Dying for Mercy

by Mary Jane Clark

  “Start with these,” she said. “But please be careful with them. They’re the only copies we have.”

  Annabelle and B.J. began flipping through the pages.

  “Here’s something,” B.J. said with excitement. “It’s buried in the back of the paper.”

  “Read it out loud,” said Annabelle. B.J. cleared his throat. “‘A blue Ford Mustang convertible was found, abandoned and badly damaged, on an isolated stretch of West Lake Road. A search of the area found no possible driver or passengers. Authorities are investigating to find out the owner of the car. Officer Clay Vitalli responded to the scene after a passing motorist alerted Tuxedo Park Police.’”

  “Good,” said Annabelle. “Now we know to look in the editions after this one.”

  The following edition featured a bigger story, right on the front page. Annabelle read it aloud.

  “‘The crushed blue Mustang convertible, found abandoned on a secluded section of West Lake Road in the park last week has been identified as belonging to 31-year-old Martin O’Shaughnessy, a town resident employed as a landscaper for many Tuxedo Park estates, among them the house of Innis and Valentina Wheelock. Mrs. Wheelock is widely considered a favorite in the next gubernatorial election.

  “‘Police are looking for Martin O’Shaughnessy, but so far have been unable to find him.’”

  Annabelle could find only one more article. It ran the following week.

  “‘Police may be near to closing the case of the mysterious abandonment of a car on West Lake Road two weeks ago. Tracing the car to Martin O’Shaughnessy, a landscaper and village resident, police now suspect that O’Shaughnessy has fled to Ireland. Martin O’Shaughnessy’s brother, William, told police his sibling had been dissatisfied with his work situation. He also said Martin had been talking for quite some time about going to live in Ireland, the country from which their parents had emigrated.

  “‘Officer Clay Vitalli stated that since no real crime was committed, other than abandoning the car in a ditch, authorities are satisfied and do not plan to pursue matters further.’”

  Annabelle removed a reporter’s notebook from her bag and opened to a clean page. Taking her pen, she began writing notes as she spoke:

  “Wrecked car found. Car belongs to Martin O’Shaughnessy. O’Shaughnessy isn’t found. Police call off inconclusive search.”

  “Sounds fishy,” said B.J.

  “Ya think?” said Annabelle. “Let’s make copies of these articles and bring them back to Eliza.”

  CHAPTER 60

  Aurelia Patterson was in tears when she finished taking inventory of Zack Underwood’s ransacked office. She handed the short list of missing items to Chief Vitalli. Then she wanted to go home and lie down. Vitalli assigned one officer to drive her and another one to follow along in her car.

  “You’re in no condition to drive, Mrs. Patterson,” said Clay. “Thank you for your help today, and needless to say it would be best if you didn’t tell anyone any details.”

  Aurelia was afraid to mention that she’d already told the KEY News people what she’d seen.

  As soon as he could get to a location where no one would hear his conversations, Clay took out his cell phone to make two phone calls.

  He said the same thing to both people. “We have to get together and talk. The three of us have a lot to figure out. Things are busting wide open.”

  CHAPTER 61

  Eliza was in her office talking with Margo Gonzalez when Annabelle and B.J. arrived. They recounted what Aurelia Patterson had told them.

  “Zack was positioned like a king on a throne?” Eliza asked uncertainly.

  “Sounds more like a mock king,” said Margo.

  “If the killer was staging things,” said Eliza, “what was that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know,” said Annabelle. “But let me show you what we found at the library.” She handed the Tuxedo News articles to Eliza.

  When she finished reading the third article, Eliza made two connections.

  “First of all, Officer Clay Vitalli mentioned here in the article is Chief of Police Clay Vitalli now. He was one of the honorary pallbearers at the funeral.”

  “And the one who was unhappy with you taking those pictures in the greenhouse?” asked B.J.

  “The very same,” said Eliza. “The other thing that strikes me is that Martin O’Shaughnessy’s brother was named William. The bartender at Tuxedo Park who told me about the accident is Bill O’Shaughnessy. I’d say he’s in his fifties, so that would line up with having a brother who would now be fifty-one or fifty-two. But if Bill’s brother was the owner of that abandoned car off West Lake Road, why didn’t Bill tell me about it when he told me about the accident?”

  “He’s hiding something,” said B.J.

  “Or maybe it’s a painful memory,” suggested Margo.

  “Whatever his reason,” said Annabelle, “it would be interesting to confirm that Martin is his brother and, if so, whether he ever had any contact with his brother again. Want me to try to get ahold of him?”

  Eliza thought about it for a moment. “If Bill O’Shaughnessy omitted mentioning his brother’s involvement, he has his reasons. We phone him and we might upset him or give him a chance to come up with some sort of story if he doesn’t want us to know the truth. I just have a hunch it might be better to talk to Bill O’Shaughnessy in person. How he reacts when confronted with our suspicions will tell a lot—perhaps even more than what his words express. Let’s see what he has to say when he has no warning.”

  “All right,” said Annabelle, “but how are we going to catch Bill O’Shaughnessy by surprise? Find out where he lives and stake out his house?”

  “We’re in luck this time, dear members of the Sunrise Suspense Society, since it seems we have another case to solve.” Eliza smiled. “I’ll have the perfect chance to speak to Bill O’Shaughnessy when I go up to Tuxedo Park this weekend. But I’m going to give Chief Vitalli a call right now.”

  CHAPTER 62

  He had tried to put her off—evading her questions or giving her vague and incomplete answers—but she was determined to find out what had happened on West Lake Road. She wanted to begin by seeing the police report. If he wouldn’t fax it to her, she said, she’d stop by the station when she came up this weekend to take occupancy of her leased carriage house.

  Cursing under his breath, Chief Vitalli put down the telephone. He didn’t like Eliza Blake trawling for information on the old accident. He didn’t need this aggravation.

  Well, she can’t see what doesn’t exist.

  Clay found the old case file and fed it into the shredder.

  CHAPTER 63

  Spreading the collar of his white shirt on the ironing board, Bill thought about the countless times his wife had done this for him while she was alive. The little tasks, day in and day out, that she’d performed to keep their lives going. Clipping supermarket coupons and searching for sales, figuring ways to get three different meals from a single roasted chicken, keeping the thermostat as low as they could stand it all through the cold winters, Moira had never complained that they had to live carefully, that a big treat for them was spending a weekend at the Jersey shore.

  Like him, Moira had not been brought up to expect more. If the rent could be paid, if there was food on the table and the other bills could be managed, she was satisfied, even grateful. When she was so sick and the medical bills kept mounting, Moira was beside herself. Bill knew that the worry and stress she experienced when the insurance company kept denying coverage exacerbated her illness and finally hastened her death.

  He took the can of spray starch and shook it, hard. Every time he let his mind travel to the months of fighting with the insurance company, he felt both enraged and helpless. But he hadn’t let Moira down, at least he could comfort himself with that. He had worked out payment plans with all the doctors and the hospital. Though he would be paying off the bills for the rest of his life—and maybe they wouldn’t even be paid o
ff then—he had the satisfaction of knowing that Moira had gotten the treatments that had given her the best chance of recovery.

  As he slid the hot iron back and forth over the white cotton, Bill’s mind turned to the subject he’d been trying to push from his thoughts since this morning, when everybody was talking at the deli he went to for his morning coffee and hard roll. Zack Underwood was dead.

  Bill had just the day before told Zack about the accident on West Lake Road. He hadn’t told him everything—he wouldn’t dare to do that. But after all these years, he didn’t think it would do any real harm to tell Zack something. The accident was no secret. What had happened to the owner of the car was.

  But when Eliza Blake had asked the same questions Zack had, Bill knew that it was more than a coincidence. Now, with Zack’s murder, Bill was terrified he’d said too much.

  As he buttoned up his shirt and finished dressing for work, Bill realized the only times he’d been this frightened were when the doctor had told him that there was nothing left to be done for Moira and, twenty years ago, when Officer Clay had told him what would happen if he continued pressing for answers about his missing brother, Marty.

  CHAPTER 64

  The tennis house, with its white columns and piazza, was a gracious enormous old building fronting on Tuxedo Lake. With its myriad courts and rooms, it provided the privacy needed for the meeting.

  Peter Nordstrut led the way down the long corridor to the back of the building and into the enclosed racket court. There were no windows to let in any of the fading October light. Peter knew where the light switch was and flipped it on as the heavy, solid steel door closed behind them with a haunting thud, the sound echoing through the chamber.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” said Clay. “It’s like a big old crypt.”

  “How appropriate, considering what we’ve come here to discuss,” said Fitzroy.

  “Legend has it that there are spirits in this place,” said Peter. “Chairs move, balls fall, doors slam—all without explanation.”

  “I don’t buy any of that crap,” said Clay, opening the collar of his uniform. “When you’re dead, you’re dead. And if there is an afterlife, that’s where you go. You don’t stay floating around here.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Peter, picking up a racket from the floor and executing a few practice swings. “Marty O’Shaughnessy seems to be haunting us now.”

  Fitzroy nodded solemnly. “I always knew this would catch up with us.”

  “It hasn’t caught up with us yet,” said Clay, “and we have to make certain that it never does. Eliza Blake called today asking questions about the accident. When I asked her why KEY News was interested in a local story that happened two decades ago, she told me about some numbers that were found in the Pentimento greenhouse, numbers that mapped out the spot on West Lake Road. She already knew about the accident, but she wanted more details.”

  “What did you tell her?” asked Fitzroy.

  “What do you think? Nothing,” Clay declared. “Do you think I was going to tell her that I staged the whole thing? That I smashed the Mustang into that tree? Of course I told her that I couldn’t tell her any more than she already knew.”

  “How’d she take that?” asked Peter.

  “She didn’t buy it,” said Clay. “She wanted to see the police report—which I promptly destroyed. But I’m sure she’s not going to give up on trying to find out what happened.”

  “And with all the resources of KEY News behind her, she very well could,” said Fitzroy defeatedly.

  “Not if we take steps to make sure that she—or anyone else, for that matter—doesn’t find out,” said Clay. “But what worries me most is that Innis, after his big religious epiphany, may have decided to come clean and make it right with God before he stabbed himself. If he left those numbers at Pentimento leading to the crash site, what’s to say he didn’t leave clues leading to what you guys did, too?”

  Peter and Fitzroy were silent as they digested the thought.

  “And let me tell you this,” said Clay. “According to his secretary, the only things missing from Zack Underwood’s office were the architectural renderings and an album cataloging the work done at Pentimento. What if Innis had decided to leave the world one last giant puzzle and used Zack Underwood to help him design it?”

  “Well, Zack is dead now,” said Peter. “So he’s not going to be revealing any of our secrets.”

  “What do we do?” asked Fitzroy, his face ashen.

  “We wait and watch,” said Clay. “But each of us has skin in this game. If one of us goes down, we all go down. Nobody can find out what happened back then.”

  CHAPTER 65

  After dinner Russell went back to his Columbia University residence hall and called his mother. With no more funeral preparations to make and the deluge of condolence calls down to a trickle, his mother would have time to think about the enormity of what had happened.

  “How’s it going, Mother?” Russell asked, stretching out on the single bed.

  ”All right, Rusty,” Valentina said listlessly. “The new maid started today.”

  “How is she?”

  “She’s not Eunice, but she’s good enough for the time being. She’s helping me get some things in order. I’m actually thinking of going away next week,” she announced.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Italy.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” asked Russell.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Because it’s so soon and it will remind you of Father so much.”

  “Everywhere reminds me of him, Rusty. And besides, with all that’s happening around here, I want to get away. Before I leave, I can make arrangements to have Eunice’s body shipped to Trinidad when the medical examiner’s office releases it. I don’t want to wait around for the autopsy results. I just want to escape for a while and get my bearings.”

  “The funeral’s over now, Mother. Things will be quieter,” said Russell.

  “Didn’t you hear?”

  “Hear what?” asked Russell. “I’ve been in classes and at the library all day.”

  “Zack Underwood was killed.”

  “My God. What happened?”

  “Somebody came into his office last night and murdered him,” she said. Russell could hear the sound of Valentina swallowing something. He would bet it was vodka.

  “What do the police think?” asked Russell. “Have you talked to Clay?”

  “No, I haven’t talked to Clay,” said Valentina. “I don’t know what the police think, but I think it has to have something to do with your father’s death.”

  “Do you want me to come home tonight, Mother?” asked Russell. “I can be there in an hour.”

  “No, dear,” said Valentina. “It’s sweet of you to offer, but the most important thing you can do is stay there and pay attention to your studies. But I would appreciate it if you came home this weekend. I miss you and I love you, and I worry about how all of this is affecting you, too.”

  Russell’s eyes moved over the words in the political-science textbook, but he wasn’t comprehending anything he read. Innis’s death, the way he’d done it to himself, the funeral, Eunice’s death, and now Zack Underwood’s murder. It was all too much.

  Realizing that he wasn’t going to get any work done, Russell closed the book. He went to the bathroom and splashed cold water over his face. He felt the need to go out and have some fun. There was nothing wrong with that, he told himself. Innis was dead, but he had to go on living.

  Taking the subway just two stops south, Russell got out of the train and climbed up the stairway to the sidewalk. He walked for two blocks, looking into windows and doorways as he went. When he came to a place that felt right, he entered.

  The Broadway Dive on 101st Street was dim and noisy. Russell maneuvered his way through the crowd and leaned against the bar.

  “I’ll have a Rolling Rock,” he told the bartender.r />
  As he drank his beer, Russell surveyed the room. Satisfied that no one he knew was there, he concentrated on picking out a likely woman to approach. At a booth near the back, three attractive young women were laughing. The brunette was really pretty, but Russell decided against going over. He didn’t want an audience judging him as he tried to pick her up.

  He ordered another beer, drank it, and was about to leave for some other place when the petite blonde came through the front door.

  CHAPTER 66

  It was Janie’s last evening before going off to Hershey with the Cohens. Though her daughter would be away for just two nights, Eliza couldn’t help but be anxious. Janie, on the other hand, seemed only excited.

  Mrs. Garcia had packed a small suitcase for Janie, which Eliza checked.

  “What about Zippy?” asked Eliza, holding up the bedraggled-looking stuffed monkey. “Do you want to take him with you?”

  Janie cocked her head as she considered it. “No, I think it’s all right if I leave Zippy here. I might be getting too big to take Zippy with me.”

  “All right,” said Eliza, touched by her daughter’s attempt to be grown-up, but not really certain that leaving behind her nightly bed companion was a good idea. Maybe Eliza would ask Mrs. Garcia to wrap him up when Janie was at school tomorrow and give him to Susan Cohen to keep in the trunk of her car in case Janie ended up wanting him.

  After Janie had taken a bath and brushed her teeth, Eliza settled in bed next to her daughter. Janie handed her The Poor Man of Assisi.

  “We just read this last night,” said Eliza. “You want to read it again?”

  Janie nodded.

  As Eliza opened the book, it occurred to her that in the not-too-distant future Janie wouldn’t want to be read to at night. Her baby couldn’t be a baby forever.