I reminded myself to throw away that diary.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just a major case of taxicabitis.”
He didn’t look all that relieved. Something was clearly troubling him. “Something’s wrong, Casey. What is it?” I asked.
He waited until the wine he’d ordered had been poured, then said, “It’s been a tough day, Carley. Surgery can do just so much, and it’s so damn frustrating to know that no matter what you do, you can only help a little. I operated on a kid who hit a truck with his motorcycle. He’s lucky he still has a foot, but he’ll have only limited movement in it.”
Casey’s eyes were dark with pain. I thought of Nick Spencer who wanted so desperately to save the lives of people suffering with cancer. Had he gone beyond the limits of safety trying to prove he could do it? I couldn’t get that question out of my mind.
Instinctively, I put my hand over Casey’s. He looked at me and seemed to relax. “You’re very easy to be with, Carley,” he said. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”
“My pleasure.”
“Even though you were late.” The moment of intimacy was gone.
“Taxicabitis.”
“What’s going on with the Spencer story?”
Over Portobello mushrooms, watercress salad, and linguine with white clam sauce, I told him about my encounters with Vivian Powers, Rosa and Manuel Gomez, and Dr. Clintworth at the hospice.
He frowned at the suggestion that Nicholas Spencer was experimenting on patients at the hospice. “If true, that’s not only illegal but also morally wrong,” he said emphatically. “Look up the case histories of some of these drugs that seemed to be miraculous but didn’t prove out. Thalidomide is a classic example. It was approved in Europe forty years ago to relieve nausea in pregnant women. Fortunately at the time Dr. Frances Kelsey of the FDA put the kibosh on approving it. Today, especially in Germany, there are people in their forties with horrendous genetic deformities, such as flippers instead of arms, because their mothers thought the drug was safe.”
“But haven’t I read that thalidomide is proving to be valuable in the treatment of other problems?” I asked.
“That’s absolutely true. But it isn’t being given to pregnant women. New drugs have to be tested over an extended period of time, Carley, before we start handing them out.”
“Casey, suppose your choice is to be dead in a few months or to be alive and risk terrible side effects. Which would you choose?”
“Fortunately, it’s a question that I haven’t faced myself, Carley. I do know that as a doctor I wouldn’t violate my oath and turn anyone into a guinea pig.”
But Nicholas Spencer was not a doctor, I thought. His mindset was different. And in the hospice he was dealing with people who were terminally ill, who had no alternative except to be a guinea pig or die.
Over espresso, Casey invited me to go with him to a cocktail party in Greenwich on Sunday afternoon. “You’ll like these people,” he said, “and they’ll like you.”
I accepted, of course. When we left the restaurant, I wanted him to put me in a cab, but this time he insisted on riding with me. I offered to fix him the after-dinner drink we’d both refused at the restaurant, but he had the cab wait while he saw me to the door of my apartment. “It occurred to me that you really should be in a place with a doorman,” he said. “This business of letting yourself in with a key isn’t safe anymore. Someone could push in behind you.”
I was astonished. “Whatever put that in your mind?”
He looked at me soberly. Casey is about six feet two. Even when I’m wearing heels, he towers over me. “I don’t know, Carley,” he said. “I just wonder if you’re not getting into something bigger than you realize with this Spencer investigation.”
I didn’t know how prophetic those words were. It was nearly ten-thirty when I entered my apartment. I looked at the answering machine but saw no blinking light. Vivian Powers had not called back.
I tried her number again, but there was no answer, so I left another message.
The next morning the phone rang just as I was leaving for work. It was someone from the police department in Briarcliff Manor. A neighbor walking his dog that morning had noticed that the door of Vivian Powers’s home was ajar. He rang the bell and on receiving no answer had walked inside. The house was empty. A table and lamp were knocked over and the lights were on. The police had been called. They had checked the answering machine and found my messages. Did I have any knowledge of where Vivian Powers might be or if she was in some kind of trouble?
TWENTY-FIVE
Ken and Don listened with sober concentration when I told them about my meetings in Westchester and the call I’d received that morning from the police in Briarcliff Manor.
“Gut reaction, Carley?” Ken asked. “Is this an elaborate performance to convince everyone that something else was going on? The housekeeping couple tell you that it was obvious Nick Spencer and Vivian Powers were lovebirds. Is it possible you were getting too close to the truth? Do you think she was planning to go to Boston for a while, live with Mommy and Daddy, then start a new life in Australia or Timbuktu or Monaco once the heat was off?”
“Absolutely possible,” I said. “In fact, if that’s the way it is, I have to tell you that I think leaving the door open and a table and chair knocked over was a bit much.” Having said that, I hesitated.
“What is it?” Ken asked.
“Looking back, I think she was frightened. When Vivian opened the door for me, she kept the safety chain on for a couple of minutes before she let me in.”
“You were there around eleven-thirty?” Ken asked.
“Yes.”
“Did she give any indication of why she was frightened?”
“Not directly, but she did say that the accelerator on Spencer’s car had jammed only a week before his plane crashed. She had begun to think neither one was an accident.”
I got up. “I’m going to drive up there,” I said. “And then I’m going back to Caspien. Unless this is a total charade, the fact that Vivian Powers called me to say that she thought she knew the identity of the reddishhaired man may mean that she had become a threat to someone.”
Ken nodded. “Go ahead. And I have a few connections. There aren’t that many people who went into St. Ann’s Hospice to die and then later walked out. It certainly shouldn’t be that hard to identify this guy.”
I was still new on the job. Ken was the senior on this cover story. Even so, I had to say it: “Ken, when you find him, I’d like to be along when you talk to him.”
Ken considered for a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough.”
* * *
I have a pretty good sense of direction. This time I didn’t need my road map to find my way to Vivian’s house. There was a lone cop stationed at the door, and he looked at me suspiciously. I explained that I had seen Vivian Powers the day before and had received a phone call from her.
“Let me check,” he said. He went into the house and came back quickly. “Detective Shapiro said it’s okay for you to go in.”
Detective Shapiro turned out to be a soft-spoken, scholarly-looking man with a receding hairline and keen hazel eyes. He was quick to explain that the investigation was just beginning. Vivian Powers’s parents had been contacted, and in view of the circumstances had given permission for entry to her home. The fact that the front door was open, the lamp and table overturned, and her car still in the driveway had left them gravely worried that she had been the victim of foul play.
“You were here yesterday, Miss DeCarlo?” Shapiro confirmed.
“Yes.”
“I realize that with the dismantling of the house and the mover’s boxes, it’s hard to be sure. But do you see anything different about the premises than when you were here yesterday?”
We were in the living room. I looked around, remembering that it had been the same jumble of packed boxes and bare tables that I was looking at now. But then I realized there was something diff
erent. There was a box on the coffee table that had not been there yesterday.
I pointed to it. “That box,” I said. “She either may have been packing it or going through it after I left, but it wasn’t here before.”
Detective Shapiro walked over to it and pulled out the file that was on top. “She worked for Gen-stone, didn’t she?” he asked.
I found myself giving him only the information I was absolutely sure of and saying nothing of my suspicions. I could imagine the look on the detective’s face if I told him, “Vivian Powers may have staged this disappearance because she’s meeting Nicholas Spencer, whose plane crashed and is presumed dead.” Or would it make more sense to him if I said, “I am beginning to wonder if Nicholas Spencer was in fact the victim of foul play, that a doctor in Caspien was the victim of a hit-and-run driver because of laboratory records he was holding, and that Vivian Powers disappeared because she was able to identify the man who collected those records.”
Instead, I limited myself to saying that I had interviewed Vivian Powers because I was cowriting a cover story on her boss, Nicholas Spencer.
“She called you after you left, Miss DeCarlo?”
I guessed that Detective Shapiro was aware he was not getting the full story.
“Yes. I had discussed with Vivian the fact that some records of lab experiments belonging to Nicholas Spencer were missing. As far as she knew, the man who picked them up, saying he had been sent by Spencer, was not authorized to do so. From the brief message she left on my machine, I got the impression she might be able to identify that person.”
The detective was still holding the Gen-stone file folder, but it was empty. “Is it possible she made that connection when she was going through this file?”
“I don’t know, but I certainly think it’s possible.”
“Now the file is empty, and she’s missing. What does that say to you, Miss DeCarlo?”
“I think there is the possibility that she may have been the victim of foul play.”
He gave me a sharp look. “On the drive from the city, did you happen to have your car radio on, Miss DeCarlo?”
“No, I did not,” I said. I didn’t tell Detective Shapiro that when I’m working on an investigative story such as this, I treasure quiet time in the car to think and to weigh the possible alternative scenarios with which I’ve been presented.
“Then you didn’t hear the report of a rumor that Nick Spencer has been spotted in Zurich, observed there by a man who had seen him a number of times at stockholders’ meetings?”
It took me a long minute to digest that question. “Are you saying that you think the man who claims to have seen him is credible?”
“No, only that it’s a new angle in the case. Naturally, they’ll check out the story thoroughly.”
“If that story checks out, I wouldn’t worry too much about Vivian Powers,” I said. “If it is true, my guess is that she’s on her way to meet him right now, if she isn’t there already.”
“They were involved?” Shapiro asked quickly.
“Nicholas Spencer’s housekeeping couple believed they were, which could mean that the so-called missing records are nothing but part of an elaborate cover-up.”
“Didn’t I hear that the front door was open?” I asked Shapiro.
He nodded. “Which is why leaving that door open may have been an effort to draw notice to her absence,” he said. “I’ll be honest, Miss DeCarlo. There’s something phony about this setup, and I think you’ve told me what it is. I bet that right now she’s winging her way to Spencer, wherever he is.”
TWENTY-SIX
Milly greeted me like an old friend when I arrived at the diner, just in time for a late lunch. “I’ve been telling everyone about how you’re writing a story on Nick Spencer,” she said, beaming. “How about today’s news, that he’s living it up in Switzerland? Two days ago those kids fished out the shirt he was supposed to be wearing, and everybody thought that meant he was dead. Tomorrow it’ll be something else. I always said that anybody smart enough to steal that kind of money would figure out how to live long enough to spend it.”
“You may have a point, Milly,” I said. “How’s the chicken salad today?”
“Awesome.”
Now there’s a recommendation, I thought, as I ordered the salad and coffee. Because it was the tail end of lunch time, the diner was busy. I heard the name Nicholas Spencer mentioned several times from different tables, but couldn’t hear what was being said about him.
When Milly came back with the salad, I asked her what she had heard about Dr. Broderick’s condition.
“He’s doing a little better,” she said, dragging out the word so it sounded like “l-e-e-e-tle.” “I mean, he’s still really critical, but I heard that he tried to talk to his wife. Isn’t that good?”
“Yes, it is good. I’m very glad.” As I ate the salad, which indeed was awesomely filled with celery but somewhat short on chicken, my mind was leaping ahead. If Dr. Broderick recovered, would he be able to identify the person who had run him down, or would he have no memory at all of the accident?
By the time I’d had a second cup of coffee, the diner was rapidly emptying. I waited until I saw that Milly was finished clearing the other tables, then beckoned her over. I had brought along the photo taken the night Nick Spencer was honored, and I showed it to her.
“Milly, do you know these people?”
She adjusted her glasses and studied the group assembled on the dais. “Sure.” She began to point. “That’s Delia Gordon and her husband, Ralph. She’s nice; he’s kind of a stiff. That’s Jackie Schlosser. She’s real nice. That’s Reverend Howell, the Presbyterian minister. And there’s the crook, of course. Hope they get him. That’s the chairman of the board of the hospital. He has egg on his face since he persuaded the board to invest so much in Gen-stone. From what I hear, he’ll be out of a job by the next board election, if not sooner. A lot of people think he should resign. I bet he does if they prove Nick Spencer is alive. On the other hand, if they arrest him, then maybe they can find out where he hid the money. That’s Dora Whitman and her husband, Nils. Both their families go way back in this town. Real money. I mean live-in help and everything. Everybody likes the fact that the family never shook the dust of Caspien off their feet, but I hear they have a fabulous summer home in Martha’s Vineyard, too. Oh, and at the end on the right is Kay Fess. She’s head of the volunteers at the hospital.”
I made notes, trying to keep up with Milly’s rapid-fire commentary. When she was finished, I said, “Milly, I want to talk to some of those people, but Reverend Howell is the only one I’ve been able to reach so far. The others either have unlisted phone numbers or haven’t returned my call. Any suggestions on how I can get to them?”
“Don’t let on I told you, but Kay Fess is probably at the reception desk in the hospital right now. Even if she didn’t call you back, she’s easy to get to know.”
“Milly, you’re a doll,” I said. I finished my coffee, paid the check, left a generous tip, and after consulting my map, drove the four blocks to the hospital.
I guess I expected to find a local community hospital, but Caspien Hospital was an obviously growing institution, with several smaller buildings adjacent to the main structure and a new area cordoned off and marked with a sign that read SITE OF FUTURE PEDIATRIC CENTER.
This, I was sure, was the planned construction now on hold thanks to the hospital’s investment in Gen-stone.
I parked and went into the lobby. There were two women at the reception desk, but I was able to tell which was Kay Fess immediately. Deeply suntanned although it was only April, with short graying hair, dark brown eyes, granny glasses, an exquisitely shaped nose, and narrow lips, she had a very “in charge” air about her. I seriously doubted that anyone slipped through without a visitor’s pass on her watch. She was the one nearest to the roped-off entrance to the elevators, which suggested that she was the head honcho.
There were four or five
people waiting for passes when I entered the lobby. I waited as she and her associate took care of them, and then I went up to speak to her. “Miss Fess?” I said.
She was immediately on guard, as though suspecting I was going to ask to bring ten kids in to visit a patient.
“Miss Fess, I’m Carley DeCarlo with the Wall Street Weekly. I’d very much like to talk to you about the award dinner for Nicholas Spencer several months back. I understand that you were on the dais sitting quite close to him.”
“You phoned me the other day.”
“Yes, I did.”
The other woman at the reception desk was looking at us with curiosity, but then had to turn her attention to some newcomers.
“Miss DeCarlo, since I did not return your call, doesn’t it suggest to you that I had no intention of talking to you?” Her tone was pleasant but firm.
“Miss Fess, I understand that you give a great deal of your time to the hospital. I’m also aware that the hospital has had to put construction of the pediatric center on hold because of the investment in Gen-stone. The reason I want to talk to you is that I believe the true story of Nicholas Spencer’s disappearance has not come out, and if it does, then that money may be traceable.”
I saw the hesitation and doubt in her expression. “Nicholas Spencer has been seen in Switzerland,” she said. “I wonder if he’s buying a chalet with money that would have saved the lives of children for generations to come.”
“What appeared to be definitive proof of his death was making headlines only two days ago,” I reminded her. “Now this. The truth is, we still don’t know the full story. Please, couldn’t we talk for just a few minutes.”