The Second Time Around (31 page)

It was the speech Don Carter had told me to expect, with the slight variation that Garner delegated it to Lowell Drexel for delivery.

Then it was Wallingford's turn: “The announcement will be made on Monday, Carley. So you will understand if I ask to postpone your visit to my home. At a later date I will enjoy meeting with you, of course.”

At a later date there won't be any story, I thought. You three want to get this story off the table and into the shredder as fast as possible.

I was not about to go gently into that good night. “Mr. Garner, I'm sure that your company's generosity will be greatly appreciated. Speaking for myself, I gather it will mean that at some point I can expect a check for twenty-five hundred dollars in full compensation for the twenty-five thousand dollars I lost.”

“That's right, Miss DeCarlo,” Drexel said.

I ignored him and stared at Adrian Garner. He stared back at me and nodded affirmatively. Then he did open his mouth: “If that's all, Miss DeCarlo—”

I interrupted him. “Mr. Garner, I would like to know for the record if you personally believe that Nicholas Spencer was seen in Switzerland.”

“I never comment ‘for the record' without factual knowledge. In this case, as you must know, I have no direct factual knowledge.”

“Did you ever have occasion to meet Nicholas Spencer's assistant, Vivian Powers?”

“No, I did not. My meetings with Nicholas Spencer all took place in this office, not in Pleasantville.”

I turned to Drexel. “But you sat on the board, Mr. Drexel,” I persisted. “Vivian Powers was Nicholas Spencer's personal assistant. Surely you must have met
her at least once or twice. You'd remember her. She's a very beautiful woman.”

“Miss DeCarlo, every executive I know has at least one confidential assistant, and many of them are attractive. I don't make it a habit of becoming familiar with them.”

“Aren't you even curious as to what happened to her?”

“I understand she attempted suicide. I have heard the rumors that she was romantically involved with Spencer, so perhaps the end of that relationship, whichever way it ended, brought on serious depression. It happens.” He stood up. “Miss DeCarlo, you'll have to excuse us. We have a meeting in the conference room in less than five minutes.”

I think he would have dragged me out of the chair if I had tried to say another word. Garner did not bother to lift his bottom off the seat when he said briskly, “Goodbye, Miss DeCarlo.” Wallingford took my hand and said something about my getting together with Lynn soon because she needed cheering up; then Lowell Drexel escorted me from the sanctum sanctorum.

The largest wall of the reception area contained a map of the world that gave testimony to the global impact of Garner Pharmaceuticals. Key countries and locations were symbolized by familiar landmarks: the Twin Towers, the Eiffel Tower, the Forum, the Taj Mahal, Buckingham Palace. It was exquisite photography and got across the message to anyone who looked at it that Garner Pharmaceuticals was a worldwide powerhouse company.

I stopped to glance at it. “It's still painful to look at a picture of the Twin Towers. I guess it always will be,” I told Lowell Drexel.

“I agree.”

His hand was under my elbow. “Get lost” was the message.

There was a picture on the wall by the door of what I took to be the hotshots at Garner Pharmaceuticals. If I had any thought of getting more than a passing glance at it, I wasn't given the opportunity. Nor did I get a chance to pick up some of the giveaway literature stacked on the table there. Drexel propelled me into the corridor and even stood with me to make sure I got on the elevator.

He pressed the button and looked impatient that there wasn't a door opening magically at his touch. Then an elevator arrived. “Good-bye, Miss DeCarlo.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Drexel.”

It was an express elevator, and I plunged down to the lobby, waited five minutes, then took the same elevator back again.

This time I was in and out of the executive offices of Garner Pharmaceuticals in a matter of seconds. “I'm so sorry,” I murmured to the receptionist. “Mr. Garner asked me to be sure to pick up some of your literature on my way out.” I winked at her, girl to girl. “Don't tell the great man I forgot.”

She was young. “Promise,” she said solemnly as I scooped up the giveaways.

I wanted to study the picture of the assembled Garner honchos, but I heard Charles Wallingford's voice in
the corridor and quickly moved away. This time, however, I didn't go directly to the elevator but instead scurried around the corner and waited.

A minute later I peeked around cautiously to see Wallingford impatiently pressing the button for an elevator. So much for the big meeting in the conference room, Charles, I thought. If there is one going on, you're not invited to it.

It had been, to say the least, an interesting morning.

*   *   *

It was to be an even more interesting evening. In the taxi on the way back to the office, I checked the messages on my cell phone. There was one from Casey. Last night when he came to my apartment, he had felt it was too late to phone Nick Spencer's former in-laws, the Barlowes, in Greenwich. He had already spoken to them this morning, though. They would be home by five o'clock today and he asked if it would be convenient for me to come at that time. “I'm off this afternoon,” Casey finished. “If you want, I'll drive you up there. I can have a drink with Vince next door while you're with the Barlowes. Then we'll find a place to have dinner.”

I liked that idea a lot. Some things don't need to be put into words, but I had the feeling the minute I opened the door for Casey last night that everything had changed between us. We both knew where we were heading, and we were both glad to be going there.

I called Casey briefly, confirmed that he'd pick me up at four o'clock, and went back to the office to start to
put together a preliminary draft of a profile of Nicholas Spencer. I had a great idea for a caption:
Victim or Crook?

I looked at one of the most recent pictures taken of Nick before the plane crash and liked what I saw. It was a close-up and showed a serious and thoughtful expression in his eyes, and a firm, unsmiling mouth. It was the picture of a man who looked deeply concerned but trustworthy.

That was the word:
trustworthy.
I could not see the man who had so impressed me that night at dinner, or who was now looking steadily back into my eyes as I stared at his photograph, lying, cheating, and faking his own death in a plane crash.

That thought opened another avenue of thought that I had accepted without question. The plane crash. I knew that Nick Spencer gave his position to the air controller in Puerto Rico only minutes before communications ceased. Because of the heavy storm, the people who believed he was dead assumed that the plane had been struck by lightning or had been caught in a wind shear. The people who believed he was alive thought he had somehow managed to get out of the plane before the crash, which he had somehow engineered.

Was there another explanation? How well had the plane been maintained? Had Spencer shown any signs of illness before he left? People under stress, even men in their early forties, can have a sudden heart attack.

I picked up the phone. It was time to have a quiet visit with my stepsister, Lynn. I called her and told her
I'd like to come by for a talk. “Just the two of us, Lynn.”

She was on her way out and sounded impatient. “Carley, I'm spending the weekend in the guest house in Bedford. Would you like to come up on Sunday afternoon? It's quiet there, and we'll have plenty of time to talk.”

O
n the way back to Bedford, Ned stopped and filled up on gas; then he picked up sodas and pretzels, and bread and peanut butter, in a hole-in-the wall convenience store next to the service station. That was the kind of food he liked to eat when he watched television and while Annie puttered around the apartment or the Greenwood Lake house. She wasn't much of a television watcher, except for a couple of shows like
Wheel of Fortune.
She was usually good at figuring out the answers before the contestants did.

“You should write to them. You should go on the program,” he used to tell her. “You'd win all the prizes.”

“I'd be a big dummy standing there. If I knew all those people were looking at me, I wouldn't be able to say a word.”

“Sure you would.”

“Sure I
wouldn't.”

Sometimes lately he would just think about her, and it was as if she was speaking to him—for instance, when he was about to put the soda and stuff on the counter, he could hear Annie telling him to get milk and cereal for the morning. “You need to eat right, Ned,” she said.

He liked it when she scolded him.

She'd been with him when he stopped for gas and food, but the rest of the way back to Bedford, he couldn't see or feel her in the car. He couldn't even see her shadow anymore, but maybe that was because it was dark.

Arriving at the Spencer property, he was careful to make sure that there was no one else on the road before he pulled up to the service gate and pressed in the code. When he had torched the house, he had gloves on so he wouldn't leave fingerprints on the panel. Now it didn't matter. By the time he left here for good, everybody would know who he was and just what he had done.

He parked his car in the service garage, the way he'd planned it. The room had an overhead light, but even though he knew it couldn't be seen from the road, he didn't take a risk turning it on. He'd found a flashlight in the glove compartment of Mrs. Morgan's car he could use, but when he turned off the car's headlights, he found he didn't need it. There was enough moonlight coming in the window to see the piles of furniture. He went to the stack of lounge chairs, lifted the top one off, and put it between the car and the wall with the shelves.

There was a name for this kind of furniture, but it wasn't chair and it wasn't couch. “What do you call those things, Annie?” he asked.

“Divan.”

In his head he could hear her saying it.

The long cushions were on the top shelf, and it was a struggle to flip one of them down. It was heavy and thick, but when it was in place on the divan, he tested it. It felt as good as his chair in the apartment. He wasn't ready to go to bed yet, however, so he opened the bottle of scotch.

When he finally got sleepy, it was chilly, so he opened the trunk, unwrapped the blanket from the rifle, picked up the rifle, and laid it down again. It made him feel good to have the rifle next to him, and he shared the blanket with it.

He knew he was safe there, so he could let himself fall asleep. “You need to sleep, Ned,” Annie was whispering.

When he woke up, he could tell from the shadows that it was late afternoon; he'd slept all day. He got up and walked to the right side of the garage and opened the door to the closetlike space that held a sink and toilet.

There was a mirror over the sink. Ned looked at himself and saw his red-rimmed eyes and the stubble on his face. He'd shaved not even a day ago, and already his beard was growing in. He had loosened his tie and the top button of his shirt before he lay down last night, but he probably should have taken them off. They looked kind of wrinkled and messy now.

But what difference did it make? he asked himself.

He splashed cold water on his face and looked at the mirror again. The image was blurry. Instead of his face he was seeing Peg's eyes and Mrs. Morgan's eyes, wide and staring and scared; like when they had realized what was going to happen to them.

Then images of Mrs. Schafley and the Harniks started to slither around inside the mirror as well. Their eyes were scared, too. They knew something was going to happen to them. They could tell he was coming after them.

It was too early to drive to Greenwood Lake. In fact, he decided he shouldn't leave the garage until ten o'clock—that would mean he'd get there about quarter past eleven. Last night it wasn't smart when he kept driving around the same mile or two, waiting for the Harnicks to get home. The cops might have noticed.

*   *   *

The soda wasn't cold anymore, but he didn't care. The pretzels were filling enough. He didn't even need the bread and peanut butter, or the cereal. He turned on the car radio and found the news. On both the nine o'clock and the nine-thirty editions, there was nothing about a nosy landlady in Yonkers being found shot dead. The cops had probably rung her bell, saw her car was missing, and thought she was out visiting, Ned decided.

Tomorrow they might get more nosy, though. Also, tomorrow her son might start wondering why he hadn't heard from her. But that would be tomorrow.

At a quarter of ten Ned raised the garage door. It was
cool outside, but it was the nice kind of cool that comes after a day that had a lot of sunshine. He decided to stretch his legs for a few minutes.