Willow Pond (26 page)

“My father says you’re the best journalist in the country.”

He hadn’t expected that. Whether it were true or not, it was definitely good for his suffering ego. “And what do you say?”

She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, I always agree with my father. Most people do.”

“Good grief. Who is he?”

“Preston Abbott.”

“The producer? That Preston Abbott?”

“Oh, you know him?” Jenny smiled, nodding. “Not that I’m surprised. Most everyone does.”

“I don’t actually know him. I just know he produced Phillip Austin’s last three movies.”

Phillip Austin again. Erich barely managed not to roll his eyes at his own words. This was one of the few times he’d been out socially since the breakup with Laura. No matter where he went, something always seemed to come up to remind him of her. He wondered if she’d haunt him for the rest of his life. The woman next to him was different from Laura. Lovely though, with her slender figure and large brown eyes.

“Isn’t this delicious?” she said, sipping at her soup.

He found himself admiring the slow grace with which Jenny lifted the spoon to her lips and took a tiny taste.

He dipped his spoon into the thick soup. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever had it before. I don’t even know what it is, for that matter.”

“It’s shrimp bisque. Taste it. It’s delicious.”

“Shrimp bisque? That explains it. A reporter doesn’t make enough money to—”

“My father says having a lot of money can be annoying at times.”

“I wouldn’t mind being annoyed that way.”

Jenny blushed. “I’m sorry. I must sound like a spoiled, overindulged little rich girl.”

“No. Yes. But that’s okay. When you do it, it’s charming. Fresh and natural.” It was true. She was enchanting.

Two waiters came to take their soup plates away, then brought the second course: stuffed artichokes. Erich was glad he knew what the food was this time and how to eat it. He hated the thought of making a fool of himself in front of all these people.

“Tell me about your work, Mr. Muller. Is it as exciting as everyone imagines it is?”

“Oh, you know. A fire here, a murder there. No big deal.”

“That’s not what I hear. Daddy says you’re out to destroy the mob one-handedly.”

Erich lifted one eyebrow. Daddy seemed to have something to say about everything.

“Does he? Well, he’s giving me more credit than I deserve. One man could never take on the mob and live to talk about it.”

“I expect you’re right.” She nodded. “I expect they’d find you floating in the East River one day. Are you working on anything interesting now?”

“I just got back from Oklahoma a couple of days ago. I went down there to interview some farmers. They weren’t in the mood to talk at first but before long they opened up and couldn’t stop talking.”

“I read about that in the newspaper. They call it the Dust Bowl. It sounds awful. All those poor people need help.”

Erich finished his last artichoke leaf and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He nodded, frowning. “Yeah. It’s a bad scene. They’ve been forced to leave their farms and move to the big cities in droves. But they can’t find work. The dust is so bad I still don’t feel I’ve washed it all off me yet. Kansas, Oklahoma - it’s awful.”

The waiter refilled their glasses and another waiter took their appetizer plates away.

“This is some party.” He glanced up and down the table, taking in the different, unfamiliar faces. “Somehow I missed meeting the Masons before we sat down. Do you know them?”

“Yes, I’ve known them all my life. She was my mother’s maid of honor and my godmother.”

“Well, that explains how you got invited. I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

“Oh, that’s easy. This dinner party is for literary types and writers.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “You may not know who the Masons are, but they know who you are.”

“So which ones are they?”

“Oh, they never come to their own dinner parties. They’re on their yacht somewhere.”

That was a surprise. “You’re not serious.”

“I am.” She smiled. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

After they finished the main course, and coffee and dessert were brought to the table, Erich turned to Jenny. “Do you think we’d offend our host and hostess if we went for a walk?”

She took his arm and they strolled down a path covered in small pebbles which which seemed to glow in the moonlight. The moist night air carried the scent of the boxwoods bordering the path. And he smelled lavender coming from somewhere. It was hard to believe they were in the heart of Manhattan.

“I ate too much,” Jenny said. “I’d better stick to salad tomorrow or I’ll get as big as a house.”

“Do you know what you make me think of? A sparrow.”

She punched his arm playfully. “I may look frail, but I’m strong.”

“Do you want to go back to the party?”

She looked sideways at him, blinking shyly. “No. Since you asked, what I’d really like would be to go someplace where you and I could talk and listen to music.”

“I know the perfect place.”

***

They were married on July 29, 1931 in the landscaped gardens of the Abbot mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. A cloudy morning gave way to a sun-filled afternoon, and a balmy, early autumn breeze filled the air with a perfumed fragrance from the rose garden. Jenny’s simple but elegant vanilla satin gown complimented her slender figure. She looked stunning.

Erich saw her walking toward him on the arm of her father and hoped he was doing the right thing. He tried to keep his mind off Laura but couldn’t. She intruded on his thoughts almost constantly, no matter what he did.

After two weeks honeymooning in the Bahamas, he carried Jenny over the threshold of his apartment in the Bronx, which had become their apartment.

Her pretty face made him smile. If he could just get the other one out of his heart they’d have a chance to be happy. But he was doomed, and he knew it. Who was he trying to kid? He was still in love with Laura. Jenny, sweet Jenny, deserved better. She stood on tiptoe and wound her arms around his neck. He pulled her close and they kissed. She smelled soft and floral, like jasmine and roses.

Erich went back down to get the suitcases, leaving her to explore the apartment. When he returned, Jenny stood at the door of the kitchen holding a wooden spoon.

“I’ve got the headline for tomorrow’s paper: ‘Bride finds spoon but nothing to stir.’”

He winked at her. “We’ll go out to eat.”

She walked to the window and looked out, arms folded across her chest.

“This must be a real letdown for you,” he said. He came up from behind and put his arms around her. “We’ll look for a bigger place. I promise.”

“Good.” She turned in his arms and kissed him. “There are some houses for sale in Yonkers.”

“I can’t afford a house now. In another year or two we’ll be able to, but not now.”

“You can’t, but we can. My parents will help us.”

“We talked about that, remember? We decided we’d make it on our own. Dan knows a couple that are moving out of their apartment in the village next month. The rooms are big, not the usual closet size.” He grabbed her hand. “Come on. Let’s go get something to eat.”

Chapter Fifty

On his way to work the following Monday morning, Erich was held up by a terrible accident on Boston Post Road. He was certain he’d be late. Dan had called him twice on Sunday, begging him to come in early. He figured that was the real reason he was going to be late. What did they call it? Karma? This wasn’t exactly the way he’d planned to start his first day back at the newsroom after a two week vacation. Dan had told him there were at least fifty messages waiting for him.

At last the police let cars pass through. When it was his turn he couldn’t help glancing at the two mangled cars and wondering if anyone had been killed. He got his answer when he saw someone pull a sheet over one of the bodies. He was grateful he hadn’t been able to see much.

Dan was waiting for him by his desk when he walked into the newsroom. “You’re late.”

Erich grimaced at the stack of messages piled on his desk. “It’s twenty to nine. I’m twenty minutes early.”

“I expected you here by eight. Sorry I missed the wedding.”

Erich laughed. “I’ll bet you’re glad you had to go to the editors’ conference.”

“Go ahead and rub it in.” Dan walked away, retracing his steps. “Oh, we may be sending you over to London for a while. Our bureau chief is retiring next year and we want you to take over.”

“I’m not moving to London.”

“Not for good. You’d be a temporary replacement.”

“I’ll have to talk to Jenny about it.”

Ten minutes later Dan came back to his desk, accompanied by a tall, thin woman about fifty years old. Erich was on the phone with one of his sources and didn’t pay much attention to them at first. The woman sat in a chair, waiting, and Dan watched Erich until he finished the call.

“Mrs. Flay came in to see you last week. She has something important to tell you. I asked her what it was and she wouldn’t say.”

She shook her head. “It’s important that I tell him,” Mary Flay said and pointed at Erich. Dan nodded and walked away.

Erich turned away from all the paper on his desk and gave Mary Flay his undivided attention. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Flay?”

She smiled sweetly. “Oh, please call me Mary. I suppose I could have told the other gentleman what I have to say, but I really think this is information I should only share with you.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“When I was a young girl I knew a man who worked at our local paper. He made up half the things he wrote about. I found that out when he interviewed my cousin’s father. My uncle was a fireman and saved three people from a fire. The story he wrote said a lot of things that hadn’t been said in the interview. You don’t do that, do you?”

“Make things up? That’s called fiction and no, I don’t do that.”

He tried not to look impatient, but he wished she’d say what she came to say. He had to tackle the mountain of messages.

“Well, all right. The thing is, when I visited my sister in the spring, I read all the articles you wrote about the Austin kidnapping. You made it come alive for me.”

Austin kidnapping? That got his attention. He let the phone messages slide a bit lower on his list of priorities.

“I need to tell you about a young woman who lived at my boarding house in Vandalia, Ohio for a few months. But it’s not actually the woman I want to tell you about. It was the child. I didn’t even know she had a child until the last night she was there. I was cleaning the hallway outside her room when I heard him cry. You should have seen the look on her face when I confronted her.”

A copy editor placed a couple of articles on his desk and Erich nodded thanks at him. Mary opened her handbag and removed something that he recognized as being the dust jacket of Laura’s book, Shattered Vows, which had just been published. She laid the paper on his desk and pushed it toward him. He found himself staring at Laura and couldn’t look away. She grew more beautiful all the time.

“Have you read this? It’s wonderful.”

“No, I haven’t had a chance. Look, I’m sorry, Mary but could you please finish telling me about the little boy? I’ve been away, as you know, and I have a ton of work to catch up on.”

“Yes, I’m sorry. I should have known you’d be busy. It’s just that I wanted to see you face to face and tell you what I think might be important. There’s not much to tell about the little boy, except for the eyes. When I saw this picture I knew what it was that grabbed my attention. The little boy had Laura Austin’s eyes. Not just the color and the shape, but also the same dreamy expression.”

Erich pulled a photograph out of one of his desk drawers and handed it to her. “Is this the child you saw?”

She stared hard at the photo, but shook her head. “I’m not sure. The hair was short and mousy brown, not blond and curly. But I can’t get those eyes out of my mind.”

“What did you say this woman’s name was?”

“I didn’t. It’s Maggie Pierce. She looks a bit like the actress. You know. The one they call the ‘it’ girl.” Mary got up and took a couple of steps away from Erich’s desk. “Oh, and she has an English accent.”

***

Within two weeks of finding and killing Rudy, Virginia had closed up her brownstone, packed her bags and was on her way to London. She’d told Laura she was going to open a new club and hoped she believed her. It wasn’t really a lie. She did plan to open a new club there. She figured in that type of environment she might meet people who had information about Todd.

It took her eight days to find a suitable location in London. Then she left her new assistant in charge of renovations and began her search for Nancy Evans. She started with the telephone directory. Listings for Nancy Evans and N. A. Evans led to four people: the son of a woman who had died seven weeks earlier at ninety-seven, a vacuum cleaner salesman, a foul-mouthed mother of six, and an enormous middle-aged woman who spoke a lilting but almost incomprehensible combination of Jamaican and English. In other words, nothing.

For the next couple of months Virginia spent mornings canvassing playgrounds. At first she made herself as inconspicuous as possible, but one day one of the mothers asked her why she kept staring at the children. Since she didn’t have a suitable answer, she stopped going to playgrounds.

One afternoon in the middle of September she visited a nursery school in South Kensington. The bell rang and the children lined up. Virginia looked at all the blond-haired children carefully, but none of them were Todd. As she was about to leave, a mother dropped off her little boy.

“Do you have a minute?” Virginia asked.

“That’s about all I have.”

“How old is your son?”

“He’s almost three.”

“Do you know if any of the children in his class are named Evans?”

“No, no one by that name.”

It had been more than a year since Todd had been kidnapped. Virginia wasn’t any closer to finding him than she’d been on the first day. Her nephew was growing up in a strange country without his family, and it was all her fault.