Daddy''s Gone a Hunting

  They met at Marea, an upscale restaurant on Central Park South. When extending the invitation, Nick had decided that the last thing Mark Sloane needed was to have dinner in a restaurant that would remind him of Tommy’s Bistro.

  Both men were prompt and were seated at the corner table that Nick had requested. It was obvious to Nick that the arrest of the kitchen worker had hit Mark Sloane hard. He seemed tense and even defensive, as though he expected to hear more bad news and had to prepare for it.

  They both ordered red wine, looked at the menu immediately, and ordered their dinner. Then Mark opened the conversation. “I wasn’t much good at the office today,” he admitted. “I kept thinking that the guy they arrested had to be responsible for Tracey’s disappearance, too.”

  “If he was, he almost certainly had an accomplice,” Greco said flatly. “And yet every instinct I have tells me that this guy is a loner.” Compassionately, he looked across the table at the troubled face of the brother of Tracey Sloane. He could guess what he was thinking. The arrest of Harry Simon had been breaking news in the media. This morning the fact that Simon worked in the same bistro where Tracey Sloane was working before she vanished nearly twenty-eight years ago had been blazed across the headlines. The Sloane case would again be hashed and rehashed even though Simon’s alibi seemed to be so strong.

  After they placed their orders, Mark suddenly asked, “Didn’t this restaurant used to be San Domenico?”

  “Yes, it was.” Nick Greco had the continuing feeling that Mark was afraid of what Nick might tell him tonight.

  “I thought the address sounded familiar. I was in New York about eight years ago. There was a law firm interested in me. The offer I received wasn’t good enough. I came here to dinner one night. It was very good then and from the fact that every table is taken, I guess it’s still very good.”

  “It is,” Greco replied.

  The waiter brought their wine. “The salads will be arriving shortly,” he promised.

  “Have you told your mother about the arrest yet?” Greco asked.

  Mark took a sip from his glass. “Yes, I did. I knew that I couldn’t wait to get any more information. I was afraid that the news about Simon’s arrest and his connection to Tracey would be on television in Illinois. When she disappeared in New York, it was major news there. I didn’t want my mother to find out about it from anyone else. She needed to hear it from me.”

  He took another sip and added, grimly, “My mother remembered that when she met and spoke to the people at Tommy’s to thank them for doing everything they could to help the police find Tracey, that guy was slobbering all over my mother and telling her how much everybody all loved my sister.”

  “The word I hear from my guys is that the homicide squad questioned Simon up and down and sideways for hours last night. He admitted killing the girl in the Lower East Side but swears he had nothing to do with Tracey disappearing.”

  Greco felt the vibration of his cell phone in the pocket of his suit jacket. The call was coming in from the detective who had taken over the Tracey Sloane file. His hand cupping the phone, he leaned his elbow on the table, hoping to conceal the fact that he was answering it in the no-cell-phone restaurant. “Greco,” he said.

  “Nick, it’s Matt Stevens.”

  “What’s up? Anything more with the Simon guy?”

  “No, not yet, but it looks as though the remains of Tracey Sloane have been found.”

  It was obvious to Nick that Mark had overheard, because his face went deadly pale.

  “Where?” Greco asked.

  “You’re not going to believe this, but she was in a sinkhole of the parking lot of the Connelly furniture complex, where they had the explosion last week.”

  67

  Little fragments of thoughts were floating through Kate’s mind. Gus. She had called him.

  And she knew right away that she had upset him. Why?

  He had agreed to meet her.

  Why did he sound scared on the phone?

  There was no reason . . .

  Kate felt herself falling back into a warm darkness. To sleep, but not to dream. She tried to whisper. Her dreams scared her . . .

  She felt her eyelids fluttering . . . But they felt so heavy. Sighing, she closed them again. Why was she so afraid? She remembered. She was little and she was running in her flowered nightgown and she had reached the end of the hallway. But someone grabbed her before she could get down the stairs . . .

  And she tried to scream but . . .

  Kate drifted back into a healing sleep.

  68

  Shaking and trembling, Jack Worth had driven home early Wednesday morning. It was only when he arrived there that he realized how absolutely stupid it had been to bolt from the complex after he looked into the sinkhole.

  A normal reaction would have been to dial 911. Sure, when the cops arrived, they’d have asked him what he was doing there in the first place. His answer would have been, “I just came to check on the progress of the rubble removal. I have every right to be here. I worked at this plant for thirty years and I was the manager for the last five years until the fire last week.”

  He had to calm down and figure out what he would tell the cops if by any chance his car had been spotted this morning.

  Tracey Sloane. He had been one of the many people questioned when she disappeared. He was in his late twenties then, working as a junior accountant for the Connelly complex. He used to hang out at Bobbie’s Joint in the Village at night. That was when it began to fill up with the would-be actors and actresses who worked as waiters in the local pubs and bistros. Bobbie’s was a gathering spot for guys his age to hook up with pretty girls.

  Tracey Sloane had been the pick of the litter. She brushed me off, Jack thought, carefully rehearsing what he would tell the cops. Then, one day, I was passing one of those little jewelry shops they used to have in the Village and a guy was carving names on fake blue sapphire medallions. He had a bunch of them hanging on chains in the window with names already on them. I saw one with the name TRACEY on it. It cost eight bucks. A couple of nights later I saw Tracey at Bobbie’s Joint and tried to give it to her. “No strings,” I said. “When I saw it, I couldn’t pass it up. The medallion is the color of your eyes.”

  I tried to give it to her in front of her buddies from Tommy’s, Jack reminded himself. One of the guys at the bar said, “It won’t do you any good.” And we all laughed.

  Then she bought it from me.

  That was about six months before she disappeared, Jack remembered.

  He told the police at the time that he had been a little disappointed because he had never seen her wearing the necklace whenever they had bumped into each other at Bobbie’s.

  By three o’clock Wednesday afternoon, and after two beers and a sandwich, Jack Worth was continuing to rehearse the story he knew he would have to give, trying to make it the same as the version he had given nearly twenty-eight years ago.

  The night Tracey disappeared, I worked at the plant until about quarter of six. I went straight home from work. That’s what I told the detectives when I was questioned. I lived in Long Island City, about a mile from the plant. I wasn’t feeling good and went to bed early. I wasn’t married yet.

  How could he explain how Tracey Sloane ended up buried on the parking lot? They were paving over the parking lot at that time, Jack thought. I’ll tell the cops that I had mentioned that to the guys at Bobbie’s only a few nights before Tracey disappeared. The guys had been joking about taking a tour of the fancy furniture in the museum. I told them that they’d have to wait. We’d had a lot of snow in the past couple of winters and the parking lot was all cracked and was being repaved.

  I did tell some of them that. I know I did. Let the cops start questioning all the rest of them again.

  It was the best story he could come up with, and it was near enough to the truth that maybe it would sound convincing. A flash of anger still went through him when he remembered offering Tracey t
he necklace all those years ago. She had said, “Blue is my favorite color and sapphire my favorite stone. Look, I love it, Jack, but I want to pay for it. Even I can afford eight dollars.”

  When I wouldn’t let her pay for it, she took it off and tried to hand it back to me. I said, “Okay, you say you like it, I’ll let you pay for it. And if you don’t believe it was only eight dollars, walk down MacDougal Street and you’ll see these little things hanging in the window.”

  Feeling deep resentment even after all these years, Jack remembered the wise guy who had heard the two of them talking, and who had watched as Tracey handed him the money. He’d had the nerve to tell him later that evening, “Jack, face it. Tracey has class. You’re not her type.”

  When would someone in that cleanup crew look down into the sinkhole and blow the whistle? Jack Worth waited in dismal anticipation.

  Jack had the television on, flipping from one news channel to another. They were all wringing out the story of the derelict who had been positively identified as the person squatting in the van of the Connelly complex. He was Clyde Hotchkiss, a decorated Vietnam War vet who had returned home deeply emotionally wounded and who, after a troubled period of trying to recover, had abandoned his wife and baby more than forty years ago. Incredibly, Hotchkiss had been finally reunited with his still caring wife and son only minutes before he had died in Bellevue Hospital this morning.

  The media had caught up with Peggy and Skip as they got out of Skip’s car at Peggy’s home in Staten Island. Neither of them would comment as they hurried inside to get away from the cameras and microphones.

  By the time the five-thirty local news came on, the media had additional details. After he had returned from Vietnam, Clyde Hotchkiss had worked as the foreman at a large construction company. An electrician who had worked with him was interviewed. “There was nothing Clyde didn’t know about the job. Plumbing, heating, you name it.”

  The reporter asked, “Do you think he would have been capable of setting off that explosion?”

  “In his right mind, no. Years ago he was a good man. But if you’re really asking if he had the technical know-how to set it off, the answer is yes. When you’re building a house and you’re running a gas line into it, like he did all the time, you have to know what you’re doing.”

  That kind of talk should make Doug feel good, Jack thought. And this guy, Hotchkiss, has been living on the streets for forty years. Maybe he really was hanging around the complex twenty-eight years ago. Maybe they really can pin Tracey’s murder on him.

  Frank realized he had not called Doug to warn him that, at any moment, somebody was going to sound the alarm about Tracey Sloane’s remains being found on the property.

  Finally, Jack summoned up the courage to make the call. But it was actually a relief when Doug did not answer. Jack knew that the discovery would be bound to upset him on more than one level. He won’t want to be reminded that his brother, Connor, who died in the boating accident, had also been one of the guys who knew Tracey Sloane, he thought, grimly.

  69

  Justin Kramer did not hesitate to admit to himself that he was enormously drawn to Hannah Connelly.

  From the minute she opened the door of her sister Kate’s apartment and stood in its door frame, something had happened to him.

  She had been wearing a running suit that outlined her slender body and tiny waistline. Her eyes were a deeper shade of blue than her sister’s and were shaded with long dark lashes. Justin didn’t know what kind of person he had expected to meet. Probably a look-alike for Kate, who was tall and blond, he had thought.

  But even in his brief encounter with Douglas Connelly, Justin had seen that Hannah resembled her father, who was a very good-looking guy.

  He certainly gave me a quick brush-off, Justin thought, and there’s no question that he looked upset about something. Then when I phoned Hannah, she didn’t sound happy to know that her father was in her sister’s apartment.

  I wonder why.

  On Wednesday evening when Justin got home from work, he decided to satisfy his curiosity about the Connelly family.

  An expert at seeking and locating information, he began his computer search with the most recent material, which consisted primarily of the articles about the explosion.

  The fact that Kate and a former workman who was known to be disgruntled were under suspicion for setting off the explosion was old news. From the beginning, Justin hadn’t believed that Kate was involved in any wrongdoing and he still didn’t believe it. Having met Kate Connelly that one time at the closing, he was totally convinced of that fact.

  The newspaper articles referred to the tragedy twenty-eight years ago when Kate and Hannah’s mother and uncle and four other people were drowned in a boating accident. Their father had been the only survivor.

  Justin continued to search until he found pictures of the funeral of Susan Connelly and her brother-in-law, Connor. Even though it was so many years ago, he felt emotionally stirred when he saw pictures of three-year-old Kate, holding her father’s hand, going in and out of St. Ignatius Loyola Church, and then at the family grave in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester County.

  Under the name CONNELLY on the large, ornate headstone, he could make out the names of the people already buried in the plot at that time, DENNIS FRANCIS CONNELLY and BRIDGET O’CONNOR CONNELLY. Probably the grandparents, he thought.

  He took a final look at the picture of Kate and her father placing a long-stemmed rose on each of the coffins and then looked up Dennis Francis Connelly. What he learned about the founder of the Connelly complex was both surprising and unsettling.

  “That guy was weird,” he said aloud. “I wouldn’t have wanted him as a father.”

  Shaking his head, Justin turned off the computer. It was seven o’clock. Would Hannah be at the hospital with her sister? Or maybe out to dinner with someone?

  Justin felt a twinge of pure jealousy at that possibility. I hope not, he thought. It can’t hurt to phone her. He was already reaching for his cell phone. Hannah answered on the first ring.

  “I’m just getting out of a cab at my apartment,” she told him. “Kate had a good day except she seemed restless. The doctor says that’s a good sign. She may be trying to wake up.”

  “That’s great,” Justin replied, hesitated, and then asked, “Have you had dinner yet?”

  “No, but I honestly couldn’t face sitting in a restaurant.”

  “Do you like Chinese?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shun Lee West is a few blocks away. The best Chinese restaurant in the city. Let me pick up whatever you’d like and bring it down. I’ll set the table, heat it up, serve it, and clean up. You don’t have to do anything.”

  He held his breath.

  Hannah began to laugh. “It’s the best offer I’ve had all night. I like wonton soup and sesame chicken. Do you have my address?”

  70

  After realizing that Hannah must have taken Kate’s jewelry, Douglas Connelly slept very poorly on Tuesday night and awoke on Wednesday morning with a headache. Sandra had slipped into his apartment early, and her presence was both annoying and convenient. She talked too much. She kept flipping her long platinum blond hair from behind her shoulders to the front of her shoulders. Then she dropped her head forward so that it covered her face. Then she lifted her face so that her hair parted like the Red Sea, and batted her eyes at him seductively.

  They must have had a charm school in North Dakota or wherever the hell she came from, Doug thought, and this was one of their lessons about how to flirt discreetly. As discreetly as a Mack truck plowing through Central Park.

  But amazingly, Sandra could cook. She said he needed a solid breakfast and that she was going to fix it. Other mornings when she’d stayed over, they’d had room service sent up from the restaurant in the building. The poached eggs were barely warm by the time they arrived, and the toast was brittle, and for all the money the place charged, they could never manage to deliver
the coffee piping hot.

  Wednesday morning with the almost Miss Universe in the kitchen, the orange juice was cold, the eggs perfectly poached, the bacon strips just crisp enough, and the toast an even shade of brown. Sandra had also cut up the grapefruit and oranges and pears she’d found in the refrigerator and put together an appetizing fruit platter.

  The daily maid service handled the cleaning of the apartment. They came in at one o’clock so that if Doug slept late, or had a visitor, they weren’t annoying him by scurrying around with the whine of the vacuum in his ears. Bernard, the driver, took care of filling the refrigerator with essentials and stocking the bar. If Doug planned a cocktail or dinner party, one call to Glorious Foods, the upscale caterer, took care of everything.

  But after breakfast and, by a near miracle, Sandra had cleaned up the kitchen, Doug wished she’d get out. He needed to think. Instead it was she who asked, “Doug, did you visit Kate yesterday?”

  “No, I heard she was resting after the fever broke.”

  “I think you should go there this morning and I’ll go with you. Don’t forget I met her and I’d like to say a prayer over her.”

  That will start World War III with Hannah, Doug had thought as he pushed himself away from the breakfast table.

  But an hour later he and Sandra were speaking with Dr. Patel. “Kate is restless,” the doctor said. “I take that as a very good sign. I like to think that she is fighting her way back, that she doesn’t want to be sedated anymore. The brain swelling is down. I must caution you that until she is fully out of sedation, we won’t know if or how much brain damage she may have suffered. I will also tell you that it would not be unusual for her to have absolutely no memory of anything immediately preceding the accident.”

  “Can we look in on her now, Doctor?” Sandra asked.