Alvirah could see that he was looking down at the park. Ignoring his observation about the changing seasons, as he had ignored hers about the white roots of her hair, she asked, “Willy, if you were the one running out of the house that night, what would you be thinking now?”
Willy turned from the window to give his full attention to his wife’s question. “If I had something like that to worry about, I’d try to figure which way to play it. I could say that the crook saw my picture with Jonathan and picked me out to blame.”
He sat down in his comfortable chair, deciding not to mention that he was getting hungry and they’d gone light on lunch. “After Jonathan was murdered, there was a big picture of him in some of the newspapers with the group that was with him on his last trip to Egypt,” he pointed out. “The article said they were his closest friends. If the cops were after me, I would say that it was easy for this guy to have seen me in that picture, then try to frame me so he could help himself.”
“That’s a possibility,” Alvirah agreed. “But suppose that sketch really is of the right person and it turns out that it is one of Jonathan’s friends? They’ve all given the prosecutor a story of where they were that night. Once somebody recognizes the sketch, the prosecutor will haul that guy in for more questioning two minutes later. What I’m thinking is, if the guy who killed Jonathan is watching the news right now, he’ll be scared to death about the sketch they’re going to do. Will he be scared enough to go on the run? Or will he try to bluff it? What would you do?”
Willy stood up. “If I were him, I’d think it over while I was having dinner. Let’s go, honey.”
“Well, I want you to have a good dinner and a good night’s sleep,” Alvirah said. “Because I can tell you right now, you’re going to have a busy day tomorrow.”
72
Greg was waiting when Mariah pulled into her driveway. He jumped out of his car and stood ready to open her door when she braked and released the lock. He put his arms around her and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “You look beautiful,” he said.
She laughed. “How can you tell? It’s dark out.”
“Your outside lights are pretty bright. Anyhow, even if it was pitch-dark and I couldn’t see you, I’d know you couldn’t look anything but beautiful.”
Greg is so shy, Mariah thought. He’s so sincere, but a compliment from his lips somehow sounds awkward and rehearsed.
Not spontaneous, and teasing, and fun—the way it would be if Richard said it, a sly voice whispered in her mind.
“Do you want to go inside for a few minutes?” Greg asked.
Mariah thought about how she had sat in the hospital parking lot sobbing after she left her mother and opened her compact to pat away the traces of smeared mascara under her eyes. “No, I’m fine,” she said.
She got into his car and sank back against the soft leather passenger seat. “I have to tell you this feels a lot more luxurious than the interior of my car,” she said.
“Then it’s yours,” he told her as he started the engine. “We’ll switch when we get back from dinner.”
“Oh, Greg,” she protested.
“I mean it.” His tone was intense. Then, as if he realized he was making her uncomfortable, he said, “Sorry. I’ll keep my promise not to crowd you. Tell me about Kathleen.”
He had reserved a table at Savini’s, a restaurant ten minutes away in the neighboring town of Allendale. On the way there she told him about her mother. “Greg, she didn’t even recognize me today,” she said. “It was heartbreaking. She’s getting worse. I just don’t know what will happen after she’s released to come back home.”
“You can’t be sure she will be released, Mariah. I saw the news about that so-called witness. That guy has a record, a whole bunch of other charges, and he’s looking for a deal. I think he’s probably bluffing when he says that he saw someone running out of the house the night your father was shot.”
“That was on the news?” Mariah exclaimed. “I was told to say nothing about it. After I started to tell you about him, when you called me as I was arriving at the hospital, I stopped because I realized I was supposed to keep quiet.”
“I only wish you had wanted to trust me and confide in me,” he said sadly.
They were at the entrance to Savini’s and the valet was opening the door, saving her from the need to answer. Greg had made a reservation for the cozy fireplace room of the restaurant. One more place where I’ve had so many pleasant evenings with Dad and Mom, Mariah thought.
A bottle of wine was already chilling at the table. Anxious to dispel the strain between her and Greg that was quickly becoming apparent, when the maître d’ had poured the wine, she held up her glass. “To this nightmare ending soon,” she said.
He clinked his glass with hers. “If only I could make that happen for you,” he said tenderly.
Over salmon and a salad, she tried to steer the conversation to other topics.
“It felt good to get to my office today—I swear I love being in the investment business. And getting to my apartment felt so good.”
“I’ll give you money to invest,” Greg answered. “How much do you want?”
I can’t do this, Mariah thought. I’ve got to be fair with him. He’s not going to be able to keep our friendship on an even keel. And I know I’ll never be able to give him what he wants.
They drove back to Mahwah in silence. He got out of the car and walked her to the door. “A nightcap?” he suggested.
“Not tonight, Greg. I’m awfully tired.”
“I understand.” He did not attempt to kiss her. “I understand a lot, Mariah.”
The key in her hand, she unlocked the door. “Good night, Greg,” she said. It was a relief to be inside and alone. From the living room window she watched him drive away.
A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. It has to be Lloyd or Lisa, she thought as she looked through the peephole. She was startled to see Richard standing there. For a moment she hesitated, but then she decided to open the door.
He stepped in and put his hands on her shoulders. “Mariah, you’ve got to understand something about that phone message you overheard. When I tried to buy that parchment from Lillian, I did it for you and your father. I was going to give it back to the Vatican. You have got to believe me!”
She looked up at him and, as she saw the tears glistening in his eyes, her intense feelings of anger and doubt evaporated. “I do believe you,” she said quietly. “Richard, I do.”
For a moment they stared at each other, then with joy and relief she felt his arms wrap around her.
“My love,” he whispered. “My dear love.”
73
Richard did not leave her until midnight.
At three A.M. Mariah was woken from a dead sleep by the ringing of the phone on her night table. Oh God, something’s happened to Mom, she thought. She spilled her water glass as she grabbed the phone. “Hello!”
“Mariah, you have to help me.” The voice on the other end sounded frantic. “I have the parchment. I couldn’t sell it and betray Jonathan like that. I want you to have it. I promised it to Charles, but I changed my mind. He was in a rage when I told him. I’m afraid of what he’ll do to me.”
It was Lillian Stewart.
Lillian is alive! And she has the parchment! “Where are you?” Mariah demanded.
“I’ve been hiding at the Raines Motel on Route 4 East just before the bridge.” Lillian broke into a sob. “Mariah, I beg you. Come and meet me now. Please. I want you to have the parchment. I was going to mail it to you, but suppose it got lost? I’m leaving for Singapore on the seven A.M. flight from Kennedy airport. I’m not coming back until I know Charles is in prison.”
“The Raines Motel on Route 4. I’ll be there right away. There won’t be any traffic. I can make it in twenty minutes.” Mariah pushed back the coverlet and in an instant her feet were on the carpet.
“I’m on the first floor in the rear area of the motel. It’s room twenty-tw
o—the number’s on the door. Hurry! I’ve got to leave for Kennedy by four o’clock,” Lillian said.
At three thirty, Mariah turned off the highway and drove past the quiet, shabby motel into the dimly lit parking area outside room 22. She opened her car door and a second later felt her head being slammed against the side of it. Waves of intense pain enveloped her and she passed out.
Minutes later she opened her eyes to almost total darkness. She tried to move her hands and legs but they were tightly tied. There was a gag stuffed into her mouth. Her head was throbbing. From somewhere near her, she could hear a whimpering sound. Where am I? Where am I? she thought frantically.
She could feel the movement of wheels beneath her. I’m in the trunk of a car, she realized. She felt something brush against her. My God, there’s someone here with me. Then, straining to catch the words, she heard Lillian Stewart moaning, “He’s crazy. He’s crazy. I’m sorry, Mariah, I’m sorry.”
74
At nine thirty on Friday morning Alvirah was sitting at the dinette table in her apartment, enjoying the cheese Danish that Willy, an early riser, had picked up for her in the coffee shop. “I know you only eat them once in a while, honey,” he had said, “but you’ve been working hard and it will give you energy.”
The phone rang. It was Betty Pierce. “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said in a worried voice. “Mrs. Meehan, I mean Alvirah, is Mariah with you, or have you heard from her?”
“Not since about five o’clock last night,” Alvirah said. “Isn’t she there? I know she went into New York early yesterday. Have you tried her cell phone?”
“No, she’s not. And she isn’t answering that phone or the phone in her office.”
“She could be on her way into the city again,” Alvirah suggested. “I know that yesterday her cell phone was off almost all day.”
“It’s more than that,” Betty said hurriedly. “Mariah is so neat. She never leaves clothes tossed around her room. Her nightgown is on the floor. The water glass on the night table was spilled and she didn’t bother to wipe it up. The closet door was open. There are a couple of jackets hanging off the hangers, as if she just grabbed something and ran. The pearls her father gave her are on the vanity table. She always keeps them in the safe. I thought some emergency might have come up with her mother at the hospital and so I called over there. But Kathleen had a quiet night and is asleep. And they said they haven’t seen or heard from Mariah today.”
Alvirah’s mind was working with feverish haste. “What about her car?” she asked.
“Her car is gone.”
“Does it look as if there was any kind of struggle?”
“I can’t say it does. It looks more like she left in a terrible hurry.”
“What about the Scotts? Did you talk to them?”
“No. I know Mrs. Scott likes to sleep late.”
“All right. I’ll call Mr. Scott. I have his cell phone. If you hear from Mariah, call me at once, and I’ll do the same for you.”
“I will. But, Alvirah, I’m desperate with worry. Rory and Lillian seem to have both disappeared. Do you think there’s any chance that—”
“Don’t even begin to think like that, Betty. I’ll talk to you later.” Alvirah tried not to let the anxiety that was making her hand tremble show in her voice. As soon as she hung up, she dialed Lloyd’s number. As she feared, he had not spoken to Mariah since yesterday afternoon.
“I’ve been in the office for an hour,” Lloyd said. “Mariah’s car wasn’t in the driveway when I passed by her house. Of course, she might have put it in the garage.”
“It’s not in the garage,” Alvirah said. “Lloyd, my hunches are good. You’ve got to call those detectives and get them to put a trace on Mariah’s cell phone and rush Wally Gruber over to make that sketch. If he comes up with a face we can identify, we’ll know where to look for Mariah.”
If it’s not too late, she thought.
As she put the phone down, Alvirah tried to banish that awful possibility from her mind.
75
He wasn’t sure what to do. For the first time in his life, he felt a lack of control. Would the face in that sketch turn out to be a figment of that crook’s imagination? Or would it bear a damning resemblance to what he saw in the mirror?
On the Internet, he had looked up the picture that had been in the newspapers of him and the others with Jonathan on that last dig. He had printed it out. If the sketch looks like me, I’ll show this to them, he’d thought. I’ll wave it in front of those detectives and say, “Look, this is where your sketch comes from.” It would be his word against that of a convicted felon who was bargaining for a reduced sentence.
But once the prosecutor’s office started to dig into his past, it might come out that Rory went to prison because she had stolen money from his aunt when she was her caregiver. Then, like a house of cards, his labyrinth of lies would fall apart. He had only visited his aunt once when Rory was working there, and Rory hadn’t recognized him when she came to work at Jonathan’s house. But I recognized her, he thought, and I used her when I needed her. She had to go along with me because I knew she had skipped parole, and she snapped at the money I dangled in front of her. She left Jonathan’s gun in the flower bed that night. She left the door unlocked for me.
He had taken Mariah and Lillian from the parking lot at the motel to his warehouse in the city. He had untied their hands and let them use the bathroom, then tied them up again. He left Lillian lying on the brocaded couch, whimpering. Across the room behind a row of lifesize Grecian statues, he had laid Mariah on a mattress on the floor. She had passed out again before he left. It had been a brilliant decision not to kill Lillian immediately. How else could he have convinced Mariah to come rushing out in the middle of the night? And long ago he had made it his business to be able to slip in and out of his apartment building without being seen. It really wasn’t hard if you wore a cleaning crew uniform, pulled a cap down over your face, and had a phony ID around your neck.
He had gotten back home just before daybreak. Now he didn’t know what to do except to act as if this was a normal day in his life. He was tired, but he did not go to bed and try to sleep. Instead, he showered and dressed, and had his usual breakfast of cereal, toast, and coffee.
He left his apartment shortly after nine and set about being visible in his normal routine. Trying to stay calm, he comforted himself with the realization that if that crook was lying about seeing anyone running out of the house, and if he had seen that picture in the newspaper, he could just as easily pick out one of the other three guys to describe to whoever was drawing the sketch.
Until he knew where this was going, he’d have to stay away from the warehouse. Mariah and Lillian, he thought sarcastically, I guess you’ll get to live a little while longer. But if the sketch looks like me, and they tell me to come in and talk to them again, they still won’t have enough at that point to arrest me. I’ll only become what they call “a person of interest.” They’ll probably start following me, but that won’t do them any good. I’m not going near the warehouse until I know where I stand.
Even if it takes weeks.
76
After speaking to Lloyd Scott, Detective Benet called Judge Brown at his chambers and received authorization to place a trace on Mariah’s cell phone and to get records of the incoming and outgoing calls, both for that phone and the one at her parents’ house.
“Judge, there’s a strong probability that Mariah Lyons is missing,” he explained. “I need a list of the last five days’ calls so that I can see who she’s been talking to, and I need access to her call log for the next five days so I can see who calls her.”
His next call was to the designated contact at the telephone company who handled emergent judicial orders.
“I’ll get right on it, sir,” he was told.
Ten minutes later Simon had the location of the cell phone. “Detective Benet, we’ve got a hit from Route 4 East in Fort Lee, just before t
he bridge. It’s coming from the immediate area around the Raines Motel.”
Rita Rodriguez was watching Simon’s expression and knew he had received bad news.
“We’ve got a major problem,” he said. “The signal is coming from around the Raines Motel. That place is a total dump. We can be there in ten minutes. Let’s go.”
They raced down the highway with their lights flashing and were soon standing outside Mariah’s car. The driver’s door was slightly ajar. They could see a woman’s shoulder bag on the passenger seat. As they opened the door carefully to preserve any fingerprints, the sound of a cell phone ringing came from inside the bag.
Simon reached for the phone and looked at the caller ID. It was Richard Callahan. Simon quickly scanned the log and saw that it was his fourth call in the last two hours. There were two others from the Lyons home, which he knew would have been from the housekeeper, and two more from Alvirah Meehan in the last hour.
Two days ago when Lillian Stewart disappeared, Richard Callahan claimed that he had been trying to reach her all day, Simon thought. He’s covering his tracks again.
“Simon, look at this.” Rita was shining her flashlight on the unmistakable signs of smeared blood on the rear door on the driver’s side of the car. She pointed the flashlight to the ground. Drops of dried blood became visible on the cracked macadam of the parking lot.
Simon crouched down to examine the droplets closely. “I don’t know what the hell she was doing here, but it looks like she was grabbed when she was getting out of the car. Rita, we’ve got to get that composite right away.”
“The guys picking up Wally Gruber should be on their way back now,” Rita said quickly. “I’ll call and tell them to turn on the flashers and be there as soon as they can.”