Daddy's Gone a Hunting (31 page)

70

A
fter 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.

Doug was uncomfortably aware that Sandra had taken on a certain attitude, almost as though she were the authorized voice of the Connelly family. He put a restraining hand on her arm. “I am very anxious to see my daughter,” he said, with the emphasis on
I
.

“You’re not going to refuse to let me say a prayer for her, Doug?”

Doug was not happy that Dr. Patel was a witness to the exchange.
He hated that, after she slipped off her coat, Sandra was wearing a tight low-cut sweater that would have been more suitable in a nightclub in the Meatpacking District. He’d been too engrossed in his own thoughts to notice it before.

But thankfully, Dr. Patel had told him that Hannah had already been there this morning. She almost certainly wouldn’t be back in the next ten minutes. He wouldn’t have to tell her that he had let Sandra go in to visit Kate. “Come along,” he said brusquely to Sandra.

Kate was stirring but her eyes were closed. Doug took her hand. “Baby, it’s Daddy. I love you so much. You’ve got to get well for me and Hannah. You can do it. We need you.”

Easy tears slipped from his eyes.

On the other side of the bed, Sandra smoothed her hand softly over Kate’s bandaged forehead. “Kate, it’s Sandra. We had dinner together the night of the accident. I thought you were so beautiful and so smart and you are. And you’re going to be again. And I want to become your best friend. And if you’re in trouble, I’ll be there for you.”

“That’s enough, Sandra,” Doug interrupted, his voice an angry whisper.

“Well, I am going to say a prayer.” Sandra closed her eyes and looked upward. “Beautiful Kate, may you be blessed and healed. Amen.”

Kate, who could not communicate with them, had heard everything. As she slipped back into sleep, she had one thought that was clear in her mind.
Bimbo
.

Doug had hoped that Sandra might want to check her mail or have dinner with her girlfriends again tonight, but she climbed back into the Bentley and told Bernard, “We’re going home, Bernard. But I’m making reservations for tonight at SoHo North, so we’ll need you to
pick us up at eight thirty. Our boy needs to get out. He has far too much on his plate and it’s not fair.”

Doug had been about to tell Sandra that he could feel the beginning of a splitting headache and needed to lie down in a dark room and be quiet. He wanted to insist that Bernard drop her off home now. But then again, the prospect of being completely alone tonight was not appealing, either. Dinner with some good wine in the same dining room as the celebrities who were always at SoHo North was more to his liking. “Sounds good to me,” he said, trying to sound cheerful.

At twenty minutes of six, the telephone rang. Sandra had just prepared a scotch for him and an apple martini for herself. She ran to the phone and looked at the caller ID. “It’s Jack Worth,” she told Doug.

“Let it ring. I’m not in the mood to talk to him.”

Ten minutes later the phone rang again. “The number doesn’t show,” Sandra reported, as, holding the martini, she ran across the library again to glance at the landline phone on the desk.

“Forget it. No, wait, I’ll take it.” Doug had suddenly remembered who might be calling.

“Connelly residence,” Sandra answered, in a voice that was her concept of the proper way for a housekeeper or secretary to answer the phone.

“Put Doug Connelly on,” a low, angry voice told her.

“Who is calling, please?”

“I said to put him on.”

Sandra covered the speaker with her hand. “I think it’s some kind of nut. He won’t give his name and he sounds as though he’s furious about something.”

Not knowing what to expect but suddenly fearful, Doug got up
and hurried across the room. “Douglas Connelly,” he said when he picked up the receiver.

“Did you know who you were messing with when you pulled that switch?”

Doug recognized the voice but was bewildered at the question.

“You thought you could get away with a dumb trick like that, you stupid idiot? You can’t. I want four million dollars deposited in my account by Friday morning or you won’t live to see Saturday. That’s the three million five hundred thousand you owe me plus interest for pain and suffering.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Then think about our last transaction and maybe you’ll get it. But tell you what? Maybe you need a little more time to put together that kind of money. So you have until next Monday. But if it goes that long, make it four million two hundred thousand dollars. The extra two hundred grand is for making me look like a fool.”

Doug heard the click of the receiver in his ears. His hand clenching, he replaced the phone in the cradle.

“Dougie, Dougie, what is it? You look like you’re going to faint. Who was that? What did he say?” Sandra was beside him, steadying the hand that was holding the drink that was now spilling down his sleeve.

“Oh my God,” Doug moaned. “Oh my God. What am I going to do?”

71

A
t five o’clock on Wednesday evening, Frank Ramsey and Nathan Klein rang the bell of Lottie Schmidt’s home. Now that they had received confirmation that Gus had not won a lottery within the United States, they had agreed that this time there would be a harder edge to their questioning, with Frank playing the more sympathetic role and Nathan expressing disbelief at Lottie’s lottery claim.

Lottie opened the door on the second ring of the bell, but if she was surprised to see them, she did not indicate it. Something in her attitude was also different. They both noticed that right away. She seemed less frightened and more sure of herself. “I would have appreciated a phone call,” she said as she stepped aside to let them in. “And you might have saved yourself a useless trip. I’m leaving in the next few minutes to go to my neighbor’s house. She was kind enough to invite me for an early dinner.”

“Then I’m very glad we caught you, Mrs. Schmidt,” Frank said, pleasantly. “We’ll only be a few minutes.” He started to turn from the foyer into the living room.

Lottie stopped him. “I think it would be more to the point if we sat at the dining room table. I have some photo albums there that I think might interest you.”

She did not tell them that after her neighbor Peter Callow left the other day, she had sat at that table, thinking long and hard. It
was obvious to her that while Peter would defend her, he did not believe that she was ignorant of where Gus had gotten the money for Gretchen’s house. If he doesn’t believe me, no one else will, she had reasoned. Well, I’ll find a story that might hold up.

With that thought in mind, she had pulled down the folding stairs to the attic, climbed up, and retrieved a now-dusty photo album and several framed pictures of severe-looking people in formal dress or military uniform. The items were from a box that had not been disturbed since the first day they moved into the house.

Carefully wiped off, the album and the pictures were now spread out on the dining room table. She invited the detectives to sit down there. Unlike the other time they had come into her home, she did not offer them water or coffee.

“You have heard my husband described as a master craftsman who was forced into retirement by Douglas Connelly and his minion, Jack Worth,” she said, her voice level. “Gus was that. He was all of that. But he was also part of one of the finest families in Germany.” She turned the album around. “In World War I, his grandfather was an aide to the kaiser. His name was Field Marshal Augustus Wilhelm von Mueller. That is his picture with the kaiser.”