Sidney Sheldon's the Silent Widow

by Sidney Sheldon

Derek Williams was tired.

  He’d shown up tonight because of a tip-off about Luis Rodriguez. The last time he’d been about to meet Rodriguez he’d been kidnapped, beaten and summarily deported. More than a decade had passed, but Williams had not forgotten about Charlotte Clancy and the mysterious American he was convinced Rodriguez had been protecting. He remembered his questions as if it were yesterday and he’d hoped tonight, he might finally have a chance to ask them, for Charlie’s sake.

  But it wasn’t to be. Once again the bastard had slipped through his fingers, pulling a last-minute no-show. Thankfully, there were plenty of other guests here to occupy Williams’ attention. Exhausted as he was, it wasn’t long before the connections started firing in his brain, the synapses going off like fireworks, one after another.

  Nikki was here, and as Haddon Defoe’s guest, no less. Williams hadn’t expected that. He still wasn’t sure what to make of his interview with Dr Defoe, or whether he believed his protestations of innocence about Doug Roberts’ mistress and her mysterious past. Or rather, her lack of a past. Increasingly, Williams was coming to the conclusion that ‘Lenka Gordievski’ was some sort of alias or alter ego. That the woman who had died in a ball of fire next to her lover, Nikki’s husband, had begun her life as somebody else. Witness protection was certainly a possibility. But until he knew more, Williams decided he would keep silent. Nikki needed answers, not more questions, and right now that was all Williams had.

  Williams’ gaze shifted from Haddon and Nikki across to Rodriguez’s estranged wife, Anne, the violinist with whom his client was obviously besotted. And less than twenty feet from where she stood were Brandon Grolsch’s parents.

  Williams now knew that Brandon was the eponymous ‘zombie’ so beloved of internet conspiracy theorists – the police had found his DNA on the bodies, or rather they’d found rotting cells from his body on Lisa Flannagan’s, which was certainly creepy and bizarre if it was true. Maybe the serial killer was one of those trophy-keeping types who held on to fingernails and locks of hair and jewelry? Maybe he had Brandon’s corpse floating somewhere in a vat of formaldehyde?

  Surely it was odd that his folks were here tonight, sitting two tables away from Lisa Flannagan’s former lover Willie Baden and his wife Valentina, a frozen-faced fossil of a woman, dripping in more diamonds than a gangster’s whore. Earlier Williams had watched Valentina Baden and Fran Grolsch briefly acknowledge one another, exchanging the frosty nod of former friends. It was as if some mystery host had invited the entire cast of characters from the Zombie Killings files, right down to the moronic duo Johnson and Goodman, surely the Laurel and Hardy of the LAPD Homicide Division.

  Right on cue, Detective Goodman popped up behind Williams like the ghost of Christmas past.

  ‘Hello, Derek.’

  Williams jumped.

  ‘I would ask what you’re doing here. But you wouldn’t tell me the truth, would you?’

  Suave, polite and very obviously educated, not to mention in perfect shape, Goodman wore the innately smug expression of a man who can’t help but be aware of his own superiority over another. Williams, being that other, bristled.

  ‘That’s right, I wouldn’t. Any more than you and Chubby Checker over there would tell me what brings you to a fancy party like this one. I’m pretty sure they’re not serving donuts, you know.’

  ‘Right.’ Goodman’s smile didn’t waver. ‘The only difference being that we’re investigating officers on a double murder case, doing our jobs. Jobs that you tried and failed to get for yourself – how many times was it now? I forget. But the point is, we’re working while you’re … what’s the word I’m looking for? That’s it.’ Goodman clicked his fingers patronizingly. ‘Trespassing. I’m assuming you don’t have an actual invitation you can show me?’

  Williams bit his lip. Boy, would he love to smash his fist into Detective Goodman’s perfect features, to watch his straight white teeth fly out of his self-satisfied mouth like gleaming white bullets in a shower of blood.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got something I can show you, pretty boy,’ he replied menacingly. ‘You wanna take this outside?’

  Goodman raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘Aren’t I?’ snapped Williams. ‘How’s it going with Nikki, by the way? A little bird told me she still won’t sleep with you. That’s gotta hurt.’

  ‘And when was the last time a woman slept with you, Derek?’ Goodman shot back. ‘Without you having to pay her, I mean.’

  ‘Unlike you, I don’t have sex on the brain,’ Williams replied coolly. ‘Especially not with Nikki. I’m actually trying to help the lady. Maybe that’s why she trusts me, tells me things she wouldn’t dream of sharing with you and shit-for-brains over there.’ He nodded towards Johnson, who had unhelpfully chosen that moment to start picking his nose.

  For the briefest of moments, Williams was rewarded with the sight of Lou Goodman losing his legendary cool. His olive skin flushed an ugly red and his nostrils flared. ‘Get out of here, Williams,’ he snapped. ‘Before I have you arrested.’

  A mocking ‘Arrested for what?’ hung on Derek Williams’ lips but he thought better of saying it. It was important to pick one’s battles, and something told him there would be plenty of those ahead with Goodman and Johnson.

  ‘I’ll see you around, Detective.’

  ‘Not if I see you first.’

  Picking up his jacket, Williams made his shambolic way towards the exit. As he left, the first strains of Anne Bateman’s haunting violin solo began echoing around the ballroom.

  Sitting at her table, Nikki’s befuddled senses jolted back to life as the first notes of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending filled the air, stunning the room into an awestruck hush. There was Anne up on the stage, her eyes closed, a tiny, transfixed figure in black, her bow moving back and forth as if independent from her body. But for once it wasn’t Anne who was mesmerizing Nikki, but the music itself and the overwhelming nostalgia it provoked. Doug had loved this piece. He and Nikki had listened to it countless times, making Sunday morning pancakes, in the car on one of their long drives up the coast. In bed. On their honeymoon …

  All of a sudden, emotion overwhelmed her. With an awful, embarrassing noise, like a sort of deep, desperate gasp, she leaned forward over the table, putting her head in her hands.

  ‘Are you all right, my dear?’ The charming neuroscientist put a concerned hand on Nikki’s shaking shoulder. ‘Would you like to get some air?’

  Nikki shook her head, blinded by tears. In recent months she’d somehow managed to keep her grief for Doug in check, to file it under ‘pending’ while she tried to make sense of the terrible, terrifying events spiraling around her. But now, thanks to Anne’s exquisite playing, Pandora’s box had been unlocked. There was no way back now, no way to stop the tears and the shaking and the awful, visceral pain ripping her in two, twisting in her gut like a dagger.

  ‘It’s OK, Professor Jameson.’ Haddon Defoe’s voice, deep and resonant and strong, rang in Nikki’s ears. ‘I’ve got this.’

  Nikki didn’t want Haddon’s help either, but unlike the professor he wasn’t taking no for an answer, lifting her to her feet and practically dragging her, sobbing, out of the ballroom and through some fire doors into a small courtyard garden.

  ‘Sit here,’ he said, lowering her gently onto a stone bench beside a softly trickling waterfall. Nikki was still crying, tears streaming down her cheeks and turning her eye make-up into muddy rivulets. But the wracking sobs had slowed to weak, intermittent shudders. The storm appeared to be subsiding.

  ‘What happened in there?’ Haddon asked, taking a seat beside her. Reaching over, he pulled her hair back from her face and offered her his handkerchief.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nikki sniffed, taking it. ‘The music, I think. It made me think about Doug and I … I just felt so sad, Haddon! He’s gone, and it’s … it’s incredibly sad. All of a sudden I couldn’t hold it.’

  Haddon pulled her in
to his arms. ‘You poor, sweet thing.’

  Exhausted, Nikki leaned into him trustingly. Haddon was like the big brother she’d never had. Solid. Steady. Not a superstar, like Doug had been, but a rock nonetheless, an anchor through all life’s storms.

  He was whispering in her ear. ‘He didn’t deserve you. You know that now, Nikki. He never deserved you.’

  His tone was low and reassuring, and Nikki’s head was still foggy enough that his actual words didn’t sink in fully at first. It was only when she felt his hand pushing up underneath her dress, his hot and eager fingers digging into the flesh of her thigh, that alarm bells belatedly went off.

  ‘Haddon!’ She tried to push him away but his grip was like a vise. ‘What the hell are you doing?!’

  ‘What I should have done years ago,’ he murmured, his voice thick and guttural with desire. ‘Don’t fight me, Nikki. You know you want this. We both do. I’ve loved you for so—’

  ‘Haddon, no!’ She was so shocked, she felt momentarily frozen. Haddon was leaning over her now, his full lips pressing down on hers, kissing her, pawing at her. ‘I said NO.’

  ‘Is everything OK out here?’

  Detective Goodman’s voice cut through the night air like razor wire. Haddon Defoe jumped back like a surprised cat.

  Nikki stared up at Goodman with profound relief. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so pleased to see someone. Actually, come to think of it, she could. It was the night the boy in the red car had scared off the lunatic trying to kill her. That whole incident felt like a dream now, or like something that happened multiple lifetimes ago.

  Had she dreamt it? Tonight, more than ever, Nikki felt as if reality was slipping away from her.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ she told Goodman, straightening her hair and dress and getting to her feet, still in shock from Haddon’s clumsy come-on. She glanced at Haddon, who looked back at her, mortified.

  Did he really believe she wanted him? Wasn’t that what he said? ‘You know you want this. We both do.’ The idea was painful. Haddon had been Doug’s friend, his best friend. How could he?

  On the other hand, Doug had lied, to her, and perhaps to both of them. Perhaps Haddon had as much right to feel angry as Nikki did, to feel cheated by Doug’s affair? Especially if he really had ‘loved her for so long’.

  But had he? Surely not. That was crazy! She’d have noticed. Wouldn’t she? She was a psychologist, for heaven’s sake. She’d have seen the signs. There would have been signs.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Nikki?’ Goodman pressed her.

  ‘She told you,’ Haddon snarled at him. ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘I’m a little dizzy, that’s all,’ Nikki told Goodman. ‘I probably had too much to drink. I think I should go home.’

  ‘I’ll get you a car,’ Goodman and Haddon announced simultaneously.

  Nikki looked from one to the other. ‘Thank you both, but I’m perfectly capable of calling myself an Uber. I appreciate the concern but I’d like to be alone now. Please.’

  Outside, on Rodeo Drive, two separate lines had formed, one for valet parking and the other for Uber pick-ups. Nikki waited in the second line, her thin cashmere shawl pulled tightly around her shoulders against a suddenly chill evening wind. She’d come here tonight to check out Luis Rodriguez for herself and to try to provide support or protection for Anne. But it turned out that she was the one who’d needed support, As for Luis Rodriguez, Nikki could barely remember now why she’d thought him so important. Something about drugs, and Trey and the girl who’d gone missing in Mexico City all those years ago … It was all a bit of a blur.

  ‘Roberts! Car for Dr Roberts!’

  Nikki stepped into a spotless sedan that smelled of peppermint and leather mixed with its owner’s lemony aftershave. As she fastened her seatbelt, it took her a moment of intense concentration to be able to remember her own address.

  What’s wrong with me?

  ‘Brentwood, please,’ she told the driver. ‘Tigertail Drive.’

  As they pulled away from the hotel, there was a hard slam on the brakes and the car squealed to a halt. Nikki’s seatbelt cut painfully into her skin and her neck snapped back against the headrest. A man, wild-eyed and obviously terrified, had jumped into the road in front of them. Nikki caught a glimpse of him tearing off in the direction of Santa Monica Boulevard, oblivious to the beeping horns and yelled insults behind him.

  Am I seeing things? she thought. Or was that Carter Berkeley?

  ‘Are you crazy?’ the driver yelled through the window at the man’s retreating back, in a heavy Jamaican accent. ‘You could ’ave been killed, man!’

  Turning back to Nikki, the driver made his apologies and they once again got on their way.

  That was Carter. I’m sure of it, Nikki thought, as they passed the serried rows of palm trees swaying like drunken sentries along the Wilshire Corridor. What was he doing here? And what was he so afraid of?

  The wind was back with a vengeance now. It wasn’t the Santa Ana – it felt too cold for that, chill and menacing. Nikki tried to marshall her racing thoughts in the back of the cab, but nothing seemed to make sense. Then all of a sudden, she started to laugh.

  It doesn’t matter! None of it matters!

  Who cared what Carter Berkeley had been running from, or that Haddon Defoe had declared his love for her, or that Luis Rodriguez had failed to turn up? Only one thing mattered in the entire world, and that was Doug.

  Doug, her Doug, was dead.

  He was never coming back.

  Pulling out her phone, Nikki tapped out a text to Williams, her fingers misspelling the words wildly as the screen swam before her eyes. ‘Any wrd n Lenka?’

  Williams’ response was immediate and succinct. ‘No.’

  Seconds later, a second reply arrived.

  ‘Let me know when you’re home safe.’

  Nikki was touched. The gruff, abrasive PI actually cared about her. And she cared about him. Unlike everybody else in her life, from her patients to Haddon Defoe to Lou Goodman, Derek Williams had no ulterior motive for his kindness. Yes, Nikki paid him. But she’d have paid him anyway, and he knew it. His concern for her was genuine.

  ‘He’s a good man,’ she said to her phone, blinking back tears.

  Doug had been a good man too. Just a bad husband, as it turned out.

  Defeated by grief, Nikki closed her eyes and sank instantly into very deep sleep. The last thing she remembered was thinking what a relief it would be if, this time, she never woke up.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Kevin Voss sat in the cafeteria at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in West Hollywood, tapping his fingers nervously on the plastic tabletop and glancing for the umpteenth time at his phone.

  The PI, Williams, had asked to meet here at six a.m. It was six ten now … six eleven … and Kevin was starting to wonder whether he’d been punked. After all, it wasn’t every day that someone called out of the blue offering ‘hundreds of dollars’ for ‘anything you can tell me about Dr Doug Roberts and his girlfriend’. The truth was, Kevin didn’t really have much to tell. Most of it was hearsay, gossip among the nurses, both male and female, many of whom had fancied Dr Roberts. What Kevin Voss did have, unfortunately, was debts. Credit card, personal, tax-related, you name it. Kevin’s last boyfriend, Enzo, had bled him dry before he left, milking poor Kevin’s modest charge-nurse’s salary for a lot more than it was worth.

  ‘Kevin?’

  A large, panting man who looked like a walking coronary, burst loudly into the cafeteria and marched over to Kevin’s table, extending his clammy hand by way of introduction. Thankfully, the place was almost empty, because this fella was anything but discreet.

  Looking around them anxiously, the nurse nodded, shook Williams’ hand as briefly as he could and gestured for him to sit.

  ‘What’s good to eat around here?’ Williams boomed. ‘I had a late night, and I could use a decent breakfast.’

  Like a hole in the he
ad, thought Kevin, eyeing the sweat patches under the PI’s arms with distaste. ‘You said you wanted to talk privately,’ he whispered, sotto voce.

  ‘I do. And we are,’ Williams grinned, striding up to the counter and ordering two blueberry muffins and a large latte before returning to his seat and telling Kevin, ‘No one’s interested in us, believe me. Besides, you’re not doing anything illegal, you know. All we’re doing is talking about an old friend. No law against that, is there?’

  ‘I guess not.’ The nurse forced a smile. He couldn’t help but wonder how much of a ‘friend’ of Dr Roberts this Williams guy really was. But he needed the money too badly to dwell on the issue.

  ‘I can’t say we were close,’ he admitted, picking at his own oatmeal while Williams cheerfully devoured the first of his treats. ‘But we worked together sometimes, Dr Roberts and I, and I liked him. Most people liked him. He was one of the good guys, but I’m guessing you know that already.’

  ‘Who didn’t like him?’ Williams asked, taking a loud slurp of coffee.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You just said most people liked him,’ Williams clarified. ‘Most implies “not all”. Who didn’t like Doug Roberts?’

  Kevin Voss looked pained. ‘He changed,’ he said, staring down at his oatmeal. ‘He met a woman. Supposedly she was Russian. Everything was different after that.’

  ‘Supposedly?’ Williams asked.

  ‘She had a Russian name,’ said Kevin. ‘I forget it now. And she used to live in Moscow. But she seemed really American, you know, to talk to? Her English was perfect. Anyway, it was like Dr Roberts was under her spell or something. No one could understand it. She wasn’t even that attractive. I always thought she looked kind of haunted, you know? Like, she might have been a looker when she was younger, but now she had the weight of the world on her shoulders? She was super tall,’ he added idly. ‘But apart from that, there was nothing special about her. Especially not compared to his wife.’

  Williams nodded his agreement. The few grainy pictures he’d seen of Lenka Gordievski showed a lanky brunette, probably a bit younger than Nikki but nowhere near as striking, physically. She wore expensive clothes, but nothing overtly revealing or sexy, and was hardly the leggy, blonde ‘Russian mistress’ of popular imagination.