“I’d like to know about your relationship with Nick and Priscilla Lawrence.”
He exhaled loudly and leaned against the wall. “Ancient history.” His voice was deep, his tone patrician and vaguely bored. She’d never in a million years let him near her with a speculum.
“I love history,” she said.
“Then try the library. Or the FBI. I’ve been through this with them already, and I have no desire to dredge it all up again.”
She had a decision to make: play on his sympathy…or scare the shit out of him. His eyes were blue and analytical, but dark circles underneath hinted at troubled dreams.
Scare him it was.
“The Priscilla Lawrence murder is front page news,” she said. “I can have any reporter I choose on the phone in five minutes. I think they might be interested in the Nick Lawrence/Mitchell Ellikin angle.”
Not that she had the slightest idea what that angle might be. But when his eyes widened, exposing a grid of fine wrinkles on his pale forehead, she knew she’d struck a chord.
“I have nothing to say to you.” His voice had thinned out.
She headed for the door. “Fine, I’ll talk to the media, then.”
“Wait!” She stopped and turned. “There weren’t any charges, you know.”
Charges?
“Of course not,” she said slowly, “but I doubt your patients would appreciate the negative publicity. Not to mention your colleagues.”
“You’re just like Nick,” he said, spitting the name at her. “How did you get involved with Nick Lawrence?” It was a question she’d been asking herself quite a lot lately.
“I fail to see how that is any of your business.”
She was halfway down the hall when he called her name.
“I was getting divorced, for the second time,” he said when she returned to the examination room, “and I had a fiancée. Ex-wives are very expensive, and my current wife isn’t what you’d call abstemious. My partners and I had just opened this clinic, our overhead was exorbitant, and we got off to rather a slow start.”
“What exactly do you do here?”
“Assisted reproductive technologies…infertility, basically. Artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, gamete intrafallopian transfer.”
“What’s that?”
“We remove eggs from the ovaries, combine them with sperm in a petri dish, then—Miss Amiel, what the hell does this have to do with Nick Lawrence?”
“You tell me,” she said.
He nodded with a condescending smile and closed the door. “My medical work has nothing to do with Nick Lawrence, thank God. He approached me several years back with a little scheme he’d hatched. He had friends, acquaintances, really, many of them fellow musicians, who wanted a certain prescription drug, Ritalin.”
“But that’s for—”
“Children with attention deficit disorder. Correct. Kids with ADD don’t get high off Ritalin; in fact it helps them focus, apparently—pediatrics is not my specialty, obviously. But college students have begun taking it as a study aid. It’s a stimulant—sometimes they grind it up like cocaine and snort it.”
“Nick Lawrence wanted Ritalin?”
“Not for himself. A lot of musicians, those who teach or hold various other day jobs, need stimulants in order to have the energy and alertness to practice. No responsible physician would prescribe Ritalin for this purpose, of course. That’s where I came in. I wrote the prescriptions, and Nick managed to get them filled at a network of pharmacies he put together. Then he passed them along to his ‘friends,’ charging a nice markup.”
“Which you split.”
He glared at her before nodding. “The clinic is a gold mine today, but back then I was living hand to mouth. Nick Lawrence bought me valuable time. Unfortunately, one of his musician friends, a cellist, took too much Ritalin. I, of course, have no way of regulating how much they take. It’s completely out of my hands.”
He paused, perhaps waiting for absolution. Instead of providing it she focused on Ellikin’s fingernails, which were polished to a pearly gloss.
“At any rate,” he said, “the cellist swallowed or snorted more Ritalin than he should have and ended up in the hospital. Some sort of psychotic episode—he hadn’t slept or eaten for several days. The police arrested Nick, and they located my name on a prescription in his apartment.”
Ellikin picked up the crumpled plastic gown and shoved it into a garbage pail.
“The Manhattan district attorney’s office offered to drop all charges against Nick if he testified against me. He refused. Nick was charged, but eventually the DA dropped the case. Small potatoes, really—all they had was that one envelope of pills found in the cellist’s apartment.”
“Why did Nick refuse to testify against you?”
He shrugged and shook his head. “I really don’t know.”
“He was willing to go to jail for you?” she said. “And you don’t know why?”
“I think he knew he’d never go to jail over a handful of pills. The DA was trying to play hardball. Nick outsmarted them.”
She couldn’t picture Nick risking prison for anyone, least of all the imperious Mitchell Ellikin, whom he hardly knew. Then she remembered that he’d left out a key detail.
“How did you and Nick meet?”
“Meet?” He squinted and puckered his lips. “He was a messenger at the time, working for a medical imaging group I refer patients to. He delivered the x-rays and CAT scans.”
“A messenger proposed a drug deal to you, the doctor?” She frowned.
“He was here virtually every day, flirting with the receptionist, the nurses. He’s a very attractive man, as I think you of all people know.” Ellikin’s chilly smile meant he’d read the tabloids, perhaps even the JANE EYRE KILLER headline in the Daily News.
“When was your last contact with Nick?”
“Two years ago, when this incident occurred. I phoned him after he refused to cooperate with the police, to thank him. We never spoke again.”
“And he never asked for anything in return?”
He shook his head.
“Money?”
“He wouldn’t have gotten any even if he had asked.”
Yeah, right. Ellikin struck her as the type who’d sell his firstborn to save his “gold mine.” And Nick? Would Nick have let Ellikin walk away free and clear? He never talked about money or things much, but could she honestly say that he wasn’t interested?
“I’m a busy man, Mrs. Amiel, and I’ve told the FBI exactly what I just told you. So if you have no other questions, perhaps you might answer one for me. What the hell does any of this have to do with you and your…predicament?”
“I’ve been accused of—”
“I know what you’ve been accused of. What does this…fiasco between Nick Lawrence and me have to do with your case?”
“Probably nothing,” she said, fearing it was true. Yet Maxine Cunningham’s words echoed through her mind. This whole…nightmare, it began a long time ago, before you came to Penaquoit…long before you were in the picture, years ago.
“That’s precisely the conclusion the FBI reached.”
Ellikin pulled a paper towel from a wall dispenser and wiped the spotless countertop. Gwen muttered a few words of thanks and left the examination room. She crossed the waiting area, heading straight for the exit.
“Miss?” The receptionist motioned her over. “We, uh, well, we generally prefer payment in full at the time of the visit.” She seemed uncomfortable in the role of debt collector. “Cash or credit card.”
“I doubt there’ll be a bill,” Gwen said.
“Let me just check.” The receptionist picked up the receiver and pressed a button. A faint buzz emanated from down the corridor.
“How long have you been here?” Gwen asked as the receptionist waited for an answer.
“Just three months.” Long after Nick Lawrence left the scene. “Who was here before you, do you know?”
/> “Before me?” She pushed the intercom button again. “Half the receptionists in the city. There’s a lot of turnover.”
“Why’s that?”
“This place is incredibly busy.” She nodded at the three women and two couples who had filled the waiting room in Gwen’s absence.
“A gold mine,” Gwen muttered.
“We really need a separate billing clerk,” the receptionist said softly, leaning toward Gwen. “Between answering the phones, making appointments, handling the doctors’ personal affairs…well, it’s too much for one person.”
“How many doctors work here?”
“Two REs, a couple of lab technicians, two nurses, and me.”
“REs?”
“Reproductive endocrinologists, like Dr. Ellikin.”
“I assumed he was a gynecologist.”
“Same med school training, but then they do a two-year fellowship to learn the infertility stuff. At least that’s what they tell me. Anyway, this one temp agency he once used won’t even send him girls anymore, they’re just—oh, yes, Doctor Ellikin? Miss…your patient is about to leave, I haven’t…oh, okay.” She looked puzzled as she hung up.
“You were right, no charge.”
Gwen thanked her and left.
Chapter 39
Gwen caught the subway a block from Ellikin’s office. As the number-four train clattered south toward Brooklyn she wondered how she’d tolerated the subway for so long. The grime, the noise, the gray defeat written on every face—she’d become immune to it all while living there. Now, after just five months away, it was vivid again, and oppressive.
She got off in Park Slope and headed for the address Kevin Gargano had given her on the phone that morning. Barry’s last known residence had been included in the evidentiary papers the prosecution had turned over to her attorney.
She pressed the button next to the name Dilianna Flores, and was buzzed into the building a few seconds later. Climbing the dimly lit stairway to the third floor, she took in the strips of yellow paint peeling from the walls and ceiling, the rickety banister, the smudged linoleum, and felt a momentary pang for Barry, for how far he’d fallen.
To hell with pity, she decided as she reached the third floor. It was one thing to fall from grace. Barry had tried to take Jimmy down with him.
The woman who opened the door looked about forty, with a trim figure and shoulder-length black hair. Her eyes were dark and accusatory, her lipstick an angry red.
“Dilianna Flores? I’m Gwen Amiel.” She extended her hand, which the woman scrutinized a few seconds before shaking. “My husband, Barry, used to live here.”
“Mother of God, enough of this!” she said in a Spanish accent. “First the FBI, then the fingerprint people, then the FBI again, and now you?”
“May I come in?”
She shook her head but opened the door. “There is nothing here for you to see. They take everything, the FBI. Next thing you know, the housing police will come and close me down for not having the correct permit.”
Gwen glanced around as she reached for the photograph of Priscilla and Tess in her pocketbook. The large living room had only one window, which overlooked an air shaft. A ceiling light did little to offset the gloom, but the room appeared tidy, and the mismatched fabrics on the sofas and chairs, the various patterns on the throw rugs, lent the room a jumbled liveliness.
“I have just one question,” Gwen said as she held out the photo. “Did this woman ever visit while my husband lived here?”
Dilianna took the photo and studied it. “I don’t think so, but…”
“But what?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You were about to say something.”
“I thought she look familiar, but I was wrong.”
Gwen took back the photo. In truth, she’d have been surprised to learn that Priscilla had visited Barry…but she had little else to go on.
“How about a tall man, mid-thirties, handsome, blue eyes.”
“No men were visiting him, just girls.” Dilianna snorted and shook her head. “Mostly cheap girls, drunks like him.”
She felt another pang for Barry, then resentment at her own weakness.
“Mostly?” Gwen said. “One of his girls was…different?”
Dilianna took the photo again, looked at it with a puzzled expression, and handed it back.
“Something in this picture remind me, there was this one girl, classy, you know what I mean? Not like the others. But she didn’t stay long, probably got a look at the mess in his room, you know what I mean? Outta there in five minutes flat. You think I should tell the FBI man?”
“She didn’t give her name?”
“To me?” Another snort. “She look like she afraid she get a disease just touching anything here, you know? She wouldn’t look at me, all I saw was her legs, which were not too bad, and her red hair, which she had in a black bow.”
“Red hair?”
“She have dark skin for a redhead. I remember thinking you don’t see that much, red hair like that and dark skin. Usually the redheads, they have skin like mayonnaise.”
“Valerie Goodwin,” Gwen muttered.
“Who?”
“Did she bring anything with her, take anything away?”
“Not that I see, but who knows? Maybe I should call that FBI man, the one who liked my arroz con pollo. Eh?” She shrugged and wiped her hands on her apron. “Why bother? I mind my own business. You got any more questions? ’Cause I got things to do.”
Gwen thanked her and left.
Dwight Hawkins rolled down his window and spoke his name into the square receiver in front of the gates of Penaquoit. A moment later they opened with imperious languor.
He drove slowly up the tree-lined approach to the mansion, wondering what the hell he was doing there. “Leave well enough alone,” Elaine had said to him that morning as she stood sentry over his breakfast. Leaving well enough alone was her life philosophy—his too, who was he kidding? Their lives had been shaped by the acceptance of compromise, the very gradual lowering of their threshold of “enough.”
The mansion loomed into view, its staid invulnerability echoing Elaine’s warning: leave it alone. But he couldn’t. For though the FBI seemed quite pleased with its case against Gwen Amiel and her late husband, his instincts were telling him that something wasn’t right.
Which was ironic, really, since up to the moment he’d arrested Gwen Amiel Sunday morning, his instincts had shouted loud and clear: she’s guilty as sin. But this morning he’d awakened to one question that wouldn’t leave him: assuming Gwen Amiel murdered her husband (to avoid splitting the five million? to shut him up?), who had called the FBI to direct them to the body?
“She called,” Don Reeves had said on the phone that morning. “Gwen Amiel figured once we’d found him dead, with a couple of hundred-dollar bills on him, we’d stop hunting down the perp. She didn’t count on us finding her directions to the mansion in his effects.”
“But he was her husband, Don. How could she think that finding her husband dead with ransom money—not to mention the handgun that killed Priscilla—would point suspicion away from her?”
“Her estranged husband, who she claimed not to have seen in months. So she waits until the body is practically liquified, which makes fixing the date of death impossible, and calls us. Makes sense to me. Anyway, let the defense worry about this, okay?”
“What about the break-in at her house, that effigy at the ravine?”
“Pranks, Dwight, stupid pranks. I’ll tell you what, why don’t you and your boys track down the perpetrators, okay, Dwight? Probably a bunch of kids, but it’ll keep you occupied until this case comes to trial.”
Rosa Piacevic answered the door, holding Tess in one arm. She stepped out onto the small flagstone terrace. He heard piano music from beyond the front hallway.
“Mr. Lawrence is practicing piano now,” she whispered nervously. “You want me to tell him you are here?
”
“In a minute, Rosa. Do you remember how I once asked you about that baby monitor?”
She nodded and stroked Tess’s golden hair. A beautiful child, with her father’s sharp features and even his serene self-possession.
“And you said it never left the nursery?”
“Never.”
“Are you positive about that?”
“Of course I am.” Creases emerged on her forehead. Her features seemed crowded in the center of her face—perhaps it was the lack of eyebrows. “It never leave the nursery.”
Which meant, as the prosecutor was going to argue, that Gwen Amiel had not “accidentally” overheard the plans for the money swap. She knew about the arrangements because she’d orchestrated them herself.
Or she had heard about the swap through the monitor, in which case someone had deliberately moved it that morning to the master bedroom, someone who wanted her to hear, wanted her at the Devil’s Ravine.
“How is the little girl doing?” he asked, unable to take his eyes off the child.
“Tess is good,” Rosa Piacevic said with a single, resolute nod. “Isn’t that right, zamer?”
The little girl reached out a hand. He extended his pinkie and she grasped it, squeezing it with gratifying firmness in her tiny fist.
Leave well enough alone. Hawkins smiled as he gently pulled his finger from her hand and forced himself to look at Rosa.
“First her mother, now her baby-sitter…Tess must have some reaction to so much loss.”
“Tess is lucky, her father is father and mother. I don’t mean nothing against her, Mrs. Lawrence, but that’s how it was.”
“I suppose he has no choice.”
She shook her head, almost angry. “Even…before, he was father and mother.”
He looked back at Tess, who was growing restless in Rosa’s arms.
“You want me to get Mr. Lawrence?”
“I’ll find him myself,” he said, and followed the music into the living room. He stood in the entrance, listening. Something romantic, he thought, passionate. His eyes studied Nick Lawrence’s back, hunched over the keyboard as if preying upon it. But his mind’s eye was fixed on Tess Lawrence’s face. Something about that face…
Disillusions Page 28