Maybe Baker’s memory got jogged a little more, Shea thought, hence the request for another meeting. As one of the handful of mourners at Hilda Johnson’s funeral service a few hours earlier, he was itching to see that Justin Wells was brought to justice. What stranger, he reasoned, would Hilda have admitted to her apartment at night, unless it were someone who identified himself as the husband of the woman she had seen pushed in front of the van?
Wells was guilty—Shea was sure of it. And it infuriated him to think that Hilda’s murderer had just walked out of this room, still a free man.
77
It would have been too difficult and caused too much comment to break the morning’s appointments, especially when he was going away in a few days’ time, so he was able to catch only a little of Susan’s radio program. As he had expected, the listeners were still anxious to talk about Tiffany’s death:
“Dr. Susan, my friend and I were saying how we hoped she’d get back together with Matt. You could tell she really liked him . . .”
“Dr. Susan, do you think Matt might have done this to her? I mean maybe he met her and they had a fight or something? . . .”
“Dr. Susan, I live in Yonkers and the guy they’re questioning about Tiffany’s murder is really bad. He served time for manslaughter. We all think he killed her . . .”
“Dr. Susan, was Tiffany wearing the turquoise ring when she was murdered?”
This last was an interesting question, and one that disturbed him. Had she been wearing the ring? He didn’t think so, but he wished now that he had thought to look for it.
Susan had responded to the questions very much as he had expected: that from what she understood, Matt was absolutely not a suspect; that she hadn’t heard any mention of the ring in the media; that one always must remember there is a presumption of innocence, even in cases where a suspect has been convicted of a previous crime.
He knew what that meant. Susan wasn’t buying the police theory as to Tiffany’s murderer. She was too smart not to connect Tiffany’s death to the others. The mind of a prosecutor is never at rest, he thought grimly.
And neither is mine, he mused with smug satisfaction. He wasn’t worried. He had worked out the time frame for eliminating Susan. All that remained was to plan the details.
In the hidden compartment in his briefcase, he was carrying the turquoise rings he had taken from Parki’s shop—three of them, plus the one Carolyn Wells had intended to mail to Susan. He only needed one, of course. The others he would toss in the ocean after he was finished with the final lonely lady. He would love to put one on Susan Chandler’s finger once he had killed her, but then that would raise too many questions. No, he couldn’t risk leaving it on her hand, but maybe for just a minute he would slip it on her finger, to give himself the satisfaction of knowing that she, like the others, belonged to him.
78
“Until Monday, this is Dr. Susan Chandler saying good-bye.”
The red on-air signal over the studio door flashed off as Susan looked up at the control room where Jed was taking off his headset. “How did it go?” she asked anxiously.
“Fine. A lot of listener participation. You’re always good—you know that—but I thought you were especially good today. Did anybody say anything in particular that worried you?”
Susan collected her notes. “No. I guess I just feel terribly distracted.”
Jed’s voice softened. “It’s been a tough couple of days. I know that. But things are looking up. Hey! You got to the studio today with twenty minutes to spare, and now it’s the weekend!”
Susan made a face at him. “Cute,” she said as she pushed back her chair and stood up. “See you Monday.”
Janet handed Susan the faxes from Yonkers as soon as she walked through the door. “Detective Sanchez phoned to see if they came through clearly,” she said. “He’s funny. He said to keep him posted on anything you learn, or else next time he won’t clean the lasagna off the evidence before photographing it.”
“I’ll do that. Thanks, Janet. Oh, and order the usual gourmet delight for me, please, and tell them to rush it. Mrs. Price will be here in twenty minutes.”
“I already ordered your lunch, Doctor,” she said, an implied reproach in her voice.
I seem to be stepping on everyone’s toes today, Susan thought as she walked into her office. First Binky, now Janet. Who’s next? she wondered. She sat at her desk and laid out the faxes of the enlarged photos and compared them with the ring Jane Clausen had given her.
The photographer had clearly made an extra effort, even managing to get some excellent shots of the inscription on the inside of the band. As Susan had expected, there were remarkable similarities between the ring in the photographs and the ring that had been Regina’s.
I’m right, she thought. This is all about the rings. The one Mrs. Clausen gave me simply has to have been made by the same guy who made Tiffany’s, which means it almost certainly was bought at the souvenir shop in the Village that Tiffany told me about. I’d stake my life that Tiffany was murdered because someone heard her when she talked to me on air about a man she had seen buying one of these rings, and he was afraid she could identify him.
Janet came into Susan’s office, the bag from the luncheonette in hand. She placed it on Susan’s desk; then when Susan put down the turquoise ring, Janet picked it up and examined it. “What a nice sentiment,” she said, squinting as she read the inscription. “My mother loves the old songs, and ‘You Belong to Me’ is one of her favorites.”
In a voice that was low and only slightly off key, she began to sing: “ ‘See the pyramids along the Nile / Watch the sunrise on a tropic isle.”’ She paused and hummed a few bars . . . “Then there’s something about a ‘marketplace in old Algiers,’ and then something else about ‘photographs and souvenirs.’ I don’t remember how that part goes, but it’s really a nice song.”
“Yes, it is,” Susan agreed absentmindedly. Almost like an alarm she couldn’t shut off, the words of the song were sounding in her head. What is it about them? she wondered. She took the ring back and tucked it in her wallet.
It was ten minutes of one. She should be preparing for her next session, but she didn’t want to wait until two to try to reach Matt Bauer, Tiffany’s former boyfriend and the one other person who might be able to tell her the location of the souvenir shop in the Village at which he had bought the ring.
Bauer’s mother answered the phone. “Dr. Chandler, my son is at work. We have already spoken to the police. I am very, very sorry about Tiffany’s death, but it has nothing to do with my son, who dated her only a few times. She simply wasn’t his type. My friends told me about Tiffany’s calls to you, and I have to tell you they were very embarrassing for Matthew. I phoned Tiffany yesterday and informed her of his impending marriage. Wednesday night we had dinner with his fiancée’s family—lovely, refined people. I can’t imagine what they would think if Matthew’s name is brought up publicly in this case. Why, I—”
Susan interrupted the flow of words. “Mrs. Bauer, the best way to be sure Matthew’s name stays out of this is to have him speak to me off the record. Now where can I reach him?”
Reluctantly Matt’s mother told her that he worked for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in midtown Manhattan and gave her his office number. Susan called, but learned that Bauer was out and not expected back in his office until three. She left a message that it was urgent for him to call her.
While she was spooning soup from the cardboard container, Pete Sanchez phoned. “Susan, just to keep you abreast of what’s going on, you should know that things are breaking. This guy not only announced that he was going back to The Grotto to take care of Tiffany, but now he admits that he did go to the restaurant’s parking lot. He claims he got scared off, though, because some guy was hanging out there.”
“Maybe he was telling the truth,” Susan suggested.
“Come on, Susan. You were in the D.A.’s office. The bad guys always have the same line: ‘I swear, you
r honor. The guy who did it went that-a-way!’ Susan, what else is new when you’re dealing with these creeps?”
79
By late Friday afternoon, Chris Ryan had managed to find both concrete facts and abundant rumors about Douglas Layton.
The facts were that he was a compulsive gambler who was seminotorious in Atlantic City, and it was widely known that on at least half a dozen occasions he had lost a great deal of money. And that explains why he doesn’t have a nickel to his name, Chris thought.
One rumor was that Layton had been barred from ever traveling on several of the cruise lines because of his suspected cheating at their gaming tables. Another rumor was that he had been asked to resign from jobs at two investment firms because of complaints that he frequently displayed a condescending attitude toward female employees.
At ten of five on Friday afternoon Chris Ryan was digesting the information he had gathered when he received a phone call from Susan. “I’m getting some interesting stuff on Layton,” he told her. “Nothing necessarily incriminating, but interesting.”
“I’m anxious to hear it,” Susan told him, “but first I have a question for you. Is there any way to get a list of all the porn shops in Greenwich Village?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Chris said. “Nobody in that business takes out an ad in the Yellow Pages.”
“That’s what I’m starting to realize,” Susan replied. “How about souvenir shops?”
“Look at every listing from ‘Antiques’ to ‘Junk.’ ”
Susan laughed. “Some help you are. Now tell me what you’ve found out about Douglas Layton.”
80
It had been an exciting week for Oliver Baker. His brief appearance on television on Monday afternoon had changed his life. Suddenly he had become a kind of celebrity. His produce customers all wanted to talk to him about the accident. The woman who worked at the neighborhood dry cleaners made a fuss over him like he was a star. He even got a nod from the stone-faced Wall Street executive who never before had given him the time of day.
At home, Oliver was a hero to Betty and the girls. Even Betty’s sister, who always groaned and grimaced when he gave an opinion on anything, called to get his personal account of what it was like to give testimony at the police station. Of course, she wasn’t content to leave it at that. Instead, she went on about the coincidence of how another witness, the old woman who claimed it wasn’t an accident, had been murdered. And she ended by cautioning him, “You just be careful that something like that doesn’t happen to you.” He wasn’t worried, of course, but it did spook him a little.
Oliver was, in fact, enjoying his contact with the police, and he especially liked Captain Shea. He was the kind of authority figure who made Oliver feel comfortable and secure. He had had a particularly good feeling, sitting in the captain’s office, just the two of them, with Shea hanging on his every word.
On Friday, page six of the Post reported that architect Justin Wells was being questioned about his wife’s accident, and the article included a picture of him leaving the hospital.
All morning Oliver kept the Post on his desk at work, with the paper open to the article. Then shortly before noon, he had phoned Captain Shea to say that he would like to see him after work.
That was why at five-thirty Friday afternoon, Oliver Baker was back in Captain Shea’s office, the picture from the newspaper in hand. Savoring his return to this seat of power, he related why he had requested another interview. “Captain, the more I look at this man’s picture, the more positive I am that he was the one I saw take that envelope as—or so I thought at the time—he tried to steady the woman who fell in front of the van.”
Oliver smiled into Shea’s understanding eyes. “Captain, maybe I was more in shock than I realized,” he said. “Do you think that’s why I just blotted out his face at first?”
81
Matt Bauer liked his job with Met Life. He intended to sit in one of the executive offices someday, and with that goal in mind he worked diligently to sell insurance programs to small businesses—his area of expertise. At twenty-five his game plan was already beginning to show results. He had been tapped for the management training course, and now he was engaged to his boss’s niece, Debbie, who was the sort of woman who would be the perfect partner to accompany him on his path to the top. What made it even better was the fact that he genuinely loved her.
That was why he was visibly distressed when he met Susan Chandler at five-thirty in a coffee shop at Grand Central Station.
Susan immediately liked the earnest-faced, clean-cut young man, and she understood his concern. She believed him when he said he was very, very sorry about Tiffany, and she was sympathetic when he explained why he did not want to get involved in a murder investigation.
“Dr. Chandler,” he said, “I only went out with Tiffany a couple of times. Literally three times, I believe. The first time came about when I was having dinner one night at The Grotto; I asked her to go out, and she invited me to be her date at a friend’s wedding.”
“You didn’t want to go?” Susan guessed.
“Not really. Tiffany was fun, but I could tell right away there wasn’t any spark between us, if you know what I mean, and I could tell right away that what she wanted was a serious relationship, not an occasional date.”
Remembering Tiffany’s eager, hopeful voice, Susan nodded in comprehension.
The waitress poured their coffee, and Matt Bauer took a sip before continuing. “At her friend’s wedding, I did happen to mention a film I wanted to see. It had won a big award at the Cannes Film Festival and had been written up in the papers. Tiffany said she was dying to see it too.”
“So, of course, you invited her?”
Matt nodded. “Yes. It was playing at a little theater down in the Village. I could tell Tiffany hated it, although she pretended she thought it was good. We went to lunch before the show. I asked her if she liked sushi, and she told me she loved it. Dr. Chandler, she almost turned green when the food arrived. She had asked me to order for her, and I assumed she knew that sushi was raw fish. Afterwards we just kind of walked around a little, looking in shop windows. I don’t know one end of the Village from the other, and neither did she.”
“That was when you went into the souvenir shop?” Susan asked. Let him remember where it was, she prayed.
“Yes. Actually, Tiffany was the one who stopped when something in the window caught her eye. She said she was having so much fun that she wanted a souvenir of our date, so we went inside.”
“Was that what you wanted to do?” Susan asked.
He shrugged. “Not really.”
“What do you remember about the shop, Matt?” Susan paused. “Or do you prefer Matthew?”
He smiled. “To my mother, it’s Matthew. To the rest of the world, it’s Matt.”
“All right, Matt, what do you remember about the shop?”
He thought for a minute. “It was stuffed with cheap souvenirs, but it was still neat, if you know what I mean. The owner—or clerk, whichever he was—was from India, and the fun thing was that in addition to the usual Statues of Liberty, and tee shirts and I Love New York buttons, he had an array of brass monkeys and elephants and Taj Mahals and Hindu gods—that sort of thing.”
Susan opened her purse and took out the turquoise ring Regina Clausen’s mother had given her. Holding it in the palm of her hand, she showed it to Matt Bauer. “Do you recognize this?”
He studied the ring carefully but did not take it. “Does it say ‘You belong to me’ on the inside of the band?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Then I’d say from what I remember that it’s the ring I gave Tiffany, or one just like it.”
And just like Carolyn’s I’ll bet, Susan thought. She said, “From what Tiffany told me, the reason you bought the ring was that some man came in and purchased one, and the clerk told you that the same man already had bought several others. Do you remember that?”
“I r
emember it, but I never actually saw that guy,” Matt said. “As I remember the shop, it was small to begin with, and there was a painted wooden screen that blocked my view of the counter. Also, as I recall, I was reading about one of the figurines—it had the head of an elephant and the body of a man and it was supposed to be the god of wisdom, prosperity, and happiness, according to the legend on the card. I thought it would make a nice souvenir, but when I turned to show it to Tiffany, she was talking to the clerk at the counter. She was holding the turquoise ring, and he was telling her about how the customer who just left had bought several of them.
“I showed her the elephant god, but Tiffany wasn’t interested—the ring was the souvenir she wanted.”
Bauer smiled. “She was funny. When I showed her the elephant god and read her the legend, she said that it looked like too many of her customers at The Grotto to convince her it was going to bring her prosperity, so I put it back and bought the ring.”
Matt’s smile vanished, and he shook his head. “It was only ten bucks, but you’d have thought I’d bought her an engagement ring. Later, all the way to the subway, she kept holding my hand and singing, ‘You belong to me.’ ”
“How often did you see her after that?”
“Only once. She kept calling my house, and if she got the message tape, she’d sing a few bars of that song. Finally I took her out for a drink and told her that she was making too much of the ring, and that while our couple of dates had been fun, I thought we should leave it at that.”
He finished his coffee and looked at his watch. “Dr. Chandler, I’m sorry, but I honestly have to leave in just a few minutes. I’m meeting my fiancée, Debbie, at six-thirty.” He signaled for the check.
“This is on me,” Susan said. She purposely had not asked about the location of the shop. She still held a faint hope that Matt might have caught a glimpse of the customer who had bought the ring, and that as he talked about what happened in the shop, something about the location would emerge from his subconscious.