Into the Dark (17 page)

“Yeah?”

“When we were in the parking lot of O’Donnell’s, and you pulled away from me . . .
Did you do it because you were thinking about what my mother had said?”

He stared at the window. “Yes.”

She exhaled. “So funny. This whole time, I was blaming myself.”

“Why would you blame yourself?”

Brenna’s phone vibrated against her hip. She ignored it. Let the call go to voice
mail. “No reason.”

“I’m sorry,” Nick said. “I shouldn’t have let it ruin the moment.”

Brenna said, “Try and have a little sympathy for my mother. Poor thing’s the only
sane person in her family.”

He gave her a half smile.

“Plus, her granddaughter’s still teething at thirteen.”

“Huh? Teething?”

She winced. “Nothing,” she said. “Just this crazy thing my Mom said during dinner
that I was joking about that night . . . You were . . . uh . . . you were laughing
. . .” For some reason, Brenna felt very lonely. She looked out the window. “You’re
going to want to get off at the next exit. The auto place is on 125th and First.”

He nodded, and for a while both of them said nothing. Nick got off the FDR and headed
up on 125th, and sure enough there was the auto shop, up ahead and on the right side
of the street. He pulled up to it and parked the car. “I’ll make sure and get you
Tannenbaum’s arrest record,” he said. “And I’ll check the blotter for October 6—see
if there were any incidents involving some John Doe with a pricey camera.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey,” Morasco said. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.” She got out of the car and turned to him, watching her so closely through
the opened window. “I’ll see you.”

He swallowed. His throat moved with it. “Take care of yourself.”

She watched him drive away, watched the car disappear around the corner before she
remembered her vibrating phone and yanked it out of her pocket. One voice mail message,
from a number she’d never seen. Brenna was about to check it when another call came
in—from the same number. “Yes?”

A male voice: young, all-business. “Miss Spector?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Detective Tim Waxman from the Twenty-fifth Precinct. I’m wondering if I could speak
to you in person.”

“Concerning . . .”

“An acquaintance of yours.”

One of the mechanics was approaching, but she held up a hand. “An acquaintance?”

“He made a phone call to your house last night at around 5
P.M.
from his cell phone.” Brenna felt herself in her apartment, the phone pressed to
her ear, her ex-husband’s gaze on her back . . .

“Ludlow.” She sighed into the phone. “What the hell has he done now?”

The detective didn’t speak right away, and Brenna became aware of background noise—the
hum of voices, a crackling police radio, a siren, wailing in the distance . . .

“Can you please come to the MoonGlow Hotel, Miss Spector?” Waxman said, rattling off
the address. “I’ve got some questions for you.”

Chapter 14

A
s soon as Brenna arrived at the MoonGlow, she saw the coroner’s van parked outside.
Oh God, Errol
, she thought.
What have you done?
She hurried into the lobby, pushing past a group of uniform cops and joining five
crime scene techs as they jammed into a waiting elevator. The whole while, she was
scanning the group for a six-foot-eight-inch man in handcuffs—Errol wasn’t someone
who was easy to miss—but she didn’t see him. One of the crime scene techs hit floor
four—a heavy girl with butter-blonde hair and a sweet face. “I’m here for Errol Ludlow,”
Brenna said to her, trying to sound official.

The girl scrunched up her forehead. “Yeah,” she said. “Us too.”

The doors opened. Down the dingy hallway, Brenna saw police tape covering one of the
rooms, medical examiners hustling in with a gurney. She headed down the hall, where
a very young guy in a cheap blue suit was talking to another lab tech, just outside
the door to the room.

Brenna heard, “Unusual, considering the age and overall health.”

She started to talk to them, but Cheap Blue Suit looked up first. “Miss Spector?”
he said.

She blinked at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “I recognized you from TV.” He smiled—a goofy, guileless smile.
“Detective Tim Waxman. We talked on the phone.”

“Oh, right.”

Detective Tim Waxman looked young enough to use Clearasil on a regular basis. If Maya
brought him to the eighth grade mixer, Brenna wouldn’t have batted an eye, and yet
here he was, in his best bad suit with the sleeves too short and the shirt cuffs frayed,
standing in this dismal purgatory of a sticky-sheet motel, cleaning up some awful
mess made by Errol Ludlow . . . She felt like covering his eyes. “So, you were familiar
with Mr. Ludlow,” Tim said.

“Yes, I used to work for him years ago . . . Wait.”

“Yes?”

“Did you just say ‘were’?”

He cleared his throat. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Not ‘
Are
you familiar.’
Were
you familiar.”

He looked at the floor. “Yes.”

“Is that significant?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did . . . That ME was saying . . . Whose age? Whose overall health?”

“I just need to ask you a few simple questions, ma’am.”

“Is Errol dead?”

“Did Mr. Ludlow say anything odd during your phone conversation yesterday?”

“
Answer my question
.”

“Did he complain of shortness of breath?”

“Oh my God. How did he die?”

“Did he say he felt funny in any way?”

Brenna stared at him.

“Miss Spector?”

“No,” she said quietly. “He . . . he didn’t say he felt funny.”

“Did he have any unhealthy habits?”

The past tense
. “He didn’t smoke. He drank occasionally.” She looked at him. “How did he die?”

“We don’t know,” he said. “But it . . . it was peaceful . . .”

The door to the room opened, room 419, a group of uniforms moving aside to make room
for the gurney. “Oh my God,” Brenna whispered.

“I’m sorry, Miss Spector.”

She stared straight ahead of her. “Not your fault.”

“Was he a good friend?”

“No.”

And then Brenna caught sight of the body bag on the gurney, the very length of it.
Errol.
The big feet angled out, the shoulders too broad for the platform, the outline of
the wide forehead, the pointy nose. She remembered his voice on the phone the previous
night, the life in it (
Ta-ta!
) and then she again saw that dark thick plastic, resting on the body, Errol’s body.
How still it was.

Errol Ludlow in the past tense.

Brenna felt a cold blast at the back of her neck, as though it were June 23, 1991,
as though she were sitting in Errol Ludlow’s over-air-conditioned office for the first
time, staring at this enormous, odd-looking man during her job interview, Errol smirking
at her, staring into her face with those dull, black-olive eyes of his . . .

“What type of drugs are you on?” he says. Not
Have you ever tried drugs?
Or even,
Are you on drugs?
No, he’s too certain for that, this guy. He wants to know what
type
.

He folds his catcher’s-mitt hands on the desk in front of him and smiles—a slow, dry
smile, like granite cracking.

The air-conditioner is cold on the back of Brenna’s neck.
Why does he keep it so cold in here?
But still her palms sweat. Her jaw tenses. Errol Ludlow is enormous. He dwarfs the
desk, the room. If he were to inhale deeply, Brenna figures, he’d suck all the air
out of it. But she can’t think like this. She can’t hate this guy. She needs him.

Help me find Clea, Errol Ludlow
, Brenna thinks.
Teach me how to find people . . .

“Miss Spector?”

“I’m . . . I’m not on drugs.”

He shakes his head. “You fit the profile of a drug abuser.”

“Excuse me?”

“Raised by a sin-gle mother. A sin-gle art-ist at that.” Ludlow overenunciates, Brenna
notices now. He spits out syllables one at a time, like seeds. It’s very annoying.
She suspects he does it on purpose.

“So? Lots of people are raised by . . . single artists.”

“I’m not through yet.” He leans forward. His big arms strain against his dark green
sport coat, making it shine. He launches the words at her—each syllable flying out
of his mouth and crashing. “Sin-gle art-ist moth-er, run-a-way sis-ter with a slut-ty
rep-u-ta-tion you worked so very hard to avoid that you became a bit re-clu-sive,
didn’t you?”

Brenna swallows hard.

“Only a few close friends in high school, didn’t date much, kept to your-self. Your
teachers said you always seemed to be in another world . . .”

“You talked to my high school teachers?”

“Just twenty-one years old, yet you’ve seen three different psy-chi-a-trists. Ivy
League college, yes. But as I’m sure we both know, Ivy League colleges are about as
full of drugs as Diego Maradona on a Saturday night in Amsterdam.”

“Who?”

“And then, the icing on the cake . . . you drop out of Columbia after just two years.”
He takes a breath. “Now what would
you
think of that profile?”

Brenna’s face feels hot. Her hands clench into fists. “I would think,” Brenna says,
“that you are the biggest asshat I’ve ever met.”

The flat, dark eyes widen, then crinkle up at the corners. A smile crosses the granite
face. He starts to laugh. “I think I like you, Brenna Spector!”

“I know it’s hard to lose a friend,” Tim Waxman said, bringing Brenna back into the
hallway, into the crime scene techs loading Errol’s bagged body into the elevator.

Brenna blinked. There were tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.” She took a breath. “Were
you saying something, Detective?”

“Just wondering if he might have had a history of recreational drug use.”

“Errol?” she said. “Actually he was very antidrug. Why?”

“Was he on blood pressure meds?”

She shrugged. “He drank a lot of green tea,” she said, which made her throat clench
up again. Crying over Errol. The loss of Errol . . . What was wrong with her?
Must be the shock.

“I just ask because we found Viagra in his Dopp kit. And the crime scene guys said
that Viagra mixed with nitrate-based drugs can bring on a heart attack.”

She looked at him. “He brought Viagra.”

“Yep. Also a bottle of really nice champagne—empty, though.”

“So he wasn’t alone,” Brenna said.

“Well, he was this morning, when the desk clerk found him.”

“Yeah, but champagne and Viagra are usually group activity–type things,” she said
slowly. She looked at the detective. “I assumed he was working.”

“Working?”

“Meeting one of his girls before or after a stakeout.”

“His girls?”

“He was a private investigator, specializing in cheating spouses,” she said. “Far
as I knew, Errol never came to hotels like this for . . . uh . . . personal reasons.”

A voice behind Brenna said, “You aren’t his wife, are you?”

She turned around to see a man with greasy gunmetal hair, wearing khaki pants, a gray
sport coat that looked petroleum-based. She swatted at her eyes. “God no,” Brenna
said. “I’m a former business assoc— Wait. Who are you?”

“Kevin Wiggins.” He showed her a row of yellow teeth. “Desk Clerk to the Stars.”

“You found him, huh?”

“Yup.” He peered at her face. “Say, anybody ever tell you, you look a little like
Barbara Stanwyck?”

“Only my mom.”

“What happened to your eye?”

“Air bag.”

He nodded, as if that were the most normal response in the world. “Listen,” Kevin
said. “I’m sorry about your friend, but if it helps at all, I can tell you without
a coroner’s report that he died with a smile on his face.”

“Is that right?”

He nodded. “I’ve seen my share of ’em in here. Happy heart attacks. I don’t need to
paint you a vivid picture, do I?”

“Please don’t.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure I saw the lady who visited him, and there isn’t
a man on the planet who could think of a better way to go.”

“Did you know her?” Brenna asked. Weird question. She wasn’t sure why she’d asked
it, or why she continued to care, but she did. Closure, maybe.
The last person to see Errol Ludlow alive.

“I didn’t know her, but she was a looker,” he said.

Tim Waxman looked at him. “Did you happen to get her name?”

“Just a first name.”

“Let me guess,” Brenna said. “Chastity?”

Kevin gave her a sly look, as if this were some Hollywood movie and they were exchanging
the wittiest of banter. “You talk like Stanwyck, too,” he said. “Delightfully acerbic.”

“Thanks.”

“Mr. Wiggins,” Tim said. “Can I please get the name of the woman you saw last night?”

“Oh.” He chuckled, still looking at Brenna. “You gotta understand, it’s so rare I
get to exchange this many intelligent words with anyone . . . You’re probably married,
aren’t you?”

“Mr. Wiggins,” Tim said.

“Sorry,” he said. “What was the question?”

“The name, sir.” Tim sighed. “What was the name given to you by Mr. Ludlow’s last
visitor?”

“Right.” He kept grinning at Brenna, even as he answered. “The lady’s name was Clea.”

Brenna stared at him, her heart beating up into her neck, her face, her eyes . . .

G
ary shuddered in his sleep—a movement that wracked his whole body and jolted Jill
out of a dream about Yasmine, her yoga instructor, performing surgery on a cat.
Wonder what Freud would have to say about that one
, she thought, still half asleep. And then Gary shuddered again. “Are you all right,
honey?” Jill said.

He put his arms around her and pulled her close.

Jill smiled. She and Gary had made love last night and she still felt warm from it.
It had been wonderful as usual, but also different—more intense. Gary had kissed Jill
so deeply, pulled her so close, as though he were trying to become a part of her,
climb under her skin, stay with her always. She’d always felt
wanted
by Gary when they had sex—there was never any question about that. But last night,
Jill had felt
needed
. Gary had made love to her as though she were saving his life, and in a way, she
was.

In a way, they were saving each other.

Part of it was that the two-week dry spell was finally ending—
two weeks—
but more powerful still, Jill thought, was Gary’s confession.

“I need to tell you something,” he had said, without her asking. Without her having
to ask. “I know I’ve been distant these past few weeks.”

And she had stood there, in their bedroom with the door closed behind her, holding
her breath, watching his mouth move as though she were standing at the edge of a cliff
. . . Only to hear him say the last thing on earth she had ever expected.

“It’s because I didn’t trust you, Jill. I’m so sorry. I was wrong . . .”

“Wait. You didn’t trust me?”

“I thought you were having an affair.”

Her jaw had gone slack. “Why would you think that?” Jill had said, but as she said
it, she knew the answer. She’d been distant, too—just as distant as Gary had been,
come to think of it, though having an affair had been the last thing on her mind.

Wise Up was having its annual fund-raiser on January 7, which was just around the
corner, and the publicity firm they’d worked with for the past eight years had demanded
double the money. There was no way the charity could afford that without her supplementing.
Jill didn’t even want to think about that now, but yeah, she’d been spending a lot
of time at her office looking for new PR, a lot of time on the phone, her head spinning,
her thoughts miles and weeks away. She hadn’t talked to Gary about it because he had
enough on his mind, why burden him with her headaches? Plus, their plate was so full
at home with the three girls and their schedules, feeding them and helping them with
homework and making sure they practiced their piano and their cheers and their French
and Spanish and that they read for half an hour every night. Worse still, Hannah was
in a needy phase so by the time she finally got to sleep, after her third glass of
water and her second bedtime story, well, it was all Jill could do to collapse on
the couch and stare at HBO for half an hour. This had been going on long before the
dry spell, she’d realized last night. Long before she’d started to get suspicious
of Gary.

He’d felt suspicious first.

“Why didn’t you just talk to me about it?” Jill had said.
Jill the hypocrite, sneaking into her husband’s office, copying down numbers from
his disposable phone . . .