Stuart looked longingly at the brass box. “Forgive me for being so presumptuous, Mrs. Hansen,” he said, bowing slightly, “but it would be my honor to take care of Constance’s remains until they can be transferred to the memorial garden.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Whitaker, but we haven’t even settled on the fact that Constance remains will be transferred to the garden.”
“Oh, Mrs. Hansen, of course that is your decision entirely,” said Stuart, flustered. “I just thought that Constance’s family would like the idea of her having a peaceful and fitting resting place. Since Constance was so young, I guess I just assumed that there would not already be plans in place for where she would spend eternity.”
At that, two young boys approached and began whining that they wanted to go home. Faith picked up the brass box.
“Mr. Whitaker, it’s clear you cared deeply about Constance. Let’s talk about the future of these ashes. Do you have a card?”
Stuart dug a business card out of his wallet.
“I’ll call you,” said Faith.
Stuart watched Faith walk away, carrying what was left of the woman he loved tucked under her arm.
CHAPTER 63
The rain had let up, but as the mourners filed out of the funeral home, they were barraged instead by a crowd of camera crews and reporters shouting their names.
Before getting into a waiting car, Eliza Blake stopped to give the obligatory comment on what a fine newswoman Constance Young was and how she would be missed. Linus Nazareth, always eager for his own face to appear on the screen, said something about the rich and wonderful years at KEY to America with Constance as host. Lauren Adams spoke about how she had such big shoes to fill and the obligation she felt to the country’s viewers to do her best to follow in Constance’s footsteps.
“Who are you?” called one reporter to the young, balding man who came out of the funeral home.
“Nobody important, pal. Just her assistant,” said Boyd, reaching into the pocket of his trench coat. As he pulled out his handkerchief to blow his nose, something fell to the sidewalk.
The reporter glanced down to see what had fallen.
“Jesus, is that what I think it is?” he asked. Without waiting for a reply from the stunned man staring down at the sidewalk, the reporter yelled for his cameraman to get a close-up of the ivory unicorn with the emerald eye lying on the wet pavement.
The word spread like wildfire among the journalists on the sidewalk in front of the funeral home. Reporters, producers, and camera crews jostled and pushed one another in an effort to get closer to Boyd Irons. Boyd picked up the ivory unicorn from the pavement and held it in his open palm, staring at it with astonishment.
“That looks like the King Arthur unicorn,” said a reporter, thrusting a microphone at Boyd. “What are you doing with it?”
“That’s the ivory unicorn that police think Constance Young could have been killed for!” yelled another reporter. “Where did you get it?”
Unable to speak, Boyd shook his head.
“Hold up that unicorn so we can get a picture of it!” called a cameraman.
Stunned, Boyd was about to lift up the unicorn to allow it to be photographed when he felt a strong hand pull his arm down.
“Come on, Boyd,” said B.J. D’Elia. “Let’s get out of here.” B.J. guided Boyd forward and pushed slowly through the noisy mob. As they finally reached the KEY News crew car, two of the men Boyd had noticed at the funeral service approached, flashed their police identification, and read Boyd Irons his rights as they fastened cuffs around his wrists.
CHAPTER 64
What luck! It couldn’t have worked out any better than this. Now there’d be no reason for an anonymous call to the police with the information that Boyd Irons had the stolen unicorn. Boyd Irons had tipped off the police himself by dropping the unicorn for all the world to see. Perfection.
Still, there was the unsettling matter of Constance Young’s housekeeper, looking up from the floor, the color drained from her face, promising that she wouldn’t tell anyone what she’d seen. Thinking back to the night of Constance’s electrocution, recalling the noise that had come from up on the deck, the killer felt with a fatal certainty that the housekeeper had been watching from some unseen perch. The article in the newspaper had detailed that Ursula Bales’s sister had been killed after cooperating with authorities on a drug case. That would explain why Ursula herself had not gone to the police after watching Constance’s final moments.
Ursula Bales knew too much. Ursula Bales had the potential to ruin everything. Ursula Bales was going to have to be taken care of, quickly, before she changed her mind and went to the police after all.
CHAPTER 65
The windshield wipers flipped from side to side as Eliza stared straight ahead, girding herself for what was coming. Mack was here, sitting beside her in the backseat, but soon he would be flying over the Atlantic Ocean to London.
“What time do you have to be at the airport?” she asked.
“Not till later this afternoon,” said Mack. “I have plenty of time to stop and get lunch.”
“Well, I wish I did,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to the office. The service took up the morning, so Paige had to schedule me pretty tightly this afternoon.”
“A cup of coffee, then?” asked Mack.
“Okay,” said Eliza. “A cup of coffee.”
They had the driver drop them off at a coffee shop a few blocks from the Broadcast Center. As Eliza walked down the aisle to a booth at the rear, she felt a few customers look up at her. She knew they recognized her. She deliberately took a seat with her back to the room.
After the waitress had filled their cups and walked away, Mack reached across the table and took Eliza’s hands. “Last night was great,” he said. “I loved being with you, Eliza. I still can’t really believe that we’re together again.”
“I don’t want you to leave,” said Eliza, her eyes glistening.
“I don’t want to go, believe me.” He gently squeezed her hands tighter.
Eliza looked into his eyes and read intensity and sincerity in them. “When will you be back?” she asked.
“That depends on you, Eliza,” Mack answered. “Before yesterday I wasn’t planning to come home again for another six months, but now I’d be happy to fly to New York every weekend.”
Eliza laughed. “You know that’s not going to happen,” she said.
“Who says?”
“It’s not practical, Mack.”
“Screw practical.”
CHAPTER 66
Eliza had been back in her office at the Broadcast Center for only a short time when she got a call from the assignment desk notifying her that Boyd Irons had been taken into police custody. She immediately phoned the KEY News attorney and asked him to look into the matter with the police.
“See what’s going on, will you please, Andrew?” she asked. “Boyd Irons has always seemed to me to be a decent young guy. Maybe he has his own attorney already, but I tend to doubt it.”
As Eliza replaced the phone in the cradle, she looked up to see Annabelle and B.J. standing in the office doorway. Their facial expressions were grim. Eliza beckoned to them to come in and sit down.
“What do you know about Boyd?” she asked. B.J. spoke first. “It was the damnedest thing,” he said, shaking his head. “One minute I’m recording you and all the other big shots coming out the funeral home, and then all of a sudden there was this surge crowding around Boyd.”
“So you, of course, crowded around, too,” said Annabelle. B.J. nodded. “And as I got closer, I heard the guys in the crowd saying that Boyd had the unicorn. The ivory unicorn everybody’s been looking for.”
“Did he have it?” asked Eliza. “Did you see it?”
“I saw it, but just for a second,” answered B.J. “The poor guy looked like a deer caught in the headlights. He seemed dumbstruck. I tried to steer him to the car before he could show off the unicorn to every freakin’
cameraman standing there.”
“Then what happened?” asked Eliza.
“Just as we were about to get into the car, a couple of plainclothes cops strong-armed him away.” B.J. slumped down in his chair, stretched out his legs, and groaned. “I was able to catch a shot of the unmarked police car driving away, but, damn it, I didn’t get video of Boyd or the unicorn.”
“That’s not the end of the world, B.J.,” said Annabelle. B.J. looked over at her and rolled his eyes. “Nice try. What are you, kidding me? Every other network and local station will have those pictures, and KEY News won’t. I was assigned to cover that story, and instead I got involved and didn’t get what I needed to get.”
“You helped a colleague, a friend, B.J.,” said Eliza. “No one is going to fault you for that.”
“And you know what?” said Annabelle. “We can probably get the video from our local station. Of course, it won’t be B.J. D’Elia caliber, but then what is?”
B.J. managed a crooked smile.
“All right, gang, let’s look at the bigger picture here,” said Eliza. “If Boyd did have the stolen unicorn, what do we think about that?”
“That he killed Constance Young to get it?” asked Annabelle. “I find that hard to believe. Boyd has always impressed me as such a decent guy. I’ve witnessed Constance beat up on him pretty badly, and he always just stood there and took it. But maybe he reached a breaking point.”
“I wouldn’t blame him if he did off her. That woman was a world-class bitch,” said B.J., sitting up straight again. “I don’t see it, though. If Boyd had killed Constance and stolen the unicorn from her, I don’t think he’d be carrying it around in his pocket.”
“Or forget that he’d put it there and reveal it to a crowd of media people,” said Eliza. “No, this whole thing doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, if Boyd didn’t put the unicorn in his pocket, that means somebody else did,” said Annabelle. “Why?”
“To implicate Boyd in Constance’s death,” said Eliza. “To throw suspicion on him and away from the real killer.”
“But why pick Boyd?” asked Annabelle.
“Hey, maybe the killer hates gays,” B.J. suggested.
“Maybe Boyd did something to anger the killer,” Annabelle offered.
“Or maybe the killer thinks Boyd knows something and has effectively silenced him—since anything he says now will be suspect,” said Eliza as she looked at her watch. “Annabelle, why don’t you call your police source and see if you can find out what the cops are thinking.”
CHAPTER 67
I’m telling you. I have no clue how it got there.” Boyd clasped his hands on top of the table. “But I don’t think it was there when I went into the funeral home. I remember stuffing a credit-card receipt in my pocket, and I didn’t feel anything then.”
On the other side of the table, the detective turned his chair backward and sat down, straddling the seat. “You were Constance Young’s assistant at KEY News, is that right?”
“Yes,” said Boyd.
“How would you characterize your relationship with her?”
Boyd nervously crossed his legs and wiped his clammy palm across his damp forehead. “I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “Constance could be difficult.”
“She gave you a hard time, huh?” asked the detective.
“Sometimes, yes,”
“Did that make you mad?”
“Look, I can see where you’re going with this,” said Boyd. “But don’t you understand? I’m being framed.”
The detective shrugged. “I don’t know about that. I see a guy who had a boss that really rubbed him the wrong way and gave him a hard time and made him angry, a boss who had lots of celebrity and money and all the things that could make a guy jealous and resentful enough to do something to even the score.”
“I’m telling you,” Boyd pleaded, his voice rising, “I had nothing to do with Constance’s death.”
“And tell me again how you got the unicorn that she was seen wearing?”
Boyd was uncomfortable with what he was about to say, hated that he was going to implicate somebody else to shift the spotlight away from himself. But he was struggling to survive here.
“Look,” he said, trying to sound calm. “There was a man who Constance dated who asked me to see if I could get the unicorn for him. Maybe he was desperate enough to kill her for it. Maybe he planted the unicorn on me.”
“And that man would be who?” asked the detective.
“Stuart Whitaker,” answered Boyd. “You know, the gazillionaire who makes all those creepy video games.”
“As a matter of fact, yes, I know who Stuart Whitaker is. We spoke with him yesterday, and he told us that you’d told him you would get the unicorn for him—if he paid you for it.”
“Oh, God,” Boyd groaned. “That’s not how it happened. He wanted the unicorn back, and I said I would see what I could do. I just wanted him to leave and not create a scene at the lunch. He’s the one who offered to make it worth my while. I didn’t ask him for anything. And I certainly didn’t get the unicorn for him.”
The detective studied Boyd, saying nothing.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Boyd asked.
The detective stood up. “Well, buddy, all I know is you were caught red-handed with that unicorn—a unicorn last seen around Constance Young’s neck. You’ll have to tell your story to the judge.”
CHAPTER 68
I talked to my police source,” said Annabelle, plopping down on the leather couch. “Their working hypothesis is that there’s a connection between the unicorn amulet and Constance’s death. They think Constance may have been killed for the unicorn.”
“Okay,” said Eliza, turning away from the computer where she was writing her daily blog for her KEY News Web site. “We had been thinking along those lines, too.”
“But here’s the interesting part,” said Annabelle, taking a bite of a Twizzler and looking at her notes. “It seems that the police now know how the unicorn went missing from the Cloisters. I got this part off the record, so we can’t report it yet, but Stuart Whitaker, the video-game magnate, says he borrowed the unicorn because he wanted to have a copy made for Constance. He told the police he never got around to making the copy and gave Constance the real thing instead.”
“So he lied to us when we interviewed him up at the Cloisters on Sunday,” Eliza mused. “Whitaker said he had made a reproduction for her and didn’t know how to explain that the real unicorn was missing.”
“Well, get this,” said Annabelle. “Whitaker is a major donor, and the museum isn’t going to press charges against him.”
“How nice for him,” said Eliza, turning back to her computer and hitting the SEND button. “I guess promising to donate twenty million dollars to create a Constance Young Memorial Garden wins you a ’Get Out of Jail Free’ card.”
“Are you surprised?” asked Annabelle.
“I guess not,” said Eliza, sighing with resignation. “But getting back to the idea that Constance may have been murdered for the unicorn, who would do that? It wasn’t a case of a robbery gone wrong, because nothing else was taken. The perpetrator was quite specific in what he took and who he killed.”
“What kind of person would kill for a piece of jewelry—or even for a historic artifact?” asked Annabelle.
Eliza shrugged. “I don’t think you and I can figure that one out. But I have an idea about who we should discuss all this with.” Eliza reached for the telephone. “If I can get Dr. Margo Gonzalez to come in so we can pick her brain, will you be available?”
“Name the time and place,” said Annabelle.
“Fine,” said Eliza. “And let’s get B.J. to be there, too.”
Annabelle started to leave and then turned around again. “And how could I forget this? The necropsy results are out. That Great Dane was electrocuted, too.”
CHAPTER 69
Before she left for the day, Lauren marched into
Linus Nazareth’s office. She tossed a newspaper onto his desk.
“Did you see this?” she demanded.
Linus read the small announcement in the Metro section that Lauren had circled in red ink.
KEY News anchorwoman Eliza Blake will host the reception celebrating the opening of the Camelot Exhibit at the Cloisters on Wednesday night. Blake will be replacing Constance Young, former cohost of KEY to America, who died over the weekend at her country home in Westchester County.
Central to the Camelot Exhibit is the planned unveiling of a carved ivory unicorn said to have been a gift from King Arthur to the Lady Guinevere. The ancient unicorn was discovered missing from the museum over the weekend. A unicorn resembling the one from the museum’s collection was seen being worn by Constance Young at her final public appearance last Friday.
Tickets are still available for the event.
“So?” said Linus.
“So now look at page five in the Arts section,” said Lauren.
Linus opened the newspaper to a full-page ad trumpeting the event. He read aloud the line at the top: “‘American News Royalty Presents the Treasures of King Arthur’s Court.’”
“Why wasn’t I asked to fill in for Constance?” Lauren whined. “Why did they ask Eliza instead of me?”
“I don’t know, baby. Relax, will you?”
“When will you stop calling me ’baby’? I hate that.” Lauren plopped down in a chair. “And I can’t relax. With what’s happened to Constance, everyone will be ultra-interested in this event. It would have been great exposure for me.”
Linus got up and walked around the desk. “How about this?” he asked. “How about we do a show from the Cloisters on Thursday morning?”
When Day Breaks Page 17