“Carter, please. Let me get this straight. You think that Robby did make the edits he promised the sponsor?”
“Tim, try to get this straight. Yes, I assume Robby made the edits. He told me he had. He asked me to look at them. I told him I would look at them. Then he wasn’t there when I went to his hotel. In other words, to repeat in order to make myself perfectly clear, he made the edits and he wasted my time.”
“Carter, I’m sorry. Look, I’m really sorry,” Tim Davis said, anxious to placate his client. “Joe Dean and Barbara Monroe have already been cast for running parts and it means the world to them to get that series on the air. From what we read in the papers, both Wilcox and Robby left just about everything in their rooms at that hotel. Could you, would you, I beg you, could you see if by any chance he left the scripts there? The last time I spoke to Robby, he bragged that his rewrites were going to make the scripts hilarious. He hardly ever used that word, and when he did, he meant it. If we can get our hands on them by overnight mail, we might be able to salvage the show. The sponsor wants a surefire comedy, and we all know Robby is capable of delivering it.”
Carter Stewart said nothing.
“Carter, I don’t like to overplay my hand, but twelve years ago when you were still knocking on doors, I took you on and got your first play produced. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s been great for me ever since, but right now I’m calling in that chip, not for myself but for Joe and Barbara. I gave you your break. Today I want you to give them the chance to have theirs.”
“Tim, you are so eloquent, you almost bring tears to my eyes,” Carter Stewart said, his tone now reflecting amusement. “Surely there’s something in all of this for you besides friendship for your old buddy Angus and paternal feelings for young talent. Someday you must tell me what it is. However, since you have totally ruined my creative concentration, I will go over to Robby’s hotel now and see if I can bludgeon my way into his room. You might prepare the way by phoning ahead, claiming you’re his agent, and explaining that Robby has instructed you to send me to pick up the scripts.”
“Carter, I don’t know how—”
“To thank me? I’m sure you don’t. Good-bye, Tim.”
Carter Stewart was wearing jeans and a sweater. His jacket and cap were on the chair where he had thrown them earlier. With an irritated sigh he got up, put on the jacket, and reached for the cap. Before he could leave the room, the phone rang. It was President Downes, inviting him to cocktails and dinner at his residence at Stonecroft.
The last thing on God’s earth I need, Carter thought. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, “but I do have dinner plans”—with myself, he added silently.
“Then perhaps just for cocktails,” President Downes suggested nervously. “I would consider it a great favor, Carter. You see, I will have a photographer here to take pictures of you and the other honorees who are still in town.”
The other honorees who are still in town—that’s a good way to put it, Carter thought sarcastically. “I’m afraid—” he began.
“Please, Carter. I won’t keep you long, but in light of the events of the past few days, I do need to have photos of the four truly distinguished recipients of our plaques of honor. I need them to replace the group pictures we took at the dinner. You can understand how very important that will be as we launch our building drive.”
There was no hint of mirth in Carter Stewart’s barklike laugh. “It seems to be my day to atone for the many sins of my life,” he said. “What time do you want me to be there?”
“Seven o’clock would be ideal.” President Downes’ voice was bubbling with gratitude.
“Very well.”
An hour later Carter Stewart was in Robby Brent’s room at the Glen-Ridge House. Both Justin Lewis, the manager, and Jerome Warren, the assistant manager, were in the room with him, and both were visibly distressed at what they considered to be the potential liability to the hotel for allowing Stewart to take anything from the room.
Stewart went over to the desk. A thick pile of scripts was stacked on top of it. Stewart flipped through some of the pages. “There,” he said. “As I explained to you, and as you can see, these are the scripts Mr. Brent edited, the ones that the production company needs immediately. I won’t take possession of them for even an instant.” He pointed to Justin Lewis. “You pick them up.” He pointed to Jerome Warren. “You hold the express envelope to drop them in. Then you can decide between you who addresses it. Now, are you satisfied?”
“Of course, sir,” Lewis said nervously. “I hope you understand our position and why we have to be so careful.”
Carter Stewart did not answer. He was staring at the notation Robby Brent had propped on the desk phone: “Made appointment to show scripts to Howie Tuesday, 3:00 P.M.”
The manager had seen it, too. “Mr. Stewart,” he said, “I understood that you were the one who had the appointment to go over these scripts with Mr. Brent.”
“That’s right.”
“Then may I ask who is Howie?”
“Mr. Brent was referring to me. It’s a joke.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Yes, I’m sure you do. Mr. Lewis, have you ever heard the saying that he who laughs last laughs best?”
“Yes, I have,” Justin Lewis said, bobbing his head in confirmation.
“Good.” Carter Stewart began to chuckle. “It applies in this situation. Now let me give you that address.”
72
After Sam left Rich Stevens’ office, he went down to the coffee shop in the courthouse and ordered coffee and a ham-and-Swiss on rye to go.
“You mean ‘with shoes,’ ” the new counterman said cheerfully. Noting Sam’s bewildered expression, he explained, “You don’t say ‘to go’ anymore. You say ‘with shoes.’ ”
I could have lived the rest of my life without knowing that, Sam thought when he got back to his office and was taking the sandwich out of the bag.
He placed his lunch on his desk and turned on his computer. An hour later, the sandwich eaten, the last sip of coffee forgotten in the container, he was putting together all the information he had gathered on Laura Wilcox.
I have to acknowledge that you can find a lot on the Internet, Sam thought, but you can also waste a lot of time in the process. He was looking for the kind of background that would not be found in Laura’s official biography, but so far he hadn’t uncovered anything that was helpful.
Because there was a depressingly long list of Laura Wilcox references, he began to open the ones that he thought might prove revealing. Laura’s first marriage, when she was twenty-four, had been to Dominic Rubirosa, a Hollywood plastic surgeon. “Laura is so beautiful that in our home my talent will be wasted,” Rubirosa was quoted as saying after the ceremony.
Sam grimaced. Isn’t that touching, especially since the marriage lasted exactly eleven months. I wonder what happened to Rubirosa? Maybe he’s still in touch with Laura. He decided to look him up and found an article showing a picture of him and his second wife at their wedding. “Monica is so beautiful that she will never have need of my professional services” was the quote attributed to Rubirosa that day.
“A little variation but not enough. What a jerk,” Sam said aloud as he clicked back to the spread on Laura’s first wedding.
There was a picture of her parents at the ceremony—William and Evelyn Wilcox of Palm Beach. On Monday, when Laura hadn’t shown up, Eddie Zarro had left a message on her parents’ phone, asking them to contact Sam. When there was no response, he’d had a Palm Beach policeman go to the house. A gossipy neighbor told the cop that they were on a cruise, but she wasn’t sure which one. She volunteered that they kept to themselves, “were kind of cranky old people,” and that she got the impression they were angry at some of the stuff that came out in Laura’s messy second divorce.
Cruise ships get the news, Sam thought. With all the media coverage about Laura these past few days, you’d think they’d make some inquiries. It’s odd that we still h
aven’t heard from them. I’ll see if the Palm Beach cops can’t dig deeper and find out what cruise they’re on. Of course, it’s just possible that Laura tipped them off not to worry about her.
He glanced up as Joy Lacko came into his office. “The boss just pulled me off the homicides,” she said. “He wants me to work with you. He said you’d explain.” From her expression it was clear to Sam that Joy was not happy about being reassigned.
Her annoyance faded as Sam filled her in on what he had learned about Jean Sheridan and Lily, her daughter. The fact that Lily’s adoptive father was a three-star general aroused her interest, as did the realization that it seemed impossible Laura Wilcox had sent the last fax to Jean Sheridan, the one that claimed that she had been behind all the threats. “And I still cannot believe that five women from the same lunch table at Stonecroft Academy died in the order in which they sat at the table,” he concluded. “If it isn’t one of those incredible strokes of fate, it would mean that Laura is destined to be the next one to die.”
“You mean you have two celebrities missing, which may or may not be a publicity stunt; you have a West Point cadet, the adopted daughter of a general, being threatened, and you have five women dead in the order they sat at the table at school. No wonder Rich thinks you need help,” Joy said matter-of-factly.
“I do need help,” Sam admitted. “Finding Laura Wilcox is top priority, both because she’s obviously in danger if those five deaths can be proven to be homicides, and because she may have known about Lily and told someone else about her.”
“What about Laura’s family? How about her close friends? Have you talked to her agent?” Lacko had her notebook out. Pen in hand, she waited for Sam’s answers.
“You’re asking the right questions,” Sam said. “On Monday I put in a call to her agency. It turns out Alison Kendall had handled Laura herself. It’s been a month since Kendall died, but no one at the agency has been assigned to take her over.”
“That’s unusual,” Joy said. “I’d think that would be one of the first things they’d do.”
“Apparently the reason is that she’s in debt to them; they’d been giving her advances. Alison had been willing to carry her, but the new chief executive isn’t. They promised to get back to us if they hear from her, but don’t hold your breath. I get the distinct feeling that the agency is not really very interested in Laura.”
“She hasn’t appeared in anything significant since Henderson County, and that’s been off the air for a couple of years. With all the twenty-year-old pop-tarts in the news, I guess she’s considered a senior citizen by Hollywood standards,” Joy observed dryly.
“I think you’re right,” Sam agreed. “We’re also trying to locate her parents to see if she’s talked to them. I’ve already spoken to the guy in California who investigated Alison Kendall’s death, and he says there’s no indication of foul play there. But I’m not satisfied. When I told Rich Stevens about the lunch table girls, he put in an order to get the files on all the deaths from the police who handled the investigations on each of them. The oldest goes back twenty years, so it may take the rest of the week to get everything. Then we’ll go through the files with a fine-tooth comb and see if anything jumps out at us.”
He waited while Joy jotted some notes in her book. “I want to go to the Website of the local papers where the so-called three accidents occurred and see if there were any questions raised in them at the time about the deaths. The first was in the car that went off the road into the Potomac; the second was the one who disappeared in the avalanche at Snowbird; the third was killed when the plane she was piloting crashed. Alison was the fourth. Finally, I want to see what was written about the supposed suicide of the girl from that lunch table.”
He anticipated Joy’s next question. “I have their names, the dates, and where they died listed here.” He pointed to a typewritten sheet on his desk. “You can copy it. Then I want to find what the Internet will spit out about Robby Brent that might be helpful. I warn you, Joy. Even with two of us working on this, it will take a lot of time to get it done.”
He got up and stretched. “When we’re finished with all that, I’m going to call the widow of a certain Dr. Connors and tell her that I need to pay her a visit. He was the doctor who delivered Jean Sheridan’s baby. Jean met Mrs. Connors the other day and had the distinct feeling that she was holding back some information, something that made her very nervous. Maybe I can get it out of her.”
“Sam, I’m good at getting stuff from the Internet, and I’m probably one hundred times faster than you at it. Let me take over doing the research, and you visit the doctor’s wife.”
“The doctor’s widow,” Sam said, and then he wondered why he had found it necessary to correct Joy. Maybe it was because Kate had been on his mind all day. I’m not Kate’s husband, he thought. I’m her widower. There’s a difference of day and night.
If Joy was annoyed at the correction, she did not show it as she picked up the list on the table. “I’ll see what I can find. Talk to you later.”
Dorothy Connors had been reluctant to meet with Jean, and when Sam phoned, she adamantly insisted that she had no information that would be helpful to him. Realizing that he had to be tough with her, he finally said, “Mrs. Connors, I have to be the judge of whether or not you can assist our investigation. I want no more than fifteen minutes of your time.”
Reluctantly, she agreed to let him come to see her that afternoon at three.
His phone rang as he was straightening the top of his desk. It was Tony Gomez, the police chief of Cornwall. They were old friends. “Sam, do you know this kid Jake Perkins?” Tony asked.
Do I? Sam thought as he rolled his eyes in the general direction of heaven. “I know him, Tony. What about it?”
“He’s been going around town taking pictures of homes, and I have a complaint from a couple of people who thought he might be setting them up for a robbery.”
“Forget it,” Sam said. “He’s harmless. He has delusions of being an investigative reporter.”
“It’s more than a delusion. He says he’s working on the Laura Wilcox disappearance as your special assistant. Can you verify that?”
“My special assistant? For God’s sake!” Sam began to laugh. “Throw him in jail,” he suggested. “And when you do, try to lose the key. I’ll talk to you, Tony.”
73
“Jean, I had a very good reason for inquiring at the desk about whether or not you had received a fax,” Mark said quietly as he joined her in the coffee shop.
“Then explain it to me, please,” she said, her tone equally subdued.
The waiter had placed her at the same table where they had sat for several hours the day before. But today the warmth and sense of developing intimacy that had characterized their earlier meeting was missing. Mark’s expression was troubled, and Jean knew that she was conveying to him the doubt and mistrust of him that had been building in her mind.
Lily—Meredith—is safe, and I am going to meet her soon, she thought. That was the essential, the alpha and omega of what mattered right now. But receiving the hairbrush in the mail last month, then the threatening faxes, and finding the rose on Reed’s grave—each and every incident had torn her apart with worry.
I should have had that last fax by mid-afternoon yesterday, Jean remembered as she looked across the table at Mark. She felt as if they were taking each other’s measure, seeing each other today in a different light. I thought I could trust you, Mark, she thought. Yesterday you were so sympathetic, so understanding when I told you about Lily. Were you only mocking me?
Like her, he was wearing a jogging suit. His was dark green and seemed to make his eyes seem more hazel than brown. The expression in them was troubled. “Jean, I’m a psychiatrist,” he said. “My job is to try to understand the workings of the mind. God knows you’ve been going through enough hell without my adding to it. Frankly, I was hoping you would continue to hear from whoever is sending those messages to you.�
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“Why?”
“Because it would be a sign that he or she wants to stay in touch. Now you’ve heard from Laura, and you’re satisfied that she wouldn’t hurt Lily. But the point is that she communicated with you. That’s what I was looking for yesterday. Yes, I was troubled when the desk clerk said that nothing had come in. I was worried about Lily’s safety.”
He looked at her, and his expression of concern changed to astonishment. “Jean, were you thinking that I’d been sending those faxes to you, that I knew the one you got late yesterday should have arrived earlier? Were you really entertaining that thought?”
Her silence was his answer.
Do I believe him? Jean wondered. I don’t know.
The waiter was standing at the table. “Just coffee,” Jean said.
“I seem to recall that on the phone you told me you haven’t eaten all day,” Mark said. “Back at Stonecroft you liked grilled cheese and tomato. You still like that?”
Jean nodded.
“Two grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches and two cups of coffee,” Mark ordered for both of them. He waited until the waiter was out of earshot before he spoke again. “You still haven’t said anything, Jeannie. I don’t know whether that means you believe me or you don’t believe me or you’re not sure. I admit I find that pretty damn disappointing but certainly understandable. Just answer me this: Are you still satisfied that Laura has been sending those faxes and that Lily is safe?”
I am not going to tell him about the call from Craig Michaelson, Jean thought. I can’t afford to trust anyone. “I am satisfied that Lily is safe,” she said cautiously.
Mark obviously realized that she was being evasive. “Poor Jean,” he said. “You don’t know who to trust, do you? I can’t say I blame you. But what are you going to do now? Just wait here indefinitely until Laura surfaces?”
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