All Around the Town

by Mary Higgins Clark

  Weekends were so hard. The house was so big, so quiet. She never wanted to be alone in it. She was glad Sarah had listed it with a real estate agency.

  The only time Laurie felt like herself was when she and Sarah played golf at the club and had brunch or dinner with friends. Those days made her think of playing golf with Gregg. She missed him in an aching, hurting way but was so afraid of him now, the fear blotted out all the love. She dreaded the thought that he’d be coming back to Clinton in January.

  25

  JUSTIN DONNELLY had already gathered from his meeting with Dr. Carpenter that Sarah Kenyon was a remarkably strong young woman, but he had not been prepared for the impact she had on him when he met her. That first evening in his office she’d sat across the desk from him, lovely and poised, only the pain in her eyes hinting at the grief and anxiety she was experiencing. Her quietly expensive dark blue tweed suit had made him remember that wearing subdued colors was once considered an appropriate gesture for someone in mourning.

  He’d been impressed that her immediate response to the possibility of her sister suffering from multiple personality disorder had been to gather information about it even before she saw him. He’d admired her intelligent understanding of Laurie’s psychological vulnerability.

  When he’d left Sarah at her car, it had been on the tip of Justin’s tongue to suggest dinner. Then he’d walked into Nicola’s and found her there. She’d looked pleased to see him, and it felt easy and natural to suggest that he join her and free up the last small table for the couple who came in just behind him.

  It was Sarah who had set the tone of the conversation. Smiling, she passed him the basket of rolls. “I imagine you had the same kind of lunch on the run I did,” she’d told him. “I’m starting to work on a murder case and I’ve been talking to witnesses all day.”

  She’d talked about her job as an assistant prosecutor, then skillfully turned the conversation to him. She knew he was Australian. Over osso buco Justin told her about his family and growing up on a sheep station. “My paternal great-grandfather came over from Britain in chains. Of course for generations that wasn’t mentioned. Now it’s a matter of pride to have an ancestor who was a guest of the Crown in the penal colony. My maternal grandmother was born in England, and the family moved to Australia when she was three months old. All her life Granny kept sighing how she missed England. She was there twice in eighty years. That’s the other kind of Aussie mind-set.”

  It was only as they sipped cappuccino that the talk turned to his decision to specialize in the treatment of multiple personality disorder patients.

  After that evening, Justin spoke to Dr. Carpenter and Sarah at least once a week. Dr. Carpenter reported that Laurie was increasingly uncooperative. “She’s dissembling,” he told Justin. “On the surface she agrees that she should not feel responsible for her parents’ death, but I don’t believe her. She talks about them as though it’s a safe subject. Tender memories only. When she becomes emotional she talks and cries like a small child. She continues to refuse to take the MMPI or Rorschach tests.”

  Sarah reported that she saw no indication of suicidal depression. “Laurie hates going to Dr. Carpenter on Saturdays,” she told him. “Says it’s a waste of money and it’s perfectly normal to be very sad when your parents die. She does brighten up when we go to the club. A couple of her midterm marks were pretty bad, so she told me to call her by eight o’clock if I want to talk to her in the evening. After that she wants to be able to study without interruption. I think she doesn’t want me checking up on her.”

  Dr. Justin Donnelly did not tell Sarah that both he and Dr. Carpenter sensed that in Laurie’s behavior they were witnessing a calm before the storm. Instead he continued to urge her to keep a careful watch on Laurie. Whenever he hung up he realized he was starting to look forward to Sarah’s calls in a highly unprofessional way.

  26

  IN THE OFFICE, the murder case Sarah was prosecuting was a particularly vicious one in which a twenty-seven-year-old woman, Maureen Mays, had been strangled by a nineteen-year-old youth who forced his way into her car in the parking lot of the railroad station.

  It was a welcome change to plunge into final preparation as the trial date drew near. With intense concentration, she pored over the statements of the witnesses who had seen the defendant lurking in the station. If only they had done something about it, Sarah thought. They all had the feeling that he was up to no good. She knew that the physical evidence of the victim’s desperate attempt to save herself from her attacker would make a strong impression on the jury.

  The trial began December second, no longer open and shut, as a hearty, likable sixty-year-old defense attorney, Conner Marcus, attempted to tear apart Sarah’s case. Under his skillful questioning, witnesses admitted that it had been dark in the parking area, that they did not know if the defendant had opened the door to the car or if Mays had opened it to allow him in.

  But when it was Sarah’s turn on redirect examination, all of the witnesses firmly declared that when James Parker came on to Maureen Mays in the train station, she had clearly rebuffed him.

  The combination of the viciousness of the crime and the showmanship of Marcus caused the media to descend in droves. Spectators’ benches filled. Courtroom junkies placed bets on the outcome.

  Sarah was in the rhythm that in the past five years had become second nature to her. She ate, drank and slept the matter of State v. James Parker. Laurie began going back to college on Saturdays after she saw Dr. Carpenter. “You’re busy and it’s good for me to get involved too,” she told Sarah.

  “How’s it going with Dr. Carpenter?”

  “I’m starting to blame the bus driver for the accident.”

  “That’s good news.” On her next weekly call to Dr. Donnelly, Sarah said, “I only wish I could believe her.”

  Thanksgiving was spent with cousins in Connecticut. It wasn’t as bad as Sarah had feared. At Christmas she and Laurie flew to Florida and went on a five-day Caribbean cruise. Swimming in the outside pool on the Lido deck made Christmas with all its attendant memories seem far away. Still Sarah found herself longing for the holiday court recess to be over so that she could get back to the trial.

  Laurie spent much of the cruise in the cabin, reading. She had signed on for Allan Grant’s class in Victorian women writers and wanted to do some advance study. She had brought along their mother’s old portable typewriter, supposedly to make notes. But Sarah knew she was also writing letters on it, letters she would rip from the machine and cover if Sarah entered the cabin. Had Laurie become interested in someone? Sarah wondered. Why be so secretive about it?

  She’s twenty-one, Sarah told herself sternly. Mind your own business.

  27

  ON CHRISTMAS EVE, Professor Allan Grant had an unpleasant scene with his wife, Karen. He’d forgotten to hide the key to his desk drawer and she’d found the letters. Karen demanded to know why he’d kept them from her, why he had not turned them over to the administration if, as he claimed, they were all ridiculous fabrications.

  Patiently and then not so patiently, he explained. “Karen, I saw no reason to upset you. As far as the administration is concerned, I can’t even be sure that a student is sending them, although I certainly suspect it. What is the dean going to do except just what you’re doing right now, wonder how much truth there is in them?”

  The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day the letters stopped coming. “More proof that they’re probably from a student,” he told Karen. “Now I wish I’d get one. A postmark would be a big help.”

  Karen wanted him to spend New Year’s Eve in New York. They’d been invited to a party at the Rainbow Room.

  “You know I hate big parties,” he told her. “The Larkins invited us to their place.” Walter Larkin was the Dean of Student Affairs.

  On New Year’s Eve it snowed heavily. Karen called from her office. “Darling, turn the radio on. The trains and buses are all delayed. What do you
think I should do?”

  Allan knew what he was supposed to answer. “Don’t get stuck in Penn Station or on the highway in a bus. Why don’t you stay in town?”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  He didn’t mind.

  Allan Grant had entered marriage with the definite idea that it was a lifetime commitment. His father had walked out on his mother when Allan was a baby and he’d vowed he’d never do that to any woman.

  Karen was obviously very happy with their arrangement. She liked living in New York during the week and spending weekends with him. At first it had worked pretty well. Allan Grant was used to living alone and enjoyed his own company. But now he was experiencing growing dissatisfaction. Karen was one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen. She wore clothes like a fashion model. Unlike him, she had a good business sense, which was why she handled all their finances. But her physical attraction for him had long since died. Her amusing hardheaded common sense had become predictable.

  What did they really have in common? Allan asked himself yet again as he dressed to go to the dean’s home. Then he put the nagging question aside. Tonight he’d just enjoy the evening with good friends. He knew everyone who would be there and they were all attractive, interesting people.

  Especially Vera West, the newest member of the faculty.

  28

  IN EARLY JANUARY, the campus of Clinton College had been a crystal palace. A heavy storm inspired students to create imaginative snow sculptures. The below-freezing temperature preserved them in pristine beauty, until the arrival of an unseasonably warm rain.

  Now the remaining snow clung to soggy brown grass. The remnants of the sculptures seemed grotesque in their half-melted state. The frivolous postexam euphoria was over and business as usual began in the classrooms.

  Laurie walked quickly across the campus to Professor Allan Grant’s office. Her hands were clenched in the pockets of the ski jacket she was wearing over jeans and a sweater. Her tawny blond hair was pulled back and clipped in a ponytail. In preparation for the conference she had started to dab on eyeshadow and lipliner, then scrubbed them off.

  Don’t try to kid yourself. You’re ugly.

  The loud thoughts were coming more and more often. Laurie quickened her steps as though somehow she might be able to outrun them. Laurie, everything is your fault. What happened when you were little is your fault.

  Laurie hoped she hadn’t done badly in the first test on Victorian authors. She’d always gotten good marks till this year, but now it was like being on a roller coaster. Sometimes she’d get an A or B+ on a paper. Other times the material was so unfamiliar that she knew she must not have been paying attention in class. Later she’d find notes she didn’t remember taking.

  Then she saw him. Gregg. He was walking across the driveway between two dormitories. When he’d gotten back from England last week he’d called her. She’d shouted at him to leave her alone and slammed down the phone.

  He hadn’t spotted her yet. She ran the remaining distance to the building.

  Mercifully the corridor was empty. She leaned her head against the wall for an instant, grateful for the coolness.

  ’Fraidy cat.

  I’m not a ’fraidy cat, she thought defiantly. Straightening her shoulders, she managed a casual smile for the student emerging from Allan Grant’s office.

  She knocked on the partly open door. A pleasant warmth and a sense of brightness permeated her at his welcoming, “Come on in, Laurie.” He was always so kind to her.

  Grant’s tiny office was painted a sunny yellow. Crammed bookshelves lined the wall to the right of the window. A long table held reference books and student papers. The top of his desk was tidy, holding only a phone, a plant and a fishbowl in which a solitary goldfish swam aimlessly.

  Grant motioned toward the chair opposite his desk. “Sit down, Laurie.” He was wearing a dark blue sweater over a white turtleneck shirt. Laurie had the fleeting thought that the effect was almost clerical.

  He was holding her last paper in his hand, the one she’d written on Emily Dickinson. “You didn’t like it?” she asked apprehensively.

  “I thought it was terrific. It’s just I don’t see why you changed your mind about old Em.”

  He liked it. Laurie smiled in relief. But what did he mean about changing her mind?

  “Last term when you wrote about Emily Dickinson, you made a strong case for her life as a recluse, saying that her genius could only be fully expressed by removing herself from contact with the many. Now your thesis is that she was a neurotic filled with fear, that her poetry would have reached greater heights if she hadn’t suppressed her emotions. You conclude, ‘A lusty affair with her mentor and idol, Charles Wadsworth, would have done her a lot of good.’ ”

  Grant smiled. “I’ve sometimes wondered the same thing, but what made you change your mind?”

  What indeed? Laurie found an answer. “Maybe my mind works like yours. Maybe I started to wonder what would have happened if she had found a physical outlet for her emotions instead of being afraid of them.”

  Grant nodded. “Okay. These couple of sentences in the margin . . . You wrote them?”

  It didn’t even look like her writing, but the blue cover had her name on it. She nodded.

  There was something about Professor Grant that was different. The expression on his face was thoughtful, even troubled. Was he just trying to be nice to her? Maybe the paper was lousy after all.

  The goldfish was swimming slowly, indifferently. “What happened to the others?” she asked.

  “Some joker overfed them. They all died. Laurie, there is something I want to talk to you about. . .”

  “I’d rather die from overeating than being smashed in a car, wouldn’t you? At least you don’t bleed. Oh, I’m sorry. What did you want to talk about?”

  Allan Grant shook his head. “Nothing that won’t keep. It isn’t getting much better, is it?”

  She knew what he meant.

  “Sometimes I can honestly agree with the doctor that if there was any fault, it was with the bus with faulty brakes that was going much too fast. Other times, no.”

  The loud voice in her head shouted: You robbed your mother and father of the rest of their lives just as you robbed them of two years when you waved at that funeral procession.

  She didn’t want to cry in front of Professor Grant. He’d been so nice, but people got sick of always having to bolster you up. She stood up. “I . . . I have to go. Is there anything else?”

  With troubled eyes, Allan Grant watched Laurie leave. It was too soon to be sure, but the term paper he was holding had given him the first solid clue as to the identity of the mysterious letter writer who signed herself “Leona.”

  There was a sensual theme in the paper that was totally unlike Laurie’s usual style but similar to the tone of the letters. It seemed to him that he recognized some unusually extravagant phrases as well. That wasn’t proof, but at least it gave him a place to start looking.

  Laurie Kenyon was the last person he’d have dreamt could be the writer of those letters. Her attitude toward him had been consistently that of a respectful student toward a teacher whom she admired and liked.

  As Grant reached for his jacket, he decided he would say nothing to either Karen or the administration about his suspicions. Some of those letters were downright salacious. It would be embarrassing for any innocent person to be questioned about them, particularly a kid living through the kind of tragedy Laurie was. He turned out the light and started home.

  * * *

  From behind a row of evergreens, Leona watched him go, her nails digging into her palms.

  Last night she had hidden outside his house again. As usual he’d left the draperies open, and she’d watched him for three hours. He’d heated a pizza around nine and brought it and a beer to his den. He’d stretched out in that old leather chair, kicked off his shoes and rested his feet on the ottoman.

  He was reading a biography of Geo
rge Bernard Shaw. It was so endearing the way Allan would run his hand through his hair unconsciously. He did it in class occasionally as well. When he finished the beer he looked at the empty glass, shrugged, then went into the kitchen and came back with a fresh one.

  At eleven he watched the news then turned out the light and left the den. She knew he was going to bed. He always left the window open, but the bedroom draperies were drawn. Most nights she simply went away after he turned out the light, but one night she’d pulled at the handle of the sliding glass door and discovered that the lock didn’t catch. Now some nights she went inside and curled up in his chair and pretended that in a minute he’d call her. “Hey, darling, come to bed. I’m lonesome.”

  Once or twice she’d waited till she was sure he was asleep and tiptoed in to look at him. Last night she was cold and very tired and went home after he turned out the den light.

  * * *

  Cold and very tired.

  Cold.

  Laurie rubbed her hands together. It had gotten so dark all of a sudden. She hadn’t noticed how dark it was when she left Professor Grant’s office a minute ago.

  29

  “RIDGEWOOD IS ONE of the finest towns in New Jersey,” Betsy Lyons explained to the quietly dressed woman who was going over pictures of real estate properties with her. “Of course it is in the upscale price bracket, but even so, with market conditions as they are, there are some excellent buys around.”

  Opal nodded thoughtfully. It was the third time she had visited Lyons Realty. Her story was that her husband was being transferred to New York and she was doing preliminary househunting in New Jersey, Connecticut and Westchester.

  “Let her get to trust you,” Bic had instructed. “All these real estate agents are taught to keep an eye on prospective buyers so they don’t get light-fingered when they’re being shown around houses. Right off, tell whoever sees you that you’re looking in different locations, then, after a visit or two, that you like New Jersey best. First time you go in, say you didn’t want to go as high as Ridgewood prices. Then drop hints that you think it’s a nice town and you really could afford it. Finally get her to show you Lee’s house on one of the Fridays we come out. Distract her and then . . .”