Vince put Erin’s letter in his briefcase. “You may be able to help us, Doctor. We’re going to be tracking down the people Erin met through personal ads. Would you be willing to interview some of them and give your professional opinion of what makes them tick?”
“Absolutely.”
“By any chance, are you a member of AAPL?” Psychiatrists who belonged to the American Association of Psychiatry and the Law, Vince knew, were particularly skilled in dealing with psychopaths.
“No, I’m not. But, Mr. D’Ambrosio, my research has shown that the vast majority of people who place or answer these ads do so because of loneliness or boredom. Others may have more sinister motives.”
Vince turned and walked to the door. As he twisted the knob, he looked back. “I’d say that was true in Erin Kelley’s case.”
On Tuesday night, Charley drove to the retreat and went directly to the basement. He took down the stack of shoe boxes and laid them on top of the freezer. Clipped onto each of them was the name of the girl who belonged with them. Not that he needed reminding, of course. He remembered every single one in perfect detail. Besides that, except for Nan, he had a videotape of each of them. And he had videotaped the True Crimes program about Nan’s death. They’d done a good job of finding a girl who looked like her.
He opened Nan’s box. The scuffed Nike and the black sequined satin slipper. The slipper was garish. His taste had improved since then.
Should he send Nan’s and Erin’s things back at the same time? Carefully, he considered the idea. It was such an interesting decision.
No. If he did that the police and the media would realize immediately that their theory about a copycat murder was wrong. They’d know that one set of hands had snuffed out both lives.
Maybe it would be more fun to toy with them for a while.
Maybe start by returning Nan’s shoe and the one from the first of the other girls. That had been Claire, two years ago. An ash-blond musical-comedy actress from Lancaster. She could dance so beautifully. Gifted. Really gifted. Her wallet was in the box with her white sandal and the gold slipper. Surely by now her family had given up her apartment. He’d send the package to the address in Lancaster.
Then every few days he’d send another package. Janine. Marie. Sheila. Leslie. Annette. Tina. Erin.
He’d time it so they’d all be delivered by March thirteenth. Fifteen days from now.
On that night, no matter how he accomplished it, Darcy would be here dancing with him.
Charley stared at the freezer. Darcy was going to be the last one. Maybe he’d keep her with him always . .
When Darcy got back to her apartment from the airport Thesday evening, there were a dozen messages on the answering machine. Condolences from old friends. Seven calls had come in from personal ads Erin must have answered for her. The pleasant-voiced David Weld again. This time he left a number. So did Len Parker, Cal Griffin, and Albert Booth.
A call from Gus Boxer saying he had a tenant for Erin Kelley’s apartment. Could Miss Scott get the place cleared out by the weekend? If she did, she wouldn’t have to pay the March rent.
Darcy rewound the tape, wrote down the names and phone numbers of the personal ad callers, and changed cassettes. Vince D’Ambrosio might want to have a record of those voices.
She heated a can of soup, ate it on a tray in bed. When she was finished she reached for the phone and the list of men who had called for a date. She dialed the first number. As it began to ring she slammed the phone back in the cradle. Tears gushed down her cheeks as she sobbed, “Erin, I want to call you.”
VIII
WEDNESDAY
February 27
At nine o’clock, Darcy went to the office. Bev was already there. She had coffee brewing and fresh juice and warm bagels. A new plant was on the windowsill. Bev hugged her briefly, her extravagantly mascaraed eyes filled with sympathy. “You can guess everything I want to say.”
“Yes, I can.” Darcy realized the coffee aroma was enticing. She reached for a bagel. “I didn’t know I was hungry.”
Bev assumed a businesslike attitude. “We had two calls in yesterday. People who saw the magic you did on the Ralston Arms apartment. Want you to redo for them. Also, would you take on that residential hotel on Thirtieth and Ninth? New owners. Claim they have more taste than money.”
“Before I do anything else, I have to clear out Erin’s apartment.” Darcy took a gulp of coffee and pushed back her hair. “I dread it.”
It was Bev who suggested she simply move all the Furniture to the warehouse. “You told me it was a Kerrific setup. Could you use Erin’s things piece by piece on jobs? One of the women who called wants to redo her daughter’s bedroom in a really special way. The kid’s sixteen and is coming home from the hospital after a long siege. She’ll be laid up for quite a while.”
It was good to think of Erin’s pewter and brass bed being enjoyed by a girl like that. It made it easier. “I’d better check that it’s all right for me to move everything out.” She called Vince D’Ambrosio.
“I know the NYPD is finished going over the place,” he told her.
Bev arranged for the van to go to Christopher Street the next day. “I’ll meet it. Just show me what you want.” At noon she went with Darcy to Erin’s apartment. Boxer let them in.
“Sure appreciate you releasing the place,” he whined. “Nice person taking it.”
I wonder how much you got under the table, Darcy thought. I never want to come here again.
There were a few blouses and scarves that she decided to keep as mementos. The rest of Erin’s clothes she gave to Bev. “You’re Erin’s size. Just please don’t wear them to the office.”
The jewelry Erin had made. Swiftly she gathered it, not wanting to think now about Erin’s talent. What else was bothering her? Finally she laid all the jewelry on the worktable. Earrings, necklaces, pins, bracelets. Gold. Silver. Semiprecious stones. All imaginative, whether formal or fun pieces. What was bothering her?
The new necklace Erin had completed with the chunky gold copies of Roman coins. Erin had joked about it. “It’ll retail for about three thousand dollars. I designed it for a fashion show in April. Can’t afford to keep it for myself, but until then I’m going to wear it a few times.”
Where was that necklace?
Had Erin been wearing it when she went out that last time? That and her initial ring and her watch. Were they with the clothes she’d been wearing when her body was found?
Darcy scooped Erin’s personal jewelry into a suitcase along with the contents of the safe. She’d have the loose gems appraised and sold for Billy’s nursing home expenses. She did not look back when she closed the door of apartment 3B for the last time.
On Wednesday afternoon at four o’clock, a detective from the Sixth Precinct, armed with Erin Kelley’s picture, was making the rounds of the pubs in the Washington Square area. So far his search had been fruitless. Several bartenders freely acknowledged knowing Erin. “She’d drop in once in a while. Sometimes with a date. Sometimes meeting someone. Last Tuesday. No. Didn’t see her at all last week.”
Charles North’s picture produced no effect at all. “Never saw that one.”
Finally, at Eddie’s Aurora on West Fourth Street, a bartender positively stated: “Yeah, that girl was here last Tuesday. I went to Florida Wednesday morning. Just got back. That’s why I’m sure about the date. I started talking to her. Told her I was finally getting away for some sun. She said she was a typical redhead, her skin always burned. She was expecting to meet someone and waited around for about forty minutes. He never showed up. Nice girl. Finally, she paid her bill and left.”
The bartender was sure it was Tuesday; sure Erin Kelley had come in at seven o’clock; sure she had been stood up. He accurately described the clothes she had been wearing, including an unusual necklace that resembled old Roman coins. “Necklace was real different. Looked expensive. I told her not to wander around outside without pulling her coat collar ove
r it.”
* * *
The detective reported to Vince D’Ambrosio from the pay phone in the bar. Vince immediately phoned Darcy, who verified that Erin had had a gold coin necklace. “I thought it might have been found on her.” She told Vince that Erin’s initial ring and watch were also missing.
“She was wearing a watch and earrings when she was found,” Vince said quietly, and asked if he could come over.
“Sure,” Darcy said. “I’ll be working late.”
When Vince arrived at the office, he was carrying a copy of Erin’s personal ad file. “We did an exhaustive examination of all Erin’s papers. In them we found a receipt for one of those private safe deposit boxes that are accessible twenty-four hours a day. Erin signed up for that only last week. She told the manager that she was a jewelry designer and was uncomfortable about the value of some of the stones she was keeping in her apartment.”
Darcy listened attentively as Vince D’Ambrosio told her that Erin had been stood up on Tuesday night. “She left that bar alone at about quarter of eight. We’re leaning to the theory that it was a felony murder. She was wearing the necklace Tuesday night, but not when she was found. We don’t know about the ring.”
“She always wore that ring,” Darcy said.
Vince nodded. “She may have had the pouch of diamonds in her possession.” He wondered if he was getting through to Darcy Scott. She was sitting at her desk, a pale yellow sweater accentuating the blond highlights in her brown hair, her expression totally controlled, her eyes more green than hazel today. He hated to be giving her copies of Kelley’s personal ads file. He was sure that she was going to start writing to the ones that were circled.
Unconsciously, his voice deepened as he stressed, “Darcy, I know the sense of rage you’re feeling at losing a friend like Erin. The point is, I beg you not to answer these personal ads with some crazy idea that you’ll find the man who called himself Charles North. We’re going to do everything we can to find Erin’s killer. But the fact remains that even though Erin may not have been one of his victims, there is a serial murderer using these ads to meet young women, and I don’t want you to be his next date.”
Doug Fox had not strayed from Scarsdale over the weekend. He’d devoted himself to Susan and the children and been pleasantly compensated for his efforts by having Susan tell him that she’d arranged for a babysitter Monday afternoon. She wanted to do some shopping and proposed that they meet for dinner in New York that night and ride home together.
She had not told him that before shopping, she had the appointment with an investigative agency.
Doug had taken her to San Domenico for dinner and made it his business to be especially charming, even telling her that sometimes he forgot how really pretty she was.
Susan had laughed.
Tuesday night Doug had arrived home at midnight. “Damn late meetings,” he’d sighed.
Wednesday morning he felt secure enough to tell Susan he’d be taking clients out to dinner and might as well stay at the Gateway. He was relieved at how understanding she was. “A client is a client, Doug. Just don’t wear yourself out.”
Wednesday afternoon when he left the office, he went straight to the apartment in London Terrace. He was meeting a divorced thirty-two-year-old real estate broker in SoHo for drinks at seven-thirty. But first he wanted to change into casual clothes and make a phone call.
He hoped that tonight he’d reach Darcy Scott.
On Wednesday afternoon, Jay Stratton received a call from Merrill Ashton of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Ashton had been thinking long and hard about Stratton’s suggestion that he buy Frances an important piece of jewelry for their fortieth wedding anniversary. “If I discuss it with her, she’ll talk me out of it,” Ashton said, a smile in his voice. “Point is, I have to be in New York next week on business. You got anything to show me? I was thinking maybe a diamond bracelet.”
Jay assured him that he most certainly did have something to show him. “I just bought some particularly fine diamonds which are being set in a bracelet right now. It would be perfect on your wife.”
“I’d want an appraisal.”
“Of course you would. If you like the bracelet, you can take it to a jeweler in Winston-Salem whom you trust and if he doesn’t agree that the value is there, we don’t have a deal. Are you prepared to spend forty thousand dollars? One for each year of your marriage?”
He heard the hesitation in Ashton’s reply. “Well, that’s a bit steep.”
“A truly exquisite bracelet,” Jay assured him. “Something that Frances Junior will proudly leave to her own daughter.”
They arranged to meet for a drink next Monday, March fourth.
Was it all going too well, Stratton wondered as he laid the portable phone on the coffee table. The twenty-thousand-dollar check for the Bertolini necklace. Would anyone think to come looking for it? The insurance on the pouch of diamonds. With Erin’s body found, the chance that she had been robbed could not be disputed. He’d give Ashton the gemstones at a reasonable but not questionable price. A jeweler in Winston-Salem wasn’t going to be looking for stones listed as missing or stolen.
A wave of pure pleasure swept over him. Stratton laughed, remembering what his uncle had said to him twenty years ago. “Jay, I’ve sent you to an Ivy League school. You’ve got the brains to get good marks on your own, and you still cheat. Your father will never be dead while you’re around.”
When he told his uncle that he’d conned the dean at Brown into letting him reapply if he joined the Peace Corps for two years, his uncle had sarcastically snapped, “Be careful. There’s nothing to steal in the Peace Corps and you might actually have to do some work.”
Not that much work. At twenty he’d started over at Brown as a freshman. Never get caught, his father had warned him. And if you do, no matter how you fix it, make sure you don’t have a record.
He’d of course been older than the other students. They’d all looked like babyfaced kids, even the ones who were obviously rich.
Except for one.
The phone rang. It was Enid Armstrong. Enid Armstrong? Of course, the teary-eyed widow.
She sounded excited. “I talked to my sister about your suggestion of what I should do to my ring and she said, ‘Enid, if that will give you a lift, do it. You deserve to pamper yourself.’ ”
On the channel 4 six o’clock news, reporter John Miller had an ongoing report about Erin Kelley. It had been learned that a quarter of a million dollars in diamonds was missing from her safe. Lloyd’s of London had posted a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for their return. The police still believed that she had been the victim of a copycat murderer who might not have known that she was carrying valuables. The report ended with a reminder that the True Crimes dramatization of Nan Sheridan’s death was being repeated at eight o’clock.
Darcy snapped the off button on the remote control. “It had nothing to do with a robbery,” she said aloud. “It had nothing to do with a copycat murder. No matter what they say, it had everything to do with a personal ad.”
Vince D’Ambrosio would undoubtedly learn the identity of some of the people Erin had dated. But Erin had been meeting for the first time the man who called himself Charles North, and he hadn’t shown up. Suppose he’d been just coming into the bar and met her at the door? Suppose he’d been one of the ones to whom she’d sent a picture? Suppose he’d said, “Erin Kelley, I’m Charles North. I got stuck in traffic. This place looks crowded. Let’s go somewhere else.”
It makes sense, Darcy thought. If there is a serial killer out there and if he’s been responsible for other deaths, he won’t stop now. If only she knew which ads Erin had actually answered, which ads she’d answered for both of them.
It was seven o’clock, a good time to try returning the calls that had been left on her machine. In the next forty minutes she reached three people, left messages for the other four. Now she had a date for drinks with Len Parker at McMullen’s on Thursday, drinks wi
th David Weld at Smith and Wollensky’s Grill on Friday, and brunch with Albert Booth at the Victory Cafe on Saturday.
What about the guys who had left messages on Erin’s machine? A couple of them had given phone numbers that she’d taken down. Maybe she’d call them back, tell them about Erin in case they didn’t already know, and try to get a date with them. If they were meeting a lot of girls, they might have heard someone talk about a date who turned out to be weird.
The first two didn’t answer. The next one picked up immediately. “Michael Nash.”
“Michael, I’m Darcy Scott, a good friend of Erin Kelley’s. I imagine you know what happened to her.”
“Darcy Scott.” The pleasant voice deepened with concern. “Erin told me about you. I’m so terribly sorry. I spoke with an FBI agent yesterday and assured him I’d like to help in any way I can. Erin was a lovely girl.”
Darcy realized her eyes were filling with tears. “Yes, she was.”
Obviously, he caught the catch in her voice. “This is terribly rough for you. Can I take you out for dinner some night soon? Talking about it may help.”
“I’d like that.”
“Tomorrow?”
Darcy thought swiftly. She was meeting Len at six. “If eight o’clock is all right with you.”
“It’s fine. I’ll make a reservation at Le Cirque. Incidentally, how will I know you?”
“Medium brown hair, five eight. I’ll wear a blue wool dress with a white collar.”
“I’ll be the most average-looking guy in the place. I’ll be waiting at the bar.”