He looked soberly at her and added, “Don’t be afraid of a compliment, Susan. You are, you know. Good night.”
Then he was gone. Susan double locked the door and leaned against it for a moment, trying to sort out her feelings. Then she crossed to the answering machine. There were two messages. The first was from her mother: “Phone me any time up until midnight.”
It was quarter of eleven. Without listening to the second message, and keeping her fingers crossed that nothing was wrong, Susan began to dial.
Her mother’s nervousness was obvious in her voice as she barely acknowledged Susan’s greeting and began to stammer out the reason for her call. “Susan, this is crazy, and I feel as though I’m being put in the position of choosing between my daughters, but . . .”
Susan listened to her mother’s fumbling explanation of how Alex Wright apparently had enjoyed meeting her at the party Sunday, but how Binky had been trying to set him up with Dee. “We know that Dee is lonely and restless, but I’d hate to see her interfere with a friendship that you might be enjoying.” Her mother’s voice trailed off. This conversation was obviously very difficult for her.
“You’d hate to see Dee move in again on someone who may have expressed interest in me. That’s it, isn’t it, Mom? Well look, I had a very pleasant dinner with Alex Wright, but that’s all. I gather Dee has been calling him. In fact, he’s invited her to join us at a dinner party Saturday night. I’m not in competition with my sister. When I meet the right person for me, we’ll both know it, and I won’t have to worry about him straying when my sister crooks a finger at him. Because if that’s the kind of man he is, then I don’t want him.”
“You’re insinuating I’d take your father back,” her mother protested.
“No, where do you get that?” Susan said. “I understand exactly how rotten you feel about what Dad pulled on you. I feel rotten about it too. But there’s something about breaking a trust that for a lot of people, myself included, would deal a mortal blow to a relationship. So let’s see what happens. I have had, after all, exactly one date with Alex. The second time around we might bore each other silly.”
“Just understand that poor Dee is so unhappy,” her mother pleaded. “She called me this afternoon to say that she’s moving back to New York. She misses us, and she’s tired of the modeling agency. Your father is treating her to a cruise next week. I hope that will pick up her spirits.”
“I hope so too. Okay, Mom, talk to you soon.”
Finally she played the second message; this one was from Alex Wright: “A business dinner was canceled, and I worked up the nerve to try you on short notice again. Not very good manners, I know, but I did want to see you. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”
Smiling, Susan replayed the message. Now that’s one compliment Dr. Richards wouldn’t find me resisting, she thought. And I’m mighty glad Dee is signed up for a cruise next week.
It was only sometime later, when she was in bed and drifting off to sleep, that Susan remembered she had wanted to phone Tiffany at The Grotto. She just had to persuade her to come in and at least compare her turquoise ring with the one found among Regina Clausen’s possessions. Turning on the light, she looked at the clock. It was quarter of twelve.
I could catch her, she thought. Maybe if I invite her to come to the studio tomorrow, and offer to take her out for a quick lunch, she’ll accept.
She got the phone number of The Grotto from information and dialed. The phone rang for a long time before it was picked up and someone barked, “Grotto.”
Susan asked for Tiffany, then waited several minutes before she came on. No sooner had she given her name than Tiffany exploded. “Dr. Susan, I never want to hear a word about that stupid ring again. Matt’s mother phoned and told me to stop talking about him; she said that he’s getting married. So I threw that dumb ring away! No disrespect to you, but now I wish I hadn’t been listening to your show that day. And I wish Matt and I had never even gone in that stupid souvenir shop. And I wish especially that we hadn’t been listening when the man who ran that dumb place told us that the guy who’d just been in had bought these rings for several of his girlfriends.”
Susan sat straight up in bed. “Tiffany, this is important. Did you see that man?”
“Sure I did. He was a doll. A class act. Not like Matt.”
“Tiffany, I have to talk to you. Come into the city tomorrow. We’ll have lunch together, and please tell me, is it possible to get your ring back?”
“Dr. Susan, by now it’s under tons of chicken bones and pizza, and that’s where it’s gonna stay. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I feel like such an idiot, telling the whole world how great Matt is. What a jerk! Listen, I gotta go. My boss is giving me the evil eye.”
“Tiffany, have you remembered where you bought that ring?” Susan begged.
“I told you, in the Village. The West Village. I know it wasn’t too far from a subway stop. The only thing I remember for certain about where it was is that there was a porn shop opposite. I gotta go. Bye, Dr. Susan.”
Completely awake now, Susan replaced the receiver slowly. Tiffany had thrown away her turquoise ring, which was too bad, but she seemed to remember a man who apparently had bought several others. I was going to call Chris Ryan to run a check on Douglas Layton, she thought. I’ll give him Tiffany’s home phone number as well. He’ll be able to get her address for me. And if he can’t, then tomorrow evening I’ll be sitting in The Grotto, having the best Italian food in Yonkers.
56
Tiffany had managed to get through the night, and during most of it she had kept up her usual wisecracking and her sassy veneer. It helped that The Grotto had been busy, and that she hadn’t had much time to think. There had been only a couple of times, like when she had gone to the ladies’ room and been forced to look at her own reflection, that the hurt and anger came flooding back.
Around eleven o’clock some guy had come in and sat at the bar. She could feel him undressing her with his eyes every time she passed him on the way to her tables.
Jerk, she thought.
At twenty of twelve he had grabbed her hand and asked her to come have a drink at his place when she got off.
“Get lost, creep!” she had told him.
Then he had squeezed her hand so hard that she couldn’t help yelping in pain. “You don’t have to get nasty,” he had snapped.
“Let go of her!” Joey, the bartender, had been around the bar in a shot. “You’ve had enough, mister,” he said. “Pay your bill and get out of here.”
The guy stood up. He was big, but Joey was bigger. Then the jerk threw some money on the bar and left.
Right after that, Dr. Susan phoned, and once again Tiffany was made aware of just how rotten she was feeling. All I want to do is go home and pull the covers over my head, she thought after that.
At five of twelve, Joey called Tiffany over. “Listen, kid, when you’re ready to go, I’ll walk you to your car. That guy could be hanging around outside.”
But then, just as Tiffany was buttoning her coat to leave, a bowling team came in and the bar got busy. Tiffany could see that Joey wouldn’t be free for at least ten minutes.
“I’ll be okay, Joey. See you tomorrow,” she called to him, and darted out.
It wasn’t until she was outside that she remembered leaving her car in the far corner of the parking lot. What a pain, Tiffany thought. If that guy is hanging around, he could be a problem. Carefully she scanned every inch of the lot. There was one person out there, a guy who looked like he had just gotten out of his car and was probably headed to the bar. Even in the shadowy light, though, she could tell he wasn’t the jerk who had tried to come on to her. This guy was tall and thinner.
Still, something made her feel funny, made her want to get out of there as quickly as possible. As she walked rapidly toward her car, she fumbled in her bag for her keys. Her fingers closed over them. She was almost there.
Then suddenly the guy she had seen acr
oss the lot was standing in front of her. There was something shiny in his hand.
A knife! she thought, the realization making her freeze almost in midstep.
No! she thought, disbelieving, as she saw him move toward her.
Why? she wondered, incredulous that this was happening.
“Please,” she begged. “Please!”
Tiffany lived long enough to see her attacker’s face, long enough for her excellent memory to help her recognize her killer as the classy guy she had glimpsed in that Village souvenir shop—the one who had bought those rings inscribed “You belong to me.”
57
As he drove back to the city, traveling along the Cross Bronx Expressway, he could feel the perspiration pouring from him. It had been a close call. He had just stepped over the low wall that separated The Grotto’s property from the locked gas station where he had parked his car, when he heard some guy yelling “Tiffany.”
He had left his car on the other side of the station, and fortunately there was an incline and he didn’t have to start the engine until he reached the road. Once there he turned right and merged with the traffic, so chances were no one had seen him.
Next week it would be all over, he reminded himself. He would choose someone to “See the jungle when it’s wet with rain,” and his mission would be completed.
Veronica, so trusting—she had been the first—now buried in Egypt: “See the pyramids along the Nile.”
Regina. He had won her trust in Bali: “Watch the sunrise on a tropic isle.”
Constance, who had replaced Carolyn in Algiers: “See the marketplace in old Algiers.”
“Fly the ocean in a silver plane.” He thought of Monica, the timid heiress he had met on the flight to London. He remembered how he had talked to her about the sun gleaming on the wing of the plane.
The rings had been a mistake, of course. He knew that now. They had been his private joke, like the connection between the names that he used on the special trips. He should have just kept his jokes to himself.
But Parki, who made the rings, was out of the way. Now Tiffany, who had seen him buying one of them, was gone. He was certain that, like Carolyn, she had recognized him at the end. Granted, Tiffany had seen him clearly and in his normal appearance in the souvenir shop, but even so it was unsettling that despite the shadowy light of the parking lot, she still had recognized him.
Well, these were feathers in the wind, and he could never recover them now, but surely they would blow away unnoticed. No matter how much he had tried to stay out of camera range, it was inevitable that he had been caught in the background of some photos taken on the cruise ships. Photos that people all over the world had no doubt framed, to remind themselves of their fabulous vacation . . . Photos that now went unnoticed on countless bedroom bureaus or study walls. He found the prospect both amusing and alarming.
After all, Carolyn Wells had been about to send a photo with him in the background to Susan Chandler. The thought of that narrow escape still unnerved him. He could imagine Susan opening that package, her eyes widening in surprise and horror when she recognized him.
At last he was at his garage. He drove down the ramp, stopped, got out and nodded to the attendant, who greeted him with the warmth reserved for longtime customers. It was almost one o’clock now, and he walked the short distance home, glad to feel the cool, bracing wind on his face.
A week from tonight, all this will be over, he promised himself. By then I will have begun the last leg of my journey. Susan Chandler will have been eliminated, and I’ll be starting my final cruise.
He knew that once that was accomplished, the terrible burning inside him would go away, and finally he would be free—free to become the person his mother had always believed he was capable of being.
58
Early Thursday morning, Pamela Hastings stopped at the hospital to visit Carolyn Wells, hoping to find her greatly improved. Instead she learned that her condition remained unchanged.
“She called for ‘Win’ again,” Gladys, the head nurse on the morning shift, told her. “Only it sounded to me more like, ‘Oh, Win,’ as though she were trying to talk to him.”
“Did her husband hear her when she spoke, Gladys?”
“No. He hasn’t been here since yesterday afternoon.”
“He hasn’t?” Pamela was shocked. “Do you know if he has phoned? Is he ill?”
“We haven’t heard from him.”
“But that’s crazy,” Pam said, almost to herself. “I’ll call him. May I look in on Carolyn?”
“Of course.”
It had been only two and a half days since the accident, but Pamela felt such familiarity with the intensive care unit that it seemed as though she must have made this journey many times. Yesterday there had been curtains drawn around the bed of an elderly man who had come in with a massive heart attack. Today that bed was empty. Pamela decided not to ask; she felt sure the man had died during the night.
The part of Carolyn’s face that was visible seemed even more swollen and bruised this morning than it had yesterday. It still seemed impossible to Pam that this woman, swathed in bandages and clips, and linked to IVs and tubes, was her pretty, vibrant friend.
Carolyn’s hands were lying on top of the coverlet. Pam entwined her own fingers with her friend’s, noting the absence of Carolyn’s simple gold wedding band. It made her think of Carolyn’s aversion to a lot of items of jewelry. A few good costume pins and earrings and her grandmother’s single strand of pearls were as much as she had ever seen her wear.
“Carolyn,” she said softly. “It’s Pam. Just wanted to see how you were doing. Everyone’s asking about you. As soon as you’re feeling better you’ll have lots of company. Vickie and Lynn and I are planning your recovery party. Champagne, caviar, smoked salmon. You name it. The ‘gang of four’ knows how to party. Right?”
Pam knew she was prattling, but they had told her that it was possible Carolyn could hear her. She didn’t want to talk about Justin. The thought occurred to Pam that if he had been the one who pushed Carolyn in front of that van, and she was aware of it, she might be terrified if in fact she was able to hear his voice, or even to sense his presence.
But I don’t know what I can do about it, Pam thought. If only she would recover consciousness, even for a minute. “I’ve got to go, Car,” she said, “but I’ll be back later. Love you.” She brushed Carolyn’s cheek with her lips; she could detect no response.
Wiping tears away with the back of her hand, she left the ICU. As she passed the waiting room she was taken aback to see Justin there, slouched in a chair. He was unshaven and wearing the same clothes he had had on yesterday afternoon. Their eyes met, and he came out into the corridor. “Did Carolyn talk to you?” he asked eagerly.
“No, she didn’t. Justin, what in God’s name is going on? Why didn’t you come back last night?”
He hesitated before answering. “Because although I’m not yet formally charged with anything, the police seem to think that I pushed Carolyn in front of that van.”
He returned Pamela’s stare. “You’re shocked, aren’t you, Pam? Shocked, but not surprised. That possibility has been running through your head, hasn’t it?” His face crumbled and he began to sob. “Doesn’t anyone understand how I feel about her?” Then he quickly shook his head and pointed to the ICU. “I’m not going back in there. If Carolyn was pushed and realized it, but didn’t see the person, even she might think I did it. But I’ve got just one question for all of you: If she is involved with this guy, this ‘Win’ she keeps calling for, then why the hell isn’t he here with her now?”
59
Chris Ryan had been an FBI agent for thirty years before he retired and set up his own small security firm on East Fifty-second Street. Now sixty-nine years old, with a full head of iron gray hair, a somewhat overweight frame, an affable expression, and merry blue eyes, he looked the perfect choice to play Santa Claus at his grandchildren’s grammar school.
H
is easygoing personality and sardonic humor made him universally popular, but those who had dealt with him professionally had considerable respect for his investigating skills.
He and Susan had become friends when the family of a murder victim hired him to try to solve the crime independently of the police. As an assistant district attorney, she was directly involved with the case, and information Chris uncovered and shared with her helped her obtain a confession.
Ryan had been flabbergasted when she told him of her decision to quit her job in the prosecutor’s office and go back to school. “You’re a natural,” he had told her. “A great trial lawyer. Why do you want to waste your time listening to a bunch of pampered whiners moan about their troubles?”
“Trust me. It’s a little more than that, Chris,” Susan had laughed.
They still saw each other for dinner every few months, so when Susan called him on Thursday morning, Chris was delighted. “Need a free meal?” he asked her genially. “There’s a new steak house down the block. Corner of Forty-ninth and Third. Prime beef. Makes you glad to be raising your cholesterol count. When can you do it?”
“New steak house on Forty-ninth and Third, you say? Seems to me that’s where Smith & Wollensky is located,” Susan said. “And I happen to know that it’s been there about seventy years and that some people think you own it.” She laughed. “Sure I’ll go, but first I have to ask a favor, Chris. I need a fast check on someone.”
“Who?”
“A lawyer, Douglas Layton. He’s with Hubert March and Associates. It’s a legal and investment advice kind of firm. Layton is also a director of the Clausen Family Trust.”
“Sounds successful. Are you thinking of marrying him?”
“No, I’m not.”
Ryan leaned back in his swivel chair as Susan filled him in on the background, and explained that Jane Clausen had expressed concern to her about Layton. Then he listened intently as Susan told him about the events since the radio program on Monday on which Regina Clausen’s disappearance was first discussed.