A Perfect Obsession--A Novel of Romantic Suspense

by Heather Graham

  “Interesting,” Kieran murmured, feeling overwhelmed. Her idea of trying to find where Jeannette’s killer had originally intended to leave her body now seemed foolish. And, even if she found a place or the place, would it help catch the killer?

  “When there were stones there, it was a place of genius inspiration. Imagine. Edgar Allan Poe used to wander there when he lived on Carmine Street.” Danny seemed to relish the idea. “Maybe I should become a writer,” he added.

  “Go for it,” she told him.

  “Wow, amazing encouragement,” he said. Danny looked at her, worried. “Okay, so I gave up a tour this morning to be with you. Weekends are big, you know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’m doing really well with the company. I’m lucky. People seem to love my tour, and they actually write it up on Trip Advisor. But it’s you I’m worried about. You were good this morning, but now you seem depressed. And I thought it was a damned nice and really upbeat sermon!”

  Kieran laughed softly. “It was. The service was beautiful, Trinity is beautiful and I love looking out over this graveyard.”

  “So,” he said softly. “We’re actually at church trying to figure out who might have killed Jeannette Gilbert, since we both know it wasn’t our brother.”

  “Kevin talked to you about Jeannette?” she asked him, trying not to show her surprise.

  He shook his head. “Kevin called both me and Declan last night. He wanted us to know what had gone on, and what was happening now.”

  “Of course,” Kieran murmured.

  “What are you looking for exactly, Kieran?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know exactly. But Jeannette Gilbert disappeared and was killed before they discovered the old graves in the walled-up crypt. I think the killer had to have other plans for Jeannette’s body.”

  “Ohh,” Danny said. “Not far from here, you have the Marble Cemetery—established 1830—and, unrelated, but near, you have the New York City Marble Cemetery. Lots of people are actually buried all over, even though many interments were moved out as the city grew and grew. You also have a single grave, a monument to a child who died around 1797, and then on West Eleventh Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, you have a tiny graveyard with about thirty graves. Peter Stuyvesant is buried at Saint Mark’s in-the-Bowery, and there are graves under and around the church. Not to mention some of the older, bigger ones when you move up northward on Manhattan or out in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. Bay Ridge has a Revolutionary War cemetery and... Kieran, its New York. Tons of people, hundreds of years.”

  “Needle in a haystack,” she murmured. Then she looked at him. “Maybe not so much. Can you think of anything near here? Not so touristy as Trinity or Saint Paul’s. Maybe something that had been hidden, or something like a cemetery for a single child, like you were talking about that’s, say, between here and Finnegan’s or between here and the old Saint Augustine’s?”

  “Yeah. Actually, I can.” He grimaced. “It’s private property, though. Owned by a Brit. I know about it because my boss—Cindy, you know her—was bitching and moaning about it. There’s an old place about a block or so south of Saint Augustine’s, or, now, Le Club Vampyre, that’s in dire need of repair. It’s actually on the historic register, and they were talking about going in. The building there now is from about 1840, but before that, there was an Old Dutch farmstead. Imagine—a farmstead in lower Manhattan! Anyway, there was a tiny family cemetery, and when they built over what had fallen apart, they put a covered carriage way—now the end of a driveway—over the old graves. You can still see about five tombstones, and there are steps leading to an underground crypt.”

  “Show me.”

  “You’re kidding me. I told you, it’s private property. You’re always telling me that I have to shape up and fly right and follow the law.”

  “Danny, you stole a diamond.”

  “Borrowed!”

  She ignored his word choice. “I only want to do a tiny bit of trespassing. There’s a difference!”

  “We can end up in jail. And then Craig will be mad at me!”

  “Danny, I need to see this place. Please.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then let out a sound of sheer aggravation and started walking north on Broadway.

  Kieran followed his quick pace until they came to Saint Paul’s Chapel and she slowed. She saw that the graveyard had been roped off.

  “Wait up!” she called to Danny.

  Kieran saw a woman working in the graveyard, patting down soil, and called out softly to her.

  “Morning!”

  “Morning,” the woman called back.

  “Excuse me. Do you have a minute to answer a couple of questions?” she asked.

  The woman rose and walked over to her, wiping her forehead. “I have a minute.”

  “If someone were to die and want to be buried here now, would that be possible?” Kieran asked.

  The woman smiled. “Planning ahead?” she asked.

  Danny groaned.

  “No, I was curious. I love Trinity and Saint Paul’s,” Kieran said.

  “First, you’d have to be a parishioner. I don’t think you could be interred here, but it might be possible at Trinity. You’d have to speak with the Trinity people. If you head north, you’ll find the Trinity cemetery. It’s quite lovely.” She hesitated and shrugged, looking at Kieran as if she might be a bit of a ghoul. “If you’re just interested in history, there are also wonderful little hidden cemeteries in the area. There’s one not far away. It was a family cemetery, and it’s still on private land, so... Well, you can kind of see it from the street. Don’t trespass. It’s against the law.”

  Kieran thanked her, and the woman went back to her seeding.

  Danny turned to Kieran immediately. “What do you think we’re looking for? From what I’ve understood of what’s going on, this guy crawled into a dusty old crypt to display his victim. Do you think that he left you a calling card, a map somewhere? Honestly, Kieran, we should be looking at someplace big and maybe something that’s charming and lovely. Where he could go maybe at night and not be seen. What do you think? This guy is like a ghoul, too? A cemetery aficionado?” Danny asked. “If so, we could go up to where it’s legal to be!”

  “Take me to this little hidden cemetery,” Kieran said.

  He turned and walked hard; she had to scamper to keep up with him.

  He cut off behind Broadway, and they were just about a block or so away from Le Club Vampyre.

  And then he stopped.

  Kieran crashed into his back. She steadied herself and stared.

  The building appeared to be older than it probably was. No care had been taken for a while, and it stood on a little sliver of land with an actual spit of lawn before it—almost unheard-of where they were. To the side was a driveway or car park covered with carved wood, probably well over 150 years old.

  Peering through the high gates, Kieran could see crooked stones in the back, beyond the gravel of the car park.

  She pushed at the gate. To her amazement, the lock fell open.

  “Kieran!” Danny warned.

  “You stay here.”

  “Hell, no! I’m going with you. You think I’d let you fall down a gutter or a—”

  “Grave?”

  She pushed the iron gate open and hurried in, not sure why she was so determined.

  When she made it to the back, she was disappointed. All she saw were five or six crooked headstones in a mass of overgrown weeds.

  “What did you expect?” Danny demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Kieran said. She looked about and started around the graves. She walked to one and knelt, trying to read the weatherworn words inscribed on the stone.

  She leaned forward.

 
And as she did so, the earth gave way beneath her and she fell...and fell.

  Deep into a dark, dank pit in the earth.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  CRAIG REMOVED HIMSELF FROM the interview by choosing the farthest chair. Since Mike had become friends with the entire Finnegan family when Craig and Kieran had begun seeing one another, he, too, made a point of being an observer.

  That left Richard Egan and Detective Larry McBride at the table facing Kevin.

  Egan had been at Finnegan’s on Broadway often enough. But he didn’t choose to excuse himself from the interview, considering himself a customer of the bar, not a friend of the family.

  Kevin basically came to tell them a story that might have had the kind of fairy-tale ending that would have made any romantic smile—had Jeannette Gilbert lived. It was the typical boy and girl meet, catch one another’s eyes in the midst of work, feel the brush of one another’s touch, a certain breathlessness, adrenaline rush...

  The hope that the other person might feel the same.

  So now Kevin merely repeated the story as he’d told others when asked. He hadn’t really looked at anyone when he spoke. He was just reciting the events. His features were taut and pained, and Craig thought that he’d seen just a look before. It was when someone didn’t care anymore what happened to them.

  The worst has already happened.

  “Why didn’t you come forward immediately?” Egan demanded. “When she was missing—when you heard that she was dead? That’s very suspicious behavior, you know.”

  Kevin lifted his hands and let them fall, shaking his head slightly. “When she disappeared, I thought it was part of a publicity stunt. I kept thinking I’d hear from her. She talked about Oswald Martin a lot. She thought he was brilliant. He’d certainly managed a stellar career for her. But she also thought he was crazy. She loved when he’d arrange for her to bring presents to hospitals. To kids, especially underprivileged kids. You really...you really should have known her,” he said softly. “She came from so much that was rotten and bad, but she was never mean or bitter. She just wanted to make things better for other people.”

  There was no catch in his voice; there was no gulping sound that escaped him. Instead, tears just dripped down his face.

  Richard Egan glanced over at Craig.

  McBride cleared his throat and asked, “I still don’t understand why you didn’t come forward.”

  “I planned to come forward. But then, I saw Brent Westwood on television. Jeannette worked with him. She had a small part in a movie with him about a year and a half ago. But if she saw him as anything, she saw him as a father figure. And the thing is...well, old-timer or not, Westwood is something of a legend. If I came forward... I don’t even really know how to explain this. I don’t want the papers turning this into the old-timer said and the upstart said... I don’t want Jeannette’s name in the rag magazines, not now...not when she’s gone. She was truly fine. She didn’t do drugs, she didn’t sleep around...and I’ll be damned if I know why Westwood did what he did other than for publicity.”

  “Mr. Finnegan,” McBride said, “don’t you understand that you might be able to help us in some way? Or, indeed, that in cases like these, we look first at the wife, the husband, the significant other or—in your case—the mystery lover?”

  Kevin looked up then, staring hard at McBride. “I’d have never hurt Jeannette. I loved her,” he said simply, and then added with passion, “Don’t you think that if there were anything I could say or do that would help catch her killer I would speak right up? I hadn’t seen her—the last conversation we had together was her laughing and telling me that Oswald Martin has something up his sleeve that she thought was crazy but fun. She told me to watch for it and tell her what I thought.”

  “And that’s why you weren’t worried when she disappeared?” McBride asked.

  Kevin nodded. “I can tell you that she did hate her step-uncle. She didn’t hate Oswald, even though he was controlling and pissed her off now and then. And while she believed that he could be a taskmaster, Leo Holt was an amazing photographer. I don’t know much about other people she was working with.” His eyes widened. “Roger Gleason. We were both at the opening of Le Club Vampyre—separately, of course. But, she managed to whisper to me that Gleason was a very rich sleaze, and that she was glad she never had to worry about money because she would always make her personal choices herself.”

  “So, Roger Gleason was interested in her?” McBride asked.

  “Yes, but I don’t see that as unusual. She was beautiful. Everyone was interested in her. There was a light about her, a glow. She wasn’t just amazing to see, she was full of life, charming. People came to her because she was just so...vital.”

  Silence fell in the room again. Then Egan cleared his throat.

  “A tragic and senseless loss,” he said. “But I believe you also know the missing woman—Sadie Miller.” He opened the folder he had on the table and produced a glossy photo, pushing it toward Kevin. “Print ad for Michael Malone jeans. That’s you in the jeans, and Ms. Miller right behind you.”

  “Yes, of course, I worked with Sadie,” Kevin said.

  “And you don’t think it’s unusual that you knew both women?” McBride asked.

  Kevin stared at him, apparently both confused and a little irritated. “I model and act. Both these women modeled and acted. Although, actually, Sadie had told me that she wanted to go back to school. She wanted to get a degree in archaeology. Maybe she knew John Shaw. Maybe she knew Aldous Digby. I don’t know. Maybe she never pursued any of her desires.” He shook his head. “I worked with her a year ago. I told her to drop into Finnegan’s sometime. She thought it was cool that my family owned a place that was so old.”

  “But she never came by, not until the other night?” Egan asked.

  “I didn’t even know about it. I wasn’t there when she came by.”

  “And you don’t think we should be suspicious of you?” McBride said.

  “Maybe you should be. I don’t know. I’m not a cop—or an agent. There are, yes, thousands of actors in New York City. But it’s not that unusual that you know people in the field. Even if you don’t work with them, you’ve probably sat in a crowded audition venue with them somewhere at some time. We’re a giant city, but there are small worlds within it.”

  “You remain a person of interest, Mr. Finnegan,” McBride said.

  “And that’s fine. Just don’t waste too much time concentrating on me, because I didn’t kill Jeannette. And Sadie is a fine person, and not to be crude, but if there’s the slightest chance she’s still alive, you ought to have your asses out on the street and be looking for her,” Kevin said flatly. “Whatever you do to me, it doesn’t matter.”

  Mike, apparently, couldn’t stand it any longer.

  He leaned forward and said, “Kevin, we have to ask these questions.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Kevin, your cell phone—is it the same one you’ve had?” Craig asked.

  Kevin nodded and reached into his pocket, sliding it across the table.

  “We’ll get it back to you,” Egan told him.

  “Sure,” Kevin said. He managed a small smile. “I was about to say that I don’t care. But there are pictures in there, so...”

  There was silence around the table.

  “Where do I go from here?” Kevin asked, the sound of his voice throaty.

  Craig wasn’t sure if he was asking about what he should do for the police or the FBI, or what he should do with his life, now that Jeannette was gone.

  “I think we should let that press conference stand, don’t give out any more information right now and just follow where it might lead,” Egan said.

  “Your call,” McBride said.

  Egan nodded. “I don’t want to fe
ed the rags, either. I do believe that another interview with Mr. Westwood is in order.” Egan stood. The others followed suit.

  “Kevin, we do, of course, know where to find you. And, I’m sure, as this goes on, we’ll need to speak again. If there is anything at all that occurs to you—no matter how small—you’re to let us know immediately. No reacting to anything else you see—you get with one of us immediately.”

  Kevin nodded gravely. “Of course.”

  The cell phone he had placed on the table began to ring. Craig glanced down and saw on the caller ID that it was Danny Finnegan calling his brother.

  Danny had been spending the day with Kieran.

  Craig went to get the phone, but Kevin was closer and he did so by rote.

  “My brother,” he said. “May I take it? I’ll give it right back.”

  “Of course,” Egan told him.

  Kevin lowered his head and listened and said, “Yes,” and then a minute later, “Yes,” again, and then, “Sure, all set here.”

  He quickly set the phone back on the conference table and said, “Thanks. So, I’m on my way. And you do know where to find me, and I will call if there’s anything else,” he added softly.

  A junior agent was waiting to escort him out of the building. Kevin greeted her politely, and they started out.

  “Sir, I’m going to follow him,” Craig told Egan. “Mike, will you—”

  “Get the phone to Tech, find anything pertinent to Jeannette Gilbert, yep,” Mike said.

  Craig didn’t wait for questions from McBride. He hurried after Kevin.

  The man was already out on the street—he had long legs, had lived in New York all his life and could speed walk with agility.

  Craig quickened his own pace.

  At some point, Kevin must have known that he was being followed because he glanced back. He didn’t acknowledge that he saw Craig. He just started moving quickly again.