Daddy's Gone a Hunting (23 page)

Giving Kate a bromeliad plant had actually been an afterthought. He had happened to be in the apartment when the real estate agent was showing it to Kate, the prospective buyer. She had admired it and clearly was knowledgeable about plants, and that’s how his housewarming gift came about. He liked Kate.

But when he had gone up to the apartment on Sunday afternoon and met Hannah Connelly, something had happened. Her midnight-blue eyes, framed by long lashes, were enhanced by her ivory complexion and cap of shining dark brown hair. She was wearing running shoes and barely came up to his chest. At five feet ten, Justin had always longed for at least two more inches.

Justin remembered how, when he complained about his height,
his father had suggested wryly, “Then stand up straight. There’s nothing like a military carriage to make you look taller.”

He and Hannah had stood together for a moment before they had gone into the kitchen and he had collected the plant. Then, on the way down in the elevator, Justin had been trying to decide if it would be too much to ask Hannah if she’d had lunch yet.

But he had asked her, and she hadn’t had lunch yet, and she did go out with him. And it had been fun. After lunch, Hannah had gone back to the hospital to check on Kate. All day Monday, Justin debated calling her, but decided that he wouldn’t want her to feel crowded. He told himself that watering a plant was not necessarily an open channel to developing the friendship that he very much wanted to develop.

On Tuesday, he had a late-afternoon meeting with a prospective client, a man in his late thirties who had inherited some money and was anxious to invest it properly. After it was over, Justin had elected to walk home from his new office. That decision meant that he would pass by Kate Connelly’s apartment.

As he did, he glanced sideways at the door, half hoping that Hannah might have stopped there again. Instead, he recognized the man who was coming out. He had seen enough pictures of Douglas Connelly in the newspapers in the last few days to be sure that he was right. Justin stopped. “Mr. Connelly,” he said.

Surprised, Douglas Connelly stopped and took Justin’s measure, noting his clean-cut appearance, including the fact that he was well dressed in business attire. Connelly forced a smile.

“Mr. Connelly, I know your daughters. How is Kate doing today?”

“She doing better, thank you. How do you know her?”

Briefly, Justin explained the connection, finishing with, “Then I met Hannah here on Sunday afternoon and picked up the plant I had given to Kate.”

“That was Sunday afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“And you met Hannah here?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“She didn’t mention to me that she was here. That explains it,” Connelly said more to himself than to Justin. “Well, nice to meet you.” With a brief nod, he stepped into his car.

It was a Bentley. Justin, a car aficionado, admired the stately vehicle as the driver pulled away from the curb. Then he thought that maybe this would be a good reason to call Hannah, to tell her that he had happened to run into her father.

Standing on the street, he pulled out his cell phone. Her number was already on his contacts list.

She answered on the first ring. When he asked about Kate, she told him about going back to the hospital late Sunday afternoon and then finding that Kate had developed a fever Monday night.

The exhaustion in Hannah’s voice was obvious.

“How is she now?” Justin asked.

“Better. The fever broke this morning. I had to go to work today but I just stopped in and she’s really as good as she can be.”

“I was going to suggest having a quick dinner, but I have a feeling you’re ready to pack it in.”

“Trust me, I am. I never did get to bed last night, but thanks.”

Belatedly, Justin remembered that his excuse for calling Hannah was to tell her that he had run into her father. As he did, he realized that nothing Douglas Connelly had told him suggested that Kate had been in a crisis situation in the hospital.

“You just ran into my father coming out of Kate’s building?” Hannah asked, astonished.

“Yes. In fact he just got into his car.”

“He didn’t tell me that he was planning to go over there, but that’s not important.” Hannah tried to keep the anger out of her voice as she asked herself why her father had gone to Kate’s apartment. It
certainly wasn’t because he was worried that some food might spoil, she thought. He was after the jewelry and probably wanted to go through Kate’s desk to find out what he could about her affairs.

It was obvious to Justin that Hannah was distressed by what he had just told her. “Hannah, are you okay?”

It seemed to Hannah that the question was coming from some remote corner of the earth. “Oh, I am,” she said quickly. “Justin, I’m sorry. I was just . . . surprised. Thanks again for calling.”

Justin Kramer hoped that before she clicked off, Hannah had heard him say, “I’ll give you a call in a day or two.”

52

M
ark Sloane was enjoying his new job. He realized that every morning he was looking forward to getting to work with a vigor that he had not felt for the last several years in his old firm in Chicago.

He liked his condo and had spent Monday evening unpacking paintings and artifacts that he had gathered on his annual overseas vacations.

Then he had grouped them on the floor below the walls where he intended to hang them. The ones that belonged on the shelves of the second bedroom, which he had turned into a den, were already in place. The room had its own full bath and the most comfortable pullout couch he could buy. He had purchased it hoping that his mother would visit him several times a year.

After running into Jessie on Monday evening, Mark had been aware all day Tuesday that Kate Connelly had had a setback and had been running a fever. He realized that his concern for a new neighbor he had never really met was tied in with his visit with Nick Greco and their discussion about Tracey’s disappearance. It was as though all the emotional scar tissue that he had formed over the years had suddenly been sliced open.

It was the minute-to-minute waiting, and hoping, and praying that he knew was going on in the lives of Hannah Connelly and her closest friend, Jessie Carlson. There was something about their
shared heartsick concern for Hannah’s sister, Kate, that reminded him of the day his mother had received the call about Tracey.

The exact moment when that call came was etched in his mind even though he had been only ten years old. He had stayed home from school because he had a heavy cold, and he had been sitting at the kitchen table with his mother. She had just made a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich for him when the phone had rung.

“Missing!”
That was the word he had heard his mother utter, her voice quivering, and he had known right away that it had to be about Tracey.

And then the waiting had begun. The waiting that was still going on.

On Tuesday evening Mark did go to the gym. He signed up as a member and did a solid hour-and-a-half workout that relieved the tension in his back and neck. After he had showered and changed, he shoved his exercise clothes into a duffel bag and dropped it off at home. Then, not feeling like grilling the steak that was in the refrigerator, he instead opened his iPhone and did a Web search. Tommy’s Bistro was still listed as a pub, located only four blocks from his apartment.

They’ve probably just kept the name of the place, he thought, as he put on his windbreaker. I can’t believe the same owner would still be there after nearly thirty years.

He had not reached his front door before his cell phone rang. It was Nick Greco. “You’ll never guess where I’m headed,” Mark told him. “Tommy’s Bistro, the place where Tracey worked, is just four blocks from here. I’m going there for dinner and maybe if, by any chance, the old owner is still around, I’ll try to talk to him. He was the one who was so worried about Tracey that he went looking for her when she didn’t show up for work.”

“Then I’ve caught you just in time,” Greco said. “I just received a call from one of my friends in the department. They’ll be announcing in the next few minutes that they’ve made an arrest in the murder of another twenty-three-year-old actress who disappeared last month and was found dead. She was strangled.”

“I don’t understand,” Mark said. “Nick, what are you telling me?”

“The alleged killer’s name is Harry Simon. He’s fifty-three years old and—can you believe it—he works in the kitchen at Tommy’s Bistro. And he’s been there for thirty years! Like all the other employees, he was questioned when Tracey disappeared but he seemed to have an airtight alibi at the time. Now maybe we’ll find out if that so-called airtight alibi still holds up all these years later.”

53

S
hirley Mercer had escorted Clyde to his room at the city-run Ansler Hotel. With its gilded ceilings and exquisite candelabra, it had once housed one of the great dining rooms in New York City. But that was ninety years ago. In the 1950s, it had fallen out of favor with sophisticated New Yorkers and eventually was closed. Located near Macy’s department store on Thirty-third Street, for many years it had been boarded up, and then several years ago had been reopened as city housing for the homeless.

Shirley had been pleased to see that the room assigned to Clyde was a single with a cot, a small dresser, and a chair. The bathroom was down the hall. In the corridor she could see scraps of takeout food casually dropped on the floor. She knew that the cleaning staff did the best it could but was always dealing with some people who had long ago lost any sense of hygiene. Someone in the adjacent room was playing music so loud that it threatened to shatter her eardrums.

She observed the expression on Clyde’s face as he pulled his cart into the room. It was impassive, noncaring. I won’t be gone fifteen minutes before he’s out the door behind me, she thought.

Clyde began to cough, the deep, rumbling cough she had observed in the hospital. “Clyde, I have a couple of bottles of water here. You must be sure to take your medicine.”

“Yes. Thanks. This is real nice. Homey.”

“I see you have a sense of humor,” Shirley said. “Good luck, Clyde. I’ll look in on you in a day or two.”

“That would be nice.”

What kind of man was he? Shirley wondered, as she walked down the four flights to the lobby. It was either that way out or trust herself to the elevator that broke down frequently. She had been trapped in it for an hour a few months ago.

When she reached the sidewalk, she stood there long enough to fasten the top button of her coat, then tried to decide if she should stop at Macy’s and pick up a present for the baby shower she was going to attend on Saturday. But then the thought of her snug apartment in Brooklyn and the fact that it was her husband’s day off and he had promised to cook dinner for them was too inviting. She went to the corner and down the steps to the subway, grateful to be going home to an atmosphere of warmth and love.

If only I could really help people like Clyde, she thought. But I guess the best I can do is to keep him from dying of pneumonia in an alleyway somewhere.