The Other Woman

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “Will do, Detective.” Humpty took the evidence bag and headed out the door. Jake saw him give a behind-the-back thumbs-up to DeLuca.

  “As for you, Mr. Vick?”

  “As for me, what?” Vick pulled a plaid muffler from one of the jacket sleeves, looping it around his neck. He shoved his arms into the jacket and gestured a hand at the lawyer. “You coming?”

  “You’re coming, Mr. Vick. Downtown.” Jake reached under his jacket and unclicked his handcuffs from the carrier. “Whether your attorney comes along is up to you. But, Arthur Vick? You’re under arrest for the murder of Sellica Darden.”

  56

  Trevor Kiernan had insisted he didn’t recognize the woman in the photo on Jane’s camera. Which was either the truth, or the beginning of the big lie. Now Jane had another plan. She had to talk to Alex, of course, but he’d been on the phone, so she headed for her desk at the Register, hoping Tuck wasn’t there. She needed some alone time.

  No Tuck. Score one for Jane. She sat down, flipped open her laptop, punched up the Deverton assessor’s office. Affluent communities had property info online, thank goodness, so what Jane needed to confirm would be a few clicks away. While her computer was thinking, Jane dug out her notebook and found the page with Kenna Wilkes’s address.

  “You avoiding bill collectors or something, roomie? You’ve got mail.”

  Tuck stood at the cubicle entrance, one arm around a stack of brown envelopes and magazines.

  “Hey, Tuck.” So much for alone time. “Mail?”

  Tuck plopped the pile of mail on their desk, a few stray envelopes sliding onto the floor. “Yeah, it’s like e-mail, but it comes on paper. Through the U.S. Postal Service. Goes to the mailroom. Where you’re supposed to pick it up. Unless your cubemate is nice enough to get it for you. Which she is. Once.”

  Jane scooted her laptop to one side and rolled her chair back, giving Tuck some space. “Mailroom?” She shrugged, thinking back. She picked up a few of the envelopes, examining them. Junk. “No one told me about the mailroom.”

  “Now they have,” Tuck said. She dragged a rolling chair from an adjacent cubicle. Swiveled it backward and straddled it, one cowboy boot on either side of the seat, her short jeans skirt climbing up her thighs. Today she wore a Bruins cap, her ponytail swinging behind. “So, you must be psyched.”

  “Psyched?”

  “Yeah, roomie. About your pal Arthur Vick.”

  “Oh, yeah, they’re searching his wife’s studio. Pretty interesting.” May he rot in hell, she didn’t say. Jane picked up another stack of mail. Junk, junk, junk. No wonder no one had told her about the mailroom, she didn’t need to know. No one used mail anymore. She looked up. “What? Did they find something?”

  “So you don’t know? That they arrested him for Sellica’s murder?”

  Jane dropped her head into one hand, propping it up with one elbow on the desk. She turned to Tuck, disbelieving. “Are you—?”

  “Horse’s mouth,” Tuck said. She wiggled her fingers toward the desktop computer. “Can I get in here, roomie? I need to write the story about the studio, the proximity to the crime scenes, and Arthur Vick’s connection to three of the victims. The cops found roofies there, too. But that’s off the record. Bummer. But bye-bye, Arthur, don’t you think?”

  An e-mail popped up on Jane’s computer. From Alex. Jane read the subject line: NOW.

  “Ah, Tuck, listen, I’ve got to go talk to Alex.” She flapped her computer closed. Alex can wait thirty more seconds. “They found roofies? In Vick’s studio?”

  “So says my source. Remember, the ME found them in Sellica’s tox screen?” Tuck nodded, lofting one leg over the chair back and taking Jane’s place at the desk. “Mrs. Vick had them as sleeping pills, apparently. They’re saying her husband must have used them to knock Sellica out before he killed her. But I’m not allowed to go with it. They’re keeping that tidbit back.”

  Jane clutched her laptop to her chest, trying to remember to breathe.

  “Roomie? You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m just thinking.…”

  Tuck, smiling, put a palm up toward her. “High five, sister. If Arthur Vick killed Sellica Darden, that pretty much also kills his testimony that he had no relationship with her.”

  Jane held up her own palm, slowly, and touched it to Tuck’s. Exactly what she’d been thinking but afraid to say out loud. Could it be true?

  * * *

  From the sliding glass window of Patti Vick’s studio, Jake could see the blue and white cruiser, Arthur Vick in the backseat and two uniforms in the front, crossing the Harbor Street bridge on the way downtown. Behind them, at the wheel of his ridiculous sports car, a probably still-fuming Henry Rothmann.

  “The happy couple,” DeLuca said.

  Jake stared across the water, remembering the parking lot press conference mere hours before. He squinted at the parking lot. “D?” he said. “I have a thought.”

  “Alert the media,” DeLuca said.

  “Come with me.” Jake ignored the wisecrack. “Vick and his pal can stew downtown for a while.”

  It was two minutes away, less. Jake turned his Jeep into the post office parking lot, driving past the cars parked along the railing.

  “What’re you thinkin’?” DeLuca asked from the seat beside him.

  Jake jammed the shift into Park, flipped on his wig-wags. “I’m thinkin’—that one.”

  Opening his door, he pointed to a white car with several orange parking tickets under the windshield wiper. The car had been there, with one ticket, during the press conference. It was still there. Why hasn’t the owner moved it?

  * * *

  “It’s what happens in the news business, you know?” Alex said. “Until it’s in the paper, it’s not wrong. It’s reporting. Right?”

  Jane nodded. Alex was taking the Kenna Wilkes thing pretty well. She perched on the edge of his couch, tentative, almost afraid to say anything for fear of upsetting the balance. The Arthur Vick arrest had just about steamrolled everything else in her mind. She had to call Sam Shapiro, because Arthur Vick’s arrest was proof she was right. Right? Vick would have to admit he and Sellica had a connection. Exactly the opposite of what Vick had testified under oath. Wouldn’t the judge be compelled to grant their appeal? Overturn the judgment?

  Wouldn’t he be obligated to make it all go away? Her million-dollar albatross?

  Alex glanced at his computer monitor, then adjusted the screen so Jane could see it. “Tuck’s already got the Arthur Vick story working. Here’s her draft for the e-version. ‘Grocery Magnate Arrested for Call Girl Murder.’ That’ll be the headline. We’re putting it up as soon as we get another confirmation.”

  Alex leaned against the side of his paper-strewn desk. “How are you about this, Jane? Seems…” He blinked a few times, thinking. Toasted her with his striped paper cup of coffee. “Pretty huge. For your appeal.”

  Jane put her elbows on her knees, chin in hands, staring at her own black leather boots. Ten minutes ago, she’d been trying to unravel the identity of a murder victim, trying to keep her job at the Register, trying to figure out how she was going to pay for a lawyer to defend herself against a million-dollar judgment. With the Vick arrest, everything changed. Didn’t it?

  “One step at a time,” she said aloud. She stood, picking a bit of couch lint from her black wool skirt and adjusting the stretchy black belt over her turtleneck. “We’ll see about that. The appeal. But the Kenna Wilkes situation—”

  “Yeah. As you said, we still have the photos of whoever the victim actually is.” Alex paused, contemplating. “Someone at the Lassiter campaign must know her, right?”

  “You’d think.” Alex was talking about what happened next. So Jane’s job was safe. He really was a pretty thoughtful guy. He’d stuck by her. Trusted her.

  Alex took a sip of coffee, then gestured his cup toward the door. “So, ace reporter, why aren’t you on your way over there to find out who the victim really is?”

/>   57

  “N-e-f-f?” Jake said the letters out loud, indicating DeLuca should be writing them in his notebook. Jake used one hand to drive, the other to hold his cell phone. “First name, Holly? H-o-l-l-y?”

  DeLuca nodded, writing. “Got it.”

  “Is there an address on the application? A local address?” Jake pulled up to a stop sign, listening to the rental company clerk. It had taken three phone calls—one to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, one to the Budget Rental Car main headquarters, one to their local office—to track down the name of the person who’d rented the white car parked in the post office parking lot. The first ticket had been issued today at 9:35 A.M. for violation of the thirty-minute meter. Several more orange tickets had piled up on top of that one. But one was all Jake needed. Sunday, he knew, the meters were not in effect. What if the victim had parked there Sunday? And didn’t pick up her car—because she was dead?

  “55423 Harborside Drive.” With a glance, he confirmed DeLuca was getting it. That address was less than a mile away, in a sprawling yuppie complex near the harbor. Lots of newcomers, postgrads with financial district jobs. Dogs. Hot tubs. “Apartment forty-three. Phone number?”

  Jake hung up, then punched his lights and siren as DeLuca wrote the numbers he’d rattled off.

  “Call her,” Jake said. “Maybe she’s, I don’t know. Shacking up with someone. Shopping at Downtown Crossing. Having lunch at Quincy Market. Left her car at the P.O. because a ticket is cheaper than a Boston parking lot.”

  “We’ll soon find out,” DeLuca said. He thumbed cell phone buttons as their car powered through a red light, made the turn onto Hanover Street. “It’s ringing. No answer yet.”

  “Voice mail?” Jake asked. Half a mile to go.

  “Nope,” DeLuca said. “Nothing.”

  * * *

  Jane stuffed the legitimate-looking mail into her tote bag and tossed the junk into the wastebasket. Tuck, fingers flying over the keyboard, hardly acknowledged her. Jane grabbed her coat from the hook, wrapped it closed. “See you—”

  “Hey, roomie.” Tuck gestured to the floor. A stray envelope. “You dropped one.”

  Jane picked it up, the postmark from four days ago, noticing it had been forwarded to her from Channel 11. Nice of them. No return address. And not the same awkward handwriting as the creepy letters. Those had stopped, thank goodness.

  Almost without thinking, she ripped it open.

  “Jane? What’s wrong?” Tuck turned, one hand still on her keyboard, and stared at her, frowning. “You made a weird noise.”

  “I did?” Jane looked back at the envelope. What she’d pulled from inside. She couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  “Yeah, like you’d seen a ghost or something.”

  “Yeah.” Jane blinked at the snapshots she held in her hands. It was a ghost. A person who was now dead. Kenna W— Well, not Kenna Wilkes. But it was the woman in the red coat. With Owen Lassiter. A recent photo of the two of them. And another, and another, and another. And then, what looked like a … a picture of a shrine to Lassiter. A whole wall of photographs of him, decorated with Lassiter balloons on ribbons and Lassiter buttons. Photos of rallies, wide shots of speeches, the exterior of his headquarters. Moira. At the bottom of the pile, a current photo of what looked—from the posters on the wall—like Lassiter’s own office, the candidate smiling behind a massive desk.

  “I guess that’s kind of right,” Jane said. She wouldn’t have recognized her own voice. “A ghost.”

  By the time she got back to Alex’s office, her brain was working again.

  * * *

  “Boston Police Department, official business,” Jake called through the door marked number 43. He’d knocked several times. No answer.

  DeLuca was shaking his head as he walked up the hall. “No one at the front desk,” he reported. “There’s a phone, looks like a house phone. But no one picked up.”

  “No one answered the manager’s door, or the doors on either side,” Jake said. “No one’s answering Holly Neff’s door, either.”

  DeLuca patted his pockets, took out a wallet, extracted a thin piece of plastic from between two bills. “In about three seconds I can get us in there,” he said. “Take a look around.”

  “In your dreams,” Jake said. “Let’s see if we can find the super.”

  “I’m serious,” DeLuca persisted. “Exigent circumstances, right, Harvard? The law says if we think there’s something—”

  “I’m familiar with exigent circumstances.” Jake gestured his partner toward the elevator at the end of the hall. “You know as well as I do, it’s a probable cause thing. Problem is, we don’t genuinely believe Holly Neff may be bleeding to death inside that apartment. That’s because we genuinely know she’s already dead. And inside the morgue.”

  “But what if, uh, uh, the guy who killed her is in there?” DeLuca stopped, beseeching Jake with outstretched palms. “What if he took her keys, ya know? How about that? We know she didn’t have them on her when she was found. What if he snagged them, and he’s inside right now. Maybe he dragged his next victim there, and if we don’t get inside, he might—”

  “Good try, my man. But no way,” Jake said. “We gotta get a warrant to go into that apartment. Or whatever we find would get thrown—”

  A rumble sounded within the walls, and a ping of the aluminum elevator. The doors swished open. And a menagerie emerged. Jake recognized two corgis, a pug, and one of those yappy poodledoodles, each with a Halloween jack-o’-lantern decoration on its collar. His own Diva would have eaten them each in one golden retriever–sized chomp. Holding the ends of all their leashes, one of those women-who-look-like-their-dogs. Bug eyes, button nose, a halo of curls, pumpkin dangly earrings. She wore a denim jacket over a denim work shirt over a denim miniskirt. Sneakers.

  “May I help you?” she said. “I’m the manager of this building. Live here, too. Barbara Bellafiore.” Each dog yanked her in a different direction, but she looked at Jake, then DeLuca. Chose Jake. “Puppies, no! You’re cops, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jake said. “Detective Jake Brogan, Boston PD. This is my partner, Paul DeLuca.” Jake pulled out his BlackBerry. Clicked to the photo he’d taken that morning, the sketch of the Fort Point victim. “Do you recognize this person? Does she live here?”

  A snuffling pug fell in love with DeLuca’s shoes. The corgis sniffed each other. The woman stared at Jake’s BlackBerry screen.

  “Holly Neff, apartment forty-three, one of my month-to-months,” Barbara said. “Puppies, no no no!”

  “You sure?” Jake and DeLuca asked her at the same time. DeLuca shrugged, gestured with a palm. All yours.

  “Oh yes,” Barbara said. “I think she’s a…” She stopped, shrugging.

  “A what?” Jake said. “Has she been home this weekend?”

  Barbara let the dogs drag her a few steps down the hall. The corgis, yapping, seemed to be tracking some invisible prey. Jake and DeLuca followed, DeLuca making a surreptitious cuckoo gesture. They stopped at apartment 43.

  Barbara looped the leashes over one wrist, pulled a jangling collection of keys from a pocket of her denim jacket. “Easy way to find out,” she said.

  She banged on the door with what looked like a brass whistle on the key ring. Waited a beat. No answer. She sorted through the keys, then brandished one. “All righty then.”

  “No, ma’am, don’t do that.” Jake took a step forward. This could ruin everything. He almost wanted to close his eyes. “We can’t—just tell us whether—”

  But she had already swung open the apartment door.

  58

  “I know who the other woman is. I know her name!” Moira Lassiter’s voice over Jane’s cell phone speaker, insistent, cut through the rumble of evening rush hour traffic. Jane navigated Boston’s zig-zag side streets, one hand on the steering wheel and the other digging into a bag of Cool Ranch chips she’d snagged from the Register’s ancient vending machine.

  “She was
here, at our home, Jane. Flaunting her little tight-jeaned self like I was someone’s dotty grandmother and she was Queen of the May. I told you, Jane. I told you. I knew it.”

  A parking place. Jane licked the salt from two fingers. “Mrs. Lassiter, hold on one second, okay? I’m just parking.” Jane eased her Audi into a too-small spot on Canal Street, turned off the ignition. If Moira knew who the other woman was, that meant there was another woman. And that meant Jane had been right about this story from moment one.

  What if the other woman Moira’s talking about—the one who’d been at the Lassiter home—is the victim now lying in the morgue? Moira said, “I know her name.”

  Maybe she was about to hear the key to the whole deal.

  “Okay, I’m back.” Jane ate the last chip, trying to chew softly so Moira couldn’t hear. “So you said—you know her name?”

  “Absolutely.” Moira’s voice was certain. “Kenna Wilkes.”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Lassiter…” Jane’s shoulders sagged, and she rested her forehead on the steering wheel as Mrs. Lassiter described how flossy “Kenna Wilkes” looked and how inappropriately the young woman behaved.

  Moira was apparently as confused as Jane had once been. At least Jane now knew the other woman—Red-Coat Girl—was not named Kenna Wilkes. Kenna Wilkes was a receptionist.

  And, more important, not dead. Kenna Wilkes was not the woman in the pictures. And that’s what had to come next on Jane’s agenda. Finding the identity of the woman who was dead. And finding who had sent those photographs to Jane.

  “Mrs. Lassiter?” Jane took a chance, interrupting mid-tirade. “Listen, I have some ideas about this. In fact, you might be— Well, do me a favor. Let me do some investigating. Can you give me some time? Sit tight? And I’ll be back in touch?”

  Jane clambered out of the car, clicking it locked. Headed down the sidewalk toward Lassiter headquarters. Moira continued to vent.

  “They’ll lie to you, Jane, if you ask about it. Be careful. I need to know what the truth is. That’s all I can think about. I don’t believe that Rory person even comprehends what ‘the truth’ means. And as for Owen, he’s—”