The First Wife

by Diana Diamond

  “Bill, someone’s in the apartment. The phones are knocked out. He’s coming up the stairs.”

  “What?”

  She nearly shouted. “Someone is coming after me.”

  “Hang up! Dial nine-one-one! I’ll call the lobby!” He clicked off. Jane ended the call and pressed 911.

  “Police emergency,” a woman’s voice answered.

  “Help me. Someone has broken in to my apartment.”

  “What’s the address?”

  “It’s a penthouse. Fifth Avenue, across from the park.”

  “What’s the address?”

  What in hell was the address? Bill had given it to her. She had written it down. She had read it off a piece of paper when she stood in front of the building. What was it? Six-something, she thought. She knew there was a six in it.

  “Ma’am, I’m not showing a caller ID number. Are you on a cell phone?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then you’ll have to tell me the address.”

  She blurted out a number. That was it. It sounded right.

  “Okay, help is on the way,” the woman’s voice said. “Stay on the line. Keep talking to me. Can you see the intruder?”

  “I’m locked in my bedroom,” Jane said. But not really, she knew. The lock wouldn’t keep anyone out. She groped for the chair and carried it toward the door. But then she heard another footstep, this one right outside her door. Someone tried to turn the doorknob. The lock jiggled. “He’s right outside my door!” Jane screamed into her phone.

  A telephone rang in the lobby, startling the night man who was dozing behind his desk. He dropped his feet from the desktop and reached out with one hand. “Front desk, Joseph speaking.” With his other hand he tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes. A second later he was bolt upright. “Yes, Mr. Andrews.”

  The distant voice was shouting, talking too quickly to be distinct. “Where? … Your penthouse?” Joseph listened. “Who’s there?” The call didn’t make any sense. The penthouse elevator hadn’t moved since he came on duty. And the penthouse was empty. Mrs. McCarty had gone home. Mr. Andrews was logged out.

  It took steely discipline for Andrews to start over again, this time more slowly. A young woman who was using his apartment was in great danger. There was an intruder in the penthouse, and the telephones had been disabled.

  “I’ll call the police” Joseph decided.

  “Get someone up there now!” Andrews shouted.

  Joseph screamed at the night porter, who was asleep in a soft chair. “Get up to the penthouse. Find out what’s going on!”

  “What’s happening?” the woman was shouting over Jane’s phone. “Are you all right?” Jane wasn’t able to answer. She had all her weight against the door and was trying to drag the desk chair under the knob. The door was still rattling softly as someone turned it from the other side.

  “I’ve called the police!” Jane shouted through the door. “They’re on the way!” The door stopped rattling. Quick footsteps faded toward the stairs. The front doorbell rang, followed in a few seconds by loud knocking. She heard the warble of a siren, growing louder in the street below.

  19

  The porter opened the door for the police, who flooded into the apartment with guns drawn. Lights were turned on in every room, and the officers poked through every closet. One of them went outside and flashed a light into the corners of the patio and the overhang of the roof. Another went upstairs to the roof and searched the cabana rooms and the space behind the planters. The burglar, it seemed, had vanished.

  “You ever see anything like this?” one policeman asked another as they looked behind the racks in the wine cellar.

  The response was a head shaken in awe. “Did you see the beach club up on the roof? Where do people get this kind of money?”

  “No wonder they hear footsteps and see ghosts.”

  Robert Leavitt came through the open door while the search was still in progress, and Jane rushed into his arms. “Thank God you’re here,” she said, holding on to his arm. “These people think I’m crazy.”

  He sat her down on one of the living-room sofas and brought her a snifter of brandy. “The alarm system calls me if there’s an emergency here,” Leavitt explained. “I didn’t know you were in the apartment until Bill called me and said you were in trouble.”

  “Make them believe that,” she said, gesturing to the prowling policemen. “They keep asking me what drugs I’ve been taking.”

  A plainclothes detective sat down across from them, found out how Leavitt fit in to the picture, and began his interview. Jane took him step-by-step through the events of the evening since her fiancé first called her. She went over the light that had appeared on her telephone, disappeared, and then come back on—proof that someone had been in the house. When she had tried to call out, all the lines were blocked. She told him about the crash somewhere in the living room, a lamp or vase that had been knocked over. Then the footsteps on the stairs, and finally the hand turning her bedroom doorknob. She had forgotten about her cell phone until it rang—her fiancé, who had forgotten to tell her something but found the telephones dead when he tried to call back. She had followed his instructions.

  The officer listened patiently, jotting down an occasional note. Then he told Jane and Robert the results of the search. The elevator hadn’t gone up to the penthouse all evening, so he was having trouble understanding how a burglar could have gotten in. Someone could have walked up the fire stairs or taken an elevator to a high floor and then gone up the fire stairs. But the fire doors were locked from the inside, and there was an alarm down in the lobby whenever one opened. Then there was the penthouse security system. Anyone coming through the front door or the service door would set off an alarm unless he punched in the right code within twenty seconds.

  “Someone was in here,” Jane interrupted.

  The detective nodded but continued with his report. The police had checked the phone system as soon as they arrived. They had gotten a dial tone on every line. He had just spoken with the telephone company, and there had been no service interruption detected by the computers.

  “You can disable this phone system just by pulling one electronic card in the control box,” Leavitt said in Jane’s defense.

  “You could,” the officer answered, “but you’d have to use a key to open the box. There are no scratches, and the lock wasn’t jimmied.”

  Then he raised the issue of the crash that Jane had heard. “A vase or a lamp?” he asked her.

  “Or a dish, a glass, a bottle,” she answered sharply. “I heard something break down here.”

  But there was nothing broken, the detective told them. They hadn’t found a broken lamp or a shattered dish. If an intruder knocked something over, there would be broken pieces on the floor. Unless he had paused to clean up his mess, which wasn’t the general m.o. of second-story men.

  “You think I dreamed this whole thing?” Jane challenged.

  The detective raised his palms in a helpless gesture.

  Leavitt showed a momentary flash of anger that he instantly brought back under control. “Ms. Warren isn’t a hysterical woman,” he said. “She’s a competent journalist who checks things out very thoroughly.”

  “I’m not criticizing the lady,” the detective responded evenly. “What I’m saying is that there is absolutely no evidence of a break-in, nor anything to suggest that an outsider was in the apartment. The fingerprints on the outside of the bedroom doorknob are the same as the ones on the inside—Ms. Warren’s. Nothing was disturbed, nothing stolen. So I can file a report, we can keep an eye on the building, and we can call back every couple of days to see if anything new has turned up or turned up missing.”

  Order slowly returned. The police left, stationing one man in the hallway as protection against someone returning. The porter came back up twice to see if there was anything he could do for his prize residents. One by one, Robert Leavitt turned off the lights.

  At three in the morn
ing he started to leave, but Jane prevailed upon him to stay for another brandy. He agreed and poured one for her as well, and decided that if Jane didn’t mind, he would crash in one of the guest rooms. She was delighted that he would be able to stay.

  “Does all this strike you as eerily familiar?” she asked when they were both seated at the piano bar.

  “No, not really. We’ve never had a problem here. I guess we’ve just assumed that the security is foolproof.”

  “Not here,” she said. Then she asked, “Weren’t you the first one on the scene when Bill’s first wife was killed?”

  Leavitt nodded, still not sure of her point.

  “Bill’s wife was killed by an intruder the police were never able to identify. Officials began to doubt that there had been an intruder. Now, when I’m going to marry Bill and become the second Mrs. Andrews, another vanished intruder appears, tries to break in to my bedroom, and then disappears without a trace.”

  “I suppose it is spooky when you look at it that way,” Robert conceded.

  “It’s a lot more than spooky when I may be in line for the same fate.”

  He smiled, dismissing her concerns. “Jane, this was most likely just a common burglar. Vacant penthouses are probably irresistible to them. And it may not have been even that. Couldn’t the telephone problem have gotten you on edge? You’re not used to the sounds in the city, and maybe your imagination was playing—”

  “You think I made all this up?”

  “No, of course not,” Leavitt assured her. “I think it was all very real to you. And calling the police was exactly the right thing to do. I just don’t believe that whatever happened tonight has any connection with … eight years ago.”

  They sat quietly for a moment. Jane saw no point in arguing her case. She had to admit that to the police, and probably to Robert, a break-in at her lofty perch was unlikely, and there was absolutely no evidence of an intruder. But then she remembered there were a few facts on her side that nobody had yet considered. “Would it change your mind any to know that someone has been snooping in my apartment?”

  His calm expression tensed. “When? Tell me about it.”

  “Last week. Twice, when I was out with Bill.” She explained the first occasion when the person was still in the apartment and she had heard him let himself out. Leavitt was concerned, not just about the intrusion but about her walking in on the guy. His escape out the door was fortunate, he thought. If Jane had confronted him, she could have been killed. Then she told him of finding her notes reordered. She had particularly noted which page was on top just before she left with Bill, and that page had been moved when she returned.

  “What were the notes about?” he asked, joining her in trying to figure out a motive.

  She hesitated, and then told him, “I’ve been looking into Kay Parker’s murder. Just to try to understand Bill’s grief. The printout was on my desk, and I checked to be sure there was nothing showing that might be hurtful to him.”

  “And that’s what the person was looking at?”

  “Yes,” she said. “At least, it seems that way.”

  Leavitt sat thoughtfully, then raised his hands in surrender. “I don’t get it. Why would anyone care? That was eight years ago, and it was a dead end even then.” He offered another interpretation. “Is it possible that you found Kay’s death disturbing … frightening? Could you be carrying that image around with you, maybe putting yourself in her place?”

  Her anger showed. “Look, I didn’t imagine that someone got into my apartment. Someone was there—twice! And I didn’t dream up tonight. There was someone in the house, and he came up the stairs looking for me.” But even as she said it, she had a moment of doubt. Was it possible she was imagining that Kay’s gruesome ending might also be hers?

  20

  The wedding plan changed. Instead of “just family” at the federal court building, they decided on family and close friends in the roof garden with an appeals court judge presiding. Craig would stand up for his father, even though Robert Leavitt would sign as the legal witness. Jane planned to have Cassie as her maid of honor. She had no close relatives, so her guest list would be mainly her friends from the office. She couldn’t invite Art. It would be tacky to invite an ex-husband, even though Art was the closest thing she had to a child.

  The reception, too, was to be kept modest—cocktails and heavy hors d’oeuvres in the roof garden. William’s guest list was limited to a few company executives and their significant others and no more than a dozen business associates. Jane decided on Roscoe Taylor, Jack Dollinger, Marie Lyons—the secretary she and Jack shared—and their spouses. She added a young friend from her health club, Diane Trotta, to demonstrate that she had friends her own age. She was embarrassed to realize how few close friends she actually had. Craig invited a classmate from school, and Cassie asked a boy she had met at an equestrian event. A trio of strings would provide the music.

  Simple as it sounded, Jane ran into problems immediately. First was the date of the affair. William’s secretary, Ann Packard, proved to be domineering and defensive. “There is no available weekend for the foreseeable future,” she said curtly, as if that was the final word on the wedding. There was only one weekend in the next two months when Mr. Andrews could be in New York, and two of the executives he would certainly invite would be away then.

  “He’ll have to cancel something,” Jane suggested, certain that Bill would regard their wedding as more important than one of his business meetings.

  “Fine,” Ann answered, clearly indignant that her decision was being challenged. “Who would you suggest we disappoint? The prime minister of Canada or a prince of the royal family of Saudi Arabia?”

  “Whichever one is a month from Saturday,” Jane said, trying to be every bit as imperious.

  “Neither Mr. Applebaum nor Ms. Annuzio will be available,” the secretary snapped, playing her trump card.

  “Oh, that’s too bad. Mr. Andrews will be terribly disappointed.”

  It took a few seconds for Ann to come to grips with the reality of a regime change. She made a desperate move to maintain her exclusive right to budget William Andrews’s time. “I’ll have to discuss this with Mr. Leavitt.”

  Eileen McCarty wasn’t very helpful. Her mind was a complete blank on the names of suitable caterers. “Mr. Andrews hasn’t had many parties since I’ve been here. The cook and I handled his small business dinners.”

  Then Craig proved balky when she got him on the telephone. “A what?” he demanded when she suggested that a dark suit would be appropriate for his role before the judge. And then, “Are you trying to tell me what to wear?”

  By the end of her first day of preparations, Jane felt thoroughly defeated. There was a school of pilot fish permanently attached to the great shark she was about to marry, and none of them took to the idea that the meal ticket might let himself be distracted. The secretary wasn’t about to give up control of William Andrews’s date book. Jane sensed that she would have to tear it out of her cold, dead hands. The housekeeper wasn’t up to the task. And the children bristled at any sign of discipline in their selfish little lives. Art had eventually given her a major role in planning her first wedding because there wasn’t much that he could handle by himself. It seemed that William might not have any role to give her, because he had already parceled out his needs to retainers.

  “How’s it going?” Bill asked when he called her the next morning.

  “Wonderful,” she said, unable to conceal her sarcasm. “Why don’t you and I run off to a justice of the peace and never come back.”

  “I’d love it,” he said. But then he immediately added, “Seriously, is everything under control?”

  “Depends on whether you want to offend a prime minister or a prince, whether you mind if I serve hot dogs, or if you care what your son wears to our wedding. Right now I think he’s planning on cargo pants and sneakers.”

  She went through her list of problems and was pleased that h
e exuded sympathy. “I’ve been in such a rut that the people around me have turned into stone. They’re all terrified of change.” But he didn’t offer to solve her problems. “Just be patient,” he said. “They’ll come around and learn to love you as much as I do.”

  She agreed but then added that someone had to set the wedding date. “You’d better plan on shutting down Andrews Global Network for a Saturday. Otherwise, you and your guests will all be out of town.”

  He promised that he would set a date and that if it wasn’t the Saturday she had suggested, it would certainly be within the next month. She asked him if he had any ideas on caterers. He mentioned the address file he thought Kay had kept on the computer. Or failing that, there might be something in the phone book in his desk drawer.

  Jane went to the office, sat at the computer, and began reviewing the list of files. Kay’s personal records, she soon discovered, were behind a firewall that required a password. There was no way she could get through. She would have to connect one of the young computerniks from her office to Kay’s directories and let an expert try his magic.

  She went to William’s desk and found the drawers locked. The locks were fragile, a simple toggle turned by a key. She could probably open it with a nail file, but she didn’t want to risk telltale scratches. She went back to the computer desk and found a small key among the rubber bands and paper clips. The key opened the drawers of Bill’s desk.

  She found an address book and looked under “C” for caterers. There were none. Maybe “P” for parties. Again there was no listing. Patiently, she went through the address book, trying every conceivable entry. Nothing suggested caterers.

  She saw a checkbook, a large leather-bound volume with three checks to a page and a whole journal for recording the payments. Maybe there was a check to a caterer. She laid the book on the desk and opened the cover. A year’s worth of monthly checks had been torn from the pages. Each had the same entry in the journal: “$100,000 to Selina Royce.” The last check had been entered just a few weeks ago. The first journal entry was eight years earlier. William was paying someone a hundred thousand a month and had been doing so for the past eight years. Just who in hell was Selina Royce?