“I would agree,” Charley said, quietly. “Zan, I don’t want this problem to come into the conversation with Detectives Collins and Dean today. Can you promise me that you won’t bring it up?”
“Why wouldn’t I bring it up?” Zan demanded. “Can’t you see? This is part of an ongoing scheme, and when we get to the bottom of it, we will know where Matthew is being kept.”
“Zan, trust me. We must thoroughly discuss this before we decide if and when we tell the detectives.” Charley Shore looked at his watch. “Zan, we’d better get going. I have a car waiting downstairs.”
“The delivery entrance is my usual mode of entrance and exit,”
Zan told him. “There’s always someone from the media hanging out around the front door.”
Charley Shore studied his new client. There was something different about her. When he delivered her to Alvirah last night, she’d been fragile in every way, pale, shivering, and broken in spirit.
Today, there was a resolute firmness in her. She was wearing light makeup that enhanced her beautiful hazel eyes and long lashes. The auburn hair that she had worn in a tight bun yesterday was flowing on her shoulders. Yesterday she had been wearing jeans and a fake-fur jacket. Today, her slender, fine-boned body was fashionably dressed in a dark gray pantsuit with a multicolored scarf draped around her neck.
Charley’s wife, Lynn, dressed well. If he ever needed confirmation of that fact, he received it from the American Express bill he got every month. He considered her mild extravagance a small price to pay for the many times he missed a dinner party or was late for an event at Lincoln Center because he was preparing for an important trial. But if he had to choose, he much preferred the image of Zan Moreland as a victim than the one the media would see if they took pictures of her today.
There was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He reached for his cell phone and directed his driver to meet them at the back of the building.
The day was still unseasonably cold, but the sun was shining and the drifting white clouds held no hint of rain. Charley glanced up, hoping that the brightness of the day might be a good omen, but he had serious doubts that would be the case.
When they were in the car, choosing his words carefully, he said, “Zan, this is terribly important. You have got to follow my lead on anything I tell you to do. If Collins or Dean asks you a question and I tell you not to answer, that’s the way it has to be. I understand that there will be times when you’re burning to try to put them straight, but you must not do that.”
Digging her nails into her palms, Zan tried not to show how frightened she was. She liked Charley Shore. He had been so kind, so fatherly at her bedside in the hospital yesterday, then in the cab when he escorted her to Alvirah’s apartment. She also knew that he didn’t doubt for one minute that she was the woman in the Central Park photos. And even though he tried not to show it, it was obvious he believed the letter to Wallington Fabrics with her signature was on the level as well.
One of her favorite books as a child had been Alice in Wonderland. Now the words “Off with her head, off with her head,” ran through her mind. But Charley does want to help me, and the least I can do is trust his advice. I don’t have any choice.
“Mommy … Mommy …” I heard Matthew’s voice this morning, she reminded herself. I must keep holding on to the certainty that he is alive and that I will find him. It’s the only way I can possibly keep going.
The cab was pulling up to the Central Park Precinct. There were people with television cameras and microphones at the entrance.
“Oh, hell,” Charley Shore muttered. “Somebody tipped them off that you’re expected here.”
Zan bit her lip. “I’ll be all right.”
“Zan, remember, do not answer their questions. If they shove a mike in your face, ignore it.”
The cab stopped and Zan followed Shore out of it. The reporters rushed to intercept them. Zan tried to close her eyes to the shouted questions, “Will you be making a statement, Ms. Moreland?” “Where is Matthew, Ms. Moreland?” “What did you do with him, Zan?” “Do you think he is still alive?”
As Charley Shore, his arm around her back, tried to propel her forward, she broke away from him and turned around to the cameras. “My son is alive,” she said, her voice steadily rising. “I believe I know who hates me enough to go to the level of kidnapping him. I tried to tell that to the police two years ago and they didn’t listen, but I am going to make them listen now.”
She turned and looked straight into Charley Shore’s eyes. “Sorry,” she said, “but it’s about time somebody starts to listen to me and look for the truth.”
42
Kevin Wilson’s present home was a furnished sublet in TriBeCa, the area below Greenwich Village that at one time had been the location of grimy factories and printing presses. It was a roomy loft with an open area that included a kitchen with a well-equipped bar, a living room, and a library. The furniture was starkly modern, but the den beyond it was equipped with a roomy leather sofa and matching chairs with hassocks. His bedroom was comparatively small, but that was because the owner had moved the wall to accommodate a fully equipped gym. An oversized corner room served as his office. The large windows in every room guaranteed sunshine from dawn till dark.
Kevin was happy to sublease the loft and recently had put in a bid to buy it. He already was making plans for the architectural changes he would make, like leaving the exercise room only big enough to hold a few pieces of equipment, enlarging the master bedroom and bath, and turning the corner room into two other bedrooms with a shared larger bath.
As for the furnishings, he already was marking which ones he would keep and which would end up at Goodwill. His mother told him he was getting the nesting instinct. “You’re the last one of your good friends to be single,” she regularly reminded him. “It’s about time you got over the casual dates and found a nice girl and settled down.” Lately she had begun to expand on that. “By now all my friends are bragging about their grandchildren,” she complained.
After having dinner with his mother, Kevin had gone straight home to bed. He slept soundly and in the morning awoke at his usual six A.M. Cereal, juice, and coffee with a quick glance at the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the Post was followed by an hour on the gym equipment. He watched the morning news, catching a segment of the Today show with some legal expert giving his opinion that the arrest of Alexandra Moreland was imminent.
My God, Kevin thought, is that really possible? He felt again the electrical reaction that he had experienced when their shoulders brushed. If those pictures in Central Park aren’t doctored, then there is something wrong with her, he regretfully acknowledged.
As he showered and dressed, he could not get Zan’s face out of his mind. Her eyes, so beautiful and expressive, had been so sad. It didn’t take a Rhodes scholar to see the pain in them. Louise had made the initial call to Moreland Interiors inviting Zan to bid on the job for decorating the apartments. Oddly enough, in all the times she had come and gone, he had not run into her until the other day when she delivered her sketches and samples. She had brought them in herself. Bartley Longe, on the other hand, had been accompanied by his assistant walking behind him carrying his designs.
That’s another reason I don’t like that guy, Kevin thought. Longe’s attitude was galling. “I look forward to working with you, Kevin,” as though it were a done deal.
It was ten minutes of eight, and he was ready to go. Because he was planning to be at 701 Carlton Place all day, he had dressed casually in a sport shirt, sweater, and khakis. He took a quick glance in the mirror. It was about time to get a haircut, and he wanted to be sure that his hair was brushed down sufficiently.
When I was a kid, I had such curly hair that Mom used to say that I should have been a girl. Zan Moreland has long, straight hair, the dark auburn of a Japanese maple. I didn’t know I was a poet, he thought, as he reached for a jacket and left the apartment.
I
f Louise Kirk did not come in at the stroke of nine, Kevin had to endure her usual indignant outburst about her belief that one day, all the traffic in New York will just stop dead. Today, though, she arrived fifteen minutes early.
Kevin had told her he surfed the channels during his workout.
“Kevin, did you by any chance catch the Today show when they were talking about Zan Moreland?” she asked eagerly.
I guess we’re friends again, he thought. I’m back to being on a first-name basis with her.
“Yes, I did,” he said.
Louise did not seem to notice his abrupt answer. “Everybody can see that unless those pictures were doctored, which I’d give ten years of my life to say that they’re not, the poor girl is deranged.”
“Louise, the ‘poor girl,’ as you describe Alexandra Moreland, is an extremely gifted interior designer and a very attractive human being. Could we withhold judgment and drop the subject?”
Kevin almost never played employer/employee with anyone in his office or on a job, but this time he did not try to hide his genuine anger.
When he was a child, at his mother’s insistence, he had taken piano lessons. It had become painfully obvious to all three — his mother, his teacher, and himself—that he had absolutely no talent as a musician, but that had not diminished his pleasure in playing. There was one song that he had learned to play very well, “The Minstrel Boy.”
Now a fragment of the words echoed through his head. “Tho’ allthe world betrays thee … One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard … One faithful harp shall praise thee!” Who did Zan Moreland have to praise or defend her? Kevin wondered.
Louise Kirk got the message. “Of course, Mr. Wilson,” she answered, her voice subdued.
“Louise, will you knock off the ‘Mr. Wilson’ stuff? We’re going to take a tour through this whole building. Bring your notebook. I’ve been seeing some sloppy work, and I have a number of people who are going to hear about it today.”
At ten o’clock, as Kevin, trailed by Louise, was pointing out uneven grouting in three of the shower stalls in apartments on the thirtieth floor, his business cell phone rang. Not wanting to be interrupted, he gave the phone to Louise to answer.
She listened, then said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Wilson is not available but I’ll give him your message.” She disconnected and handed him back the phone. “That was Bartley Longe,” she said. “He wants to invite you to have lunch with him today, or if that doesn’t work, to have dinner this evening or tomorrow night. What shall I tell him?”
“Tell him to forget it for now.” Longe’s probably gloating that he has the job, he thought, and then reluctantly concluded that maybe he did. The model apartments needed to be finished. The consortium that owned the building was already grumbling about the cost overruns and the inevitable delays in construction. They wanted the apartments decorated so that the sales department could take over. Certainly if Zan Moreland was arrested, she wouldn’t have any time to oversee the day-to-day progress. A decorator had to be on top of the job when any interior work was done.
At quarter of eleven, when he and Louise were finally back in his office, one of the workmen came in to see him. “Which apartment do you want us to stack the fabrics and all that other stuff in, sir?”
“What do you mean, where do I want to put what stuff?” Kevin asked.
The workman, a leathery-faced man in his sixties, seemed bewildered by the question.
“I mean all the stuff that decorator ordered for the model apartments. It’s starting to arrive.”
Louise answered for Kevin. “Tell whoever is delivering anything for those model apartments to take it right back to where it came from. Not one single order has been authorized by Mr. Wilson.”
Kevin did not believe what he heard himself saying. “Put any deliveries in the largest apartment.” He looked squarely at Louise. “We’ll sort this out,” he said, “but if we don’t accept whatever is coming, we’ll be part of the sensational stories about Zan Moreland. Those suppliers will go screaming to the media. I don’t want potential buyers to see this building in that kind of light.”
Not daring to show what she was thinking, Louise Kirk nodded. You’re attracted to that young lady, Kevin Wilson, she thought.
Fools rush in …
43
Matthew had begun to be really scared of Glory. It had started yesterday when she yelled at him for forgetting his truck and leaving it where that lady saw it. He had run back into the closet and then she locked him in and then after a while she said she was sorry, but he couldn’t stop crying. He wanted Mommy.
He kept trying to think about Mommy’s face but it was like seeing shadows. But he could remember her wrapping him inside her bathrobe, and he could even remember when her long hair would tickle his nose and he would brush it away. If she was with him now, he wouldn’t brush it away. He’d hold it so tight that he’d never let go even if it hurt her.
Later on, after Glory had put that smelly stuff in his hair, she gave him one of the muffins the lady brought. But afterward he felt sick and threw up. It wasn’t the muffin. He knew that. It was because some days when Mommy didn’t go to work, she used to bake muffins with him. It was like the soap that he kept under his pillow. The muffins made him think of Mommy.
After that Glory had tried to be nice. She read a story to him, but even though she told him he was really smart and read grown-up words better than any kid his age, he hadn’t felt any better. Then Glory told him to make up a story. He did make up one — that a little boy had lost his mother and knew he had to go out and find her.
Glory didn’t like that. He could tell that she was tired of taking care of him. He was tired, too, and went to sleep early.
After he had been asleep for a long time, he woke up when he heard a phone ring. Even though his door was only opened a little, he could hear some of what Glory was saying. He heard her talking about keeping this kid from his mother. Was he the kid she was talking about? Was it her fault he wasn’t with Mommy? She had told him that Mommy wanted him to hide because bad people were going to steal him.
Was she lying to him?
44
When he left the police station at ten A.M., Ted Carpenter pushed through the assembled media, his eyes resolutely fixed on his waiting car. But when he reached it, he stopped and spoke into the microphone that had been thrust in front of him. “For nearly two years, despite her emotionally unstable personality, I have tried to believe that my ex-wife, Alexandra Moreland, was in no way responsible for my son’s disappearance. Those pictures are absolute proof that I was wrong. I can only hope that she will now be forced to tell the truth and that by the grace of God Matthew is still alive.”
As questions began to be thrown at him, he shook his head. “Please, no more.” Tears glistening in his eyes, he got into the car and buried his face in his hands.
His driver, Larry Post, pulled away, then when they were clear of the police station, asked, “Will you be going home, Ted?”
“Yes, I will.” I can’t face going into the office, he thought. I can’t face talking to people. I can’t face trying to persuade Jaime-boy, that no-talent, egocentric, crude jackass whose so-called reality show is making him millions, that he should sign up with me. What in the hell was I doing even going to dinner with that blood-sucker Melissa and her hangers-on the night of Matthew’s birthday? My ex-wife is going to be grilled by the cops, and maybe she’ll say or do something that will break this wide open.
Larry glanced in the rearview mirror and took in the haggard, strained expression on Ted’s face. “Ted,” he said, “I know it’s none of my business, but you look as though you’re getting sick. Maybe you should see a doctor.”
“There’s no medicine available to solve my problems,” Ted said wearily. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His meeting with the detectives replayed itself, moment by moment, in his mind. The expression on both their faces had been inscrutable.
What’s the ma
tter with them? he asked himself. Why haven’t they arrested Zan? Is there something wrong with those photos? And if so, why wouldn’t they tell me? I’m the father. I have every right to know. Zan had always insisted that Bartley Longe hated her enough and was jealous enough of her success to do anything to hurt her. But did those cops honestly believe that a high-class interior designer would go to the extent of kidnapping and maybe even killing a child just to get back at a former employee? His head pounded at the notion.
Larry Post knew what was going through Ted Carpenter’s mind. Ted was worried sick. It’s really a crime that he ever met that More-land woman who dumped him after he was so good to her and then didn’t even want him when she started to get better, he thought, even though she was pregnant with his kid.
Larry’s weathered skin and balding hair made him seem older than his thirty-eight years. His tightly muscled body was the result of rigorous daily exercise. That had started when he was twenty and serving a fifteen-year sentence for killing a drug dealer who had been trying to cheat him. When he got out he couldn’t find a job anywhere in Milwaukee and phoned Ted, his closest friend in high school, begging for help. Ted had told him to come to New York. Now Ted called him his right-hand man. Larry cooked for him when Ted wanted a night home, chauffeured him everywhere, and did general maintenance in the building Ted had so foolishly bought three years ago.
Ted’s cell phone rang. As he had expected, it was Melissa. When he answered, she said, “I didn’t like the fact that you claim you were too sick to go to the Club with me the other night. I notice that you were able to be at the police station bright and early today.”
Enraged, Ted waited a long moment, then forced a reasonable tone into his voice. “Melissa, sweetheart, I told you that the police needed to talk with me. I put them off yesterday and anyhow I didn’t want you to catch any kind of bug I may be carrying. I still feel absolutely lousy and much as I want to meet Jaime-boy, I’m not up to it today. I’ve got to just get home and sit by the phone. My ex is meeting with the detectives in less than an hour. With any luck they’ll arrest her and maybe get her to talk. I’m sure you can understand how I’m feeling right now.”
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