“You scare me, Peter. You didn’t use to, but you do now,” I said as directly as I could.
He looked chagrined. “I hate to hear that.” He opened a small refrigerator next to his seat and waved a hand in front of it. “Orange juice? Iced coffee? Soda?”
I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
“How was Max’s wedding?” he asked.
I had gotten over the shock of knowing that Peter Miceli knew everything I did and every place I had been; I was actually becoming bored by it. I sighed. “It was fine, Peter. What is it that you want?” I asked, out of patience.
“Why didn’t you ever have children, Alison?”
That question did shock me. Not having children was something that I had made my peace with a long time ago, but hearing the question come from him made me feel sad and vulnerable all over again. I decided to keep the truth from him—that I wanted children desperately but had married a man who would go to great lengths not to have any—and offered a noncommittal shoulder shrug.
“Every woman wants children, don’t they?” he asked, studying my face for some indication of the truth.
“Some do. Some don’t. I’m one of the ones who don’t.” Tears were pushing at the back of my eyes, but through sheer force of will, I kept them there. He had hit a nerve and, emotional terrorist that he was, he knew it.
He nodded slowly. “I see.”
I stared back at him, holding his gaze.
He rubbed a hand over his bald head. “Well, as hard as it is for me to admit this, Alison, Kathy was pregnant when she died.”
I knew exactly where he was headed with this.
“Cut to the chase, Peter.” I lurched slightly to the right as the limo took a corner at a sharp angle.
He shot me a look, unhappy at being instructed as to what to do. “And as hard as it is for me to say this, Alison, I have become convinced that your ex-husband, Dr. Stark, was the father of Kathy’s baby.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Oh, no, Peter, you’ve got that all wrong,” I said. “That’s not possible.”
In his expression was the apparent surprise that someone had questioned his judgment. Apparently, nobody ever told him that he was wrong. “I don’t think so, Alison.”
“Peter, Ray had a vasectomy while we were married.”
He looked confused. “Why would he do that?”
“Because we didn’t want children,” I lied. Ray was the one who didn’t want children.
It was Peter’s turn to laugh. “Alison, nice try, but that’s a ridiculous story. You don’t strike me as the career woman type.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know, career woman, all job, no kids. Not you, Alison. No way.”
This guy was good. He could see right through my lame story. But how could I make him believe the truth: that Ray had waited until I left for a teaching position overseas, had a vasectomy, and never told me?
Peter leaned forward and put his hands on his knees, staring at me. “You’re a terrible liar, Alison.” He put a hand on my knee and gave me a little squeeze. “Now why don’t you own up to the fact that your ex-husband was a sleaze and got a nineteen-year-old girl pregnant?”
I got a little panicky; we were treading in very dangerous waters. I looked out the window and saw that we were indeed heading toward my destination, but I knew that one false move, one transparent lie, and I would end up in the South Bronx with no way home again. Or worse.
Peter looked at me, his black eyes glistening slightly at the corners. “Cat got your tongue?” he asked, his voice getting hoarse.
“Here’s the deal, Peter,” I said, knowing that nothing was worse than an angry Peter Miceli. I decided to tell him the truth. “Ray didn’t want kids, but I did. He knew that from the day we got married. I went to Ireland one summer to teach and he had a vasectomy. He never told me until we were getting divorced.” I was babbling. Even I didn’t believe the story despite the fact that it was the truth. “It was a horrible betrayal. I’ll never forgive him. For years, I thought I was infertile.” I finished but wondered, at this point, did it really matter what Peter Miceli thought? Ray was dead and one of Peter’s minions had probably killed him.
Peter watched me, his eyes narrow and dark. He took his hand from my knee and leaned back on his seat. He interlaced his fingers and let his hands hang down between his knees. Looking out the window, he suddenly exclaimed, “That’s the most ridiculous story I ever heard!”
He was right. It was a ridiculous story, the kind that fell into the “truth is stranger than fiction” category. I let the tears behind my eyes slip out. It was almost as if Peter wanted someone to blame, and Ray was the most convenient person around.
“Is that the best you can come up with?” he bellowed. He threw his hands up. “That your husband had a vasectomy and didn’t tell you?” He looked at me directly. “That is ridiculous!”
“It’s not ridiculous, Peter. It’s the truth,” I said. I asked the next question, born of a courage I didn’t know I had. “Is that why you killed him, Peter?”
He looked at me with a pained expression, but didn’t answer me. He hit a buzzer on a panel next to his seat. “Where the fuck are we, Franco?”
Franco’s disembodied voice flowed through the speaker with such clarity it was almost as if he were sitting beside me and not behind four inches of Plexiglas. “Thirty-second and Madison, Mr. Miceli.”
He looked at me. “Where are you going?”
“I can get out here.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“Grand Central,” I whispered.
“Grand Central, Franco,” he yelled into the speaker. He took his finger off the button and looked at me. “I have to go back home to go to church. Do you go to church, Alison?”
“Sometimes.” Hardly ever.
He pulled a cigar out of his jacket pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead.”
“They talk a lot about life after death at church. Do you believe in that?” he asked, pulling out a lighter and taking a few long drags on the cigar to get it lit.
“I’d like to.” It would make the thought of my departed parents that much easier to accept.
“You should,” he said quietly, puffing on the cigar. He took it out of his mouth and blew on the glowing tip to make it light. “Believing that makes things a lot easier.” He looked out the window as we approached the Forty-second Street entrance to Grand Central, the beautifully etched doors beckoning to me, the inside of the building a sanctuary. If I could just get out of the car.
I wiped my hands over my eyes to clear my vision. I looked at him as we sat, idling, in front of Grand Central. He looked at me sadly, his eyes conveying some kind of conflict.
“If you just tell me that you killed him, Peter, we can all move on,” I said. “Just tell me.”
“I didn’t kill him,” he said softly.
“Okay, then, one of your people—”
“I didn’t kill him!” His rage in full view, I concluded that this conversation should end and wisely didn’t say anything else.
He pushed a button and the door locks popped up. I put my hand on the handle.
“Wait,” he said, and leaned over again. He was calmer than just moments before. He grabbed me and embraced me, putting his lips to my neck. “It’s okay that he’s gone, you know,” he whispered into my hair.
I didn’t want to know what that meant, but I felt more confident than ever that I had stared into the face of Ray’s murderer.
Chapter 14
I leapt from the car and onto the street, half falling, half running to the doors of the transportation hub. As soon as I was inside, I realized that I had left all of my luggage in Peter’s car: my overnight bag with my clothes, my garment bag with my matron of honor dress, and all of my makeup. Fortunately, my purse was strapped crosswise over my chest and I had money and my cell phone. I turned and saw that the limo was gone, so I t
ook a few deep breaths and collected myself. I smoothed my hair down and walked back outside onto the street, busy even for a Sunday morning.
I looked around, afraid I was making a spectacle of myself, but nobody gave me a second glance. I was just another New Yorker on the street.
My legs were like rubber as I made my way down the steep ramp to the main part of the train station. People were rushing past me, trying to make trains, and I realized I was standing still in the middle of the great room. I took a seat on one of the steps on the grand staircase in the main part of the terminal, trying to figure out what to do, when my phone rang.
I pulled it out and flipped it open, the device nearly flying out of my shaking hands. I didn’t take the time to read the screen to see what number was displayed. “Hello?”
Max guffawed into the phone. “Hi!”
“Max…”
“I’m on my honeymoon!” she screamed. Technically, her honeymoon location was Bali and she was still in New York, but I wasn’t one to quibble. “Did you have fun at my wedding?”
“I had a wonderful time,” I said, scanning the crowd in Grand Central. She moaned slightly in response and let out a little breath of air, audible even over the din at the train station and with the crappy cell phone reception. “Max?” It occurred to me that while technically she wasn’t yet on her honeymoon, she was still in the midst of her wedding night. “Are you having sex while you’re talking to me?”
She giggled. “Sort of.”
“Sort of?” I asked. “How do you ‘sort of’ have sex?”
All I got was another moan in reply.
“I’m hanging up,” I said.
“Wait!” she screamed.
I stayed on the line.
“I’m going to be gone for two weeks.”
“I know.”
“I’ll miss you,” she said, and hung up. Max isn’t one for sentimentality; hearing what I had to say in response would have made the conversation go on much longer than she could stand. I wasn’t surprised to hear the phone go dead and mouthed “I’ll miss you, too” into the mouthpiece.
I sat for another moment, considering whether or not to call Crawford. I decided against it. There was nothing to tell. Once again, I had been picked up by Peter Miceli, but this time, I had been dropped off at my destination. Peter had seemed pretty adamant in his denial, but then again, he was a professional criminal; he probably had honed that skill long ago. Was it easier to say that you hadn’t done something when you had had someone do it for you? Or was he truly blameless in this? It was hard to tell. I had known Peter a long time ago, and even coupled with our recent close encounters, that wasn’t enough to allow me to adequately judge his motivations.
Thanks to Peter’s car service, I managed to make an earlier train than the one I originally planned on taking. Safely ensconced in a window seat on the river side, I leaned my head against the cool glass and dozed until I heard the conductor call my stop.
I got off the train and looked around; no limos. I breathed a sigh of relief. Without the bag that I had left in Peter’s car, I was not weighed down and trudged up the hill from the train station in record time. Although I was sort of hungry, I was more tired than anything else, and decided to go home and crawl into bed for the remainder of the day.
I reached my street without incident and made the turn that would take me straight to my house. My legs felt like lead, but I kept my pace quick so that I could dive into bed sooner rather than later. As I approached the house, I spied Terri on her front lawn playing with Trixie. Trixie spied me first and took off down the street, bounding with unbridled joy at seeing me.
I braced myself for the inevitable Trixie love fest. She jumped on me and started licking my face, which, while not as lovely as being licked on the face by Crawford, was pretty damned enjoyable. I tried to keep my mouth closed because I drew the line at doggie French kisses.
Terri approached tentatively and commanded Trixie to heel, which, amazingly, she did. She sat patiently at Terri’s side, watching me.
“Hi, Alison,” Terri said in her breathy voice.
“Terri,” I said, barely disguising my disgust at seeing her.
“Listen, can we talk?” she said, holding my eye.
“Do we have to?” I said, whining. I had almost made it home, I thought. And then this.
She looked disappointed and more than a little bit taken aback by my rudeness. “Well, okay, then. I guess I’ll just say what I have to say out here.”
I waited.
“I just wanted to say that I may have been just a little bit, you know, teensy bit, maybe, just a bit overly…”
Yes, I get it. “Little bit” would have sufficed.
She took a deep breath and regrouped. “I may have accused Jackson of doing…Ray’s…you know…prematurely and unnecessarily.”
A Dale Carnegie graduate she was not. I continued to look at her. “Got it,” I said. “Jackson didn’t do it. Not that you know of.”
“Well, you know, the police came back again,” she said, a little outraged. “They questioned us once and then they questioned us again. It was very upsetting.”
Boo-hoo. I’ve been accused of murder, so I know it’s upsetting. Something occurred to me, so I decided to ask her. “You didn’t kill him, did you, Terri?” Feeling a bit peckish, I decided to push her buttons a teensy bit, as she would say.
The look on her face was one that I had never seen before. It took a few seconds before the rage that immediately registered in her eyes after my question softened into mild anger. “What?”
“You know, kill Ray. Did you do it?”
Tears appeared behind her thick, mascaraed lashes. “I’m going to forget that you ever asked me that and walk away, Alison. In case you’ve forgotten, I loved Ray.”
Well, that makes one of us, I thought. I wondered how long it would take her to realize that professing your love for another’s husband—albeit another’s former husband—was really not acceptable in polite society. She turned and walked away, pulling at Trixie’s collar. Trixie turned back one last time to look at me sadly.
I watched them walk away and looked at the fifty feet that separated me from the interior of my house. If I can just make it up the driveway, I thought, I’ll be home free. I went in through the front door—the back door, which opened up into the kitchen, was still a bit of a roadblock for me—and stood in the hallway, gazing at the hall closet door, which sat ajar.
Hanging in the closet were my garment bag and overnight bag, the two items that I had left in Peter Miceli’s limousine.
Chapter 15
I’m a big believer in napping to cure all ills. That is, when martinis are either unavailable or not appropriate, given the hour. I was out of vodka and it was just after noon, so a nap was the next best thing.
Although I was distressed that either Peter Miceli or one of his cohorts had been in my house, it was clear that they had only entered to return the stuff that I had left in the limousine. That was actually kind of polite, when you stop to think about it. If they had really wanted to cause me harm, they would have been waiting for me upon my return, right? That’s what I told myself. So, after my heart stopped racing, I went straight to my bedroom, where I stripped down to my bra and underpants and dove under the covers, pulling them over my head in an attempt to block out the rest of the world.
I probably would have slept straight through to the next morning had the phone not started ringing at around five o’clock. Groggy from my five-hour nap, I picked up the receiver and held it upside down against my face. After attempting to speak to the person on the other end through the mouthpiece, I finally figured out what was wrong and turned the receiver the right way.
“Alison? It’s Jack McManus.”
Oh, boy.
“Alison? Are you there?”
I cleared my throat. “Uh, yes. Hi, Jack.” I closed my eyes and lay back on the pillows.
“Kevin said it would be okay to give you a call.
I’m at the Rangers’ practice facility and was wondering if you might be available for an early dinner? It’s not far from you.”
How much more complicated could things get? I had a sort-of-married boyfriend who was a homicide detective, of all things (I was starting to appreciate my mother’s decision to marry a UPS man—regular hours and no dead bodies); I had a gangster following me around; my deli guy wanted to marry me; my neighbors were psychotic; and now I had a completely available, gorgeous man interested in me. While I should have been jumping for joy, I was dumbstruck.
“Alison?”
“Uh, yes.” I meant that response as an affirmative, that indeed, I was Alison, but Jack took it another way.
“You’re free? Great!” His cell phone crackled. “I’m losing you. I’ll be over in about fifteen minutes. See you then.”
He was gone before I could make up some excuse for not going. Fifteen minutes? I studied my reflection in the mirror across from my bed. I needed more like fifteen hours. My hair was a virtual rat’s nest and my eyes were bloodshot from a nap that went on about four hours longer than it should have. I would never be able to recreate the Barbra Streisand hairdo in fifteen minutes. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and hung my head while I straightened out my thoughts.
“Your boyfriend is still unavailable,” I reminded myself. “You’re not doing anything wrong.” I got up and stood for a moment, trying to quell the feelings of guilt and paranoia that bubbled in my gut. My internal monologist is not a very good debater and even I couldn’t convince myself that going out with Jack again was the right thing, or even a good thing, to do.
But I don’t have caller ID, so I couldn’t call him back to tell him that I couldn’t go. And when I hit *69, I was told that his number was unavailable. He probably blocked it so that Kevin couldn’t bug him about Ranger tickets constantly.
After brushing away the fuzz that had taken up residence in my mouth during my nap, I decided on my outfit. What does one wear to a casual dinner with a friend? I erased the word “date” from my mind and started getting dressed. I settled on a pair of jeans that Max had bought me and which I was sure cost a few hundred dollars. They sure didn’t look, or fit, like the jeans I buy at Target and a quick check revealed that my ass had never looked better. I pulled on a clean T-shirt and a suede blazer from my closet to complete the look. I decided I didn’t have the strength for the Funny Girl coif and ran a brush through my hair enough times to flatten it down against my scalp. After a couple of swipes of mascara and some lip gloss, I looked and felt better than I had just moments before.
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