can’t understand at this point is where Rory fits into the whole picture. It may be as simple as the fact that she knew that the detectives would be checking out everybody, and with that parole warrant from years ago hanging over her head, she simply took off.”
“On the other hand, maybe she’s involved in some way,” Mariah speculated. “If anybody was in a position to set up my mother, it was Rory.”
Lisa had not yet said anything. “Mariah, it would make sense if your father and Lillian were breaking up that Lillian might want to get rid of your father, so that she could hang on to the parchment. Did you ever notice any quiet conversation between Lillian and Rory?”
“I can’t say that I did, but on the other hand Rory had only been my mother’s caregiver for six months when those photos of Venice were found. Lillian was never in the house again. But we don’t know if Lillian and Rory were calling each other.”
“Rory vanished forty-eight hours ago. No one has seen her since,” Lloyd said slowly. “Now you say Lillian left her apartment a little before nine this morning, and as of about forty minutes ago when you spoke to Alvirah, she still hadn’t returned.”
“That’s right,” Mariah said. “I can’t help but think that maybe she and Richard are out somewhere celebrating.”
“You told me that Richard missed his appointment with the prosecutor’s office. That doesn’t sound right to me. If anything, you’d think he’d get there early, to appear cooperative and cover his tracks.”
“Lloyd, when I talked about speaking to the nurse, I told you that she said that the judge would have the psychiatric report by two tomorrow afternoon and the attorneys would get a copy. But I didn’t think to ask you, at what time do you get it?”
“I’m sure the judge will give it to the prosecutor and me before the end of the day, so that we can look at it overnight.”
“Can you show it to me when you get home?”
“Of course, Mariah. Now, for heaven’s sake, have some of that sesame chicken. You hardly even touched the soup.”
With an apologetic smile, Mariah started to reach for the plate when her cell phone rang. She grabbed it out of her pocket, murmuring, “I hope it’s Alvirah.” But then she saw the caller ID and said, “If you can believe it, it’s Richard. I’m not going to answer. Let’s see if he leaves a message and what lie he comes up with.”
The three sat silent until her phone chimed, indicating that there was a new voice mail. Mariah played it on speakerphone: “Mariah, I am so very sorry. I have made a terrible mistake. Please call me.”
“Mariah, maybe you should call him back,” Lloyd began, then stopped.
Mariah’s face was buried in her hands and her shoulders were shaking with sobs.
“I can’t talk to him,” she whispered. “I can’t.”
55
On Wednesday evening at eight o’clock, Father Aiden opened the door of the friary of Saint Francis of Assisi Church to find Richard Callahan standing in the doorway. “It’s good of you to see me on such short notice,” Richard said as the priest motioned for him to come in.
Father Aiden looked at the troubled face of his visitor, noting that in place of his usual black slacks and white shirt, Richard was wearing a blue sport shirt with a designer logo and tan slacks. There was a light shadow on his face indicating that he had not shaved recently. When he took Aiden’s extended hand, Aiden could feel that his palm was moist.
It was obvious to him that something was terribly wrong. “My door is always open to you, Richard,” he said mildly. “The other friars are lingering over coffee. Why don’t we go into the sitting room? We’ll have privacy there.”
Richard nodded without speaking. It was c
lear to Father Aiden that Richard was trying to compose himself. “Richard, I know you’re a coffee drinker,” he said. “I’m sure there’s still some left in the pot in the dining room. Let me get you a cup. In fact, I’ll bring a second cup in for myself. I know how we both like it, black and no sugar.”
“That sounds good.”
At the door of the modest sitting room, Aiden gestured for Richard to go in and said, “I’ll be right back.” When he returned, he put the cups on the coffee table, then closed the door. Richard was sitting on the couch, his shoulders slumped forward, his elbows propped up on his knees, and his hands clasped. Wordlessly, he reached for the coffee. Father Aiden noticed that his hand was trembling. He sat down in the wing chair facing the couch. “How can I help you, Richard?” he asked.
“Father, I’ve made a terrible mistake.” As Father Aiden listened, Richard told him that he always believed that Jonathan had given Lillian the parchment. Then he admitted that he had lied to her. “Father Aiden, I told her that Jonathan had shown it to me, and that he said that he was going to give it to her for safekeeping.
“I knew that there was no way anyone could prove that she had it, and I was desperate to get it back,” Richard explained. “She believed me. She even told me that after Jon dropped her so abruptly that Wednesday evening, she was heartsick. She said that Jon asked her to give the parchment back to him, but she had already put it in her safe-deposit box. She told me she begged him to wait a week before she returned it and pleaded with him to take that time to think more about whether he really wanted to end their relationship.”
Father Aiden nodded without commenting. He thought back to that same day, when, in the late afternoon, Jonathan had told him he could no longer endure the pain of his estrangement from Mariah and the heartbreak Kathleen continued to suffer because of his relationship with Lillian. He had said he was going directly to Lillian’s apartment to tell her of his decision.
Aiden O’Brien remembered sadly that Jonathan then had spoken about his plan to take Kathleen to Venice and said that he would ask Mariah to go with them. Aiden was stunned when Jon said at the time that he had an odd sense that he might not live very much longer, and he needed and wanted to repair the damage his affair with Lillian had inflicted on his family.
“I never saw the parchment and Jonathan never told me he had given it to her,” Richard repeated, then paused, as if too embarrassed to go on. “But Lillian believed me.”
“When did you tell her this?” Father Aiden asked.
“Let me explain. After the funeral, I waited in the cemetery when the others drove to the club for lunch. I had a hunch that Lillian would show up there and I was right. She visited Jonathan’s grave and when she went back to her car, I followed her. That was when I asked her if she had ever seen the parchment. I knew she was lying when she said no. I knew that she almost certainly had it, and I was afraid she would sell it now that Jonathan was dead. But of course I had absolutely no proof.”
Richard reached for the coffee cup that until now he had ignored. He took a long sip before he said, “Father Aiden, as we both know, that parchment is the property of the Vatican Library. That was when I decided to take a different approach with Lillian. I called her and got tough. I told her I knew Jonathan had given it to her, and I was going to the cops to tell them that. She believed me and finally admitted that she had it. I told her that I would give her two million dollars for it.”
“Two million dollars! Where would you get that kind of money?”
“A trust fund my grandfather set up for me. I am sure Lillian must have had at least one other offer, but I promised her I would never disclose that I had actually paid her for it. I told her she could tell people that she realized that it would be wrong to keep it and that she wanted to do the right thing. She was afraid because she had already told the detectives that she didn’t have it. I said to her that I really believed that the prosecutor’s office wouldn’t pursue it any further if she returned it quickly. I swore to her that I would give the parchment back to the Vatican Library and said no matter how much Jonathan had hurt her, she owed it to him to see that it went back there.”
“How were you going to make the payment?” Father Aiden inquired. “If you did it on the level, wouldn’t you or she or both of you have to pay some kind of tax on all this money?”
Richard shook his head. “As the tax laws stand today, I am allowed to give away up to five million dollars in my lifetime. I would report the two million dollars to the IRS as a gift to her. That way she could have the use of the money without having the worry that if she sold the parchment under the table and it somehow came out, she might end up in prison for tax evasion.”
Richard hesitated, then took a long sip of his coffee. “Last night, as we were leaving Mariah’s house, Lillian phoned me and said she would accept my offer. This morning I went downtown to my trustee’s office to sign the paperwork to move the money into her account. But I’ve been calling her all day, and she still hasn’t answered.”
“Why wouldn’t she answer after she agreed to accept your offer?”
“My guess is that she is greedy, she reconsidered, and she probably decided to sell it to some underground collector for a lot more money. I spent the whole day hanging around outside my trustee’s office because if I had reached her, I was going to have her meet me there. At five o’clock, I gave up and went uptown to my parents’ apartment. They were on their way out, but I stayed there for a while, calling Lillian every half hour. Then I decided to come and talk to you.”
“Richard, what I don’t understand is, why are you blaming yourself? You were willing to spend a very considerable amount of your own money to get that parchment back and then return it to the Vatican.”
“I’m blaming myself, Father, because I should have gone about it another way. I should have hired a private detective to follow Lillian around the clock and see where she was going and whom she was meeting. She did admit she had put the parchment in her safe-deposit box. I’m afraid that once she sells it, it will be gone for good. Then if I go to the detectives, it will be her word against mine. I’m already on record with them that I never saw the parchment.”
Richard stopped and looked startled. “My God, I forgot. I was supposed to go talk to the detectives again today. It absolutely went out of my mind. I’ll call them in the morning. But here’s what I need. Father Aiden, you met Lillian at Jonathan’s home a number of times before those pictures were found. I know she respects you. Will you try to talk to her? I’m sure she’s avoiding my calls.”
“I don’t know if it will do any good but of course I will. Do you have her number?”
“It’s right here on my cell,” Richard said.
Father Aiden quickly jotted it down on a slip of paper, then picked up his phone and dialed it and listened as Lillian’s voice mail greeting came on: “You have reached Lillian Stewart. I’m not available to take your call. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
A computerized voice immediately announced that the mailbox was full.
Richard had been able to hear the recording. “Probably her voice mail is full because of all the messages I left for her today,” he said as he stood up to leave. “Will you try her again in the morning, Father?”
“Of course,” Father Aiden said as he put the receiver down and walked Richard to the door, promising to get in touch with him as soon as he reached Lillian. Then he slowly walked back to the sitting room and settled again into the wing chair, his arthritic knees emitting sharp pains as he lowered his body. He picked up the cup of now less-than-warm coffee. Frowning in concentration, and disappointed, he sadly acknowledged that all of his long experience in dealing with human beings was warning him that his valued friend Richard Callahan had been less than truthful.
“But why?” he asked himself aloud.
56
On Thursday morning, Detectives Benet and Rodriguez began to consider the possibility t
hat Lillian Stewart had been a victim of foul play.
When they’d met with Alvirah at her Central Park South apartment the previous evening, they had listened to the tape of Lillian’s message to Richard Callahan again, which Alvirah had already played for them over the phone. Then they reviewed with Alvirah everything she had told them during that call.
She had repeated the exact timeline of following Lillian to the bank, then downtown on the subway, and finally losing her at Chambers Street. “It made me so mad,” Alvirah told them, “but this poor old soul was crawling up the steps, one at a time, leaning on her cane. And with so many people rushing down the other way, I could no more have passed her than I could have jumped over her. And when I got to the sidewalk, Lillian had disappeared into thin air.”
“Do you think she might have gotten into a car that was waiting for her, Mrs. Meehan?” Benet asked.
“Call me Alvirah. As I told you, when Lillian walked out of the bank with something in her tote bag, she was holding a cell phone to her ear. Who knows if she was making a call or receiving one? I can’t say. Maybe she was agreeing to meet someone. It’s a possibility.”
“And I kept driving around the block,” Willy offered from his comfortable lounge chair. “By the time Alvirah got back to me I felt as if I was on a carousel.”
From the Meehans’ apartment on Central Park South, Benet and Rodriguez drove directly to Lillian’s apartment building and learned from the doorman that Ms. Stewart had not returned home yet that day.
“The doorman said that since Professor Lyons died, he doesn’t remember anyone, man or woman, coming to visit her,” Rita pointed out.
Simon did not respond. Rita knew her partner well enough to have a pretty good idea of what the disgruntled look on his face meant. After they had interviewed Lillian Stewart on Tuesday morning, they should have requested a search warrant on her apartment immediately. Whether or not she admitted to having a safe-deposit box, with a search warrant they would have been able to trace it. Simon was beating himself up because if Lillian had taken the parchment from the safe-deposit box yesterday, it might well have slipped through their fingers for good now.