Let Me Whisper in Your Ear (12 page)

“I think so. I grew up in Cliffside Park, the town where the old amusement park used to stand. My father ran the Cyclone the year the park closed down.”

“And there's some sort of unsolved murder connected to the park?”

“It looks like it. They've just found a boy's body that has been missing for thirty years, buried a stone's throw from the park's perimeter, and they've identified it.”

“Cool.”

Laura briefly thought how sick they were to be enthused about such a grotesque turn of events, so excited about the details of someone else's agony. But that was the business. A nightmare made a compelling story.

“What are you doing at KEY now?” Matthew changed the subject.

“I work in the Bulletin Center.”

“Doing?”

“Hard news pieces. Obits seem to be my specialty.”

“Fun. No wonder you want to get out.”

“It hasn't been so bad, really,” Laura protested. “I've kind of enjoyed doing them.”

Matthew considered her comments and nodded in agreement. “Come to think of it, you're right, Laura. I can think of a few people whose obits I'd like to see run.”

32

“Y
OU'VE BEEN AVOIDING
me all night, Doctor.” Francheska stood behind Leonard Costello and whispered in his ear.

Leonard turned and smiled warmly, but hissed his answer. “What the hell do you think you are doing?” He cast a furtive glance around the party to see where his wife was.

“Don't worry, lover. Mrs. Costello is on line for the powder room. You're safe.” Francheska smiled.

“Stop it, Francheska. This isn't funny.”

“I think it is. I think the whole situation is very amusing. And exciting, too. Want to slip away for a quickie?”

For a split instant, Francheska recognized that Leonard was actually considering her proposition. Then his survival instincts kicked in. His wife and many of his patients were at this party.

“Cut it out, Francie. How did you get in here, anyway?”

“I have friends in high places, too, Len. Laura brought me.” Francheska plucked a champagne cocktail as a waiter passed with a silver tray. “I thought it would be fun to surprise you.”

“Well, you did. Now let's say good night. I'll call you tomorrow.”

“I don't like being dismissed, Leonard.”

“That's part of the deal, Francheska, and you know it. You get the posh Upper East Side digs and the credit cards and anything your heart desires. I can tell that dress you're wearing must have set me back plenty. And that's fine. But the price is discretion. My wife finds out and it's all over. You've known that from the beginning.”

“You could at least make some pretense that you're going to leave her for me.”

“I've never said that I would. Please, let's not get into all of this now.” Leonard's eyes searched for his wife.

Francheska cast her eyes downward, not wanting him to see the hurt she was sure he would recognize there. She turned and walked away.

33

T
HOUGH
G
WYNETH'S
N
EW
Year's Eve party was costly to host, the main attraction of the night didn't cost her a penny.

The magical fireworks display over Central Park at midnight.

As the new year inched closer, the guests, some of them getting their coats first, trailed out to the wraparound terrace. Drinks in hand, they waited on their privileged perch for the fireworks to begin.

When she thought that all of the partygoers had made their way out to the terrace, Gwyneth went down the hall to her quiet bedroom to get her Pashmina shawl to wrap around herself. She heard the first pop of the fireworks explode outside as she pulled the soft wrap from her closet, and she jumped as she felt a tap on her shoulder.

“My God, you scared the hell out of me.”

“I'm sorry. But I need to talk to you.”

“What is it?”

“It's really very important, but not here. Someone might hear us. Want to go up on the roof and have a cigarette for ‘auld lang syne'?”

“But my guests…” Gwyneth trailed off.

“They won't miss you. Their attention is on the fireworks. Come on. You'll only be gone a few minutes. It will be worth your time. I promise you.”

34

“F
IVE, FOUR, THREE
, two, one. Happy New Year!”

Alone in his living room, Emmett watched, as he had for dozens of years, the televised New Year's Eve celebration from Times Square. The revelers cheered and danced around, horns tooted and blared and confetti fell as another year began.

Amateur night.

He did not understand those idiots who bothered to go into the city to be crowded and jostled in the freezing cold and wait for the Waterford crystal ball to fall. It was pathetic, really. Didn't they have anything better to do? He suspected this was the one night of the year that they got out. Why else would anyone go there? He took another swig of Budweiser.

He'd rather be alone. Or so he told himself.

But he was glad that Laura had been invited to that swanky uptown party. He wanted her to have a good time, a good life. He knew that it hadn't been easy for her.

Emmett knew that he should have paid more attention to Laura. He should have stopped drinking, should have straightened himself out. But he couldn't. Instead he'd gone from one lousy job to another, barely making ends meet. Each job loss led to another bender. If those checks hadn't come regularly, he didn't know what they would have done.

But Laura, in spite of everything, had succeeded. She was her mother's daughter. Smart, conscientious, determined. Laura was in the big leagues now. A producer at
KEY News.
New Year's Eve at Gwyneth Gilpatric's.

Emmett rose from his armchair and switched off the television set. He walked into the kitchen, stopping at the refrigerator to take out another beer. Then he opened the door to the basement, stumbling at the top step. He grabbed the handrail, righted himself and continued down the wooden steps.

The amusement park was lit for the holidays. He took his seat next to the Cyclone and gently pushed the tiny roller-coaster car up the tracks to the zenith. He held it there for a while before he let it go, watching it as it swooshed downward.

Such a long time ago. But that one night had changed his life forever.

It had started so innocently.

It was just an accident.

He hadn't had the courage to own up to what had happened. If he had, things would have been so different.

But would he have gone to jail? Would Sarah have married him? Would there have been a Laura? They said that God worked in mysterious ways. Maybe that had been his plan, that Emmett not tell, so that his life went on as it did. God surely wanted a world with Laura in it.

Did God forgive him?

But he knew from his old religious training that God would only forgive him if he confessed, admitted what he had done.

It was too late for that now.

He finished off the can of beer and switched off the amusement park lights. As he headed upstairs, he wondered if Gigi knew that Laura was working on a story about the park and Tommy Cruz. If Gwyneth Gilpatric did, she surely wouldn't like it. He chuckled in spite of himself.

35

O
NCE BEFORE, SHE'D
felt this way.

The car accident on Route 95 as she had driven up to college. Gwyneth had grasped the steering wheel tight, years ago, her body stiffening as the car hydroplaned across the rain-covered highway. She knew she'd been driving too fast. She always did.

She had waited for another car to smash into hers as she glided across the sheet of water that coated first one lane and then another, on her way to the heavy steel guardrail. Coming from the other direction, a huge tractor-trailer approached. She knew that if the guardrail didn't do its job, if her car flipped over to the other side of the superhighway, she would certainly collide with the giant gray eighteen-wheeler. The truck driver must have known that, too. She heard his warning horn blast angrily.

The windshield wipers continued their rhythmic slapping and she'd wondered how many cars would ultimately be involved in the accident as, one by one, they'd be unable to stop, skidding on the slippery macadam into the car in front of them. How many other people were going to have their lives altered or ended?

She'd listened as an old Beatles song blared from the radio and thought of the things she wouldn't want her parents, or whoever went through her things, to find.

She'd wondered if she was going to die.

She'd thought of all those things, observed all those details in five seconds. Five seconds from beginning to end: the car skidding, hitting the guardrail and then fishtailing around the back and smashing into the rail again, leaving the automobile looking like a giant accordion. Totaled.

No other cars had hit hers. And she had walked away that time, without a scratch. Miraculous, the state trooper later described it. A charmed life.

Five seconds. Yet, after the accident, she recalled with great clarity that everything had seemed as though it had been moving in slow motion, like videotape played frame by painstaking frame.

That's what it felt like now. Slow motion.

But there would be no miracle this time. This time, she didn't wonder if she was going to die. She knew it.

The cold winter air whipped her long black velvet evening skirt. She wondered if, when they found her, the skirt would be up around her waist. Pantyhose but no underwear, a smoother line. Interesting detail. Someone would be sure to report that.

She heard the firecracker pops of gunpowder and saw the fireworks flashing, sparkling white, green and red against the charcoal night. Diamonds, emeralds and rubies. Her own jewels, a rope of Akoya pearls, blew up from her neck across her face in a strangely comforting caress.

The inevitable was coming. Closer, closer. But what they said was wrong. Your life didn't pass before your eyes. She thought now of only one thing. One regret. One person.

The moment before she hit the icy sidewalk, she thought her last thought.

This is how Tommy Cruz must have felt.

The New Year

36

New Year's Day

T
HEY DIDN'T WAIT
for the elevator. Laura and Mike Schultz raced down the flights of stairs—her legs moving like rapid-fire, graceful pistons; his, clomping and heavy—both as fast as they could. As they flew through the elegant lobby and out toward the frosty street, Mike barked over his shoulder to the doorman.

“Call 911.”

The sidewalk was eerily deserted except for the lifeless velvet form collapsed on the cold concrete. It flashed through Laura's mind that in this exclusive, protected neighborhood, one of the world's wealthiest, people were snug and protected inside, busy doing what they were doing to celebrate the New Year. As they sipped their Dom Perignon or Veuve Clicquot, they were completely unaware that one of their own, illustrious and renowned, lay bloodied and broken below them.

“Jesus,” whispered Mike as they crouched down beside Gwyneth. She was lying face up, her eyes wide open, staring unseeingly into the clear night sky. A halo of dark blood pooled about her shattered head. A trickle of red oozed from the corner of her carefully painted mouth. Mike reached to feel the side of her neck, already certain that he would not find a pulse.

Laura tugged at the hem of Gwyneth's velvet skirt, trying to pull it down to give the woman some semblance of dignity as she lay exposed. She noticed that pearls lay scattered like luminescent drops of hail around Gwyneth's body as she heard a wailing police siren grow increasingly stronger.

Mike pulled his cell phone from his rear pocket.

“Who are you calling now?”

“The office.”

“Oh, God, Mike. No. You're not calling for a crew.”

He did not answer her, but listening to the one-sided conversation told her everything she needed to know. The cameras were coming.

She actually hesitated for only a moment and then she told him.

“Gwyneth's obit is ready to air, Mike. It's in my desk drawer.”

37

R
OWS OF
W
ATERFORD
champagne flutes and platters of uneaten petits fours were spread across the marble countertops in Gwyneth's gleaming kitchen. Delia stood in the corner, eyes downcast, her arms wrapped around herself to steady her shaking.

Blue-uniformed police officers and overcoated detectives were systematically making their way through the apartment, questioning both partygoers and staff alike. Delia knew that her turn was coming.

She ached for a cigarette, but she didn't dare.

Delia looked up to see a middle-aged man in a dark gray coat coming in her direction.

“Detective Alberto Ortiz, Twentieth Precinct,” he identified himself routinely. “And you are?”

“Delia. Delia Beehan.”

“And you were just working here for the evening?” he asked expressionlessly, as he eyed her starched white apron.

“No, sir. I am Ms. Gilpatric's personal maid. I work for Madam full-time.”

The passive look on Ortiz's face changed to intense interest and he stared at Delia keenly. The maid's lower lip was quivering.

“Any ideas on what happened here tonight?”

“No, sir.”

“Had Miss Gilpatric been upset about anything?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“Was she depressed?” the detective tried to draw her out.

“Not that I knew of, sir.”

“Can you think of any reason why she might want to kill herself?”

At that, Delia began to cry uncontrollably.

38

A
SHAKEN
N
ANCY
Schultz drove home alone.

Carefully, she followed the string of red taillights up the West Side Highway. It was almost two
A.M.
, but the highway traffic was steady. The New Year's Eve revelers were on their way back to suburbia.