On the Street Where You Live

  “I laid fifty bucks on the maître d’, Alvaro,” she said. “That opened him up. According to him, Frieze has been acting weird for a long time now. This guy thinks he’s in the process of a nervous breakdown or something. Yesterday, Natalie Frieze came in to the restaurant, but she didn’t stay long. She and Bob had words at the table, and the maître d’ overheard her tell him she was afraid of him.”

  “That fits in with the battered woman angle.”

  “There’s more. A waiter who was serving the next table heard them talking about breaking up, and he’s willing to talk, but he wants big, big bucks.”

  “Pay him and write it up,” Alvaro ordered.

  “I’m going to try to see Natalie Frieze today.”

  “Get her to talk. Robert Frieze used to be a hotshot on Wall Street. He’s good for some headlines even if he had nothing to do with the murder.”

  “Well, he’s no hotshot in the restaurant business. Food’s only so-so. Decor overdone and uncomfortable. Absolutely zero buzz to the place. Trust me. It’ll never be the Elaine’s of Monmouth County.”

  “Keep up the good work, Reba.”

  “You bet. How are you doing on Stafford?”

  “So far, nothing. But if there’s any dirt to find, we’ll dig it up.”

  seventy-two ________________

  “NO MORE SITTING IN HIS STUDY letting him run the show,” Tommy Duggan told Pete Walsh grimly as they left the crime scene. “We’ve got to flush him out, and make him show his hand—and we’ve got to do it soon.” The body of Bernice Joyce had been removed. The forensic team had done its work and was wrapping up. As the head investigator had said to Tommy, “With the breeze from the ocean, there isn’t the chance of a snowball in hell that we’ll get anything we can use. We’ve dusted for prints, but we all know the killer had to be wearing gloves. He’s a pro.”

  “He’s a pro all right,” Tommy snapped to Pete as they got in the car. The face of Bernice Joyce filled his mind, as she had looked a week ago when he’d interrogated her at Will Stafford’s house.

  She was forthcoming when he asked her if she had noticed the scarf, he remembered. She knew Rachel Wilcox had been wearing it. But did she remember then that she had seen someone pick it up? Tommy wondered. I don’t think so, he decided. It probably came to her later.

  She told me she was going back to Palm Beach on Monday. But even if I’d known she was staying over, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to talk to her again.

  He felt both disgusted and angry with himself. The killer read that article in the tabloid and got scared, he thought, so scared that he took a chance on killing Mrs. Joyce in broad daylight. And if he still was following a game plan, then there would be someone else tomorrow, Tommy reminded himself. Only this one would be a young woman.

  “Where to?” Pete asked.

  “You called Stafford?”

  “Yes. He said anytime we want to stop in is okay. Said he’ll be at his desk all day.”

  “Let’s start with him. Check the office first.”

  That was when they learned that Natalie Frieze was missing.

  “Forget Stafford,” Tommy said. “The local guys are talking to Frieze. I want to sit in on it.”

  He hunched back in the seat, pondering the terrible possibility that the serial killer had already elected his next victim: Natalie Frieze.

  seventy-three ________________

  NICK TODD phoned Emily the moment he heard the news report of the death of Bernice Joyce. “Emily, did you know that woman?” he asked.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Do you think the article in that rag was the reason she was killed?”

  “I have no idea. I haven’t seen the article, but I understand it’s pretty bad.”

  “It was a death sentence for that poor woman. This kind of thing makes me itch to get into the U.S. Attorney’s office.”

  “How is that going?”

  “I put out feelers to some of his top people. I won an important case against them last year, which could either hurt or help me, who knows?”

  There was a subtle change in his voice. “I called last night, but I guess you were out.”

  “I was out to dinner. You didn’t leave a message.”

  “No, I didn’t. How’s the project going?”

  “I may be kidding myself, but I’m seeing a pattern to all those deaths, and it’s horrific. You remember I told you that Douglas Carter, the young man Madeline was engaged to, killed himself?”

  “Yes, you told me about that.”

  “Nick, he was found with a shotgun beside him. He’d been terribly depressed over Madeline’s disappearance, but he was also young, good-looking, with family money, and a promising future on Wall Street. Everything that’s written about him in all the diaries and other materials I have is positive, and nothing points specifically to his being suicidal. Something else. His mother was very sick, and he apparently was very close to her. He must have known that his death would destroy her. Just think—how would your mother feel if something happened to you?”

  “She’d never forgive me,” Nick said wryly. “But how would your mother feel if something happened to you?”

  “She wouldn’t like it, of course.”

  “Then until both your stalker and this serial killer you’re trying to identify are apprehended, please keep your doors locked and the alarm on, especially when you’re there alone. Look, I’ve got a call coming in I have to take. I’ll see you on Sunday, if we don’t talk before then.”

  Why does Nick feel the need to sound like the voice of my better judgment? Emily wondered as she hung up the phone. It was 11:30. For the past two and a half hours she had been alternating between the old police reports and the Lawrence memorabilia.

  She had also called her mother and father in Chicago and her grandmother in Albany and given all of them a cheerful account of how much she was enjoying the house.

  All of which is true enough, she told herself as she thought as well of everything she was withholding from them.

  Julia Gordon Lawrence had kept yearly diaries. She had not made daily entries, but she did write in the books frequently. I could enjoy reading every word, Emily thought, and I will if the Lawrences let me keep them long enough. But for now I need to find information in them that directly ties in to those disappearances and to Douglas’s death. With a start, she realized she no longer thought of his death as a suicide, but considered him a likely victim of the same person who had killed the three young women.

  Ellen Swain vanished on March 31, 1896.

  Of course, Emily thought. Julia must have written about that. She went through the diaries and found the one for that year.

  Before she started reading it, however, there was something else she wanted to do. She opened the door that led from the study to the porch, went outside, and looked across the street. The records showed that the old Carter house had been destroyed in a fire in 1950 and replaced by the one that was there now, a loving copy of a turn-of-the-century Victorian home, complete with the wraparound porch.

  If Madeline was sitting here and Douglas, or Alan, beckoned to her . . .

  Emily wanted to verify in her mind that the scenario she had come up with yesterday was possible.

  She walked around on the porch to the back of the house and went down the steps into the backyard. The contractor had smoothed the dirt, but her sneakers immediately gathered mud as she walked the length of the yard to the boxwoods that defined the end of her property.

  Deliberately she walked to the site where the remains of the two victims had been found, and she stood there. The massive holly tree with its heavy, low branches would have made it impossible for anyone in the house to know if Alan Carter had seen Madeline come out, and then either deliberately or accidentally harmed her. The sound of Madeline’s sister taking her piano lesson would have covered any outcry.

  But even if it happened this way, Emily asked herself, how does that tie any of these murders to the prese
nt?

  She went back inside, picked up the 1896 diary and looked for entries dated after March 31st.

  On April 1, 1896, Julia had written, “My hand shakes as I write this. Ellen has disappeared. Yesterday she stopped to see Mrs. Carter to bring her a blancmange to tempt her appetite.

  “Mrs. Carter has told the police that she had a pleasant but brief visit. Ellen was quite thoughtful, she said, and seemed to be in a state of excitement. Mrs. Carter was resting in a lounge chair at the window of her bedroom and saw Ellen exit the house and begin walking down Hayes Avenue on her way home. That was the last she saw of her.”

  Which meant she went past Alan Carter’s house, Emily thought.

  She turned the next pages quickly, then stopped. The entry dated three months later read, “Dear Mrs. Carter has been called to her heavenly home this morning. We are all so saddened, yet feel that for her this is a great blessing. She has been released from pain and grief and is now reunited with her beloved son, Douglas. Her last days were spent with her mind in a state of confusion. Sometimes she thought Douglas and Madeline were in the room with her. Mr. Carter has endured with grace his wife’s long illness and the loss of his son. We all hope that the future will be kinder to him.”

  What about him, the husband and father? Emily wondered. There isn’t very much at all written about him. On the other hand, obviously he and Mrs. Carter weren’t attending the parties and festivities. From the few references to him, she had learned his name was Richard.

  She kept turning the pages, looking for more references to anyone named Carter. There were many more references to Ellen Swain for the rest of 1896, but nothing that Emily could spot about either Richard or Alan Carter.

  The first entry in the 1897 diary had been made on January 5th.

  “This afternoon we attended the wedding of Mr. Richard Carter to Lavinia Rowe. It was a quiet affair due to the fact that the late Mrs. Carter is not yet deceased a year. However, no one begrudges Mr. Carter his happiness. He is a strikingly handsome man and still only in his forties. He met Lavinia when she was visiting her cousin and my close friend, Beth Dietrich. Lavinia is a most attractive girl, poised and mature in her ways. At twenty-three, she is half Mr. Carter’s age, but we have all seen many May and December romances, and some of them very successful and happy.

  “They say they will sell the house on Hayes Avenue, which has known so much pain, and have already purchased a smaller but most charming residence at 20 Brimeley Avenue.”

  At 20 Brimeley Avenue, Emily thought. Why does that address sound familiar?

  And then she remembered. She had been there last week.

  It was where Dr. Wilcox lived.

  seventy-four ________________

  TOMMY DUGGAN AND PETE WALSH arrived at the Frieze home to find a highly agitated Robert Frieze sitting on a couch in his living room, speaking with local police officers.

  “My wife has been eager to move to Manhattan, which is something we’ve been planning to do,” he was saying. “I have just sold my restaurant and will put this house on the market immediately.

  “She was offered the use of a friend’s apartment and planned to go there yesterday. I don’t know why she changed her mind. Natalie is impulsive. For all I know, she got on a plane to Palm Beach. She has dozens of friends there.”

  “Can you tell if any of her warm-weather clothes are missing?” the police officer asked.

  “My wife has more clothes than the Queen of Sheba. I’ve seen her buy exactly the same outfit twice because she forgot the duplicate was hanging in her closet. If Natalie made up her mind to get on a plane to Palm Beach, she would think nothing of going with the clothes on her back and when she got there, spending a couple of hours on Worth Avenue with her credit card in hand.”

  The more Bob Frieze talked, the more credible the suggestion seemed to him. Just the other day, Natalie had been complaining about the weather. Raw. Cold. Dull. Dreary. Those were just a few of the words she had used to describe this time of year.

  “Do you mind if we take a look around, Mr. Frieze?”

  “Go ahead. I have nothing to hide.”

  Tommy knew that Bob Frieze had seen him and Walsh when they came into the room, but he had not bothered to acknowledge them. Now Tommy moved into the seat the police officer had just abandoned. “Mr. Frieze, I thought maybe you didn’t recognize me. We’ve met before several times.”

  “A lot more than ‘several’ times, I think, Mr. Duggan,” Frieze said sarcastically.

  Tommy nodded. “That’s absolutely true. Did you happen to go jogging this morning, Mr. Frieze?”

  Did I? Bob Frieze asked himself. I had my sweats on. When did I change into them? Yesterday afternoon? Last night? This morning? Did I follow Natalie home when she left the restaurant? Did we have another fight?

  He stood up. “Mr. Duggan, I am sick and tired of your accusatory manner. I have been sick and tired of it for a very long time, four and a half years to be exact. I will no longer submit to questioning by you or anyone else. I intend to start phoning friends in Palm Beach to see if any of them have seen my wife or has my wife staying as a guest in their home.”

  He paused. “However, Mr. Duggan, my first call will be to my lawyer. Any further questions you have for me should be addressed to him.”

  seventy-five ________________

  JOAN HODGES was going through the computer files and making lists of all Dr. Madden’s patients for the past five years.

  A police technician had been assigned to help her. Two psychologists, both friends of Dr. Madden, had volunteered to come over to assist in trying to reassemble the confidential files of the patients that had been scattered about the office.

  The accelerated pace of the activity had been requested by Tommy Duggan. If the file of Dr. Clayton Wilcox remained missing, he reasoned, it would point to the strong possibility that he had been the killer.

  Joan had already been able to ascertain that no one else on the list Duggan gave her to check had been one of Dr. Madden’s patients.

  “But that doesn’t mean someone didn’t use a phony name,” Tommy had cautioned her. “We need to know if the file of anyone else listed in the computer is missing, because if so, we’ll check that person out.”

  They had laid the file folders in alphabetical order on long metal tables that had been set up in Dr. Madden’s living room. In some cases the adhesive name tags on the folders had been torn or pulled off, so they knew that the results would be inconclusive at best.

  “Police work is tedious,” the police technician told Joan with a smile.

  “I can see that.”

  More than anything else, Joan wanted now to finish up here and find a new job. She had called the employment agency already. Several of the psychologists who knew Dr. Madden had hinted they’d like to talk to her about working with them, but she knew she needed a complete change. Continuing in an office with the same atmosphere would only bring back to her the grisly sight of Dr. Madden sitting in her chair, the cord pulled tightly around her neck.

  She came across a name with a Spring Lake address and frowned. She read the name and couldn’t place him, although she realized that she didn’t know them all. He could have been one of the evening patients; she never did meet most of them.

  But wait a minute, she thought.

  Is he the one who only came once, about four years ago?

  I got a glimpse of him getting in his car when I came back that evening to pick up my glasses, which I left here. I remember him, she thought, because he seemed to be upset. The doctor said he left abruptly. She handed me a one-hundred-dollar bill that she said he’d thrown on her desk, Joan thought. I asked her if she wanted me to bill him for the rest of her fee, but she said to forget it.

  I’d better pass his name along to Detective Duggan immediately, she decided as she picked up the phone.

  Douglas Carter of 101 Hayes Avenue, Spring Lake.

  seventy-six ________________

  TOMMY D
UGGAN AND PETE WALSH were in the prosecutor’s office, where they had just given him a rundown of their findings in the Bernice Joyce murder and on the disappearance of Natalie Frieze. “So the husband told us she’s probably in Palm Beach, and now he won’t talk to us except through his lawyer,” Tommy concluded.

  “What’s the likelihood that she’ll turn up in Palm Beach?” Osborne asked.

  “We’re checking the airlines to see if she flew out on any of them. I think it’s a thousand to one against it,” Tommy replied.

  “The husband invited you to look around the house?”

  “The Spring Lake cops went through it. No sign of any struggle or violence. It looks as if she might have been in the middle of packing, then left.”

  “Cometics? Pocketbook?”

  “The husband said that when he saw her at his restaurant yesterday, she was wearing a gold leather jacket, a brown-and-gold striped silk shirt, and brown wool slacks, and she was carrying a brown shoulder bag. There was no sign in the house of either the shoulder bag or the gold leather jacket. He admits they quarreled and that she slept in the guest bedroom the night before. That would be Wednesday night. There were enough cosmetics and perfumes and lotions and sprays in the master and guest bathrooms to open a Macy’s outlet.”

  “More likely an Elizabeth Arden outlet,” Osborne observed. “We’ll have to wait and see if she shows up. As an adult, she has the right to pick up and go whenever she wants. You say her car was in the garage? Somebody must have picked her up. Is there a boyfriend in the picture?”

  “None that we’re aware of. I spoke to the housekeeper,” Walsh said. “She comes in three afternoons a week. Thursday wasn’t one of them.”

  The prosecutor raised his eyebrows. “She comes in afternoons? Most housekeepers come in during the morning.”

  “She was arriving when we left today. She explained that Mrs. Frieze often sleeps late, so she didn’t want to be bothered by someone puttering around or vacuuming. I didn’t get the idea the housekeeper was too fond of Natalie Frieze.”