Darcy grinned. “Obviously, I haven’t missed much. How many ads have you answered for me?”
“About a dozen. I thought it would be fun to send both our letters to some of the same ads. We can really compare notes if those dudes call.”
“I love it. Where are you meeting tonight’s prize?”
“In a pub off Washington Square.”
“What does he do?”
“Corporate law. He’s from Philadelphia. Just relocating here. You can make tomorrow night, can’t you?”
“Sure.” They were meeting Nona for dinner.
Erin’s tone changed. “I’m glad you’re back in town, Darce. I’ve missed you.”
“Me too,” Darcy said heartily. “Okay, see you then.” She started to say good-bye, then impulsively asked, “What’s the name of tonight’s pig-in-a-poke?”
“Charles North.”
“Sounds upscale, waspy. Have fun, Erin-go-bragh.” Darcy hung up.
Bev was waiting patiently with the messages. Now her tone was frankly envious. “I swear, when you two talk, you sound like a couple of school kids. You’re closer than sisters. Thinking about my sister, I’d say you’re a lot closer than sisters.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Darcy said quietly.
The Sheridan Gallery on Seventy-eighth Street, just east of Madison Avenue, was in the midst of an auction. The contents of the vast country home of Mason Gates, the late oil baron, had drawn an overflow crowd of dealers and collectors.
Chris Sheridan observed the scene from the back of the room, reflecting with pleasure that it had been a coup to triumph over Sotheby’s and Christie’s for the privilege of auctioning this collection. Absolutely magnificent furniture from the Queen Anne period; paintings distinguished less by their technique than by their rarity; Revere silver that he knew would set off feverish bidding.
At thirty-three, Chris Sheridan still looked more like the linebacker he had been in college than a leading authority on antique furniture. His six-four height was accentuated by his straight carriage. His broad shoulders tapered down to a trim waist. His sandy hair framed a strong-featured face. His blue eyes were disarming and friendly. As his competitors had learned, however, those eyes could quickly take on a keen, no-nonsense glint.
Chris folded his arms as he watched the final bids on a 1683 Domenico Cucci cabinet with panels of pietra dura and central reliefs of inlaid stones. Smaller and less elaborate than the pair Cucci made for Louis XIV, it was nevertheless a magnificent, flawless piece that he knew the Met wanted desperately.
The room quieted as the bidding between the two high-stakes players, the Met and the representative of a Japanese bank, continued. A tug on his arm made Chris turn with a distracted frown. It was Sarah Johnson, his executive assistant, an art expert whom he had coaxed away from a private museum in Boston. Her expression reflected concern. “Chris, I’m afraid there’s a problem,” she said. “Your mother’s on the phone. She says she has to talk to you immediately. She sounds pretty upset.”
“The problem is that damn program!” Chris strode toward the door, shoved it open, and, ignoring the elevator, raced up the stairs.
A month ago the popular television series True Crimes had run a segment about the unsolved murder of Chris’s twin sister, Nan. At nineteen, Nan had been strangled while jogging near their home in Darien, Connecticut. Despite his vehement protests, Chris had not been able to prevent the camera crews from filming long shots of the house and grounds, nor from reenacting Nan’s death in the nearby wooded area where her body had been found.
He had pleaded with his mother not to watch the program, but she had insisted on viewing it with him. The producers had managed to find a young actress who bore a startling resemblance to Nan. The docudrama showed her jogging; the figure watching her from the protection of the trees; the confrontation; the attempt to escape, the killer tackling her, choking her, pulling the Nike from her right foot and replacing it with a high-heeled slipper.
The commentary was delivered by an announcer whose sonorous voice sounded gratuitously horrified. “Was it a stranger who accosted beautiful, gifted Nan Sheridan? She and her twin celebrated their nineteenth birthday the night before at the family mansion. Did someone Nan knew, someone who perhaps toasted her on her birthday, become her killer? In fifteen years no one has come forward with a shred of information that might solve this hideous crime. Was Nan Sheridan the random victim of a deranged monster, or was her death an act of personal vengeance?”
A montage of closing shots followed. The house and grounds from a different angle. The phone number to call “if you have any information.” The last closeup was the police photo of Nan’s body as it had been found, neatly placed on the ground, her hands folded together on her waist, her left foot still wearing the Nike, her right foot in the sequined slipper.
The final line: “Where are the mates to this sneaker, to this graceful evening shoe? Does the killer still have them?”
Greta Sheridan had watched the program dry-eyed. When it was finished, she’d said, “Chris, I’ve gone over it in my mind so often. That’s why I wanted to see this. I couldn’t function after Nan died, couldn’t think. But Nan used to talk to me so much about everyone at school. I . . . I just thought that seeing that program might make me recall something that could be important. Remember the day of the funeral? That huge crowd. All those young people from college. Remember Chief Harriman said that he was convinced her killer was sitting there among the mourners? Remember how they had cameras set up to take pictures of everyone in the funeral home and at church?”
Then, as though a giant hand had smashed her face, Greta Sheridan had broken into heart-rending sobs. “That girl looked so much like Nan, didn’t she? Oh Chris, I’ve missed her so much all these years. Dad would still be alive if she were here. That heart attack was his way of grieving.”
I wish I’d taken an ax to every television in the house before I let Mother watch that damn program, Chris thought as he ran down the corridor to his office. The fingers of his left hand drummed on the desk as he grabbed the phone. “Mother, what’s wrong?”
Greta Sheridan’s voice was tense and unsteady. “Chris, I’m sorry to bother you during the auction, but the strangest letter just came.”
Another fallout from that stinking program, Chris fumed. All those crank letters. They ranged from psychics offering to conduct seances to people begging for money in exchange for their prayers. “I wish you wouldn’t read that garbage,” he said. “Those letters tear you apart.”
“Chris, this one is different. It says that in memory of Nan, a dancing girl from Manhattan is going to die on the evening of February nineteenth in exactly the way Nan died.” Greta Sheridan’s voice rose. “Chris, suppose this isn’t a crank letter? Is there anything we can do? Is there anyone we can warn?”
Doug Fox pulled on his tie, carefully twisted it into a precise knot, and studied himself in the mirror. He’d had a facial yesterday and his skin glowed. The body wave had made his thinning hair seem abundant and the sandy rinse completely covered the touch of gray that was emerging at his temples.
A good-looking guy, he assured himself, admiring the way his crisp white shirt followed the lines of his muscular chest and slim waist. He reached for his suit jacket, quietly appreciating the fine feel of the Scottish wool. Dark blue with faint pinstripes, accented by the small red print on his Hermes tie. He looked every inch the part of the investment banker, upstanding citizen of Scarsdale, devoted husband of Susan Frawley Fox, father of four lively, handsome youngsters.
No one, Doug thought with amused satisfaction, would suspect him of his other life: that of the single freelance illustrator with an apartment in the blessed anonymity of London Terrace on West Twenty-third Street, plus a hideaway in Pawling and a new Volvo station wagon.
Doug took a final look in the long mirror, adjusted his pocket handkerchief, and with a glance to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, walked to the door. The bedroom
always irritated him. Antique French provincial furniture, damn place done by an upscale interior designer, and Susan still managed to make it look like the inside of Fibber McGee’s closet. Clothes piled on the chaise, silver toilet articles haphazardly strewn over the top of the dresser. Kindergarten drawings taped on the wall. Let me out, Doug thought.
The kitchen was the scene of the usual mayhem. Thirteen-year-old Donny and twelve-year-old Beth jamming food in their mouths. Susan warning that the school bus was down the block. The baby waddling around with a wet diaper and grubby hands. Trish saying she didn’t want to go to kindergarten this afternoon, she wanted to stay home and watch “All My Children” with Mommy.
Susan was wearing an old flannel robe over her nightgown. She had been a very pretty girl when they were married. A pretty girl who’d let herself go. She smiled at Doug and poured him coffee. “Won’t you have pancakes or something?”
“No.” Would she ever stop asking him to stuff his face every morning? Doug jumped back as the baby tried to embrace his leg. “Damn it, Susan, if you can’t keep him clean, at least don’t let him near me. I can’t go to the office looking grubby.”
“Bus!” Beth yelled. “Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad.”
Donny grabbed his books. “Can you come to my basketball game tonight, Dad?”
“Won’t be home till late, son. An important meeting. Next time for sure, I promise.”
“Sure.” Donny slammed the door as he left.
Three minutes later, Doug was in the Mercedes heading for the train station, Susan’s reproachful “Try not to be too late” ringing in his ears. Doug felt himself begin to unwind. Thirty-six years old and stuck with a fat wife, four noisy kids, a house in the suburbs. The American Dream. At twenty-two he’d thought he was making a smart move when he married Susan.
Unfortunately, marrying the daughter of a wealthy man wasn’t the same as marrying wealth. Susan’s father was a tightwad. Lend, never give. That motto had to be tattooed on his brain.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love the kids or that he wasn’t fond enough of Susan. It was just that he should have waited to get into this paterfamilias routine. He’d thrown his youth away. As Douglas Fox, investment banker, upstanding citizen of Scarsdale, his life was an exercise in boredom.
He parked and ran for the train, consoling himself with the thought that as Doug Fields, bachelor artist, prince of the personals, his life was swift and secretive, and when the dark needs came there was a way to satisfy them.
III
WEDNESDAY
February 20
On Wednesday evening, Darcy arrived at Nona Roberts’s office promptly at six-thirty. She’d had a meeting with a client on Riverside Drive and phoned Nona to suggest they cab over to the restaurant together.
Nona’s office was a cluttered box in a row of cluttered boxes on the tenth floor of the Hudson Cable Network. It held a somewhat battered oak desk piled with papers, several filing cabinets, the drawers of which did not fully close, shelves of reference books and tapes, a distinctly uninviting-looking love seat, and an executive swivel chair which Darcy knew no longer swiveled. A plant which Nona consistently forgot to water drooped wearily on the narrow windowsill.
Nona loved that office. Darcy privately wondered why it didn’t destroy itself by spontaneous combustion. When she arrived, Nona was on the phone, so she went out seeking water for the plant. “It’s begging for mercy,” she said when she returned.
Nona had just completed the call. She jumped up to embrace Darcy. “A green thumb I have not.” She was wearing a khaki wool jumpsuit that faithfully followed the lines of her small frame. A narrow leather belt with a white-gold clasp sculpted in the form of linked hands cinched her waist. Her medium-blond hair, streaked with touches of gray, was blunt-cut and barely reached her chin. Her animated face was interesting rather than pretty.
Darcy was glad to see that the pain in Nona’s dark brown eyes had been almost completely replaced by an expression of wry humor. Nona’s recent divorce had hit her hard. As she put it, “It’s traumatic enough turning forty without your husband bumping you for a twenty-one-year-old nymphet.”
“I’m running late,” Nona apologized. “We’re meeting Erin at seven?”
“Between seven and seven-fifteen,” Darcy said, her fingers itching to skim the dead leaves from the plant.
“Fifteen minutes to get over there, provided I throw myself in front of an empty cab. Terrific. There’s one thing I’d like to do before we go. Why don’t you come with me and witness the compassionate side of television.”
“I wasn’t aware it had one.” Darcy reached for her shoulder bag.
* * *
All the offices rimmed a large central area which was crowded with secretaries and writers at their desks. Computers hummed and fax machines clattered. At the end of the room, an announcer was on camera giving a news update. Nona waved a general greeting as she passed. “There isn’t a single unattached person in that maze who isn’t answering the personal ads for me. As a matter of fact, I suspect there are some supposedly attached guys who are also quietly getting together with an intriguing box number.”
She led Darcy into a screening room and introduced her to Joan Nye, a pretty blonde who didn’t look more than twenty-two. “Joan does the obits,” she explained. “She just finished updating an important one and asked me to take a look at it.” She turned to Nye. “I know it will be fine,” she added reassuringly.
Joan sighed. “I hope so,” she said, and pushed the button to start the film rolling.
The face of film great Ann Bouchard filled the screen. The mellifluous voice of Gary Finch, the Hudson Cable anchorman, was properly subdued as he began to speak.
“Ann Bouchard won her first Oscar at the age of nineteen, when she replaced ailing Lillian Marker in the 1928 classic Perilous Path . . .”
Film clips of Ann Bouchard in her most memorable roles were followed by highlights of her personal life: her seven husbands, her homes, her well-publicized battles with studio executives, excerpts of interviews throughout her long career, her emotional response to receiving a lifetime achievement award: “I have been blessed. I have been loved. And I love you all.”
It was over. “I didn’t know Ann Bouchard died,” Darcy exclaimed. “My God, she was on the phone with my mother last week. When did that happen?”
“It didn’t,” Nona said. “We prepare the celebrity obits in advance just the way the newspapers do. And we regularly update them. The farewell to George Burns has been revised twenty-two times. When the inevitable occurs, we just have to drop in the lead. The rather irreverent name for the project is the Toodle-oo Club.”
“Toodle-oo Club?”
“Uh-huh. We do the final portion and say toodle-oo to the deceased.” She turned to Nye. “That was terrific. I’m positively blinking back tears. Incidentally, have you answered any new personals?”
Nye grinned. “It may cost you, Nona. The other night I made a date to meet some jerk. Naturally got caught in traffic. Double-parked my car to rush in and let him know I’d be right back. Rushed out to find a cop ticketing me. Finally found a garage six blocks away and when I came back—”
“He was gone,” Nona suggested.
Nye’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”
“Because I’ve heard this from some other people. Don’t take it personally. Now we’d better run.” At the door Nona called over her shoulder, “Give me the ticket. I’ll take care of it.”
* * *
In the cab on the way to meet Erin, Darcy found herself wondering what it was that made someone pull a trick like that. Nye was genuinely attractive. Was she too young for the man she had met? When she answered the ad she must have given her age. Did he have some image in mind that Nye didn’t fit?
It was a disquieting thought. As the cab bumped and lurched through Seventy-second Street traffic, she commented, “Nona, when we started answering these ads, I thought of it as a joke. Now I’m not so sure. It’s lik
e having a blind date without the security of being introduced to the guy because he’s the best friend of somebody’s brother. Can you imagine any man you know doing that? Even if for some reason Nye’s date hated the way she dressed or wore her hair or whatever, all he had to do was have a quick drink and say he was rushing for a plane. He still gets away fast and doesn’t leave her feeling like a fool.”
“Darcy, let’s face it,” Nona said. “From all the reports I’m hearing, most of the people who place or answer these ads are pretty insecure. What’s a lot more scary is that just today I got a letter from an FBI agent who’d heard about the program and said he wants to talk to me. He’d like us to include a warning that these ads are a natural for sexual psychopaths.”
“What a lovely thought!”
* * *
As usual, Bella Vita offered encompassing warmth. The wonderful, familiar garlicky aroma was in the air. There was a faint hum of talk and laughter. Adam, the owner, greeted them. “Ah, the beautiful ladies. I have your table.” He indicated one by the window.
“Erin should be along any minute,” Darcy told him as they were seated. “I’m surprised she isn’t waiting. She’s always so prompt, it actually gives me a complex.”
“She’s probably stuck in traffic,” Nona said. “Let’s order wine. We know she’ll have chablis.”
Half an hour later, Darcy pushed her chair back. “I’m going to phone Erin. The only thing I can imagine is that when she delivered the necklace she designed for Bertolini’s, there might have been some adjustment needed. She loses track of time when she’s working.”
The answering machine was on in Erin’s studio apartment. Darcy returned to the table and realized Nona’s anxious expression mirrored her own feelings. “I left a message that we’re waiting for her and to call here if she can’t make it.”