No Place Like Home (12 page)

“Georgette, I want to apologize.” Henry Paley was standing at the door to her office.

Georgette looked up.

Before she could answer, Paley continued: “That is not to say I didn't mean every word, but I apologize for the way I said it.”

“Accepted,” Georgette told him, then added, “Henry, I'm taking Celia Nolan to see the farmhouse on Holland Road. I know you were there last week. Do you remember if the key to the storage closet in the basement was there?”

“I believe it was.”

“Did you look in the closet?”

“No. The couple I took out were obviously not interested in the house. It was too pricey for them. We stayed only a few minutes. Well, I'll be on my way. Goodnight, Georgette.”

Georgette sat for long minutes after he left. I always said I could smell a liar, she thought, but what in the name of God has Henry got to lie about? And why, after he viewed it, didn't he tip me off to the fact the house is sure to move fast?

A
fter she had viewed the vandalism on Old Mill Lane, Dru Perry went straight back to the
Star-Ledger
office and wrote up the story. She was pleased to see that her picture of Celia Nolan fainting had been picked to run with it.

“Trying to put me out of business?” Chris, the newspaper's photographer who had rushed to the scene, asked jokingly.

“No. Just lucky enough to be there and catch the moment.” That was when Dru had told Ken Sharkey, her editor, that she wanted to do a feature story on the Barton case. “It's absolutely perfect for my ‘Story Behind the Story' series,” she said.

“Any idea where Barton is now?” Sharkey asked.

“No, not a clue.”

“What will make it a real story is if you can track Liza Barton down and get her version of what happened in that house that night.”

“I intend to try.”

“Go ahead with it. Knowing you, you'll find
something juicy.” Ken Sharkey's quick smile was a dismissal.

“By the way, Ken. I'm going to work at home tomorrow.”

“Okay with me.”

When she had moved from Washington five years earlier, Dru had found the perfect home. A small house on Chestnut Street in Montclair, it was a reasonable commute to the
Star-Ledger
in Newark. Unlike people who bought condos and town houses to avoid landscaping and snow-plowing problems, Dru loved tending her own lawn and having a small garden.

Another plus was that the train station was down the block, so she could be in midtown Manhattan in twenty minutes without the hassle of driving and parking. Dru, a film and theatre buff, went there three or four evenings a week.

Early in the morning, comfortably dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, coffeepot plugged in beside her, she settled at her desk in the office she had created in what would have been a second bedroom for most people. The wall in front of her desk was covered with a corkboard. When she was writing a feature story, she tacked all the information she downloaded from the Internet on it. By the time she had completed a “Story Behind the Story” feature for the
Sunday Star-Ledger,
the wall was a jumble of pictures, clippings, and scrawled notes that made sense only to her.

She had downloaded everything available about
the Liza Barton case. Twenty-four years ago, it had stayed in the news for weeks. Then, as with all sensational stories, it had quieted down until the trial. When the verdict was released, the story hit the headlines again. Psychiatrists, psychologists, and pseudo–mental health experts had been invited to comment on Liza's acquittal.

“Rent-a-Psychiatrist,” Dru mumbled aloud as she read the quotes attributed to several medical professionals who agreed that they were gravely concerned by the verdict and believed that Liza Barton was one of those children capable of planning and executing a cold-blooded murder.

She found one interview particularly grating. “Let me give you an example,” that psychiatrist had said. “Last year I treated a nine-year-old who smothered her baby sister. ‘I wanted her to be dead,' she told me, ‘but I didn't want her to stay dead.' That is the difference between my patient and Liza Barton. My patient simply didn't understand the finality of death. What she wanted was to stop the infant's crying. From every indication I see, Liza Barton wanted her mother dead. She thought her mother was betraying her deceased father when she remarried. The neighbors attested to the fact that Liza was always antagonistic to her stepfather. I wouldn't be surprised if she was intelligent enough to be able to fake that so-called trauma when she didn't say a word for months.”

It's people like that windbag who helped perpetuate the “Little Lizzie” myth, Dru thought.

When she began to put together a feature article for her series, Dru always listed on the board any name she came across that had been mentioned as being connected in any way with the story. Now two columns on the board were already full. The list began with Liza, Audrey Barton, and Ted Cartwright. The next name Dru added after that was Liza's father, Will Barton. He had died in a riding accident. How idyllic had his marriage to Audrey been? She intended to find out.

A name that jumped out at her as being of special interest was that of Diane Wesley. Described in the newspapers as “a model and former girlfriend of Cartwright,” at the time of the trial, she had posed for the photographers and willingly discussed her testimony even though she was under a gag order from the judge. She told reporters that she had dinner with Ted Cartwright the evening of the tragedy, and that he told her he'd been seeing his wife secretly, and that the child's hatred of him was the cause of the rift.

Diane's testimony could have helped convict Liza except for the fact that a former friend of hers went to court and said that Diane had complained that Ted had been physically abusive to her during their relationship. If so, then why was she so willing to back up his story at the trial? Dru wondered. I'd love to interview her now.

Benjamin Fletcher, the lawyer who had been appointed to defend Liza Barton, was another one who set Dru's antenna quivering. When she looked
him up, she found that he had gotten a law degree when he was forty-six, had worked as a public defender for only two years, then quit to open a one-man office handling divorces, wills, and house closings. He was still in practice in Chester, a town not far from Mendham. Dru calculated his age now to be seventy-five. He'd be a good starting point, she decided. The court probably won't open any juvenile files. But it's obvious Fletcher never specialized in juvenile defense. So why was someone who was relatively inexperienced appointed to defend a child on a murder charge? she wondered.

More questions than answers, Dru thought. She leaned back in her swivel chair, took off her glasses, and began twirling them—a sign her friends compared to a fox picking up a scent.

M
arcella hasn't changed a bit, Ted Cartwright thought bitterly as he sipped a scotch in his office in Morristown. Still the same nosy gossip and still potentially dangerous. He picked up the glass paperweight from his desk and hurled it across the room. With satisfaction he watched as it slammed into the center of the leather chair in the corner of his office. I never miss, he thought, as he visualized the faces of the people he wished were sitting in that chair when the paperweight landed.

What was Jeff MacKingsley doing on Old Mill Lane today? The question had been repeating itself in his mind ever since he saw MacKingsley drive past Marcella's house. Prosecutors don't personally investigate vandalism, so there had to be another reason.

The phone rang—his direct line. His sharp bark of “Ted Cartwright” was greeted by a familiar voice.

“Ted, I saw the newspapers. You take a good picture and tell a good story. I can vouch for how broken-hearted a husband you were. I can prove it, too. And, as you've probably guessed, I'm calling because I'm a little short of cash.”

W
hen Georgette phoned to suggest seeing other houses, I was quick to respond. Once we are out of this house and living in a different one, we will simply be the new people in town. We will have regained our anonymity. That thought kept me going all through the afternoon.

Alex had asked the movers to put his desk, his computer, and boxes of books in the library, a large room facing the back of the house. On my birthday, when he and the agent, Henry Paley, led me from room to room, Alex had enthusiastically announced that he would take the library as his home office, and pointed out that it would also accommodate his grand piano. I was nervous about asking him if he had canceled delivery of the piano from the storage house, scheduled for next week.

After our late lunch, with its strained atmosphere, Alex escaped to the library and began unpacking his books, at least those he intended to make accessible. When Jack woke up, I brought
him upstairs. Luckily, he's a child who can amuse himself. In the joy of late parenthood, Larry swamped him with gifts, but it was clear from the beginning that blocks were his favorite toys. Jack loved to build with them, creating houses and bridges and the occasional skyscraper. I remember Larry commenting, “Well your father was an architect, Celia. Must be in his genes.”

The genes of an architect are acceptable, I thought as I watched my son sitting cross-legged on the floor in the corner of my old playroom. While he played, I busied myself going through the files I had meant to clean out before we moved.

By five o'clock, Jack had tired of the blocks, so we went downstairs. Tentatively I looked into the library. Alex had papers scattered over the surface of his desk. He often brings home the file of a case he is working on, but I could also see a pile of newspapers on the floor beside him. He looked up and smiled when we came in. “Hey, you two, I was getting lonesome down here. Jack, we never did get very far with your pony ride did we? How about we try it now?”

Of course that was all Jack needed to hear. He rushed for the back door. Alex got up, came to me, and cradled my face in his hands. It is a loving gesture that never fails to make me feel protected.

“Ceil, I reread those newspapers. I think I'm beginning to understand how you feel about living here. Maybe this house
is
cursed. At least, a lot of people apparently think it is. Personally, I don't believe
in that stuff, but my first and only goal is your happiness. Do you believe that?”

“Yes, I do,” I said over the lump in my throat, thinking that Alex didn't need another weeping session.

The phone in the kitchen rang. I hurried to answer it, and Alex followed me on his way to the backyard. It was Georgette Grove telling me about a wonderful farmhouse that she wanted me to see. I agreed to meet her, then got off quickly because I heard the “call waiting” click. I switched to the other call as Alex started out the back door. He must have heard me gasp, because he turned quickly, but then I shook my head and hung up the phone. “The beginning of a sales pitch,” I lied.