Heyward nodded. “Yes, that’s what I do, too, and Prestige keeps a record of when the alarm is on or off. Do you realize that means you’re alibied for those times Jonathan was away?”
Coleman stared at Heyward. Could this be true? Could Dinah have been cleared since the beginning of all this horror?
Dinah, looking stunned, turned to Jonathan, who took his cell phone out of his pocket, and made a call. He walked into the living room, away from the group, and spoke briefly on the phone. Coleman held her breath, waiting to hear what he learned.
When Jonathan rejoined the group in the hall he said, “You’re absolutely right. Their records prove that Dinah never left the house the nights those women were killed.”
Dinah’s face lit up. “Oh,” she breathed. “I can’t believe it. All this time, and we always had the answer.”
Yes, Coleman thought, so simple. Meanwhile, Dinah was suffering, nearly had a complete breakdown. Why didn’t Rob think to check with Dinah and Jonathan’s alarm company? For that matter, why hadn’t any of them thought of it? But Rob was the pro; he was supposed to know about security. Rob certainly hadn’t covered himself with glory during this investigation.
The doorbell rang again, and Rob came in, followed by Debbi Diamondstein, Jeb, and Hicks, Heyward’s assistant. The noise level rose as everyone tried to tell the newcomers about Dinah’s alibi. Rob looked shattered. Debbi whispered in Coleman’s ear that she’d turn the story into a column item, pointing out that the police should have checked with the alarm company but were so anxious to pin the DDD&W crimes on anyone no matter how innocent, they hadn’t done any real detecting. And Jonathan thanked Heyward again and again.
At the dinner table, Coleman was seated next to Jeb. She could think of nothing but his nearness. She wanted to reach out and brush that wheat-colored cowlick away from his forehead. She wanted to touch the tanned hand that lay in his lap. She nearly jumped when his knee brushed hers. He was an intelligent and amusing conversationalist, but she couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. It had been a long time since she’d been so attracted to anyone. Her feelings must be obvious. Rob was staring at her, his brown spaniel eyes hurt, and Dinah looked disapproving. Coleman didn’t care.
Her feelings were so intense, she was almost relieved when dessert and coffee were served, and even more relieved when everyone stood up and went into the living room.
Jeb followed her. “May I take you home?”
She must have said yes, and she hoped she said good night to everyone and thanked Heyward properly. She rode the few blocks to her apartment beside him in a little red car that Jeb drove with skill and grace. But when they reached the door of the building and he said, “May I come up?” she kept her head and said, “Not tonight.” He kissed her and she nearly changed her mind but came to her senses at the last minute and hurried inside.
Her phone was ringing when she opened the door to her apartment. She looked at her watch. 11:20. Who would call so late? She grabbed the phone a ring ahead of the answering machine.
“Ms. Greene? I hate to bother you, but this is Marilyn, one of Loretta Byrd’s roommates, and she never came home tonight. I spoke to her around two this afternoon—she was at DDD&W. She didn’t say anything about being out for supper, or not staying here tonight. We have a rule you have to call if you’re not coming home for supper, and you have to call if you don’t plan to sleep here. She hasn’t called, and her cell phone is turned off, and we’re afraid something’s happened to her—”
Coleman frowned and picked up Dolly, who was leaning against her legs. Why was Loretta still at DDD&W at two o’clock this afternoon? She should have left long before two. Dinah had received the check about twelve thirty. “Have you tried Bethany?”
“Yes, I got the answering machine at her apartment, same thing at Zeke’s. Do you think they all went somewhere together?”
“No, I forgot—Bethany’s out of town. Look, wait near the phone in case Loretta tries to reach you. Call me on my cell phone if you hear anything. I’ll start a search for her, try to find out when she left DDD&W. I’ll let you know when we find her. What’s your name again?”
While she was talking, Coleman had stripped off her green silk pantsuit and pulled on jeans, a sweater, and boots. She gave Marilyn her cell phone number, said goodbye to Dolly, and ran for the door. Something—or someone—had prevented Loretta from leaving DDD&W when she should have. A murderer was on the loose, and no one had heard from Loretta for nine hours. She prayed that she was safe.
She hailed a taxi and gave him the DDD&W address. She called Heyward first. Would he meet her at DDD&W? And call Jonathan? They might need Greg Fry’s assistance with the building people, and she was sure Dinah would want to help look for Loretta. Maybe he should call Rob, too, in case they had to deal with the police.
Rob, alerted by Heyward, reached Billy, the technician who’d unpacked the listening devices, at home. He hadn’t heard from Loretta. When he left at ten, he’d left the recorder on. “She must have removed the wire, and left it somewhere. I can’t believe she was at DDD&W all that time and never said a word,” Billy said. “Last we heard from her was when she sent the box up—”
“Meet me at our suite. Maybe the recorder has picked up something since you left,” Rob said.
They converged in the lobby of the Fry building. The guards had been alerted, and one of them escorted Dinah, Jonathan, and Heyward to the thirty-second floor, while Coleman and Rob headed up to fifty-four. Another guard was checking the security tapes to see if they could spot Loretta leaving the building.
The technician had arrived and was listening to the voice-activated tape that they hoped Loretta was wearing. Nothing was heard until 10:47, when Loretta, sounding cheery as a chickadee, said, “Hi! What brings you here this time of night?” A soft voice mumbled a response, and Loretta replied, “Oh, I cleaned out Ellie’s desk yesterday. Go ahead and look, but it’s empty. Dinah had loaned her some books, and Dinah asked me to look for them. Did you know Ellie? Nobody else around here seems to have ever heard of her.”
“Mumble, mumble.”
“Damn it, Billy, can’t you turn up the volume?” Rob said.
“It’s as loud as it’ll go,” the technician said. “The guy’s whispering.”
“Shh,” Coleman said. “I want to hear what Loretta is saying.”
“What did I do with Dinah’s books? Packed ‘em up and sent ‘em to Dinah,” Loretta said.
“What books?” Rob said.
“Shh,” Coleman said again. “Tell you later.”
“—that’s why I’m still here—had a lot of cleaning up to do,” Loretta said. “Actually, I’m glad I ran into you—I’m longing to see the Stubbs paintings. Will you show them to me?”
“Mumble, mumble.”
“Okay. Let’s go upstairs. Let’s walk since it’s just the one flight—quicker than the elevator. I can hardly wait—”
Silence.
“What happened?” Coleman said.
“Nothing good,” the technician said. “The tape is working but they’re not talking. They were on thirty-two, but I can’t be sure where they are now.”
“I don’t like it,” Rob said. “Coleman, let’s go downstairs and help look for her. Billy, call me if you hear anything else on the tape.”
To Coleman, he said, “Okay, explain. She didn’t send any books to Dinah, did she?”
She shook her head. “No, she brought all of Ellie’s stuff to me. She was making an excuse to the person she was talking to for having gone through the files. Whoever she’s talking to knew Ellie, and was interested in the contents of her desk. That’s the first person who’s admitted knowing her.”
The thirty-second floor was brightly lit and buzzing with activity. The security people had locked the building’s exterior doors, and leaving one guard on duty downstairs, half a dozen men had come up to help with the search. The lobby tape didn’t show Loretta leaving the building. She had to be in the building. T
hey were certain she was on thirty-two, when they checked the art storage room and found Loretta’s hideout. They searched the office allocated to the Greene Gallery and found nothing. They were spreading out over the floor to look for traces of the girl when Dinah spotted the metal knitting needle, one of the pair Loretta often wore in her hair. She leaned over to pick it up, but Rob stopped her. “Don’t touch it,” he said.
“I have some of Dolly’s cleanup plastic bags with me,” Coleman said, pulling one out of her carryall and handing it to Rob. “What’s that on the point?”
“I’m afraid it’s blood,” Rob said, his tone grim. He picked up the needle with his handkerchief and dropped it in the bag. “We better call the police, and emergency medical services.” His cell phone rang.
“Rob? The tape just came to life. She’s definitely on thirty-two. I can hear her groaning. I think she’s hurt,” Billy said.
Rob looked at his watch. “She can’t have been here long. It’s not yet midnight. Hurry, everyone. We have to find her fast.”
“Why do you say she can’t have been here long?” one of the guards asked.
“The tapes tell us the time and the location,” Rob explained. “She was talking to someone on this floor around eleven. We can hear her groaning—she’s still on this floor. The person who was with her must be here somewhere, too. I don’t think anyone could have gotten past us. Unlock every office door, check every room,” he told the senior guard. “Make sure all exit doors remain locked so no one can get out of the building.”
Jonathan used his cell phone to call New York Episcopal, the nearest hospital, requesting an ambulance, while Heyward called the police.
Dinah nudged Coleman. “There’s a big supply closet near the stairs to thirty-three. They’d have to pass it if they walked up. Let’s look in there.”
Loretta lay on the floor of the closet. She looked young and small. Her face was pale and her black hair had partly tumbled down; the other knitting needle remained in what was left of her bun. Coleman couldn’t see any blood. Maybe the blood belonged to her attacker? If so, good for Loretta! Coleman hoped she’d stabbed the devil in a tender spot. Dinah ran back and called to the others, who swarmed around the door of the closet.
Loretta was at least partly conscious and struggling to talk. “Teddy…teddy…teddy,” she said.
“Poor little girl. She’s asking for her teddy bear,” the guard with the Groucho Marx moustache said.
“I don’t think so.” Coleman said. “I think she’s telling us who hurt her.” And damn the monster to hell, she added silently.
After they found Loretta, everything moved at high speed. The ambulance arrived and took the girl away. Jonathan and Dinah and Coleman followed in Jonathan’s limousine, with Tom at the wheel. Heyward remained with Rob to help conduct the search for Loretta’s attacker, and to deal with the police.
Sixty-One
Coleman and Dinah huddled together on the hard orange plastic chairs in the hospital waiting room, while Jonathan paced. After what seemed an interminable wait, Dr. Shah, whom they’d met when they arrived, reappeared. He was smiling. “She has a mild concussion,” he said. “She’ll be fine. She was a little confused, but she’s better now. She’s resting, and I’d prefer no one try to talk to her tonight. She needs quiet and rest.”
“Thank God,” Dinah whispered.
“Can you tell us what happened to her?” Jonathan asked.
“She received a blow on the back of her head. The impact was deflected by that big bundle of hair. Her hair saved her from a much more serious injury,” the doctor said.
“When can she go home?”
“Tomorrow, if she feels okay. Someone should be here to pick her up about ten. Unless there’s a change in her condition for the worse—and I’m pretty sure there won’t be—she’ll be better off at home, but she’ll have to take it easy,” he said.
“Thanks, Dr. Shah,” Jonathan said, “We’ll be here. Come on, Dinah, Coleman.” In the lobby, they met Heyward and Rob coming in and told them the good news. They had news, too.
“It’s over,” Rob said. “They found Theodore Douglas hiding in the dining room on thirty-three. Loretta had managed to stab him in the hand with that needle, and he left a trail of blood. He denied touching Loretta until he learned she was alive and had identified him. Then he began to talk. I advised him to be quiet and call a lawyer, but he seemed determined to spill everything. He implicated Parker all the way, except that Parker had nothing to do with the attack on Loretta. This was about Loretta discovering Douglas’s second family. He recognized her in the elevator this morning and decided to kill her before she told anyone. He planned to follow her home, to the building where he saw her in the Village, and kill her there. He waited downstairs in the coffee shop to see her leave, eventually came back to see if she was still in the office, and ran into her.
“When he confessed to hitting her, he even produced the weapon—would you believe he struck her with a three-hole punch he grabbed off a desk? He used it like a tennis racket to slam her from behind. He was sure she was dead, but if we hadn’t turned up when we did, I think she’d have followed Patti Sue down the elevator shaft. He also planned to go after Ellie, if he could find her. He said he became suspicious of her when she disappeared. He thought Ellie might have seen him arranging Frances Johnson’s death, and he’d planned to look through her desk for clues to her whereabouts. As for why he killed the Victor sisters: they knew too much and got too demanding.”
“Why didn’t he divorce Glenda instead of trying to kill poor Loretta to cover up his secret life?” Dinah asked.
“I’ve thought a lot about his other ‘wife’ and children,” Coleman said. “Loretta said he seemed so happy with his Village family. Living with the Ice Queen must have been horrible, when he might have been with a wife and children he loved. But he needed a lot of money to support his second family—money that had to be kept secret from Glenda.”
“Glenda’s family would have annihilated him if he’d tried to divorce her,” Heyward said. “The Goulds are notorious for holding on to what’s theirs. I’m sure he was tied to her with an airtight prenuptial agreement. His job probably depended on their goodwill, too.”
“Douglas deserves punishment, but I feel sorry for Hunt. He didn’t harm anyone, but his firm is disgraced and falling apart,” Dinah said.
“He made your life pretty miserable,” Jonathan said.
“I think he’s suffered enough,” Dinah said.
“I’m convinced that Hunt will rise above all this,” Heyward said.
Coleman looked at him. “You know what? I am, too. I’d planned to write a big story about Hunt and the missing art and the disastrous merger, but I think that story is over. The real story is what happens next.”
Sixty-Two
April
The Greene Gallery was closed Mondays, but Dinah always went in. She was usually alone and enjoyed the time to herself. There was often a lot to do, and this Monday was no exception. She had a great deal to think about.
She sat down at her desk and reflected on recent events. She had so much to be grateful for. No one close to her, including Loretta, had been severely hurt. She and Jonathan had picked Loretta up at the hospital that Saturday morning, planning to bring her back to Cornelia Street with them, but instead, to their surprise, she wanted to go the apartment near Columbia where her friends—now her roommates—were taking turns making a fuss over her. She seemed subdued but physically fine. She’d asked Coleman for a few weeks’ leave to go home to see her family, and Coleman had readily agreed. The girl had certainly earned some time off.
The check from DDD&W would see Dinah through lean times until the Greene Gallery was stronger, and earning more. Debbi Diamondstein thought the print installation at DDD&W was great and would bring in lots of business. She had arranged to have every wall photographed and would see that the photographs reached the right magazines. She told Dinah she might even win an award for the pr
oject.
But Dinah’s confidence and her faith in people had been shaken by the events of the last month. She would never have dreamed that anyone could think she was a murderer. She was no longer sure she wanted the responsibility—the burden—of trying to make a success of the gallery. If she hadn’t taken on the DDD&W job, she’d never have been accused of murder, and Loretta wouldn’t have been hurt. Maybe Patti Sue and her sister wouldn’t have been killed. She was beginning to think Jonathan was right: she wasn’t suited to managing a big commercial art gallery. She certainly wasn’t capable of dealing with the corporate world.
Should she turn the management of the gallery over to Bethany? Bethany would run it well. If Dinah didn’t have to worry about making the gallery profitable, she could do as much or as little research as she liked. She could write articles and catalog essays. She could find the perfect Midtown apartment, and make Jonathan happy. She could get pregnant, and make Jonathan ecstatic. A quiet domestic life sounded blissful. She wanted babies eventually. Why not now?
The sound of the mail hitting the floor interrupted her reverie. She collected the handful of envelopes and returned to her desk. Openings at other galleries. Bills. Advertisements. A letter from the Art Museum of Great Britain. What could that be?
Good heavens, they were offering her a Samuel Palmer Fellowship, assisting with the research and cataloguing of a major addition to their American Print collection—an American patron had donated his huge collection to the museum. An exhibition was planned, and her knowledge about American prints would be invaluable.
The Palmer Fellowships were famous, but she had never considered applying. They were a tremendous honor, given to the greatest scholars in the print world. Dinah didn’t even have a PhD. She’d never heard of a Palmer Fellow who hadn’t earned a doctorate. Who had nominated her? Oh, darling Rachel, her good friend.
Fatal Impressions Page 24