Nighttime Is My Time: A Novel (13 page)

35

The body of Helen Whelan was discovered at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon in a wooded area in Washingtonville, a town about fifteen miles from Surrey Meadows. The discovery was made by a twelve-year-old boy who was cutting through the woods, taking a shortcut to his friend's home.

Sam got the message as he was finishing his interviews of the employees at the Glen-Ridge House. He called Jean in her room. She had gone upstairs to phone Mark Fleischman, Carter Stewart, and Jack Emerson, in the hope that one of them might have known Laura's plans. She had already seen Robby Brent in the lobby, and he had disclaimed any knowledge of where Laura might be.

"Jean, I have to go," Sam explained. "Have you reached anyone yet?"

"I talked to Carter. He's very concerned but has no idea where Laura might be. I told him that Gordon and I are having dinner, and he's going to join us. Maybe if we can make a list between us of the people Laura seemed to be spending time with, we might come up with something. Jack Emerson isn't home. I left word on his answering machine. Same with Mark Fleischman."

"That's about the best you can do for the moment," Sam said. "Our hands are legally tied. If no one has heard from her by tomorrow, I'll try to get a search warrant to go through her room and see if she left any indication of where she might have gone. Otherwise, sit tight."

"You will go over to the rectory in the morning?"

"Absolutely," Sam promised. He snapped closed his phone and hurried out to his car. There was no point in telling Jean that he was on his way to the crime scene where another woman who had disappeared had been found.

***

Helen Whelan had been struck with a blow on the back of her head and then had been stabbed repeatedly. "He probably hit her from behind with the same blunt weapon that he used on the dog," Cal Grey, the medical examiner, told Sam when he arrived at the crime scene. The body was in the process of being removed, and under floodlights investigators were combing the roped-off area for possible clues to the killer. "I can't be sure until I do the autopsy, but it looks to me as if the injury to her head might have knocked her out. The stab wounds happened after he got her here. One can only hope that she didn't know what was happening to her."

Sam watched as the slender body was lifted into a body bag. "Her clothes don't look disturbed."

"They're not. My guess is that whoever grabbed her brought her directly here and killed her. She still has the dog's leash around her wrist."

"Hold it a minute," Sam snapped to the attendant who was opening the stretcher. He squatted down and felt his feet sink into the muddy ground. "Let me have your flashlight, Cal."

"What do you see?"

"There's a smear of blood on the side of her slacks. I doubt she got it from the wounds in her chest and neck. My guess is that the killer was bleeding pretty heavily, probably from a dog bite." He straightened up. "Which means he may have needed to go to an emergency room. I'll get an alert out to all the hospitals in the area to report any dog bites they may have treated over the weekend or that may come up in the next few days. And make sure the lab runs tests on the blood. I'll meet you back at your place, Cal."

On the drive to the medical examiner's office, the waste of the life of Helen Whelan hit Sam with intensity, catching him in the pit of his stomach. It happened whenever he encountered this kind of violence. I want that guy, he thought, and I want to be the one who cuffs him. I hope to God that wherever that dog bit him, he's in misery right now.

That train of thought gave him another idea. Maybe he's too smart to go to an emergency room, but he'll still have to take care
of
that bite. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, but it might be worth notifying all the pharmacies in the area to watch out for someone buying items such as peroxide and bandages and antibacterial ointments.

But if he's smart enough to avoid a hospital, he's probably smart enough to shop for stuff like that in one of the big drugstores where there's a long line at the cash register and no one is paying attention to what's in the basket except to scan it.

Still, it's worth a try, Sam decided grimly, remembering the smiling picture of Helen Whelan he had seen in her apartment. She was twenty years older than Karen Sommers had been, he thought, but she died the same way—savagely stabbed to death.

The mist that had come and gone all day had turned into a driving rain. Sam frowned as he switched on the windshield wipers. There couldn't be any connection between those cases, though, he thought. There hadn't been a similar stabbing in this area in twenty years. Karen had been in her home. Helen Whelan had been outside walking her dog. But, then again, was it possible that some maniac had been lying low all these years?

Anything was possible, Sam decided. Please let him have gotten careless, he thought. Let him have dropped something that would lead us to him. Hopefully we'll have his DNA. That must be his blood on the dog's whiskers and maybe also the smear on her slacks.

Arriving at the medical examiner's office, he pulled into the parking area, got out of his car, locked it, and went inside. It was going to be a long night and a longer day tomorrow. He had to see the pastor at St. Thomas and persuade him to open the records of baptisms that had taken place nearly twenty years ago. He had to get in touch with the families of the five women from Stonecroft who had died in the order in which they sat at the lunch table—he needed to know more about the details of their deaths. And he needed to find out what had happened to Laura Wilcox. If it weren't for the deaths of the other five from her class, I'd say she just took off with a guy, he thought. From what I understand she's pretty lively and has never been without a man for long if she can help it.

The medical examiner and the ambulance with Helen Whelan's body arrived seconds behind him. Half an hour later Sam was studying the effects that had been removed from the body. Her watch and a ring were her only jewelry. She had probably not been carrying a handbag because her house key and a handkerchief were in the pocket on the right side of her jacket.

Lying on the table next to the house key was one other object: a pewter owl a little over an inch long. Sam reached for the tweezers that the attendant had used in handling the keys and the owl, picked up the owl and examined it closely. The unwinking eyes, cold and wide, met his gaze.

"It was way down in the pocket of her slacks," the attendant explained. "I almost missed it."

Sam remembered there had been a pumpkin outside the door of Helen Whelan's garden apartment and a paper skeleton in a box in the hall that she must have been planning to hang up somewhere. "She was decorating for Halloween," he said. "This was probably part of the stuff she had. Bag everything, and I'll take it to the lab."

Forty minutes later, he was watching as the clothing of Helen Whelan was checked under a microscope for anything that might help identify her killer. Another attendant was examining the car keys for fingerprints.

"These are all hers," he commented, as with tweezers in his hand he reached for the owl. A moment later he said, "That's funny. There aren't any fingerprints on this thing, not even smudges. How do you figure that one? It didn't walk into her pocket. It had to have been put there by someone wearing gloves."

Sam thought for a minute. Had the killer left the owl deliberately? He was sure of it. "We're keeping this quiet," he snapped. Taking the tweezers from the attendant, he picked up the owl and stared at it. “You're going to lead me to this guy," he vowed. "I don't know how yet, but you
will
."

36

They had agreed to meet at seven o'clock in the dining room. At the last minute Jean decided to change into dark blue slacks and a light blue sweater with a floppy wide collar that she had bought at an Escada sale. All day she had been unable to shake off the chill of the cemetery. Even the jacket and slacks she had been wearing seemed to retain the cold and dampness she had felt there.

Ridiculous, of course, she told herself as she touched up her makeup and brushed her hair. While standing in front of the bathroom mirror, she paused for a moment, holding the brush and staring at it. Who had been so close to Lily that he or she had managed to take her brush from her home or handbag, she wondered.

Or was it possible that Lily managed to trace me and is punishing me for giving her up? Jean asked herself, agonized by the thought. She's nineteen and a half now. What kind of life has she led? Have the people who adopted her been the wonderful couple Dr. Connors described to me, or did they turn out to be bad parents once they had the baby?

But instinct immediately told Jean that Lily wasn't playing games to torment her. This is someone else, someone who wants to hurt
me
. Ask for money, she pleaded silently. I'll give you money, but don't hurt
her
.

She looked back into the mirror and studied her reflection. Several times she had been told that she resembled the
Today
show host Katie Couric, and she felt flattered at the comparison. Does Lily look like me? she wondered. Or is she more like Reed? Those strands of hair are so blond, and he used to joke that his mother said his hair was the color of winter wheat. That means she has his hair. Reed's eyes were blue and so are mine, so she certainly has blue eyes.

This line of speculation was familiar territory. Shaking her head, Jean laid the brush on the counter, turned off the bathroom light, reached for her purse, and went down to meet the others for dinner.

Gordon Amory, Robby Brent, and Jack Emerson were already at the table in the nearly empty dining room. As they stood up to greet her, she was aware of the marked contrast in the way they looked and dressed. Amory was wearing a cashmere open-necked shirt and expensive tweed jacket. He looked every inch the successful executive. Robby Brent had changed from the cableknit sweater he had worn to the brunch. To Jean, the turtleneck shirt he was wearing now emphasized his short neck and squat body. A hint of perspiration on his forehead and cheeks gave him a glistening appearance that she found offputting. Jack Emerson's corduroy jacket was well cut, but cheapened by the red-and-white-checked shirt and bright multicolored tie he wore. The thought went through her mind that with his fleshy florid face, Jack Emerson embodied the old anti-Nixon political ad with the slogan "Would you buy a used car from this man?"

Jack pulled out the empty chair beside his own and patted her arm as she stepped around it. In a reflex action, Jean stiffened and pulled her arm away from him.

"We've ordered drinks, Jeannie," Emerson told her. "I took a chance and ordered a chardonnay for you."

"That's fine. Are you guys early, or am I late?"

"We're a bit early. You're exactly on time, and Carter isn't here yet."

Twenty minutes later, as they were debating whether or not to order, Carter arrived. "Sorry to keep you waiting, but I didn't expect another reunion quite this soon," he observed dryly as he joined them. He was now wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt.

"None of us did," Gordon Amory said in agreement. "Why don't you order a drink, and then I suggest we get down to the reason we're here now."

Carter nodded. He caught the waiter's eye and pointed to the martini Emerson was drinking. "Continue," he said to Gordon, his tone dry.

"Let me start by saying that after some consideration, I believe and hope that our concern for Laura may be unnecessary. I remember hearing that a few years ago she accepted an invitation to visit some big bucks guy, who shall be nameless, at his Palm Beach estate, and she reportedly left in the middle of a dinner party to go away with him on his private plane. That time, as far as anyone could gather, she didn't even bother to bring her own toothbrush, never mind her cosmetics."

"I don't think anyone returned to Stonecroft in a private plane," Robby Brent observed. "In fact, I think from the looks of some of them, they probably backpacked to get here."

"Come on, Robby," Jack Emerson protested. "A lot of our graduates have done mighty well. That's why quite a few of them have bought property around here for an eventual second home."

"Let's skip the sales pitch for tonight, Jack," Gordon said irritably. "Listen, you have big bucks, and you're the only one, as far as we know, who has a house in town and could have invited Laura to join you for your own quiet reunion."

Jack Emerson's already florid face darkened. "I hope that's supposed to be funny, Gordon."

"I don't want to displace Robby as our comedian in residence."

Gordon said as he helped himself to an olive from the dish the waiter had placed on the table. "Of course I was joking about you and Laura, but not about the sales pitch."

Jean decided it was time to try to redirect the conversation. "I left a message for Mark on his cell phone/' she said. "He called me back just before I came downstairs. If we haven't heard from Laura by tomorrow, he's going to rearrange his schedule and come back."

"He always had a thing for Laura when we were kids," Robby observed. "I wouldn't be surprised if he still does. He made it a point to sit next to her on the dais last night. He even changed place cards to make it happen."

So that's why he's rushing back, Jean thought, realizing she had read too much into his phone call. "Jeannie," he had said, "I want to believe that Laura is okay, but if anything has happened to her, it could mean that there is a terrible pattern to the loss of the girls at your lunch table. You've got to realize that."

And I assumed he was worrying about me, she thought. I was even thinking of telling him about Lily. Since he's a psychiatrist, I thought maybe he'd have some insight into what kind of person is contacting me about her.

It was a relief when the waiter, a slight, elderly man, began passing out menus. "May I tell you our specials for this evening?" he asked.

Robby looked up at the waiter with a hopeful smile. "Can't wait," he murmured.

"Filet mignon with mushrooms, filet of sole stuffed with crab-meat…"

When he had finished the recitation, Robby asked, "May I ask you a question?"

"Of course, sir."

"Is it a habit of this establishment to make last night's leftovers today's specials?"

"Oh, sir, I assure you," the waiter began, his voice flustered and apologetic, "I've been here forty years, and we're very proud of our cuisine."

"Never mind, never mind. Just a little humor to lighten the table talk. Jean, you first."

"The caesar salad and rack of lamb, medium-rare," Jean said quietly. Robby isn't just sarcastic, she thought; he's nasty and cruel. He likes to hurt people who can't strike back, people like Miss Bender, the math teacher at the dinner last night, and now this poor guy. He talks about Mark having a crush on Laura. But no one had a bigger crush on her than he did.