Keepsake (38 page)

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m worried. He was in charge of Rina’s security at Anaheim. It never occurred to me to think
that perhaps he engineered things so that the killer could get to my wife.”

“I don’t believe he did,” April said quietly.

“Of course you don’t. He is your lover. You cannot believe evil of him.” Armand’s voice was gentle, philosophical. “It is
very difficult to imagine that someone we love could be capable of deceiving and betraying us. But it happens. All too often,
we are hurt by those we love.”

She said nothing. She could still feel the imprint of Rob’s warm and knowing hands on her body.

“April, I found something. That’s why I’m calling. I found a computer diskette that my wife must have been using shortly before
her death.”

The blood rushed to her ears. He’d found it? The diskette existed, after all?

“Kate and I had a little chat,” he continued. “After her accident she confessed to me that the night before she encountered
the killer, while she was staying overnight at my home, she searched among my things for this diskette. She did not find it.
But I thought of some hiding places
that she would not have known about. And just over an hour ago, I found the diskette and examined it on the computer downstairs
in my library.”

“Rina’s missing autobiography?” April tried to keep her voice even. Did he know the murderer? Is that what he was trying to
tell her? Was there something on the diskette that implicated Rob?

“Perhaps. There are a number of long files. All I’ve had time to examine is some of the correspondence. I found some letters
that had passed between my wife and Robert Blackthorn. They are angry and confrontational, on his side, especially. And I
also discovered a memo, written just before the trip to Anaheim, in which Sabrina makes a note to dismiss Blackthorn and his
firm as soon as she returns to New York. ‘I just don’t feel safe with him,’ she writes.”

April touched the silver necklace that was clasped around her throat.

“Are you there?” Armand said, after a moment.

“Yes.”

“For your own safety, I think you should leave. Is he asleep?”

“I think so.”

“Cherie,
I beg of you, get away from him. Now.”

She tiptoed back into the bedroom. Rob was turned on his side away from her, and he was snoring. As quietly as possible, she
grabbed her clothes from the floor where he had thrown them as he’d undressed her. Images of what they’d done together threatened
to overwhelm her. She banished them. She’d think about that later. She’d think about all of it later. Right now she just had
to get out of here so she could decide what to do.

She carefully put the portable phone back on its holder. What she had knocked down when she’d reached for the phone turned
out to be Rina’s keepsake—the photograph of both of them in the scratched tin frame. As she picked it up she saw that the
glass in front of the picture had cracked in the fall. There was now a jagged line running down through the center of the
photo, right between herself and her mother.

For some reason this seemed like the last straw. April felt tears spring into her eyes. Everything was going wrong. Her mother
was dead, her lover might be the murderer, and now the damn picture was ruined as well…

Clutching it to her, she fled the room.

She took the stairs. She checked to see that there was no one but a sleepy security guard in the lobby. She got out past him,
quickly, looking up and down Sixty-second Street as she stepped outside. Nobody leapt back away from her into the shadows.

It was just before six in the morning, and the city was slowly awakening. There wasn’t much traffic yet, but in a couple of
hours, it would be gridlock.

She walked quickly to the corner, holding the large pocketbook into which she had dumped a change of clothes and—she wasn’t
sure why—Rina’s now-broken photograph. It was early, but this was New York. As soon as the light changed up at the next block,
she saw a couple of taxis approaching. She flagged one down, he pulled up, and she climbed in.

“Come here, to me,” Armand had said. “Together we will notify the police.” It was tempting. But the way she felt now, she
didn’t trust anybody. If she couldn’t trust Blackthorn, whom she’d held in her arms and loved, then she certainly wasn’t going
to trust Armand, Christian, or anybody else in the de Sevigny family.

She would have to trust herself. “Take me to the Port Authority Bus Station,” she said to the cabbie.

Morrow was across the street parked illegally in front of the Lincoln Center garage complex when he saw his prey come out
of her building and catch a cab. So. It was happening. She was on the run.

He pulled the car onto Columbus Avenue. Not too many cars. Following her would be easy if she did what she was supposed to
do. But in his experience, you couldn’t count on that.

Sure enough, she got out of the cab at the bus station.
Shit.
The only predictable thing about the Target was that she was quick, and always did the unexpected.

Looked like she was leaving town.

He ditched the car at the curb and followed her into the station. He caught sight of her immediately, her red hair was a dead
giveaway. She was in line at one of the windows behind a fat woman who looked like a bag lady.

He hung back. He didn’t think she’d recognize him even if she looked him full in the face. He was wearing a scruffy beard
now and he’d had his hair cut punk-short and bleached it blond.

When it was the Target’s turn at the window, she suddenly shook her head and changed her mind. Then she strode away, heading
for an exit on the opposite side of the building.

He followed, cursing. Now what?

She looked behind her nervously as she exited the bus terminal, but Morrow was still behind the glass door and knew she couldn’t
see him. He ambled out when she was about fifty yards ahead, and followed her as she walked
south. He waited for her to flag down another cab, but she walked quickly and purposefully, as if she knew exactly where she
was going. He hoped she wasn’t about to take refuge with a friend. He assessed the situation on the street. Dark, seedy section
of town, but, as always, traffic in the street and pedestrians. He could take her now, but there’d be witnesses. He’d really
prefer to get her alone.

She walked fast towards Madison Square Garden. And Penn Station.

Where did you go when you were frightened and unsure whom to trust?

You ran toward the place where you felt the most secure. And for April, that would not be New York City, but Boston, MA.

That must be it. At Penn Station, she could get an Amtrak train to Boston. More comfortable than the bus. He vaguely remembered
that there was one that left sometime around now. He’d checked it out earlier during his research—where the Target might go
if she decided to run.

Sure enough, she looked behind her once again, then ducked into the Eighth Avenue entrance to Penn Station, near the departure
point for the Amtrak trains.

He’d guessed correctly. April Harrington was headed home.

“Hey, Boss, what’s going on?”

“Carla?” Blackthorn had a headache. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand while he tried to focus on the phone. “What
the hell time is it?”

“It’s six
A.M.
Where’s April?”

“I don’t—”

“Shit, are you all right? You’re not hurt or anything, are you?”

“Just asleep.”

“Well, while you’re lying there sleeping, the body you’re supposed to be guarding has apparently done another one of her disappearing
tricks.”

Blackthorn grabbed the phone and checked the apartment as she spoke. But he knew without checking that he’d fucked up again.
He was alone.

“Are you tracking her?” he barked into the phone.

“Is she wearing the necklace?”

“She was when we went to bed.”

“Gee, what’d you do to her, Boss? Spooked her somehow? I’ve got her at Eighth and Thirty-first Street at the moment—that’s
Penn Station. Looks to me like Ms. Harrington is on the run.”

“Goddammit!” he barked into the phone.

The Poison Pen Bookshop was dark and silent when April let herself in at around noon. It was a Sunday, and the place was closed.

She felt a sense of immediate relief. Surrounded by books that were shelved as high as the ceiling in the relatively small
space, she felt safe and protected. Strange, dangerous, and fantastic things happened between the covers of these books. There
were a thousand stories whirling around her. She and other fans of the genre could read them, identify with the characters,
share the excitement and their fears and their glories. Always they were safe in the knowledge that good would prevail over
evil and that justice would triumph in the end.

She would have liked to stay. But the bookstore was too obvious a place to look for her.

In the books, disappearing always seemed so easy. But in real life April had found her options sharply limited. She hadn’t
been able to rent a car in New York, because
there wasn’t any way to do it without giving her real name to the car company. She couldn’t fly anywhere for the same reason.
Buses and trains didn’t require your name—not if you paid for your seat in cash. Fortunately there had been a bank machine
in Penn Station.

Here, though, she could get a car. Or, at least, borrow one.

There was a phone booth down the street at a gas station. She glanced at her watch as she dialed. Maggie lived in Somerville,
just a few blocks away. April could walk it easily.

She hoped she was home.

Maggie answered, sounding bright and chirpy. “Maggie, thank God,” April said.

“April? What’s the matter? You sound awful. Are you in trouble again?”

“Maggie, I need your help.”

“Of course. What can I do?”

Two hours later, April was on the road again, this time in the driver’s seat. She knew she didn’t have much time—she’d been
too predictable—Blackthorn would find her. But all she needed were a couple of days to reflect, to think things through, and,
most importantly, to decide whom, if anybody, she could trust.

She was crossing the Cape Cod Canal on the Sagamore Bridge, headed for Brewster, Mass., where she and Rina had spent the summer
in 1963.

April had never been back to the Cape. This was a little odd for a woman who’d spent most of her adult life in Boston. Although
the Cape was a natural vacation spot, she’d taken her vacations instead in Maine, New Hampshire, or Vermont.

Cape Cod drew her now, though. Here lay the beginning of the strange and twisted path that had led Rina
away from her job as a waitress and put her on track for interacting with rich and famous men. It all went back to that summer
when she’d met and loved the president.

It seemed hard to believe, but Sea Breeze Housekeeping Villas were still there, right where she remembered them, just off
a pitted dirt road leading down toward the sea from Route 6A in Brewster. They were old and badly in need of fresh paint.
A faded, lopsided sign at the entrance to the driveway proclaimed a Vacancy, and from the looks of the place, quiet, with
hardly any cars on a lovely June day, April suspected there were a lot of vacancies.

An elderly man answered her knock on the end cottage, the one with a small sign that said Office and was missing one of the
f’s. He looked her over and seemed incredulous when she declared that she’d like to rent one of the cottages for the night.

“You ain’t one of them state inspectors, are you?” he said, looking her over through narrowed eyes. “I had the exterminators
out here just over a week ago, just like I said I would.”

Great, she thought, hoping they’d been after roaches rather than rats. “Just a tourist.”

“We don’t get too many,” he declared. “Least, not this early in the summer. July, August, maybe, when all the other places
are crammed full, then we take the overflow. There’s a real motel, just up the road.”

“I like cottages,” she said. “Besides I stayed here once, many years ago, 1963. Were you the owner then, by any chance?”

He shook his head. “I’m not the owner now. My son is, but he don’t lift a finger around here. Put me to work, figuring
it was better than sticking me in a nursing home. Seems an odd place to want to reminisce. The cabins are musty and the furnishing’s
old. Wouldn’t catch me staying in one of ‘em.”

“Is number seven free?”

He glanced at an old wooden key rack where several rows of rusty keys were hanging from faded ribbons. “Yup, it sure is,”
he said, taking down the key.

“I’ll pay cash,” she said, taking out her wallet.

“Fine, sign the register,” he said, handing her a pen and pushing a moth-eaten volume toward her. She glanced in the front
of it, wondering… but it only went back to 1978.

She scrawled “Judith Exner,” smiled, and handed him back the pen.

Morrow had nearly lost her in Cambridge.

As he had expected, she had gone to the bookstore. He hadn’t been able to watch both exits at once, and she must have gone
out the back, since only luck enabled him to catch sight of her hurrying into a gas station on the corner to make a phone
call.

Obviously she was afraid of being tracked. But she didn’t seem to realize that she’d been carrying a tail ever since she’d
left her apartment in New York.

She left the gas station on the opposite side from where she entered it, but instead of doubling back to the bookstore, as
he’d expected, she disappeared somewhere behind it. He gave her a couple minutes, in case she was simply being cautious about
returning to the bookstore, then set off in pursuit. When he got around to the back of the gas station, she was nowhere to
be seen.

It was part instinct, part luck that sent him back to the
car he’d rented. There were only two possibilities for streets, and he could cover them much faster by car than on foot.

It took him several blocks to acquire her again, just in time before she entered a three-decker house over the line in Somerville.