Let Me Whisper in Your Ear

by Mary Jane Clark

  “Tommy was my best friend.”

  “Can you tell me some of the things you used to do together?”

  “We were in the same class in school. We were in Boy Scouts together. Played football on the same team.”

  “You had a lot of fun with Tommy?” Laura led him on.

  “Yeah, we had lots of good times.”

  “Ever go to the amusement park with Tommy?”

  Ricky nodded.

  “What did you do there?”

  “We’d go swimming in the pool,” Ricky recalled. “We’d try to get there early in the day before all the crowds came.”

  “That must have been fun.”

  “Yeah, but the pool got awfully dirty. There would be hot dogs and hair and green gunk floating in it sometimes. Kids used to pee in there, right in the water. They were too lazy to get out of the pool and go to the bathhouse. They said they changed the water every day, but I didn’t believe it.”

  Rose Potenza winced.

  “What about the rides, Ricky?” asked Laura, changing the subject. “Did you and Tommy like the rides?”

  “Yeah, they were cool, when we had the money to go on them. But once in while the guys who ran the rides would let us on for free.”

  “Did you and Tommy have a favorite ride?”

  “Not really.”

  “You know, Ricky, my father used to run the roller coaster at Palisades. Did you ever ride the Cyclone?”

  The man uncrossed his legs and sat up stiffly in his chair. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the edges of the armrests.

  “Ricky?”

  “I was afraid of the Cyclone,” he answered shortly.

  Laura sensed Ricky’s tension and didn’t want to exacerbate it, especially since she hadn’t gotten to the questions she most wanted to ask him.

  “I’d like to talk a little more about Tommy if we could, Ricky. About the time when he disappeared. That was the last summer that Palisades was open, wasn’t it?”

  Ricky nodded.

  “Just before school started?”

  He nodded again.

  “Do you remember the last time you saw Tommy?”

  Ricky stared piercingly at her.

  “Ricky?”

  He pulled the microphone from his collar. The interview was over.

  77

  OVER A SCOTCH on the rocks, Francheska listened as Leonard spewed out his story of what a tough day he’d had. Though Leonard was trying not to show it, Francheska could tell that the visit from the detective worried him.

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he declared. “Let that dick dig all he wants.”

  At another time, Francheska would have gone to him, circled her arms around him and distracted him with a long, deep kiss. But not tonight.

  Maybe he wouldn’t really care that much when she told him that they were through. But she had given special attention to getting ready for tonight. She wanted him to be fully aware of what he would be missing without her in his life.

  “Come here, baby.” Leonard patted the cushion on the sofa beside him.

  Francheska approached, her skin radiant in the glow of the candlelight that lit the room. Her black hair fell softly on her cashmere sweater. She took her place alongside him.

  “You smell great, baby.” Leonard leaned forward to nuzzle her neck.

  If she allowed him to get started, she would never tell him, she thought, pulling away.

  “Hey! What’s wrong, sugar?” Leonard inquired sweetly, but Francheska knew his short temper would flare quickly if she continued to hold out.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore, Len.”

  Leonard stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Don’t want to do what anymore?”

  “This!” Francheska gestured widely. “Living like this, being a mistress, your mistress. I don’t like all the lies and stolen moments and lonely nights. I’m tired of feeling like trash. I’m not going to do this anymore. It’s over, Len.”

  “Oh, come on, Francie,” he urged. I know it’s been rough lately, with the holidays and all. I’m sorry that I’ve had to spend so much time at home with the kids, but I thought you understood that.”

  “Of course I understand that. And you should be with your kids, and your wife, too, for that matter. But I want more, need more, than you are willing to give. I want kids of my own someday, and much as I’ve hoped and prayed and wished it would be otherwise, I know you are not going to be my children’s father. I have to get out of our relationship, Leonard. Get out and move on. Make a decent life for myself. I’ve made up my mind.”

  Without a word, Leonard rose from the sofa, walked to the hall closet and pulled out his coat. As he opened the front door, he turned to her.

  “You’ll change your mind, Francie. You’ll see. It’s a cold, hard world out there. You just better hope that when you come crawling back, I still want you. And it will be only on my terms.”

  “I’ll be out by the end of the month,” called Francheska, tears welling in her eyes, as the door slammed shut behind him.

  78

  Thursday, January 13

  “THINGS WERE GOING pretty well there, until you asked him about the Cyclone,” Matthew observed as they screened the tape of Laura’s interview with Ricky Potenza recorded the day before.

  “Yeah,” answered Laura dejectedly. Unrealistically, perhaps, she had been hoping to get Ricky to open up about the time of his friend’s disappearance. How conceited of her to think she could succeed where so many professionals had failed. But even more upsetting to her than the lack of good sound bites was the nagging suspicion that the mention of her father might have been what had caused Ricky to shut down.

  The tape finished running and their editor announced that, if they did not have anything else for him right now, he was going to lunch. Alone in the semidark editing booth, Matthew and Laura discussed the elements they had at this point for their story.

  “We’ve shot Ricky, your father and his miniature playground, and the monument in Cliffside Park. We’ve got the old black-and-white film of the park from archives. I’m getting tapes of various songs about Palisades Park. And we have permission to shoot at that fund-raiser in two weeks.”

  It was a start, but not enough to make an Hourglass story, and they both knew it.

  “I haven’t made much progress with the Cliffside Park police,” Laura said glumly. “There is no one left on the force there who worked on the Cruz disappearance. The ones who are there now don’t want to comment on the latest developments in the case. But I’m going to try to track down a retired cop that I saw quoted in some of the newspaper articles from that time.”

  “Good,” said Matthew firmly. “Anything I can do to help on that score?”

  “No, thanks. I can do that, but I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

  “What else?” Matthew mused, staring at his notepad and chewing the end of his pen.

  “We need to get Tommy Cruz’s parents to talk to us.”

  “You want me to try to set that up?” offered Matthew.

  Laura considered before answering. “It would probably be better if I called the Cruzes. Since I’m a hometown girl and all.”

  “Fine, but is there anything you are going to let me do? Or do you want to do this piece all by yourself?”

  Matthew smiled, but Laura thought she detected some annoyance in his voice.

  “Feel like going through that old scrapbook that my father gave us and looking for any pictures we could use?” she suggested.

  “Sure, I think I can handle that.” He capped his pen and abruptly left the editing room.

  79

  MATTHEW UNSCREWED THE amber plastic vial and emptied out a small pill, swallowing it with a swig of the unfinished cold coffee that sat in the paper cup on his desk. He hated himself for doing it.

  Was it just his imagination, or was Laura treating him differently since he had confided in her about his drug abuse?

  It had all started so innocently. He had
only been at Hourglass a short time when one of the stories he was working on began keeping him up at nights. It was that Cordero story. They were trying to meet an impossible deadline. Gwyneth had become a screaming harpy, Joel wouldn’t let anyone get a word in edgewise, barking at everyone who came near him, and even Mike Schultz, usually a sweetheart of a guy, had begun losing his temper at the drop of a hat.

  Matthew had mentioned to a friend how toxic the anxiety was becoming and that losing sleep at night only made him more anxiety-ridden during the day. He was worried that he would lose his job. It was then that he got some “friendly” advice—a small vial of Valium. He was told, “These will calm you down, and when the piece airs during February sweeps, you’ll be back to your old self.”

  Only that didn’t happen. After just a few weeks, he was hooked—it seemed that he couldn’t even manage waiting for the subway in the morning without popping a five-milligram tablet on the subway platform. Now, three years later, and almost twelve sweeps periods later, he was trying, without much success, to quit.

  But Gwyneth’s murder had everybody jumpy. And this Palisades story had him as anxious as ever. His attempts at romance with Laura seemed to be going nowhere.

  Matthew tried to be philosophical—again.

  Hey, it was no sin to be anxious, was it? Everyone experienced anxiety at one time or another, didn’t they? Who didn’t have sweaty palms during a job interview or have butterflies in the stomach before a speech?

  And, God knew, the profession he had chosen had more than its share of stress. Deadlines, competition, exacting standards. Anyone in his right mind would be worried about the repercussions of getting the facts wrong in front of millions of television viewers.

  Working for Joel Malcolm just twisted the tourniquet tighter. The relentless demand for stories hit out of the ballpark time after time after time. Not even Sammy Sosa could hit a home run every time at bat.

  He wondered how many of the other Hourglass producers were taking drugs. He knew he couldn’t be the only one who took Valium to relax.

  But Matthew’s problem was that his use had gotten out of hand. He’d become addicted. He was clever enough to have arranged to get prescriptions from three different doctors, so none of them realized the scope of his dependency. He only submitted the bills from one set of prescriptions, so the KEY News HMO never red-flagged the pharmacies he used.

  He was trying to stop. At first he went cold turkey. But the withdrawal had been a nightmare. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, the headache was blinding. He’d had a story that was near air, and, panic-stricken, he’d popped the pills again.

  There was never a good time to stop. There was always some other stressful situation that had to be dealt with and the Valium made it bearable.

  Yes. Much better. It was kicking in now.

  80

  THE GNAWING WORRY had been intensifying over the past two days.

  What if Kitzi Malcolm hadn’t been telling the truth during her Hourglass interview?

  She said that she couldn’t see faces. Couldn’t tell if the figure on the roof with Gwyneth was a man or a woman. But what if she was lying? What if the light from the fireworks had illuminated them as they stood on the freezing rooftop?

  Would there have to be a third murder?

  The newspapers and television hadn’t reported anything about a woman’s body found hidden deep in the thicket in Central Park. So far so good. Sooner or later, though, Delia’s body would be discovered.

  That would be a great addition to the Hourglass series. Gwyneth Gilpatric’s maid found murdered!

  Killing Kitzi would be more difficult, but not impossible.

  81

  BEFORE SHE LEFT the office for the day, Laura dialed her father’s number.

  “Hey, Pop. It’s me. Just checking in. How’s it going?”

  “I’m fine, Munk. How are you?”

  “Okay,” Laura answered, holding the phone against her shoulder as she replaced her shoes with sneakers for the walk home. “Working hard on this Palisades Park story.”

  There was no answer from Emmett.

  “Know who I interviewed yesterday? Ricky Potenza,” Laura continued. “He was Tommy Cruz’s best friend.”

  “Did he tell you anything you didn’t know?”

  Laura thought she detected a slurring of her father’s voice. She cringed.

  “No. Not really, but we still have some time left to work on our other sources. I’m praying that we can find out what happened to Tommy Cruz before this piece airs.”

  Silence on the telephone line.

  “Pop?”

  “Yeah, Munk?”

  “What’s going on? Why are you so negative on me doing this story?”

  A deep sigh filtered through Laura’s earpiece. “I told you at Christmas, Laura, I think you should let what happened lie. What good is there in digging all this up?”

  “Try a little piece of mind for the Cruzes. How about that?” Laura answered, annoyed. “Did you ever think that it might bring some closure for them, to know what really happened to their son?”

  “Come off it, Laura. Helping the Cruzes isn’t your main aim here.” Laura could hear the anger in his voice. “Get off your high horse. You want a story that you think could be sensational. You want to impress all your KEY News buddies. Miss Big Hotshot Producer solves a thirty-year-old murder mystery.”

  Laura was taken aback and hurt by the venom in her father’s voice.

  82

  EMMETT FELT LIKE a noose was tightening around his neck.

  Alerted by the New York City police, a Cliffside Park detective had come to the house this afternoon to ask about the checks that Gwyneth had written out to him over the years. There had been no sense in denying them. Something like that was easily traced.

  “Gwyneth Gilpatric and I were old friends,” he had told the detective. “After my wife died, I kind of fell apart and Gwyneth took it upon herself to help me out. She was very loyal.”

  “And very generous,” added the detective, but he seemed to accept Emmett’s explanation. It had the ring of truth. Among those who had lived in Cliffside Park for a long time, it was fairly common knowledge that Emmett Walsh had a drinking problem. Over the years, he had floated from one job to the next. People had wondered how he managed to hold on to his house and send his daughter to an expensive private college.

  When the detective left, Emmett opened a beer and hoped that that would be the end of it. But two hours and a six-pack later, Laura called, with her news of Ricky Potenza.

  He had lived in fear for years of Ricky coming forward, never dreaming that his own daughter would one day be urging Ricky to tell what he knew.

  Emmett crushed the aluminum beer can and tossed it at the barrel of empties. Missed.

  The past was closing in on him from all sides.

  83

  Friday, January 14

  FRIDAY MORNING, LAURA made a trip upstairs to the KEY News library. The clippings that lined hundreds of yards of shelves were a treasure trove of information.

  Years before the arrival of the computer, with its accompanying easy access to thousands of sources of information around the world, KEY News librarians had sat at their desks and quietly scanned the pages of newspapers and magazines. They cut out articles of interest and filed them in manila folders, keeping a running historical account of various people and subjects. The electronic age made the librarians’ searches less necessary, but the clipping files were still updated.

  Laura cruised the stacks until she found the PALISADES AMUSEMENT PARK file. She pulled it from its high shelf and carried it to a desk near the library window.

  Bright, clear morning sunlight streamed in, bleaching out the faded, yellowing newspaper articles. Laura turned the clippings carefully until she found the one she was looking for.

  A Cliffside Park police officer named Edward Alford was quoted in the story on the disappearance of Tommy Cruz.

  Laura xeroxed the clippin
g, returned it to its pale yellow folder and refiled it in the P section on the shelf. She was about to go back to her office when she impulsively stopped two aisles over.

  GATES, BILL.

  GIFFORD, FRANK.

  GIGANTE, VINCENT “THE CHIN.”

  GILBERT AND SULLIVAN.

  Laura flipped through the files. GILPATRIC, GWYNETH.

  She stood in the aisle, scanning the stories and pictures. The file had already been updated with newspaper accounts of Gwyneth’s death. Laura dug deeper into the file. The last item was a then-dark-haired Gwyneth Gilpatric’s high school yearbook picture. The one Laura had used in her obit.

  84

  Saturday, January 15

  LAURA WAS READY for it when the weekend finally came. It had been an intense week and she was glad to have the break. Spending Saturday morning with her delightful Jade was just what the doctor ordered.

  As they worked on math problems together, Laura observed her bright little student. What a good mind she had! Laura hoped that they would continue their relationship through the years and that she could help to ensure that Jade would develop her full potential.

  Now that she would have more money than she ever dreamed of, Laura realized that she could assist Jade with more than her time. As important as her physical and mental input could be to the child, when push came to shove, Jade would need cash if she was going to go all the way with her education. How wonderful to be able to provide that!

  Watching Jade concentrate on the arithmetic worksheet, Laura remembered back to the time when she was applying to colleges. She had been so worried that Emmett would not be able to afford anything but a community college. But, to his credit, her father had told her to apply to any university she wanted. They would find the money, he said.

  When the acceptance letter arrived from Holy Cross, she had held her breath as she presented it to him, knowing that the tuition and room and board cost more than Emmett earned in a year. So focused was she on her own youthful dream that she pushed from her mind the question of how Emmett was going to manage to pay when her father told her she could go to Holy Cross.