The Second Time Around

He was in the kitchen when the sharp peal of the phone made him clutch the rifle and press his finger on the trigger. The phone rang three times before the answering machine on the counter picked it up. Ned opened and closed cabinet drawers as he heard the recorded message. Then he heard a woman’s voice saying, “Lynn, this is Carley. I’ll be doing a draft of the story tonight and wanted to ask you a quick question. I’ll try you again later. If I don’t reach you, I’ll see you tomorrow at three in Bedford. If you’ve changed your plans and are coming back to New York early, give me a call. My cell phone number is 917-555-8420.”

  Carley DeCarlo was coming here tomorrow, Ned thought. That was why Annie had told him to wait and to rest today. Tomorrow it would be all over. “Thank you, Annie,” Ned said. He decided he should get back to the garage, but first there was something he had to find.

  Most people kept an extra set of keys around the house, he thought.

  Finally he found them, in almost the last drawer he opened. They were in an envelope. He knew they’d be there somewhere. Each of the housekeepers probably had a key to this house. There were two sets of keys in two different envelopes. One envelope was marked “Guest House,” the other, “Pool House.” He didn’t care about the pool house, so he left that, taking just one set of the house keys.

  He opened the back door and made sure that one of the keys fit into the lock. There were only a couple of things more that he wanted before he went back to the garage. There were six cans of Coca-Cola and club soda, and six bottles of water in the refrigerator, lined up two by two. He wanted to take those, but he knew the Spencer woman would notice if any were missing. But he found that one of the overhead cabinets had boxes of crackers, bags of potato chips and pretzels, and cans of nuts—he didn’t think she’d miss one of those.

  The liquor cabinet was full as well. There were four bottles of unopened scotch alone. Ned took one of them from the back. You couldn’t even tell it was missing unless you pulled the drawer out all the way. They were all the same brand, too.

  By then he felt as if he’d been inside the house a long time, even though it really had been only a few minutes. Still, he took the time to do one more thing. Just in case there was anyone in the kitchen when he came back, he’d leave a side window unlocked in the room with the television.

  As he hurried down the hall, Ned’s eyes darted from the floor to the staircase to be sure there wasn’t a single mark from his shoes anywhere. As Annie used to say, “You can be neat when you want to be, Ned.”

  When the window in the study was unlocked, he took long strides to the kitchen, then with the bottle of scotch and box of crackers under his arm, he opened the back door. Before he closed it behind him, he looked back. The blinking red light of the answering machine caught his eye. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Carley,” he said quietly.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  I kept the volume on the television on low all morning, turning it up only when I heard new information about Ned Cooper or his victims. There was a particularly poignant segment about his wife, Annie. Several of her coworkers at the hospital spoke about how they remembered her energy, her sweetness with the patients, her willingness to work overtime when she was needed.

  With increasing pity I watched as her story evolved. She had carried trays all day, five or six days a week, and then went home to a rented apartment in a shabby neighborhood where she lived with an emotionally disturbed husband. The one great joy in her life seems to have been her home in Greenwood Lake. One nurse talked about that. “Annie couldn’t wait to get to start her garden in the spring,” she said. “She’d bring in pictures of it, and every year it was different and beautiful. We used to tease her that she was wasting her time here. We told her she should be working in a greenhouse.”

  She had never told anyone at the hospital that Ned sold the house. But a neighbor who was interviewed said that Ned had bragged about owning Gen-stone stock and had said that he was going to be able to buy Annie a mansion like the one the Gen-stone boss had in Bedford.

  That comment sent me scurrying to the phone to call Judy again and ask her to send me a copy of that interview, as well as one of my own. It provided one more direct link between Ned Cooper and the Bedford fire.

  I kept thinking of Annie as I e-mailed my column to the magazine. I was certain that the police were checking the libraries, showing Ned Cooper’s picture, to see if he was the one who had sent me the e-mails. If so, he had placed himself at the scene of the fire. I decided to call Detective Clifford at the Bedford police station. He was the one I had spoken to last week about the e-mails.

  “I was just about to call you, Miss DeCarlo,” he said. “The librarians have confirmed that Ned Cooper was the man who used their computers, and we’re taking very seriously the message he sent you about preparing yourself for judgment day. In one of the other two he said something about your not answering his wife’s question in your column, so we think he might be getting fixated on you.”

  Needless to say, it wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  “Maybe you should request police protection until we get this guy,” Detective Clifford suggested, “although I can tell you that a black Toyota with a man who might have been Cooper was seen an hour ago by a truck driver at a rest stop in Massachusetts. He’s sure the car had a New York plate even though he couldn’t get the numbers, so it may turn out to be a good lead.”

  “I don’t need protection,” I said quickly. “Ned Cooper doesn’t know where I live, and anyhow, I’m going to be out most of the day today and tomorrow.”

  “Just to be on the safe side, we phoned Mrs. Spencer in New York, and she called back. She’s staying up here in the guest house until we catch him. We told her that it’s unlikely that Cooper would come back here, but nonetheless we’re keeping an eye on the roads near her property.”

  He promised to call me if he heard any further definite news about Cooper.

  I had brought my thick file on Nick Spencer home from the office for the weekend, and as soon as I was off the phone, I got it out. What I was interested in this time were the reports about the plane crash, ranging from the first headlines to the brief follow-up references in the articles about the stock and the vaccine.

  I highlighted as I read. The accounts were straightforward. On Friday, April 4, at 2 P.M., Nicholas Spencer, a seasoned pilot, had taken off in his private plane from Westchester County Airport, destined for San Juan, Puerto Rico. He planned to attend a weekend business seminar there, returning late Sunday afternoon. The weather forecast was for moderate rainfall in the San Juan area. His wife had dropped him off at the airport

  Fifteen minutes before he was to land in San Juan, Spencer’s plane disappeared from the radar screen. There had been no indication that he was having a problem, but the rainfall had developed into a heavy storm, with considerable lightning in the area. The speculation was that the plane had been hit by lightning. The next day, bits of wreckage from his plane began to wash ashore.

  The name of the mechanic who had serviced the plane just before takeoff was Dominick Salvio. After the accident he said that Nicholas Spencer was a skillful pilot who had flown under severe weather conditions before but that a direct lightning strike could have sent the plane into a spin.

  After the scandal broke, questions about the flight began to surface in the newspaper accounts. Why hadn’t Spencer used the Gen-stone company plane, which he normally did on company-related trips? Why had the number of calls made and received on his cell phone decreased so drastically in the weeks before the crash? Then, when his body was not recovered, the questions changed. Had the crash been staged? Had he actually been on the plane when it went down? He always drove his own car to the airport. On the day he left for Puerto Rico, he had asked his wife to drop him off at the airport. Why?

  I called the Westchester airport. Dominick Salvio was at work, and I was put through to him and learned that he would be finished work at two o’clock. He reluctantly agreed to meet me for fifteen minutes in t
he terminal.

  “Fifteen minutes only, Miss DeCarlo,” he said. “My kid has a little league game today, and I want to see it.”

  I looked at the clock. It was eleven forty-five, and I was still in my robe. One of the great luxuries to me on Saturday mornings, even if I’m working at my desk, is not having to rush to shower and dress. But now it was time to get moving. I had no idea how much traffic I might encounter and wanted to leave myself a full hour and a half to get to the Westchester airport.

  Fifteen minutes later, thanks to the noise of the blow-dryer, I almost didn’t hear the phone, but then I ran to get it. It was Ken Page. “I found our cancer patient, Carley,” he said.

  “Who is he?”

  “Dennis Holden, a thirty-eight-year-old engineer who lives in Armonk.”

  “How is he doing?”

  “He wouldn’t say over the phone. He was very reluctant to even talk to me, but I persuaded him, and he finally invited me to come to his house.”

  “What about me?” I asked. “Ken, you promised—”

  “Hold it. It took a bit of doing, but you’re in. He’s willing to see you, too. We have our choice: today or tomorrow at three o’clock. That’s not much notice, so does either work for you? I can make whichever works best for you. I have to call him right back.”

  Tomorrow I was scheduled to see Lynn at three o’clock, and I didn’t want to change that. “Today is perfect,” I told Ken.

  “I’m sure you’ve been watching the news about that Cooper guy. Five people dead because the Gen-stone stock tanked.”

  “Six,” I corrected. “His wife was a victim, too”

  “Yes, you’re right, she was. Okay, I’ll call Holden, tell him we’re on for later, get directions, and get right back to you.”

  Ken called back a few minutes later. I took down Dennis Holden’s address and phone number, finished drying my hair, put on a quick touch of makeup, chose a steel blue pantsuit—another of my end-of-the-season sales purchases from last summer—and took off.

  Given all that I had learned about Ned Cooper, I looked around very carefully as I opened the outer door. These old brownstones have high, fairly narrow stoops, which means that if anyone wanted to take aim, I’d make a pretty easy target. But the traffic was moving fast. There were a fair number of people walking on the sidewalk outside my building, and I couldn’t see anyone sitting in the parked cars near the house. It looked safe enough.

  Even so, I ran down the stairs and walked quickly to my garage, three blocks away. As I walked, I wove in and out of the people who were just sauntering along, and all the time I had a feeling of guilt about it. If Ned Cooper did have me in his sights, I was exposing these others to danger.

  * * *

  Westchester County Airport is situated at the border of Greenwich, the town I’d visited less than twenty-four hours ago, and where I would be returning tomorrow with Casey, for dinner with his friends. I knew the airport had started out as a sleepy airfield created primarily for the convenience of the wealthy residents in the surrounding area. Now, however, it was a major terminal and the preferred choice of thousands of travelers, including those not necessarily counted among the well-heeled.

  Dominick Salvio met me in the terminal lobby at 2:04. He was a large-framed man with confident brown eyes and an easy smile. He had about him the comfortable air of a guy who knew exactly who he was and where he was going. I gave him my card and explained that I went by the name of Carley, and he said, “Marcia DeCarlo and Dominick Salvio turn into Carley and Sal. You figure.”

  Since I knew the timer was clicking away, I didn’t waste a minute getting to the point. I was absolutely frank with him. I told him that I was doing the story and that I had met Nick Spencer. Then I briefly explained my relationship to Lynn. I said that I did not and would not believe that Nick Spencer had survived the crash and was now hiding away in Switzerland, thumbing his nose at the world.

  At that moment Carley and Sal bonded. “Nick Spencer was a prince,” Sal said emphatically. “They don’t come any better than that guy. I’d like to get my hands on all those liars who are making him out to be a crook. I’d wrap their tongues around their feet.”

  “We’re agreed,” I said, “but what I need to know from you, Sal, is how Nick seemed when he got on the plane that day. You know he was only forty-two years old, but everything I uncover about him, especially the things that happened in those last months, seems to suggest that he was under a tremendous amount of stress. Even men as young as he get heart attacks, the kind that kill you before you have a chance to react in any way.”

  “I hear you,” he said, “and it’s possible that’s what happened. What gets me mad is that they act as if Nick Spencer was an amateur-night-in-Bridgeport kind of pilot. He was good, damn good, and he was smart. He’d flown in plenty of storms and knew how to handle them—unless he did get slammed with lightning, and that’s tough for anyone to handle.”

  “Did you see or speak to him before he took off that day?”

  “I always service his plane myself. I saw him.”

  “I know Lynn dropped him off. Did you see her?”

  “I saw her. They were sitting at a table in that coffee shop nearest to where the private planes are kept. Then she walked him to the plane.”

  “Did they seem affectionate with each other?” I hesitated, then said bluntly, “Sal, it’s important to know Nick Spencer’s state of mind. If he was distressed or distracted because of something that had happened between them, it could have had a bearing on his physical condition or his concentration.”

  Sal looked past me. I sensed he was weighing his words, not so much to be cautious as to be honest. He looked at his watch. My allotted time with him was going by too quickly.

  Finally he said, “Carley, those two people were never happy together, I can tell you that.”

  “Was there anything special about their behavior that day?” I persisted.

  “Why don’t you talk to Marge? She’s the waitress in the coffee shop who waited on them.”

  “Is she here today?”

  “She works long weekends, Friday through Monday. She’s there now.”

  Taking my arm, Sal walked with me through the terminal to that coffee shop. “That’s Marge,” he said, pointing to a matronly looking woman in her sixties. He caught her eye, and she came over to us, smiling.

  The smile vanished when Sal told her why we were there.

  “Mr. Spencer was the nicest man,” she said, “and his first wife was a lovely person. But that other one was one cold fish. She must have really upset him that day. I will say for her that she was apologizing, but I could tell that he was mad clean through. I couldn’t hear all of what they were saying, but it was something about how she had changed her mind about going to Puerto Rico with him, and he said if he’d known sooner, he would have taken Jack. Jack is Mr. Spencer’s son.”

  “Did they eat or drink anything?” I asked.

  “They both had ice tea. Listen, it’s a good thing that neither she nor Jack was on that plane. It’s just a damn shame that Mr. Spencer wasn’t that lucky.”

  I thanked Marge and walked back through the terminal with Sal. “She gave him a big kiss in front of everybody when she left him,” he said. “I had figured that at least the poor guy might have been feeling good about his marriage, but then Marge tells me what she just told you. So maybe he was upset, and maybe that did affect his judgment. That can happen to the best of pilots. I guess we’ll never know.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  I got to Armonk early and sat in the car outside Dennis Holden’s house, waiting for Ken Page to arrive. Then, almost like an automaton, I called Lynn at the Bedford number. I wanted to ask her point-blank why she had talked Nick Spencer out of taking his son with him to Puerto Rico, then backed off from going herself. Had someone hinted to her that it wasn’t smart to get on that plane?

  She was either out or chose not to pick up the phone. Thinking about it, I decided it was just
as well. It would be better to see for myself how she reacted when I did ask her that question. She had traded on my mother’s marriage to her father to make me her unpaid public relations spokesperson. She was the sad widow, the abandoned stepmother, the bewildered wife of a man who turned out to be a crook. The truth was that she didn’t give a damn about Nick Spencer, and she didn’t give a damn about his son, Jack, and she had probably been carrying on with Charles Wallingford all along.

  Ken pulled up and parked behind me, and we walked together to the house. It was a handsome Tudor-style stucco and brick home, enhanced by the setting. Expensive shrubbery, flowering trees, and a velvety green lawn testified that Dennis Holden was either a successful engineer or had family money.

  Ken rang the bell, and the door was opened by a thin boyish-faced man with very short brown hair and warm hazel eyes. “I’m Dennis Holden,” he said. “Come in.”

  The house was as attractive on the inside as it had appeared from the street. He took us into the living room where two creamy white couches faced each other on either side of the fireplace. The antique rug was a wonderful amalgam of colors, shades of red and blue, gold and crimson. As I sat down next to Ken on one of the couches, the thought ran through my head that a few months ago Dennis Holden had left this house for what he expected to be the last time to check into a hospice. What did it feel like for him to come home? I could only imagine the emotions that were churning inside him.

  Ken was handing his card to Holden. I fished in my bag for mine, found it, and handed it to him as well. He examined them carefully. “Dr. Page,” he said to Ken, “do you have a practice?”

  “No. I write about medical research full-time.”

  Holden turned to me. “Marcia DeCarlo. Don’t you also write a financial advice column?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “My wife reads it and enjoys it very much.”

  “I’m glad.”

  He looked at Ken. “Doctor, on the phone you said that you and Miss DeCarlo are writing a cover story on Nicholas Spencer. In your opinion is he still alive, or is the man in Switzerland who claims to have seen him mistaken?”