Watching Amanda (13 page)

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Authors: Janelle Taylor

BOOK: Watching Amanda
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“My couch sentence,” Amanda repeated. “That's a good way to put it. And you're right—I arrived just before nine in the morning, and she was already there, apparently almost finished. She remarked that I was early. She was long gone before ten-thirty
“How did she strike you?”
Amanda thought about Clara, her cool demeanor. “She was a bit cold. Unfriendly. Wouldn't make small talk, didn't even acknowledge my father's death. Just all business. I guess I was a little surprised because I thought she'd remember me more fondly from our two-week visits in Maine.”
“Well perhaps she's angry that she wasn't left anything in the will,” Ethan said. “Perhaps she was in love with William. Perhaps a thousand things. We'll check her out. In fact, she may be the perfect person to start with for investigating William's personal life and the women in his life.”
“There are phone books for every borough in the cabinet under the telephone,” Amanda said. “We could look up her address.”
“Let's do it.”
Ethan took the Manhattan White Pages; Amanda took Queens. And it turned out they didn't have to worry about checking Brooklyn, the Bronx, or Staten Island.
Clara Mott lived only a few blocks away.
“Expensive neighborhood for a housekeeper,” Ethan pointed out. He glanced at the bright yellow clock on the wall. “It's barely eight o'clock. Let's wait until nine and give our Ms. Mott a call. We can use the time to come up with careful questions.”
Amanda nodded, relieved to think of dour Clara Mott as a ruthless, greedy bitch and would-be killer instead of her sisters or Paul.
CHAPTER 13
At exactly eleven, the doorbell rang.
“She's very punctual, isn't she?” Ethan said to Amanda as he glanced at the grandfather clock on the wall in the living room.
He had a feeling Clara Mott would be as precise with her answers. She'd been curt on the phone. Ethan had told her he had been retained by William's estate to investigate a break-in at the brownstone last night, and he might as well have told her that it was December for all it seemed to register as out of the ordinary. Ethan explained that with her familiarity with the brownstone, she might be able to shed light on access points or perhaps even secret doors or tunnels leading outside.
“Since I'm stuck here for another thirty minutes, you'll have to open the door,” Amanda reminded him. He glanced at her and was struck by how sexy she looked on the sofa, which had an ornate dark wood frame around the buttery brown leather upholstery.
He suddenly envisioned her lying down across the pillows, her cream-colored sweater rising to show an expanse of stomach, her large breasts rising and falling with her breath, her long, silky brown hair spilling over the side ...
“Ethan?” she said.
He started, shaking himself out of his very inappropriate fantasy, glad it hadn't gone further. He wouldn't have been in any position to walk to the door, let alone conduct a sharp investigation of Clara Mott.
“Sorry,” he said as the doorbell pealed again. He headed to the front door, relieved that someone else, even the sour housekeeper, would be between him and Amanda. Things had gotten a little too personal a little too quickly for his tastes. Amanda had a way of getting him to talk, something that only teenaged Nicky Marrow had been able to do in the past three years. Amendment: he had to add William Sedgwick to that short list. He'd gotten Ethan to talk plenty, to spill his guts to the point where he felt his despair, whereas all he'd felt before William had come along was emptiness. Coldness. Nothingness. After William, Ethan had
felt
. And he hadn't wanted to. But once the dam burst, he couldn't close it up again. The only thing to do at the time was to go into seclusion, far, far away from here, from New York City.
And yet here he was.
Fantasizing about making love to a woman when he hadn't had much of a sexual thought in three years. His despair over Katherine, over their unborn child, had taken over his mind, soul and body. He hadn't had sex in three years.
Concentrate, Black
, he cautioned himself.
Concentrate and open the damn door.
He cleared his throat and pulled open the door to find a prim, sour-faced woman wearing a dark gray wool coat.
“I was about to leave,” she snapped.
“Sorry about that,” he said. He gestured for her to come in, and she stepped over the threshold and into the foyer. “Thank you for coming, Ms. Mott. I appreciate it. May I take your coat?”
“I'm sure I won't be here long enough to justify that,” Clara responded.
He led the woman into the living room. “Please sit down,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you some coffee or tea?”
“Nothing, thank you,” she said, taking one of the antique chairs across from the sofa.
Ethan noticed she didn't even so much as glance at Amanda. He sat down on the matching antique chair instead of the sofa, careful to give the impression that he was on Clara's side, not Amanda's. If Clara was the attempted murderer, if she did have a major axe to grind against Amanda, he wanted to make sure he seemed neutral like someone Clara could call back with information. He had to make the woman feel that he was an ally.
“Before we begin,” he said to Clara, flipping open his notebook, “I just need to ask Miss Sedgwick to remind me of the exact time she was attacked last night.” He shifted slightly, so that he could address Amanda yet still see every one of Clara's facial movements. “Ms. Sedgwick, can you remind me of the exact time of the incident.” He surreptitiously eyed Clara for any change in her expression—fear, surprise, worry—anything, but again, she was poker-faced.
“The
incident?
” Amanda repeated with the perfect touch of haughtiness. “I wouldn't call someone trying to suffocate me with a pillow an
incident
.”
He pretended to be absorbed with his notes. “Yes, right. What was the exact time?”
“It was just after ten,” Amanda said.
He jotted that down in his notebook. “Mrs. Mott—”
“It's Miss,” Clara corrected.
“Miss,” Ethan repeated. “Miss Mott, I understand that you have keys to this brownstone. Who besides yourself and Miss Sedgewick has a set?”
“How would I know?” Clara asked.
“Well, perhaps while you were here sometime, someone let themselves in,” he said. “Can you recall anyone ever letting themselves in?”
“No, just William himself and Miss Sedgwick, yesterday.”
“Miss Mott,” Ethan began, “would you say that William entertained often?”
“I'm not paid to discuss my employer's private business,” she responded.
Ethan nodded. “I understand and appreciate your discretion, Miss Mott. I'm in no way inquiring in a personal sense, but simply to ascertain if there were a large number of people familiar with this house or only a small number.”
Clara pursed her lips. “I would say a large number. There was generally a party each quarter to celebrate the success of his company.”
Ethan made a show of jotting down that information. “I'd like to ascertain whether or not William gave a key to a friend, perhaps. A lady friend, maybe. Do you recall if William was involved in a relationship—”
Bingo.
Clara's cheeks flushed, just slightly. She regained her composure quickly, though. “It's my business to look after his home, not his personal life,” Clara snapped.
“Of course,” Ethan said. “I'm very sorry to have to even ask such a question. The estate is hoping to get to the bottom of the incident here last night, and I'm looking for any information, anything that might lead me to who tried to murder Miss Sedgwick.”
“From incident to attempted murder,” Amanda threw in, right on cue. “I'd appreciate it if you stopped calling it an
incident
.”
“I apologize Miss Sedgwick,” he said, barely looking at her. He turned his attention back to Clara, who seemed pleased by his inattention to Amanda, a beautiful young woman and heiress, and the daughter of her employer. He paused for a moment to give Clara an opportunity to address Amanda, to express shock or outrage or the least bit of concern for what happened last night. But the woman remained silent, sitting straight-backed. There were no questions as to how Amanda was doing or feeling. If she was all right. If she'd been hurt, if her son was all right.
In fact, Clara hadn't so much as eyed the playpen where Tommy sat cheerfully playing with a board book.
“I'm afraid I don't have any information that could help you,” Clara said. She glanced at her watch. “I'd better be going. I have an appointment.”
“Thank you so much for coming,” Ethan said as she stood.
“Yes, thank you,” Amanda seconded.
Clara primly nodded. “I'll see myself out.”
And so she did. The moment the door was closed, Ethan said, “Damn. I want to follow her. But I don't want to leave you here alone.”
“And I don't want to be here alone,” she said. “But it's just a couple more minutes till my time is up here. Go ahead. I have a cell phone. You can call me to tell me where you are, and I'll come meet you.”
“No, it's not worth it,” he said. “We won't lose sight of Clara just because we can't track her right now. And there's no way I'm leaving you and Tommy here alone. Not even for two minutes.”
She glanced at him, something shifting in her expression.
You care
, her expression said.
Thank you.
Don't get used to this
, he wanted to warn her.
Because in just a few weeks I'll be hundreds of miles away.
“Ethan, can I ask you to change Tommy's diaper? He's really starting to fuss... .”
Ethan stiffened and looked at Tommy. “I can't,” he said in such a low voice he wasn't sure she heard him.
She smiled. “Oh come on. I'll bet you can change a diaper. You must have nieces, nephews?”
“I told you there are no people in my life, didn't I?”
The smile left her face. “Well, changing a diaper is pretty easy.”
He glanced at her and the coldness was back in his eyes.
That ended the issue.
 
Clara Mott was either a slow walker or she was doing some window shopping. Ethan knew she'd turned left out of the brownstone and then right onto Columbus Avenue, so they rushed out of the brownstone, Amanda wheeling a very quickly-changed-and-dressed Tommy, in the direction Clara had gone.
They spotted her several blocks up and across the street, and then she turned onto Eighty-sixth Street.
And disappeared among the crowds.
“Damn,” Ethan said, catching his breath. “We lost her. She could have gotten on a bus, or gone into any of these stores or buildings.”
“Ethan,” Amanda said, gnawing her lower lip. “Do you think Clara could be the one? Did she try to kill me last night?”
He looked at her, then back out at the crowded intersection where Clara had disappeared. “I don't know, Amanda. The attacker was wearing a ski mask, but I'm quite sure it was a man. He could be working for her, though. She's certainly not trying to hide her animosity toward you. Were she guilty, I would have expected her to feign concern and surprise.”
“Maybe she's too smart for that. Reverse psychology?”
Ethan nodded. “Well, we'll keep tabs on her. At least we know where to find her every Wednesday and Saturday.”
“She was very protective of my father's privacy,” Amanda said. “Perhaps she just takes me for a spoiled daughter who never had much to do with William except for those summer weekends.”
“Or perhaps she was in love with William. Or perhaps she feels that her compensation for continuing to clean your father's house after his death isn't enough.”
“Well getting rid of me wouldn't get her anything,” Amanda said. “It's not like she'd inherit the brownstone if I didn't. So what could her motive be?”
Ethan shrugged. “Her motive might have nothing to do with money. She could be motivated by rage or her unrequited love for William—who knows? Perhaps she just wants to ensure you don't inherit the brownstone.”
“By killing me,” Amanda said. “Great.”
“Or scaring you to keep you from lasting the thirty days,” Ethan reminded her.
“How did this become my life?” she asked, shaking her head.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “One day everything's the same, and then in an instant, everything changes, and you don't even recognize yourself.”
“That's exactly it,” she said, holding his gaze. “That's exactly how I feel.”
“Let's take advantage of Tommy's nap time by paying a visit to someone else who might shed some light on William's personal life.”
“Who?” Amanda asked.
“His secretary,” Ethan said. “She'd been with William only for the past six months, so there won't be a loyalty issue. And I'll bet she'll be able to tell us quite a bit.”
“What happened to Sally?” Amanda asked. “I remember her being very pleasant on the phone the few times I called as a teenager. She was the one who always made the arrangements every summer, sending me my train tickets, that sort of thing.”
“I did some research,” Ethan said. “Sally was with William for twenty-one years. But she died last year in a car accident.”
“My father must have been so upset,” Amanda said. “And I didn't know a thing about it.” She shook her head. “I wish he would have let me into his life. Tommy could have brought him so much joy, but my father wasn't even interested in seeing him.”
“Your father sounds like a complicated man,” Ethan said gently. “Maybe his secretary will be able to shed some light—at least on the last six months of his life.
“I hope so,” Amanda said. “I really hope so.”

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