Nighttime Is My Time: A Novel (25 page)

62

When Jean awoke, she was astonished to see that it was nine o'clock. She shivered as she got out of bed. The window was open a few inches from the bottom, and a cold breeze was blowing through the room. She hurried over and closed the window, then opened the blinds. Outside the sun was breaking through the overhead clouds, reflecting, she decided, the way she was feeling. The sun was breaking through the clouds in her life, and she was filled with a sense of euphoria. Laura is the one who has been contacting me about Lily, she reasoned, and if there is anything I can stake my life on, it is that Laura would never harm her. This is all about her need for money.

Still, I hope she gets in touch with me again soon, Jean thought. I should despise her for what she has put me through, but I realize now how desperate she was. There was something frenetic about her behavior on Saturday evening. I remember how she acted when I tried to talk to her before the honoree dinner. I asked her if she had seen anyone carrying a rose at the cemetery. She kept trying to brush me off, and finally she practically threw me out of her room. Was it because she could see how upset I was and felt guilty about what she was doing to me? Jean wondered. I'll bet anything she put the rose on the tombstone. She would have guessed that I'd visit Reed's grave.

Jean's last conscious thought before she fell asleep last night had been that she must let Craig Michaelson know about the fax from Laura. If on his own he had chosen to contact Lily's adoptive parents, it simply wasn't fair to continue to worry them.

She slipped on her robe, went over to the desk, fished in her pocketbook for Michaelson's card, and phoned his office. He took her call immediately, and her heart sank at his reaction to what she told him.

"Dr. Sheridan," Craig Michaelson said, "have you verified that this latest communication is actually from Laura Wilcox?"

"No, and I can't. But do I believe she sent it? Absolutely. I confess that I was shocked to learn Laura knew about Lily and must have known I had been dating Reed. She certainly never let on at the time. Anyway, we also know, because of the cell phone Robby Brent bought and the time element of when I supposedly heard from Laura, that Robby must have made the phone call to me, imitating her voice. So I think we have two situations going here. Laura knows who Lily is, and she is broke and desperate for money. Then Robby concocted Laura's disappearance because he intends to use her on his new sitcom and was just trying to generate publicity. If you knew Robby Brent, you would understand it's the kind of performance— and sneaky trick—that he is utterly capable of carrying out."

Again she waited for reassurance from Craig Michaelson.

"Dr. Sheridan," he said finally, "I can understand your relief. As you very correctly surmised, when you came to my office yesterday, I was not at all convinced that you might not be concocting a story because you were obsessed with your need to locate your daughter. Frankly, your outburst was what convinced me that you were absolutely on the level. So I'm going to level with you now."

He did handle the adoption, Jean thought. He knows who Lily is and
where
she is.

"I considered the potential danger to your daughter serious enough to contact her adoptive father. He happens to be out of the country right now, but I'm sure I will hear from him shortly. I am going to tell him everything you have told me including who you are. As you know, you and I do not have an attorney-client privilege, and I feel I owe it to him and to his wife to make them aware that you are both believable and responsible."

"That is absolutely fine with me," Jean said. "But I don't want those people to go through the hell I've been going through these last few days. I don't want them to get the impression that Lily is in danger now, because I don't think she is anymore."

"I hope she is not, Dr. Sheridan, but I think until Ms. Wilcox comes forward, we should not be too sanguine about the fact that a serious problem may not still exist. Did you show this fax to the investigator you told me about?"

"Sam Deegan? Yes, I did. As a matter of fact, I gave it to him."

"May I have his phone number?"

"Of course." Jean had memorized Sam's number, but the continuing concern in Craig Michaelson's voice upset her enough that she could not be sure she remembered it. She looked it up, gave it to him, then said, "Mr. Michaelson, we seem to have reversed positions. Why are you so worried when I'm so relieved?"

"It's that hairbrush, Dr. Sheridan. If Lily remembers anything about the details of losing it—where she was, who she was with—it is a direct link to the person who sent it. If she recalls having been in the company of Laura Wilcox, then we can believe the contents of the recent fax are on the level. But knowing the adoptive parents and knowing Ms. Wilcox's rather well documented lifestyle, I find it a big stretch to think that your daughter was likely to be around her."

"I see," Jean said slowly, suddenly chilled by the logic of his reasoning. She ended the call with Michaelson, after agreeing to keep in touch. She then immediately dialed Sam's cell phone, but got no answer.

Her next call was to Alice Sommers. "Alice," she said, taking a deep breath. "Please be frank with me. Do you think there's any chance that the fax from Laura, or supposedly from Laura, was a ploy to slow us down, to keep me from contacting Lily's adoptive parents and asking about the hairbrush?"

The answer was the one she feared yet instinctively knew she was going to receive. "I didn't trust it at all, Jeannie," Alice said reluctantly. "Don't ask me why, but it didn't ring true to me, and I could tell Sam felt exactly the same way."

63

As Eddie Zarro had warned, District Attorney Rich Stevens was upset and angry. "These broken-down performers come into this county doing publicity stunts and waste our time when we have a maniac on our hands/' he barked. "I'm going to issue a statement to the press to the effect that both Robby Brent and Laura Wilcox may face criminal charges for creating a hoax. Laura Wilcox has admitted that she's been sending those faxes threatening Dr. Sheridan's daughter. I don't care whether Dr. Sheridan is in a forgiving mood or not. I'm not. It's a crime to send threatening letters, and Laura Wilcox is going to answer for it."

Alarmed, Sam hastened to calm Stevens. "Wait, Rich," he said. "The press does not know about Dr. Sheridan's daughter or the threats to her. We can't let that out now."

"I'm aware of that, Sam," Rich Stevens snapped. "We're only going to refer to the publicity stunt that Wilcox confessed to in that last fax." He handed Sam the file on his desk. "Photos of the crime scene," he explained. "Take a look at them. Joy was the first one of our people to get there after the call came in. I know the rest of you have heard this already, but, Joy, fill Sam in on the victim and what the neighbor told you."

There were four other investigators in addition to Sam and Eddie

Zarro in the district attorney's office. Joy Lacko, the only woman in the group, had been an investigator for less than a year, but Sam had enormous respect for her intelligence and ability to extract information from shocked or grief-stricken witnesses.

"The victim, Yvonne Tepper, was sixty-three years old, divorced, with two grown sons, both of whom are married and live in California." Joy had her notebook in her hand but did not consult it as she looked directly at Sam. "She owned her own hairdressing salon, was very well liked, and apparently had no enemies. Her former husband has remarried and lives in Illinois." She paused. "Sam, all of this is probably irrelevant, given the pewter owl we found in Tepper's pocket."

"No fingerprints on it, I assume?" Sam queried.

"No fingerprints. We know it has to be the same guy who grabbed Helen Whelan Friday night."

"What neighbor did you talk to?"

"Actually, everyone on the block, but the one who knows anything is the one Tepper had been visiting and had probably just left when she was waylaid. Her name is Rita Hall. Tepper and she were close friends. Tepper had brought some cosmetics from her salon for Mrs. Hall and ran over with them when she got home last night, sometime after ten o'clock. The two women visited for a while and watched the eleven o'clock news together. Hall's husband, Matthew, had already gone to bed. Incidentally, this morning he was the first person to reach Bessie Koch, the woman who found the body and was blowing the horn of her car to get help. He was smart enough to tell the other neighbors to keep away from the body and to call 911."

"Did Yvonne Tepper leave Mrs. Hall's house directly after the news was over?" Sam asked.

"Yes. Mrs. Hall walked her to the door and stepped out onto the porch with her. She remembered that she wanted to tell Tepper something she'd heard about a former neighbor. She said they didn't stand there longer than a minute and that the overhead light was on, so they could have been seen. She said she noticed a car slow down and pull over to the curb, but she didn't think anything of it. Apparently the people across the street have teenagers who are always coming and going."

"Does Mrs. Hall remember anything about the car?" Sam asked.

"Only that it was a medium-sized sedan, either dark blue or black. Mrs. Hall went back into her house and closed the door, and Mrs. Tepper cut across the lawn to the sidewalk."

"My guess is that she was dead less than a minute later," Rich Stevens said. "The motive wasn't robbery. Her handbag was on the sidewalk. She had two hundred bucks in her wallet and was wearing a diamond ring and diamond earrings. The only thing that guy wanted to do was kill her. He grabbed her, pulled her onto her own lawn, strangled her, left her body behind a bush, and drove away."

"He stayed long enough to drop the owl in her pocket," Sam observed.

Rich Stevens looked from one to the other of his investigators. "I've been turning over in my head whether or not to release the information about the owl to the papers. Maybe someone would know something about a guy who's obsessed with owls or possibly keeps them as a hobby."

"You can imagine what a field day the media would have if they knew about the owl being left in the victims' pockets," Sam said quickly. "If this nut is on an ego trip, and I think he is, we'll be feeding him what he wants, to say nothing about the possibility of setting a copycat killer loose."

"And it's not as though we'd be warning women by releasing that bit of information," Joy Lacko pointed out. "He leaves the owl
after
he kills his victim, not before."

At the end of the meeting it was agreed that the best course of action was to warn women against being alone on the street after dark and to acknowledge that evidence pointed to the fact that both Helen Whelan and Yvonne Tepper had been murdered by the same unknown person or persons.

As they got up to go, Joy Lacko said quietly, "What scares me is that right now some perfectly innocent woman is going about her business, not realizing that in the next few days, just because she happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when that guy comes cruising by, her life will be over."

"I am not conceding that yet," Rich Stevens said sharply.

I am, Sam thought. I am.

64

On Wednesday morning, Jake Perkins attended his scheduled classes, with the exception of the creative writing seminar, which he felt he was more equipped to teach than the current instructor. Just before the lunch break, in his capacity as a reporter for the
Stonecroft Gazette
, he went into the office of President Downes for his scheduled interview, in which Downes was supposed to give his comments on the glorious success of the reunion.

Alfred Downes, however, was clearly not in good temper. "Jake, I realize I had promised you this time, but actually it's quite inconvenient now."

"I can understand, sir," Jake responded soothingly. "I guess you've seen on the news that the district attorney may press criminal charges against two of our Stonecroft honorees because of this publicity hoax."

"I am aware of that," Downes said, his voice icy.

If Jake noticed the frosty tone, he did not show it. "Do you think that all this adverse publicity reflects badly on Stonecroft Academy?" he asked.

"I would think that's obvious, Jake," Downes snapped. "If you're going to waste my time asking stupid questions, then get out of here now."

"I don't mean to ask stupid questions/' Jake said quickly, his tone apologetic. "What I was leading up to is that at the dinner, Robby Brent gave a check for ten thousand dollars to our school. In light of his actions of the last few days, are you inclined to return that donation to him?"

It was a question that he was sure would make President Downes squirm. He knew how much Downes wanted a new addition to the school to be built during his term as president. It was common knowledge that, while Jack Emerson had dreamed up this reunion, along with the idea of the honorees, Alfred Downes had been delighted by the concept of it. It meant publicity for the school, a chance to show off the successful graduates—the message being, of course, that they learned everything they needed to know at good old Stonecroft—and it would also be a chance to wring donations from them and other alumni at the reunion.

Now the media were speculating about the eerie coincidence of five women from the same lunch table who had died since they graduated from Stonecroft, and Jake knew that wouldn't make anyone want to send their kids there. And now the Laura Wilcox and Robby Brent publicity scheme was another blow to the prestige of the school. His face set in earnest lines, his red hair sticking up even more than usual, Jake said, "Dr. Downes, as you know, my deadline for the
Gazette
is coming up. I just need a quote from you about the reunion."