The First Wife

by Diana Diamond

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” Jane started, but he cut her off.

  “This is a surprise. What brings you here?”

  “You don’t want to know. Let’s just say that I’m caught between two husbands. One is spying on me, and the other one nearly drowned me. I need a friend.”

  “Of course, of course. But first a drink and then something to eat. I’ve got some fish—frozen, I’m sorry to say. But if you have a couple of cocktails before, it isn’t half bad.”

  She slumped into a soft chair and accepted the martini he brought her with loving care. Then he returned with his own.

  “To your recent promotion,” Jane said, raising her glass.

  He blushed. “I’m glad you already know. It saves me the embarrassment of telling you about it.”

  “What embarrassment? You’ve earned it, Roscoe.”

  He sat down, his fingertip tracing the rim of his glass “I may have earned it, but that’s not why I got it. I got it for dropping our investigation into that news anchor in San Antonio. Pure and simple, I took the money and ran. What’s embarrassing is the way they pulled it off,” he said. “There’s nothing subtle about the William Andrews team. John Applebaum called me at three o’clock and told me they were creating a new position. ‘To improve editorial quality right through the organization.’ And I had the experience and the integrity that they were looking for. He said they appreciated that at this stage of my career I might not want to take on new responsibilities. So he told me to sleep on it, and if I wanted to ‘join the team,’ to give him a call in the morning.” He shook his head. “ ‘Join the team.’ I didn’t like the sound of joining anyone’s team, and that was even before I knew what they meant.

  “At five o’clock, your husband’s gunslinger, Robert Leavitt, called. He said he had heard the news and hoped I would be joining the team. Then he told me, ‘There’s just one little matter I should call to your attention.’ Selina Royce, he said, was a very difficult episode for the company. ‘It’s not something that we’re eager to go through again.’ It was pretty clear. Team members join in the cover-up.”

  Jane sighed. “That’s from a guy who couldn’t remember whether there had ever been a Selina Royce.”

  “I should have told him to go fuck himself,” Roscoe lamented. He lifted his drink and downed nearly half of it.

  “No, you did the right thing,” Jane insisted. “Whatever you learned probably couldn’t have been all that important. And you deserve the job and the recognition.”

  “Thank you,” he said softly, as if his sins had just been forgiven. He finished his drink and then asked Jane, “Another?”

  “Not if I’m ever going to stand up and walk.”

  When he returned with his refill, Roscoe began talking before he reached his chair. “I will tell you what I did find out. That is, if you want to hear some sly innuendo about your husband.”

  She sighed. “I suppose I asked for this….”

  “There’s no need to know. I can take it with me to my new job in the clouds.”

  “I’d go crazy wondering what it was,” Jane decided.

  Roscoe leaned back into his storytelling posture. “William Andrews must have seen her on her San Antonio station, or met her at some sort of cable event. Whatever, he approached Selina Royce and offered her a position with the Andrews network. She accepted. Who in hell wouldn’t want to move from San Antonio to New York? Trouble was that she had an ironclad contract with the station. She couldn’t leave for another two years. When Andrews heard about it, he tried to buy out her contract. According to my sources, he offered two million for a contract that was paying her less than one hundred thousand.”

  Jane gasped. “What kind of ratings did she have? The whole audience?”

  “I don’t know,” Roscoe answered impatiently. “But whatever she had, her station owner turned Andrews down cold. Selina was his property, and no matter how much William Andrews was worth, he couldn’t have her.”

  “So he bought the whole cable system,” Jane surmised.

  “You’ve got it!” Roscoe said. “The whole company. He attached it to one of his Southwest properties, fired the owner, and brought Selina to headquarters. He paid five million just to get an evening news anchor from San Antonio.”

  “He was in love with her,” Jane said.

  Roscoe shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. I mean, William Andrews could have had any woman on the planet.”

  “So what happened?” Jane asked.

  “She disappeared,” Roscoe answered. “Do you know she never did a network news show?

  They sat thoughtfully, staring at each other. Jane finally ventured, “If he was keeping her as a mistress, Kay might have found out. And from what I’ve learned about the first Mrs. Andrews, she wouldn’t have put up with it for a minute. So, suppose she told Andrews to get rid of her. And suppose Selina learned that she was on the way out?”

  “Yeah, then Selina might have reason to kill Kay Parker,” Roscoe agreed. “Or maybe Kay came after Selina, and Selina beat her to the draw.”

  Jane found herself nodding at the logic. “Either way, Selina would be Kay Parker’s killer. But why in hell is Bill paying her a hundred thousand a month?”

  Roscoe pursed his lips. “Well, if he was in love with her …”

  “He’d be paying to keep her out of the hands of the police,” Jane said, finishing the thought.

  “Or,” Roscoe continued, “suppose William Andrews had someone else kill his wife. Then Selina would have him by the short hairs.”

  “No,” Jane insisted. “If he had Kay Parker killed in order to have Selina, then why wouldn’t he still have her?”

  Roscoe looked at her sadly. “Maybe he does.”

  Jane pulled back as if he had aimed a blow at her.

  “I don’t know anything like that,” Roscoe hastened to assure her. “We’re just speculating here, and we could be miles off the mark.”

  “But what you’re suggesting is that Selina is still his mistress, and he keeps her in Paris so that there won’t be any second thoughts about Kay’s death.” Jane sighed. “But if that’s true, then where do I fit in? I mean, if he’s having a happy affair with the woman of his dreams, then why would he bother to marry me? I don’t bring one damn thing to the party!”

  Roscoe asked, “Isn’t it possible that he’s fallen out of love with Selina, and into love with you?”

  Jane snickered. “He’s still spending a lot more on her than he is on me.”

  “Maybe he has to in order to keep her from stirring up a fuss. Isn’t it possible that he has to pay her so that he’s free to love you?”

  She shook her head. “Thanks for the compliment, Roscoe. But it isn’t very likely. He was paying her long before he ever met me.”

  Again they sat in quiet thought. Roscoe broke in with “None of this really makes any sense. There has to be a simpler explanation.”

  “But if there is,” Jane pointed out, “why wouldn’t he tell me about it?”

  The implications of Roscoe Taylor’s report tormented her during the train ride back to the city. How could her husband still be in love with Selina? She had just spent a week alone with him, and his every gesture told her that he loved her deeply. He had rushed to marry her when he had every opportunity to postpone the wedding. Was it possible for a man to be in love with two women at once?

  Why was he paying Selina Royce? If she killed Kay, why would he have gone to such lengths to protect her? Perhaps he felt guilty that he had brought her into his life. Maybe he felt that he had a hand in the deadly confrontation. That might explain his covering up for her and helping her escape. But all that money over all those years? Wouldn’t she have a life of her own by now?

  Then, that night, Bill told her he had to leave for Paris. “Something just came up …,” he started to explain.

  “Take me with you. I love Paris!”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. It’s just a quick trip. All business.”


  “It’s business to you,” Jane countered, “but it’s a joy to me. I won’t be in the way. I’ll go to the Picasso, or maybe the Orsay. I’ll sit in a sidewalk café and see if I can get picked up by a Frenchman.”

  He laughed. “You’ll have no trouble doing that. I’ll take you if you promise to stay in the museums.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “I’ll send a car,” he said. “We landed at La Guardia, but I think they may have moved the plane up to Westchester for maintenance.”

  “See you on the plane,” Jane bubbled.

  Museums like hell, she thought as soon as she hung up. This was her chance to find out exactly what her husband’s relationship was with the woman who had probably once been his mistress.

  PART THREE

  The Murder

  32

  She fell asleep with her head resting on her husband’s chest and didn’t wake up when he slid out of the small bed and went up to the plane’s conference room. Gordon Frier and Robert Leavitt were both aboard, and they joined Andrews for an all-nighter. They were all red-eyed when the plane landed in Paris.

  They checked into the Hôtel George V, where Bill had caught her coming out of the shower, and were escorted to a penthouse suite that seemed to be his regular quarters. They slept for a few hours and then had a breakfast of cheese and ham brought to their room. At nine-thirty, Bill donned his suit, picked up his briefcase, and kissed her good-bye like a commuter going off to the train station. Jane slipped into jeans and a sweater, applied a little makeup, and put on her most comfortable walking shoes. She stopped at a shop in the lobby and bought a pair of oversize sunglasses.

  She walked several blocks away from the hotel, down to the Seine and the Place de l’Alma. She got into a taxi at the foot of the bridge and asked for the Place de l’Opéra. Then she walked west on Boulevard Haussmann until she reached Selina Royce’s address.

  There was a fashionable shop on the street level, with exquisite lingerie and beautiful dresses in the window. At another time the shop would have been irresistible, but she was on a very different mission. There was an insignificant doorway to one side, serving the four residential floors above. Each French window led to an iron-railing balcony. Shutters were closed over most of the windows to ensure privacy from the identically styled buildings across the wide street.

  She pushed the door open and stepped into a hallway that led to a large and elegant lobby behind the shops. At the end of the lobby were doors opening out onto a garden with a central fountain. To the left were two brass-cage elevators. A uniformed concierge, seated at a desk near the elevators, rose to greet her.

  He glanced at her hand, found the wedding ring, and asked “Madame?” His bow indicated that he was waiting to be helpful.

  Jane answered in English. “I seem to be lost. Does Arthur Keene live here?”

  “Monsieur Keene?” He looked puzzled. If he had known Art, he probably would have broken out in laughter. “No, I don’t think so,” he said politely in heavily accented English. “Perhaps you have the wrong address.”

  She showed him the paper she had written the address on. He squinted at it, shrugged, and announced that this was indeed the address she was looking for. “But, unfortunately, no Monsieur Keene.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I must have copied it wrong.” On her way out she stole a glance at the brass postal boxes. Just as Roscoe had told her, Selina Royce’s name filled one of the slots. She went down the hallway and back onto the street. It was a luxury building, apparently catering to those with more money than they needed. Selina would fit that description. She looked around and spotted a café across the street, just a few storefronts down. Jane crossed over, took a seat by the sidewalk, pulled her sweater tight against the fall chill, and settled down for what might be a long wait. If she had guessed correctly, Andrews would be stopping by for a visit. She hoped she was wrong, but the fact that she was watching the doorway meant that she thought she was right.

  She ordered a small baguette sandwich and a bottle of water, then sat back to watch. The busy thoroughfare, with its glamorous pedestrian traffic, presented constant distractions, and it wasn’t easy to keep her attention focused. An hour passed. Maybe he wasn’t coming. Maybe the rendezvous was all in her imagination. She ordered coffee and sipped it slowly; then when the waiter seemed to hover, she added a pastry. It was past midday, and there had been no sign of her husband. People had gone in and come out of the doorway, a middle-aged man and two women who were too old to fit a profile of Selina.

  Jane began to feel conspicuous. She was starting her third hour at the café and was the only one using the outdoor tables. She paid her bill, got up, and found a store window directly across the boulevard from the doorway. For another hour she pretended to window-shop, always keeping the entrance in sight. A woman came out, this one more in keeping with Selina’s age and general description. The woman began walking toward the opera house. Jane was tempted to follow her. Maybe it was Selina, on her way to a meeting with Bill. Very possible! Why had she assumed that he would visit her apartment? But on closer inspection, the girl seemed wrong. Tall and skinny rather than statuesque, and probably too young to have been a news anchor eight years ago. Jane gambled, and stayed put. She had lost confidence that her husband would be coming to the apartment. What had seemed to be a perfect plan now seemed ridiculous.

  Maybe she should go back to the lobby and simply ask for Selina Royce. “Whom shall I say is calling?” the concierge would certainly ask. And then tell him, “Mrs. William Andrews.” But then what would the other woman do? Invite her up for coffee? That didn’t seem likely. What was more probable was that she would send word that she was not at home and then call Bill to warn him off. She wandered back to the café and sat in the chair she had abandoned. The waiter probably recognized her, but he gave no sign of it as he took her order for a glass of wine.

  She began another vigil, sipping the wine and nibbling on a dish of peanuts. The young woman she had almost followed returned, far too quickly to have been at a midafternoon liaison.

  A taxi maneuvered to the curb a few doors away from her, attracting her attention because of the horn blasts from the cars it cut off. She had almost turned away when William Andrews stepped out. He leaned into the window to pay his fare and, without looking either left or right, bounded into the doorway of Selina Royce’s building. She swallowed hard. Her worst fears were playing out in front of her.

  What now? Jane hadn’t planned that far. He was inside with his mistress. Should she charge across the street, push past the guard, and then confront them together? She had a delicious moment thinking of catching the two of them together, but then she realized how ridiculous she would look, standing in the doorway and screaming, “J’accuse!” Especially if he was simply dropping off a check. She decided to wait and ordered another glass of wine.

  Now the waiting became unbearable. Half an hour was more than enough time for him to pay hush money. As her wait drifted toward an hour, she did battle with the images of what might be going on in the apartment. She couldn’t believe that her husband could be making love to another woman. Why would he keep a mistress a continent away? But, of course, he flew to Europe several times a month. With his resources, Paris was just the next town.

  She fantasized about other cities. Was this the only one, or did he keep women in other places that he frequented? She stopped just short of entertaining the notion that he might be an international philanderer. But it wasn’t easy to sit watching the doorway he had entered, realizing that nearly two hours had passed with no sign of his return.

  She felt a lump in her throat when he appeared at the doorway, glanced around furtively, and then rushed off toward the opera house. He could find a taxi to take him back to the critical meeting that had been his excuse for flying across the Atlantic. Or he might just go back to the hotel and await her return from her museum jaunt.

  She realized she was crying.

  33


  The tears oozed out from under her sunglasses and were running down her cheeks. Damn it, she loved him! She had fallen in love when he first began paying attention to her, consummating her feelings on their honeymoon. But he didn’t love her, at least not in the same way. Now it seemed completely plausible that he would go to any length to keep her from stumbling onto his secret.

  The door opened again, this time to a stylish young woman wearing a scarf over her head that touched the rims of her sunglasses. She seemed to be the right age and height. She was tall, well proportioned, and spirited. She stepped into the street and walked in the opposite direction, away from the Place de l’Opéra. There was a sensual sway to her hips that turned a few heads moving in the opposite direction.

  Jane threw money on the table and jumped up to follow. She kept the woman in sight from the other side of the street and crossed at her first opportunity. Then she walked, no more than thirty yards behind, watching as Selina negotiated the frantic pedestrian traffic. She couldn’t help but notice her regal stride, tall and erect, head held high, as if she were the only one on the boulevard. Jane felt as if she were chasing breathlessly, an athlete in walking shoes after royalty in high heels. For a second she wished she were Selina Royce, fresh out of bed with her lover and strolling down the most fashionable street in Paris.

  The woman turned into a bank office, and Jane followed as far as the lobby. Selina strode past the tellers’ windows with supreme confidence, up to one of the officers’ desks. While she waited for the man to come around and position her chair, she looked up and seemed to come eye-to-eye with Jane. For a second each was reflected in the other’s sunglasses. But then Selina turned back to her banker. He seemed delighted to see her, an old friend who made large deposits.