Partners In Crime (33 page)

"If you have a problem with any callers or
visitors, send them to me," he said reluctantly. He had better calm
her before she ran through the Main Floor of the bank shouting,
"Mayday! Mayday!" and spreading panic like wildfire.

"Roger, sir. I knew you'd be able to help."
He listened to her abrupt click and felt some small satisfaction.
At least she still had faith in his abilities.

Edgar Hale had gone into shock. Sterling
& Sterling would grind to a halt. Who was there to take charge?
He was unable to ponder the problem long. He had been unconsciously
aware of Sheila's phone ringing in the next room and it chose that
moment to jump to his line, startling him from his reverie.

"Personnel," he barked, unwilling to go into
an entire introduction.

"That you again, T.S.?" He heard Brian
O'Reilly's voice with some distaste. "What did they do? Demote you
to receptionist?" He laughed heartily at his joke.

T.S. really could not understand how Sheila
could have married such a buffoon.

"Hey, is my wife there?" he asked. It
occurred to T.S. that perhaps the man had been drinking. His hale
and hearty Irish manner was a shade too hale and hearty.

"No, she took a personal day," T.S. said
curdy. "I assumed to spend with you.'' Not that he could imagine
anyone wanting to spend a day with Brian O'Reilly in such a
disgraceful condition.

"A personal day? What the hell for?" the
Irish cop barked through the phone. "Certainly not to get personal
with me!" He laughed loudly at this joke and, for the first time,
T.S. detected a slight roar in the background. A murmur of voices
and clinkings. He looked at his watch. Good heavens, it was barely
noon and the man was whooping it up in a bar. No wonder Sheila
wasn't home.

The question remained—where was she?

"Do me a favor, would you, T.S.?" Brian
O'Reilly's voice was infected with a growing hostility that T.S.
was not at all sure he liked. "When you see my lovely wife, would
you ask her where the hell she was last night on my first night
home?"

T.S. heard the angry bang of the phone being
slammed down, followed by a sudden and complete silence. He stared
into the dead receiver and thought, "It's time to talk to Anne
Marie again."

Anne Marie looked pale and thin as T.S.
ushered her into his office. "I hope this doesn't take long," she
said almost apologetically. "With so many people out, I've had to
take on quite a lot of extra work and I can only stay so late
tonight. That Quincy is really taking advantage of the situation.
Ordering me around right and left.'' Anne Marie looked as well
turned out as ever, but tiny wisps of hair fluttered
uncharacteristically about her face and she wrung her hands tightly
as she spoke. Her voice hardened when she mentioned Mrs.
Quincy.

"No, of course, I won't keep you long," he
agreed absently before deciding on a roundabout tack. "Do you know
where Sheila is today?"

She looked in the direction of her
daughter's empty office. "She's taking a personal day, I believe.
She called me early this morning and said not to wait for her at
the subway stop.'' She spoke lightly, but her eyes narrowed and she
watched him with some suspicion.

He considered her answer in silence. Why
would Sheila need a personal day so suddenly?

"Why do you ask?" Anne Marie inquired
faintly, fidgeting in her chair. "Personal days are allowed, aren't
they? She rarely takes hers."

"Yes, yes, of course they are. It's on page
19 of the personnel manual." He thought hard. "Did she call you
from home?"

"Of course she did," the woman replied a bit
too quickly.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

She stared quietly at the rug. "I assumed
she did." Was it his imagination or was she evading his eyes?
Perhaps more direct action was called for.

"Anne Marie—if you know where she is today,
you must tell me."

The woman looked up at T.S., and he saw that
she was clearly upset. "What is so important about where Sheila
is?" she asked him. "I thought personal days were personal." Her
voice swelled indignantly.

"They are," he assured her. "But to be
perfectly frank, there are some troubling inconsistencies and
coincidences in Sheila's absences and appearances lately. With the
murders and all, everyone is under suspicion." He noted the instant
alarm on her face and hurried on. "Not that Sheila is really under
suspicion. Not for a moment. But I've been asked to verify her
whereabouts during certain times, and it appears she did not tell
me the entire truth."

They were both silent and when no answers
were forthcoming, T.S. continued. "You can see the importance of
the truth under the circumstances, can't you?"

"It's so distressing," Anne Marie said. Her
mouth trembled and she removed a handkerchief from her pocketbook.
T.S. hoped she would not break down in tears. He didn't know if he
could deal with yet another woman in tears.

"I assure you I will keep whatever you tell
me in complete confidence," he said.

She hesitated and dabbed at her eyes.
"Sheila and Brian are... having marital problems. She's been
unhappy for some time." She gave a sigh that caused her shoulders
to heave. "I can sympathize. It's not easy being married to a
policeman and when he drinks as much as Brian does, well..." She
let her words trail off, but her eyes flashed with a sudden anger
and she glared unexpectedly at T.S. "No doubt he suffers from the
same problems as my husband," she said bitterly.

"Problems?" he inquired, his voice an octave
too high.

"Not for him, of course. The inability of a
husband to remain faithful is really only a problem for the wife,
wouldn't you say?" She stared at T.S. and he flushed, looking away
for comfort. He remembered the lieutenant's failure to locate Tommy
Shaunessy the day Anne Marie was being questioned and how
Abromowitz had kidded about her husband's obvious infidelity. Well,
it was now apparent that Anne Marie knew everything and was clearly
not as amused as the lieutenant.

"I've always found it strange how policemen
find it impossible to keep either their guns or... or their private
parts where they belong, haven't you?" She stared at T.S. sweetly
but an angry fire smoldered in her gaze.

"I hadn't noticed," T.S. assured her
hastily. Oh god, the things he had to learn about people. Was no
one as honorable as they seemed? "Where has Sheila been?" he
prompted her gently. "Brian called and said she never came home
last night."

The woman looked up at him with genuine
surprise. "I assure you, I don't know the answer to that." She
clamped her lips together and stared thoughtfully out the window.
"I thought you meant today. Today she's going to see a lawyer. To
see about a separation and, I suppose, a divorce." This final
admission pushed her over the brink and she began to quietly
cry.

"Now, now, Anne Marie," T.S. said, nearly as
distressed as she was at her unhappiness. "People get divorced
every day. It's not a crime."

She looked up at him with tear-stained
cheeks. "Try telling that to Father O'Donnell. She'll likely be
excommunicated from the Church.''

"Surely they don't bother with"—he groped
for the right word— "official excommunication these days."

"Oh, you'd be surprised," she sobbed in
reply. "But a divorce is the best thing for her. I know that." She
stared at the wall and paused dramatically, tears dripping down her
cheeks. "Better to suffer excommunication than be put through the
kind of humiliation I've had to endure." She glared again at T.S.
"Men are all alike."

He was quite offended and spread his hands
wide in protest. He was not like that at all. He had always thought
he was rather unique. But at least she had told him some, though
not all, of what he needed to know. If Sheila's home problems were
that severe, perhaps she had simply been staying at a girlfriend's.
He watched Anne Marie sob into her handkerchief for a moment longer
before deciding that, so long as she was crying anyway, he might as
well take the plunge.

"Anne Marie—is Sheila adopted?" he
asked.

The effect was startling. She stopped her
crying immediately, handkerchief raised halfway to her nose, and
stared at him in astonishment. An emotion he could not
fathom—anger, suspicion, panic or fury—rippled across her face and
was gone.

"Is Sheila adopted?" he asked again.

"Who told you that?" she hissed, tears
forgotten.

"I... well, no one. I'm just guessing."

"You don't guess about things like that."
Anne Marie leaned forward, anger replacing her distress. "What do
you know about that?" She leaned forward and repeated her question
even more loudly. "What do you know about that?''

"Nothing," he replied, astonished.
"Honestly. I'm just guessing."

"They swore to me that it would always be
kept a secret," she declared bitterly.

"Who is they?" he asked, ignoring her
reproachful glare.

"The nuns at the agency."

"You adopted her through the Church?"

"Of course I did." She sat up straight in
her chair and blew her nose daintily. "I suppose now you'll want to
know why we couldn't have children of our own," she said somewhat
nastily.

"No, no, no." He was appalled at this swipe
at his good manners. "Not at all. I can't explain it to you right
now, but it's important that I know whether or not Sheila is
adopted."

"I'll tell you anyway," Anne Marie declared.
"It's because the great Tommy Shaunessy is sterile. That's right!
The big tough guy can't father a child." Her voice dripped with
scorn. "But does he let that bother him? No, not at all. No thought
to the anguish he has caused his wife. Oh, no." She glared at T.S.
with a malevolence that frightened him. "Instead, he's used it as
an excuse to play around for years. My husband has been unfaithful
to me for decades, all because he can't father a child!"

"Please, Anne Marie. Please." He was
practically begging her now. He wanted to hear no more about
unfaithful husbands and sex. How quickly the genteel turned tawdry
when you looked beneath the surface. "Just tell me about Sheila.
It's for your daughter's own good," he pleaded with her. "Please,
Anne Marie. You've known me for years, surely you can trust me. We
could find out other ways, you know."

"You wouldn't find out much," she said
nastily. "Those records are sealed."

"We could get a court order," he countered,
returning her angry tones. He was tired of her nonsense. "And I
will if I have to."

Her manner changed abruptly. "Not even
Sheila knows," she told him. "Just her father and I. And... one or
two other people." She twisted her handkerchief. "When we couldn't
have children of our own, it was terrible. Everyone kept asking
when we were going to start a family. They whispered that it was
me, of course. No one would dream that one of the Shaunessy boys
could be shooting blanks." She laughed bitterly and T.S. sighed. He
didn't want her to get started again on that.

"You can imagine, back then, what it was
like," she said sadly. "Living in a Catholic neighborhood filled
with young girls and boys and having none of your own. We were the
only family on our block without children." She was staring again
at the wall, lost in her own thoughts, many miles and many years
away from where they sat. "Finally, we contacted a monsignor at
another church on... on Long Island, I believe. It was my mother's
idea, rest her soul. She was actually the one who arranged it. She
felt it would be easier on Sheila, although we didn't know it would
be Sheila at that point, if no one suspected that she was adopted.
And easier on Tommy, no doubt."

She blew her nose daintily again and
continued. "To make a long story short, we didn't have to wait
long." She looked up at T.S. with indignation. "There were no
alternatives, you understand, for pregnant women in those days." He
nodded. "Nowadays, of course, it's... different." She stopped as if
aware she was in danger of wandering off the track once more. "At
any rate, we were put in touch with an agency and heard about a
young girl who was expecting to deliver in six months or so. I went
to stay at my aunt's house in Maine and the story went around that
I had been ordered to bed for the whole pregnancy. When Sheila was
born and turned out to be Sheila, Tommy and I simply collected her
at the hospital and brought her home and no one ever knew. Since I
hadn't been physically pregnant, I was emotionally unprepared for
the enormity of how much I would love her." She broke down again
and began to sob.

"I don't want her to know anything," she
begged T.S. through tears. "She'll hate me for not telling her
first. I don't want her to know." Her sobs grew louder.

"I won't say anything unless I have to,"
T.S. quickly assured her. Why in the world hadn't she told Sheila
when she was younger? What was the big deal? God, everyone was so
on edge. He couldn't take the tension much longer.

"I couldn't bear to leave her and go back to
work so soon after getting her," Anne Marie whispered. "Mr.
Cheswick kept my job open an extra year for me. He was the only one
who knew the truth." She paused in her story, tears on hold, and
looked at T.S. closely. "How did you know?" she asked him
again.

He shrugged. "She doesn't look a bit like
you or her father," he pointed out, feeling a need to defend
himself. "Look at her blonde hair. Look at yours. It's
blue-black."

"Oh, who really does look like their
parents?" She stared at him a moment longer but saw she would get
nothing out of him. "Anyway, Sheila mustn't know."

"Are you sure she doesn't know already?
Children have a way of sensing the very things we try to hide from
them."

"Of course I'm sure. She's never even
considered the possibility or brought it up," Anne Marie said
quickly. "And I don't see why we have to now."