All Around the Town

  “It’s the people who bought the house,” Sarah explained to Justin and Laurie. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to invite them to so much as sit down, but I suppose I should speak to them. I’m sure they’ve noticed my car.”

  “I don’t think you’ll have to bother going to them,” Justin said as footsteps came across the foyer. A moment later, Bic was standing in the doorway, Opal behind him.

  “Sarah, my dear, my apologies. Some business records my accountant needs desperately. And, is this Laurie?”

  Laurie had been sitting next to Sarah on the sofa. She stood up. “Sarah has told me about you and Mrs. Hawkins.”

  Bic did not leave the doorway. “We are delighted to meet you, Laurie. Your sister is a wonderful girl and talks about you a great deal.”

  “A wonderful girl,” Opal echoed, “and we’re so happy to be buying this lovely house.”

  Bic turned to look at Justin. “Reverend and Mrs. Hawkins, Dr. Donnelly,” Sarah murmured.

  To her relief, after an acknowledgment of the introduction, Hawkins said, “We will not intrude on your reunion. If we may we’ll just go down and get the material we need and let ourselves out the side door. Good day one and all.”

  In that minute or two, Sarah realized that the Hawkinses had managed to spoil the temporary happiness of Laurie’s homecoming. Laurie fell silent and did not respond when Justin talked breezily about growing up in Australia on a sheep station.

  Sarah was grateful when Justin accepted the invitation to dinner. “Sophie has cooked enough for an army,” she said.

  Laurie clearly wanted Justin to stay as well. “I feel better that you’re here, Dr. Donnelly.”

  Dinner was unexpectedly pleasant. The chill that the Hawkinses had brought to the house vanished as they ate Sophie’s delicious dinner of pheasant and wild rice. Justin and Sarah sipped wine, Laurie had Perrier. As they were finishing coffee, Laurie quietly excused herself. When she came back downstairs, she was carrying a small bag. “Doctor,” she said, “I can’t help it. I have to go back with you and sleep in the clinic. Sarah, I’m so sorry, but I know something terrible is going to happen to me in this house and I just don’t want it to be tonight.”

  92

  WHEN BRENDON MOODY phoned Sarah the next morning, he could hear the sounds of doors opening and closing, of furniture being moved. “We’re getting out of here,” Sarah told him. “It’s not good for Laurie to be in this house. The condo isn’t quite ready, but they can complete the finishing touches sometime later.” She told him how Laurie had returned to the clinic the night before.

  “I’m going to pick her up late this afternoon,” she said, “and when I do, we’ll go straight to the condo. She can help me put it together. The activity might be good for her.”

  “Just don’t give the Hawkinses a key to your new place,” Brendon said sourly.

  “I don’t intend to. Those two set my teeth on edge. But remember . . .”

  “I know. They paid top dollar. They let you stay after the closing. How did you ever get a mover that fast?”

  “It took a lot of doing.”

  “Let me come over and help. I can at least pack books or pictures.”

  * * *

  The moving was well under way when Brendon arrived. Sarah, her hair held back by a bandana, and dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a cotton blouse, was busily tagging the furniture the Hawkinses had purchased.

  “I won’t get everything out today,” she told Brendon, “but turnabout is fair play. I’m supposed to have the use of this place till August twenty-fifth. I’ll feel free to come in and out and sort the things I’m not sure of now.”

  Sophie was in the kitchen. “Never thought I’d see the day I’d be glad to leave this house,” she told Brendon. “The nerve of those two Hawkins people. They asked if I’d help them get settled when they move in for good. The answer is no.”

  Brendon felt his antennae going up. “What don’t you like about them, Sophie? You’ve heard Sarah say that they’ve done her a big favor.”

  Sophie snorted. Her round, usually pleasant face grimaced in disgust. “There’s something about them. Mark my words. How many times do you have to study rooms and closets to decide if you’re going to enlarge them or cut them up? Too much talk as far as I’m concerned. I swear these last months their car has been on radar to this place. And all those boxes they left in the basement. Pick up one of them. They’re light as a feather. I bet they’re not half-full. But that hasn’t stopped them from delivering another and another. Just an excuse for dropping in, is what I call it. What do you want to bet, the Reverend uses Laurie’s story on one of his programs?”

  “Sophie, you’re a very clever woman,” Brendon said softly. “You may have hit the nail on the head.”

  * * *

  Sarah entrusted Brendon with packing the contents of her desk, including the deep drawer that contained all of Laurie’s files. “I need them in the same order,” she told him. “I just keep going through them hoping and hoping that something will jump out at me.”

  Brendon noticed the top file was marked “Chicken.” “What’s this?”

  “I told you that the photograph of Laurie Dr. Donnelly had restored and enlarged had a chicken coop in the background and that something about it terrified Laurie.”

  Moody nodded. “Yes, you did.”

  “That’s been nagging me particularly, and I’ve just realized why. Last winter Laurie was seeing Dr. Carpenter, a Ridgewood psychiatrist. A few days before Allan Grant died, she was leaving Carpenter’s office and went into shock. What seems to have set her off is that she stepped on the head of a chicken in the lobby of his private entrance.”

  Moody’s head tilted up in the position of a bird dog picking up a scent. “Sarah, are you telling me that the severed head of a chicken just happened to be on the floor at the entrance to a psychiatrist’s office?”

  “Dr. Carpenter had been treating a very disturbed man who would come by unexpectedly and who the police thought was involved in cult worship. Moody, it never occurred to me or Dr. Carpenter at the time that this could be in any way connected to Laurie. Now I wonder.”

  “I don’t know what I think,” he told her. “But I do know that some woman had Danny O’Toole reporting on your activities. Danny knew that Laurie had been seeing a psychiatrist in Ridgewood. He mentioned it to me. That means whoever was paying him knew it too.”

  “Brendon, is it possible that someone who knew the effect it would have on Laurie actually planted that chicken head?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this much. I felt in my bones that the idea of an insurance company hiring Danny didn’t ring true. Danny thought his client was Allan Grant’s wife. I never quite bought that.”

  He could see that Sarah was trembling with fatigue and emotion. “Take it easy,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll drop in on Danny O’Toole, and I can promise you, Sarah, before I get finished we’ll both know who ordered that report on you and Laurie.”

  93

  ON THE DRIVE back to the clinic the night before, Laurie had been very quiet. The night nurse reported to Justin the next morning that she had slept fitfully and had talked aloud in her sleep.

  “Did you hear what she said?” Justin asked.

  “A word here or there, Doctor. I went in several times. She kept mumbling something about the tie that binds.”

  “The tie that binds?” Justin frowned. “Wait a minute. That’s a phrase from a hymn. Let’s see.” He hummed a few notes. “Here it is. ‘Blest be the tie that binds . . .’ ”

  When Laurie came in later for the therapy session, she looked calm but tired. “Doctor, Sarah just phoned. She won’t be here till late this afternoon. Guess what? We’re moving into the condo today. Isn’t that terrific?”

  “Hey, that’s fast.” Smart of Sarah, Justin thought. That house has too many memories now. He still wasn’t sure what had changed Laurie so drastically yesterday. It had happened when the Hawkins couple stopped
in. But they’d barely stayed a minute. Was it the fact that they were strangers and therefore represented some sort of threat to Laurie?

  “What I like about the condo is that there’s a security guard at the gate,” Laurie said. “If anyone rings the bell, there’s a television monitor so you’ll never make a mistake and let a stranger in.”

  “Laurie, yesterday you said that something terrible was going to happen to you in the house. Let’s talk about that.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Doctor. I’m not going to stay there anymore.”

  “All right. Last night, in your sleep, you were apparently quite a chatterbox.”

  She looked amused. “Was I? Daddy used to say that if there was something I didn’t get out during the day, I’d manage to have my say at night.”

  “The nurse couldn’t understand a lot of it, but she did hear you say ‘the tie that binds.’ Do you remember what you were dreaming when you said that?”

  The doctor watched as Laurie’s lips became ashen, her eyelids drooped, her hands folded, her legs dangled. “ ‘Blest be the tie that binds . . .’ ” The childlike voice, true and clear, sang the words then faded into silence.

  “Debbie, it’s you, isn’t it? Tell me about the song. When did you learn it?”

  She resumed singing. “ ’Our hearts in Christian love. . .’ ”

  Abruptly she clamped her mouth shut. “Chill out and leave her alone, mister,” a boyish voice ordered. “If you must know, she learned that one in the chicken coop.”

  94

  THIS TIME Brendon Moody did not ply Danny the Spouse Hunter with liquor. Instead, he went to Danny’s Hackensack office at 9 A.M., determined to get him at his most sober. Whatever condition that may be, Brendon thought as he sat across the shabby desk from him.

  “Danny,” he said. “I’m not going to mince words. You may have heard Laurie Kenyon is home.”

  “I heard.”

  “Anyone contact you to run a check on her again?”

  Danny looked pained. “Brendon, you know perfectly well that the client-investigator relationship is as sacred as the confessional.”

  Brendon slammed his fist on the desk. “Not in this case. And not in any case where a person may be in jeopardy thanks to the good offices of the investigator.”

  Danny’s florid complexion paled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that someone who knew Laurie’s schedule may have deliberately tried to frighten her by putting the severed head of a chicken where she’d be sure to find it. It means that I’m damn sure no insurance company hired you and I don’t believe Allan Grant’s widow did either.

  “Danny, I have three questions for you, and I want them answered. First, who paid you and how were you paid? Second, where did you send the information you gathered on the Kenyon sisters? Third, where is the copy of that information? After you’ve answered the questions, give a copy of your report to me.”

  The two men exchanged glares for a moment. Then Danny got up, took out a key, unlocked the file and riffled through the folders. He pulled out one and handed it to Brendon. “All the answers are in here,” he said. “I was called by a woman who introduced herself as Jane Graves and said she represented one of the possible defendants in the Kenyon accident case. Wanted an investigation of the sisters. As I told you, that began right after the parents’ funeral and continued until Laurie Kenyon was arrested for the murder of Allan Grant. I sent the reports to a private mail drop in New York City, enclosing my bill. The original retainer as well as all further bills were paid by a cashier’s check from a bank in Chicago.”

  “A cashier’s check,” Brendon snorted. “A private mail drop. And you didn’t think that was fishy?”

  “When you’re chasing spouses the way I do, you find the one who retains you often goes to great lengths to avoid being identified,” Danny retorted. “You can make a copy of that file on my Xerox machine. And remember, you didn’t get it from me.”

  * * *

  The next day, Brendon Moody stopped by the condo. Sarah was there with Sophie, but Laurie had gone into New York. “She drove herself. She really wanted to. Isn’t that great?”

  “She’s not nervous?”

  “She locks the car doors at all times. She’ll park next door to the clinic. She has a carphone now. That makes her feel safe.”

  “It’s always best to be cautious,” Brendon said, then decided to change the subject. “Incidentally, I like this place.”

  “So do I. It will be great when we get it in shape, which shouldn’t take too long. I want Laurie to be able to enjoy it, really enjoy it before . . .” Sarah did not finish the sentence. Instead she said, “With all these levels, we do get our exercise. But this top floor makes a terrific study, don’t you think? The bedrooms are the next floor down, then the living room, dining room, kitchen are entry level and the rec room opens out to the back.”

  It was clear to Brendon that Sarah welcomed the work involved in moving to take her mind off Laurie’s problems. Unfortunately, there were some things Sarah had to know. He laid the file on her desk. “Take a look at this.”

  She began to read, her eyes widening in astonishment. “My God, it’s our lives down to our every movement. Who would want this kind of information about us? Why would anyone want it?” She looked up at Moody.

  “I intend to find out who it is if I have to blast open the records of that bank in Chicago,” Moody said grimly.

  “Brendon, if we can prove Laurie was under extraordinary duress from someone who knew how to terrify her, I’m sure the judge will be swayed.”

  Brendon Moody turned away from the look of naked hope on Sarah’s face. He decided not to tell her that on gut instinct alone he was beginning to circle around Karen Grant. There are a number of things rotten in Denmark, he thought, and at least one of them has to do with that lady. Whatever it was, he was determined to find the answer.

  95

  THE PRIVATE postal box in New York had been rented under the name J. Graves. Rental payments had been made in cash. The clerk in charge of the boxes, a small man with slicked-back hair and an unpressed suit, had absolutely no memory of whoever made the pickups. “That box changed hands three times since February,” he told Moody. “I’m paid to sort mail, not run Club Med.”

  Moody knew that this kind of mail drop was retained by purveyors of porno literature and get-rich-quick schemes, none of whom wanted to leave a paper trail that might lead back to them. His next call was to the Citizen’s Bank in Chicago. He was keeping his fingers crossed on that one. In some banks it was possible to walk in, plunk down money and buy a cashier’s check. Other institutions would only issue that kind of check for depositors. Muttering a prayer, he dialed the number.

  The bank manager told Moody that it was bank policy that cashier’s checks could only be sold to depositors who withdrew the funds from their savings or checking accounts. Bingo, Brendon thought. Then, predictably, the manager told him that without a subpoena no information would be forthcoming about any depositors or accounts. “I’ll get the subpoena, don’t worry,” Moody told the manager grimly.

  He dialed Sarah.

  “I have a friend from law school who practices in Chicago,” she said. “I’ll get him to request the court for the subpoena. It will take a couple of weeks, but at least we’re doing something.”

  “Don’t get too excited about it yet,” Moody cautioned. “I do have one theory. Karen Grant certainly had the money to hire Danny. We know that in her own personality Laurie liked and trusted Professor Grant. Suppose she told him something about things that frightened her and he discussed them with his wife.”

  “You mean Karen Grant may have believed there was something between Allan and Laurie and tried to scare Laurie off?”

  “It’s the only explanation I can come up with, and I could be all wet. But Sarah, I’ll tell you this: That woman is a cold-blooded phony.”

  96

  ON JULY 24, with Sarah at her si
de, Laurie pled guilty to manslaughter in the death of Professor Allan Grant.

  The press rows or the courtroom were packed with reporters from television and radio networks, newspapers and magazines. Karen Grant, in a black sheath and gold jewelry, was seated behind the prosecutor. From the visitors’ section, students from Clinton and the usual contingent of courtroom junkies watched the proceedings, hanging on every word.

  Justin Donnelly, Gregg Bennett and Brendon Moody sat in the first row behind Laurie and Sarah. Justin felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness as the clerk called, “All rise for the Court,” and the judge strode in from his chambers. Laurie was wearing a pale blue linen suit that accentuated her delicate beauty. She looked more like eighteen than twenty-two as she answered the judge’s questions in a low but steady voice. Sarah was the one who seemed the more fragile of the two, Justin thought. Her dark red hair flamed against her pearl gray jacket. The jacket hung loosely on her, and he wondered how much weight she had lost since this nightmare had begun.

  There was an air of pervasive sadness throughout the courtroom as Laurie calmly answered the judge’s questions. Yes, she understood what her plea meant. Yes, she had carefully reviewed the evidence. Yes, she and her lawyer were satisfied that she had killed Allan Grant in a fit of anger and passion after he turned her letters over to the school administration. She finished by saying, “I am satisfied from the evidence that I committed this crime. I don’t remember anything about it but I know I must be guilty. I’m so terribly sorry. He was so good to me. I was hurt and angry when he turned those letters in to the administration, but that was because I didn’t remember writing them either. I’d like to apologize to Professor Grant’s friends and students and fellow members of the faculty. They lost a wonderful human being because of me. There’s no way I can ever make that up to them.” She turned to look at Karen Grant. “I’m so very, very sorry. If it were possible I would gladly give my life to bring your husband back.”