The First Wife

by Diana Diamond

  “I hadn’t thought—” she began, but he cut her off.

  “You’d better think, and think hard. You’re poking around, trying to find out if your husband loves you. And you’re thinking that someone else who loves him may be trying to scare you away. What you’re really doing is looking for evidence that could send William Andrews to prison. And that would cost networks, cable companies, broadcasters, and God knows how many manufacturers a lot of money. Not just millions, but billions. There are probably a hundred companies out there that would kill you in a second if they thought you were a danger to Andrews Global Network.”

  “Roscoe, that seems like such a stretch—”

  He cut in again. “Let me tell you about my new job. Do you know what I do?” She might have ventured a guess, but he kept talking. “Nothing! I sit here all day reading our papers and sending letters to their editors and managing editors, commenting on their coverage. Letters that I’m sure they ignore, just as I would have ignored them in my old job. And for this they’re paying me twice as much as I used to make and giving me company stock. You know why?” Again, he didn’t give her time to guess. “Because I was asking questions about William Andrews’s former lover and might just have discovered that he had something to do with his wife’s death. So they’re paying me not to dig and not to ask any more questions.”

  “Roscoe, I think they need someone in your position. You were promoted because—”

  “I was promoted to keep me on the sidelines. What does it cost them? An extra thirty thousand a year. Jesus, that’s pocket change next to what they’re protecting.”

  “My God,” Jane snapped, “are you saying that Bill married me to keep me on the sidelines?”

  “What I’m saying is that if you get too close to the truth, even William Andrews won’t be able to save you. There are important men who have bet serious money on his company. Do you think they give a rat’s ass about whether you have a happy marriage?”

  She sat speechless, listening to her mentor breathing on the other end of the conversation. She concluded, “I guess I have to clear out, don’t I?”

  “Or stay put. You’re getting much more for forgetting what you know than the lady in Paris is getting. She gets a million bucks and an occasional visit. You’ve got his wedding ring. So think long and hard, Jane. Stay or leave. But whatever you do, stop asking questions.”

  Her hands were shaking when she closed her telephone. Roscoe wasn’t a man given to exaggeration. In all the years she had known him, he had always been factual, unemotional, and precise. And now he seemed to be frightened, not just for her but for himself as well. He was going no further in their investigation into the relationship between Andrews and Selina. He was going to sit in his office, collect his hush money, and try not to attract the attention of anyone connected with Andrews Global Network. He was advising her to do the same. He was a bought man, and he was suggesting that she get used to being a bought woman. She had a better deal than the woman in Paris, he had told her. She had the name, the position, and easy access to the fortune. All Selina had was a monthly check. Stay, if she could live with the secret space in her marriage that held her husband’s past. Get out if she couldn’t. Those were her choices.

  38

  Jane walked back to Fifth Avenue and began meandering along edge of the park. “Not even William Andrews can save you,” Roscoe had warned. And that meant there would always be a third party in her marriage. Not just Selina Royce but all the investors that had a stake in Andrews’s empire. They would always be watching to see if she was content with her role as the loyal, unquestioning wife. They would always be ready to deal with her if she should ever step out of line. Being married to Bill meant becoming a silent member of the “team” and, like Roscoe, taking care not to attract attention.

  It would be like being married to a gangster, pretending not to notice the body in the trunk of the car. Or to a government official, living on the bribes that came stuffed into envelopes. The piano player in a brothel took his tips and smiled politely, feigning ignorance of what was going on in the rooms upstairs. She would be Mrs. William Andrews, accepting the honors and accolades and ignoring the headless body of his first wife.

  She should run! But where? Back to her job at one of Bill’s newspapers, to sit alongside an equally compromised Roscoe Taylor? Or to a new life? Was there any place she could go where Andrews Global Network wouldn’t be waiting for her? They could find her and watch her no matter where she went. They would never let her uncover the truth about Kay Parker’s murder. She would be no safer in another country than she was in Bill’s apartment, and no more independent than she was in his arms.

  How had she let this happen? Obviously, she hadn’t been thinking clearly when she let herself be flattered into a relationship with him. But she had known about his first wife from the very beginning, and she had learned about Selina long before they were married. There were clues everywhere. There had been countless warnings. Why hadn’t she heeded any of them?

  But maybe there had been no chance of escape. From the moment he glanced at the desk in her apartment and saw that she was digging into Kay’s death, he had known that she was a danger to him. Perhaps that was the need he had for her. From that moment, he knew that he could never let her get away.

  She dined alone, again by the window. The cook had prepared a delicious rack of lamb with a mint sauce and fresh vegetables. Mrs. McCarty had gone to the wine cellar and brought back a Bordeaux that was old enough to need decanting. As she looked out over the skyline, there was no doubt that she was at the top of the world. Everything she tasted, all that she saw, advised her to join Bill’s conspiracy of silence. But still, it was hard to put aside the sound of the shotgun blast that had obliterated Kay Parker’s face. Hard, too, to ignore the voices that kept asking questions about her husband’s role in Parker’s death.

  In the morning she threw a few essentials into an oversize handbag. “Out for the day,” she told Mrs. McCarty cheerfully. She walked downtown to the station and boarded a train for Southport. She took a cab to her apartment, then drove to the house where her first husband rented a room. He was fresh out of bed, still scratching and stretching, when he opened the door.

  “Everything all right?” Art asked.

  “Fine,” she lied. “Just back from Paris.”

  Art seemed glum. “Sure as hell beats Southport.” He staggered off to get dressed.

  They drove to a diner for coffee and muffins. He ate hungrily, but the food didn’t improve his mood. “How’s the play coming?” she asked, and then listened to the problems of getting answers from his producers.

  “They’re never in, never return phone calls. And when you do get ahold of them, they’re still waiting for information. I figured I’d be in the theater in six months. Now I’m beginning to think more like six years.”

  Jane sympathized, but then brought up the reason for her visit. “I need cover, Art. I need people to think I’m at home here in South-port while I’m upstate doing a bit of research.” His interest was piqued instantly. “The thing is,” Jane went on, “I think I’m being watched. When I don’t go back to the city tonight, I think people are going to come looking for me.”

  He was mildly amused. “Jealous husband?”

  “More than that,” she said, and his expression became serious. She took him through the events in Paris, her experience in the sauna and the bogus nurse in her room. She didn’t mention Andrews’s liaison with his mistress or her suspicions about the woman who had tried to inject her. There was no reason to get into her husband’s tarnished love life. But she clearly conveyed the message that her marriage to William Andrews was proving to be dangerous.

  “You know those ghost movies,” she said, “where they hear chains rattling and voices telling them to get out? But the idiots stay in the house anyway? That’s about where I am. I’m getting a lot of warnings, and I think it’s time for me to get out. But there are a couple of things I have to
investigate first. If I’m walking out on the marriage of the century, I want to be sure.”

  “What’s left to investigate?” he said. He reminded her of her research into the murder of Kay Parker and the pages on Selina Royce that she had caught him reading. “He’s lying to you. They all are. When you smell something fishy, it’s probably because there is a fish.”

  “I want to go up to the place where it all happened. There was a meeting at an inn near the chalet. I need to know who was at that meeting. And then I want to talk to the one-man police force that started the investigation. Someone inside the William Andrews corporation killed Kay Parker, and everyone has been covering it up. I need to know …” she trailed off, unable to finish the thought.

  “You need to know if it was William Andrews?” Art said, supplying the unspoken name.

  Jane nodded. “That’s why I need your help.”

  She explained that she needed to switch cars with him so she could leave hers in front of her apartment. She needed activity in the apartment at night. Maybe he could stay there and turn the lights on and off. And she needed a cover if someone should come knocking on her door. He had to say that she had been in and out all day. That she had met up with a friend. Anything that would make it sound as if she were spending a routine day. Art nodded and tossed her the keys to his car.

  “Okay,” he said. “But I liked your first idea better. Just get out!”

  Jane phoned Roscoe Taylor. She wanted him to give her the same cover. She had been in the office and was out, probably working on an assignment.

  “I don’t like this,” Roscoe told her. “You really should let it go. If you nearly got killed just for raising questions, what do you think will happen if they catch you investigating the crime scene?”

  “I love the man, Roscoe,” she admitted. “And I think he loves me. That’s why I have to know. I need to know how the rest of my life is going to turn out.”

  ————

  Jane drove to a strip mall near her office and went to a public telephone kiosk. Mrs. McCarty answered on the first ring.

  “It’s me,” Jane said. “Is Mr. Andrews home?”

  “He’s at the office,” the housekeeper said, amazed that anyone would expect William Andrews to be home.

  “Well, I know I’ll never get him there. So, will you tell him that I’m working late and that I’ll probably stay at my apartment. Or maybe I’ll stay with one of my friends. I’ll phone him when I decide.”

  “Where can he reach you?”

  “He can call my cell phone,” Jane said, and then hung up quickly. She had established that her plans weren’t yet firm and had left a caller ID number that would put her near her office if anyone checked. Then she started north into Massachusetts, where she took the turnpike to Albany. With a little luck, she would be at the inn in the Adirondacks in time for dinner.

  39

  William Andrews looked away from the faces around the conference table, checked his watch inconspicuously, and scribbled a brief note, which he passed to his secretary. “Call my wife. Leave word that I’ll be late.” Then his attention went back to the issue at hand—advertisers who had cut their spending. Kim Annuzio had a boggling array of figures and charts. Most of the cuts, she was demonstrating, were cyclical and were offset by other increases. The hard-core declines seemed to come from just two cable systems.

  “Anyone know why?” Andrews asked.

  His secretary slipped back into the room and leaned close to him, whispering that his wife was away for the evening. He immediately lost interest in the revenue shortfall.

  “Where?” he whispered.

  “She didn’t say. Just that you could call her cell phone.”

  “Well, call,” he ordered, and then turned back to the meeting.

  The woman returned, this time with a note that she left next to him. “Her phone is turned off. I left a message for her to call you.” He folded the paper into his pocket and switched his attention back to the meeting.

  It was another hour before they broke up. As they were filing out, Robert Leavitt suggested that Andrews pay a visit to the offending cable systems. Andrews nodded curtly. “Someone should,” he said. But his mind was elsewhere. “Any calls?” he asked as he passed his secretary. There were none.

  He phoned the apartment and got Mrs. McCarty, who could tell him only that Jane had called. “Did she have an overnight bag?” he demanded, and she assured him that his wife didn’t. “Just a shoulder bag,” Mrs. McCarty reported. He tried the cell phone and got her mailbox. He was puzzled but not really alarmed. Jane was bright and independent, clearly able to decide to spend the night with friends. He knew he had been busy, hardly home at all—and distracted when he was. It made sense that she’d welcome an opportunity for a bit of conversation.

  But she wasn’t generally careless. It was unlike her to turn her phone off, particularly when she had asked him to call her. He packed the report they had just discussed into his briefcase and had his secretary alert his driver.

  At home, he took a sandwich into his office but found he was too distracted to get into the numbers and charts. He called Mrs. McCarty and asked her to repeat the message Jane had left. Then he went down to the main telephone set and scrolled down to check for the number she had called from. He recognized the Connecticut area code. No problem! He dialed her office, and her secretary said she had been in. He was switched to Roscoe Taylor, who greeted him cordially and said that Jane was probably out on an interview. Andrews called her apartment and got her voice, promising to call back. As the evening wore on, he made two more tries to her cell phone, sure that she would notice it was off and would turn it back on. He was angry. If her phone had run down or broken, she could have found another phone and called.

  Jane was on the Northway, passing Lake George in the Adirondack foothills. Fatigue was setting in, but she had to admit that she welcomed the distraction. Since France, she had thought of nothing but the sauna and the woman in the hospital—the same woman her husband had visited. She had churned up all the possibilities, running one scenario after another. It was relaxing to concentrate on something else, even if it was only the boring task of driving.

  But now, as she got closer to the answers she had to find, Jane went back to rerunning the possibilities one more time. The woman near the opera house was certainly Selina Royce. She lived openly and, given the ease with which Roscoe had located her, made no effort to hide her identity. It was also certain that she had a relationship with her husband. The detective’s report left no doubts that they had been lovers. And he was still paying her bills. Why? There were two possibilities she could think of. Either he was ensuring her silence, in which case he might not still love her, or he was ensuring her lifestyle, in which case he probably did still love her. Or, at least, felt responsible for her.

  Those were facts. William Andrews had a lover, and Kay Parker knew about it. Maybe Kay had confronted him, laughed when he asked for his freedom, and told him he would be her prisoner forever. Or maybe Kay had given him a hint at just how much a divorce was going to cost him. Either way, both her husband and his mistress had motives for murder.

  But that was where things became iffy. It was pure speculation to suggest that William and Selina had planned Kay’s death. Maybe Kay had decided to do away with her rival. Or perhaps it was Bill alone who planned to get rid of Kay. These were the questions that had to be answered.

  Those answers would shed light on the present issues. Why, if he loved Selina, would he have married her? Roscoe had suggested that it was to “keep her on the sidelines,” but that sounded much too manipulative. Through it all, Jane felt that Andrews really loved her. Maybe it was her ego, or perhaps just a case of wishful thinking, but she couldn’t believe that all their intimate moments had been part of a ruse. But if he loved her, why would he be keeping Selina? If it was only because he needed her to keep his secret, then why wouldn’t he tell Jane about her?

  The more she thought a
bout it, the more important it seemed to find out who had visited the house in the Adirondacks, and in what order they had arrived. She needed to know whether Selina was actually at the house or at the Bass Inn business meeting, which would have put her in the neighborhood. It was also important to know whether Andrews had brought his wife with him to the chalet or whether she had gone up on her own. The first would imply that Selina was the unexpected intruder. The other would imply that Kay had decided to catch them in each other’s arms. And if, indeed, Selina wasn’t at the meeting or at the house, then Andrews would have acted alone in killing his wife.

  She remembered that her husband had also been wounded, proof that he had been behind his wife when the fatal shot was fired. But that was Robert Leavitt’s spin on the events. Could it be that Kay had fired first, only wounding her target, and that Bill had then taken the gun away from her? Or could his wounds have been faked? Leavitt would have no problem testifying that his boss had been wounded, and Andrews had more than enough clout to create a fake medical record.

  How could she get the information she needed? Bob Leavitt would know who had attended the meeting, but that wasn’t information he would be likely to share. Nor would any of the other top executives talk to her about a subject they had kept secret for so long. Would the airline that the company used still have records of who had been aboard flights to the Adirondack meeting? Would they have kept them all these years? She would have to find the rules and regulations for passenger lists. Another question: How did Selina get away from the crime scene? According to Leavitt’s statement, all the attendees had left for New York. So if Selina had been at the chalet when the murder occurred, she would have needed special arrangements for her escape—a private flight, a car rental, a taxi to a train. Would any of that have been recorded? But Jane realized that she couldn’t be sure the crime had actually been committed that morning. It might have been the previous evening, which would have allowed Selina to leave with the other executives. It could have been at any time! There was no postmortem examination of the body, and no medical examiner had been involved.