The Second Time Around (28 page)

I nodded to Drexel, thanked Charles Wallingford, and followed Mrs. Rider out of the room. She took time to close the door to the private office behind us. “There are a few telephone operators and keyboarders and some maintenance people still here,” she said. “Where would you want to start?”

“I think probably the keyboarders,” I said. She tried to lead me, but I fell in step beside her. “Is it all right if I talk to you, Mrs. Rider?”

“I would prefer not to be quoted.”

“Not even to comment on Vivian Powers's disappearance?”

“Disappearance or flight, Miss DeCarlo?”

“You believe that Vivian staged her disappearance?”

“I would say that her decision to stay after the plane crash is suspect. I personally observed her carrying files out of the office last week.”

“Why do you think she would take records home, Mrs. Rider?”

“Because she wanted to be absolutely certain that there was nothing in the files that would give a hint about where all our money went.” The receptionist had been tearful, but Mrs. Rider was furious. “She's probably over there in Switzerland with Spencer right now, laughing at the rest of us. It isn't just my pension that I lose, Miss DeCarlo. I'm another one of the fools who invested most of her life savings in this company's
stock. I wish Nick Spencer really had been killed in that plane crash. His rotten, oily tongue would be on fire in hell for all the misery he caused.”

If I wanted a reaction to how an employee felt, I certainly had it now. Then her face became scarlet. “I hope you don't print that,” she said. “Nick Spencer's son, Jack, used to come in here with him. He always stopped by my desk to talk to me. He has enough to live down without someday reading what I said about his contemptible father.”

“What did you think of Nicholas Spencer before all this came out?” I asked.

“What we all thought, that he walked on water.”

It was the same comment Allan Desmond had made in describing Vivian's reaction to Nicholas Spencer. It was the same reaction I'd had to him myself.

“Off the record, Mrs. Rider, what did you think of Vivian Powers?”

“I'm not stupid. I could see that there was a relationship developing between her and Nicholas Spencer. I think maybe some of us in the office realized it before he did. And what he saw in that woman he married, I'll never know. Sorry, Miss DeCarlo. I've heard she's your stepsister, but whenever she happened to be here—which wasn't often—she'd treat us all as if we didn't exist. She'd sail right past me into Mr. Wallingford's office as though she had every right to interrupt anything he was doing.”

I
knew
it, I thought. There
was
something going on between them. “Was Mr. Wallingford annoyed when she interrupted him?” I asked.

“I think he was embarrassed. He's a very dignified man, and she'd mess up his hair or kiss the top of his head, and then laugh when he would say something like ‘Don't do that, Lynn.' I'm telling you, Miss DeCarlo, on the one hand she ignored people, on the other, she acted as though she could say or do anything she wanted.”

“Did you have much chance to observe Vivian's interaction with Nicholas Spencer?”

Now that she'd opened up, Mrs. Rider was a journalist's dream. She shrugged. “His office is in the other wing, so I didn't see much of them together. But one time when I was leaving to go home, he was ahead of me and walked Vivian to her car. The way their hands touched and the way they looked at each other, I could tell there was something very, very special going on, and at the time I thought, ‘Good for them. He deserves better than the ice queen.' “

We were in the reception area, and I could see that the receptionist was looking at us, her head bent as if trying to pick up scraps of our conversation.

“I'll let you go, Mrs. Rider,” I said. “And I promise you that this has been off the record. Give me one more impression. You now believe Vivian stayed in the office to cover traces of the money. Right after the plane crash, did she seem genuinely grieved?”

“We all were heartsick and couldn't believe it had happened. Like a bunch of dopes, we were all standing around here crying and saying how wonderful Nick Spencer was, and we were all kind of looking at her because
we suspected that they had become lovers. She didn't say a thing. She just got up and went home. Guess she didn't think she could put on a convincing act for our benefit.”

Abruptly, the woman turned away from me. “What's the use?” she snapped. “Talk about a den of thieves.” She pointed to the receptionist. “Betty can show you around.”

As it turned out, I wasn't interested in talking to the people who would be made available to me. It was immediately clear that none of them held a position where they would know anything about the letter Caroline Summers wrote to Nicholas Spencer last November. I asked the receptionist about the laboratory. “Could that be shut down overnight like everything else?”

“Oh, no. Dr. Celtavini and Dr. Kendall and their assistants will be here for a while.”

“Are Dr. Celtavini and Dr. Kendall here today?” I asked.

“Dr. Kendall is.” She looked uncertain. Dr. Kendall had obviously not been on her list of people to be interviewed, but Betty did call her.

*   *   *

“Miss DeCarlo, do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a new drug approved?” Dr. Kendall asked. “In fact, only one in fifty thousand chemical compounds discovered by scientists make it to the public market. The search for a cancer cure has been unrelenting, going on for decades. When Nicholas Spencer started
this company, Dr. Celtavini was extremely interested and enthusiastic about the results reported in Dr. Spencer's files, and he gave up his position with one of the most prestigious research laboratories in the country to join Nick Spencer—as did I, I might add.”

We were in her office above the laboratory. When I met Dr. Kendall last week, I had thought of her as not being particularly attractive, but now when she looked directly at me, I realized that there was a compelling, almost smoldering fire that had not then been apparent to me. I had noticed her determined chin, but her dark blunt-cut hair had been tucked behind her ears, and I had not taken in the curious shade of her grayish green eyes. Last week I had the sense that she was a fiercely intelligent woman. Now I realized she was also a very attractive one.

“Were you with a laboratory or a pharmaceutical house, Doctor?” I asked.

“I was with Hartness Research Center.”

I was impressed. It doesn't get higher quality than Hartness. I wondered why she had given up that job to go with a new company. She herself had just said that only one in fifty thousand new drugs makes it to the market.

She answered my unasked question: “Nicholas Spencer was a most persuasive salesman in recruiting personnel, as well as money.”

“How long have you been here?”

“It's a little over two years.”

It had been a long day. I thanked Dr. Kendall for seeing me and left. On the way out I stopped to thank
Betty and wish her well. Then I asked her if she kept in touch with any of the girls who had been in the keyboarding pool. “Pat lives near me,” she said. “She left a year ago. Edna and Charlotte, I wasn't close to. But if you wanted to get in touch with Laura, just ask Dr. Kendall. Laura's her niece.”

I
t wasn't a question of
if
the cops would come back. It was
when
they'd come back that bothered Ned. He thought about it all day. His rifle was out of the way, but if they had a search warrant for his van, they'd probably find some of Peg's DNA there. She had bled a little when her head hit the dashboard.

Then they'd keep searching until they found the rifle. Mrs. Morgan would tell them that she knew he went to the grave a lot. Eventually they'd figure it out.

At four o'clock he decided not to wait any longer.

It was deserted in the cemetery. He wondered if Annie was lonesome for him the way he was for her. The ground was still so muddy that it was easy to dig up the rifle and the box of ammunition. Then he sat on the grave for a few minutes. He didn't care that his clothes were getting wet and dirty. Just being there made him feel close to Annie.

There were still some things—some people—he had to take care of, but once he'd done what he had to do, then the next time he came here he wouldn't leave. For just a minute Ned was tempted to do it now. He knew how it was done. Take off his shoes. Put the rifle barrel in his mouth and hook the trigger with his toe.

He started to laugh, remembering how he'd done that once when the rifle wasn't loaded, just to tease Annie. She had screamed and burst into tears, and then had run over to him and pulled his hair. It hadn't hurt. He'd laughed at first, but then he'd felt sorry because she was so upset. Annie loved him. She was the only one who had ever loved him.

Ned got up slowly. His clothes were so dirty again that he knew wherever he went people would stare at him. So he went back to the van, wrapped the rifle in the blanket, and drove back to the apartment.

Mrs. Morgan would be first.

He showered and shaved and brushed his hair. Then he took his dark blue suit from the closet and laid it on the bed. Annie had bought it for him on his birthday, four years ago. He'd worn it only a couple of times. He hated to dress up like that. But now he put it on, along with a shirt and tie. He was doing it for her.

He went to the dresser where everything was just the way Annie had left it. The box with the pearls he had given her for Christmas was in the top drawer. Annie had loved them. She said he shouldn't have spent $100 for them, but she loved them. He picked up the box.

He could hear Mrs. Morgan walking around upstairs. She always complained that he was messy. She
had complained to Annie about all the stuff in his part of the garage. She'd complained about the way he emptied the garbage, saying that he didn't tie the sacks but just threw them into the big pails at the side of the house. She used to get Annie so upset, and now that Annie was dead, she wanted to throw him out.

Ned loaded his rifle and walked up the stairs. He knocked on the door.

Mrs. Morgan opened it, but she kept the chain on. He knew she was afraid of him. But when she saw him, she smiled and said, “Why, Ned, you look so nice. Do you feel better?”

“Yes, I do. And I'm going to feel even better in a minute.”

He kept the rifle at his side so that she couldn't see it with the door open only a few inches.

“I'm starting to sort things out in the apartment. Annie liked you very much, and I want you to have her pearls. Can I come in and give them to you?”

He could see the suspicious look in Mrs. Morgan's eyes, and could tell she was nervous from the way she bit her lip. But then he heard the chain slide.

Ned quickly shoved the door open and pushed her back. She stumbled and fell. As he aimed the rifle, he saw the look he wanted on her face—the look that said she knew she was going to die, the look he'd seen on Annie's face when he ran out to the car after the truck slammed into it.

He was only sorry that Mrs. Morgan closed her eyes before he shot her.

They wouldn't find her until sometime tomorrow,
maybe even the day after. That would give him time to get the others.

He found Mrs. Morgan's pocketbook and took her car keys and wallet. There was $126 in it. “Thank you, Mrs. Morgan,” he said looking down at her. “Now your son can have the whole house.”

He felt calm and at peace. In his head he could hear a voice telling him what to do:
Ned, take your van and park it somewhere so they won't find it for a while. Then take Mrs. Morgan's car, her nice, clean, black Toyota that nobody will notice.

*   *   *

An hour later he was driving the Toyota down the block. He had parked the van in the hospital parking lot, where no one would think anything of it. People came and went there twenty-four/seven. Then he'd walked back, looked up at the second floor of the house, and got a good feeling thinking about Mrs. Morgan. At the corner, he stopped for the light. In the rearview mirror he saw a car slow down in front of the house, and then he watched as the detectives got out. On their way to talk to him again, Ned figured. Or to arrest him.

Too late, Ned thought, as the light turned green and he headed the car north. Everything he was doing, he was doing for Annie. In her memory he wanted to visit the ruin of the mansion that had started him dreaming of giving her a home like that. In the end, the dream became a nightmare that had taken her life, so he had taken the mansion's life. As he drove, it felt as if she
were sitting with him now. “See, Annie,” he would say when he stopped in front of the ruined mansion. “See, I got even with them. Your house is gone. Their house is gone.”