Manhattan Mayhem (11 page)

Bunny Darnell’s husband magically found a parking space near the Frick museum, and then he threaded their trio smoothly past a doorman and into an elevator that opened directly into a penthouse apartment.

“Buffet to starboard,” Mrs. Darnell advised Sam. “Drinks to port, host and hostess receiving guests amidships, in front of the windows. Will you want a ride back with us?”

“I’ll get myself home. Thank you.”

“No problem,” she said, adding, “as the young ones say, though I wish they wouldn’t. Whatever happened to a simple gracious ‘You’re welcome’?”

She then surprised him by placing a hand lightly on his shoulder to give herself a boost up to kiss his cheek.

“If you’re lucky, they won’t remember you,” she whispered, causing him to turn to her so sharply that he knocked her briefly off balance. Sam grasped her elbow to steady her.

He apologized as people around them stared with concern at her and disapproval at him.

Bunny Darnell looked straight into his eyes and said quietly but firmly, “Don’t be sorry for what you’ve done, Sam.”

He stared as she walked away, then he turned blindly toward the windows.

When he could think clearly again, he joined a line of people waiting to speak to the family. All around, he heard comments marveling at the view of Central Park. He looked out over its trees, on toward his beloved West Side, and wished he were there with his wife and son, inside his own happy family, instead of here, intimately, on the East Side, with an unhappy one.

When a white-jacketed waiter went down the line with a silver tray and wine, Sam was tempted, but he decided he’d better keep his wits about him.

“I was her doctor,” Sam told her mother quietly.

“I know who you are,” she said coldly.

She’d been his patient, too, years before—right up until the day she’d taken Priss to him for a pregnancy test.

“May I speak to you privately?” he asked.

She stepped back, indicating with a head gesture that he should follow her to the window ledge behind her.

“Excuse me for asking something that will seem none of my business, but did Priscilla speak to you in the days before she died?”

“Speak to us? If you mean, come here without warning after years of saying nothing to us, then yes, she did. If you mean, did she speak the same unspeakable things she said to us years ago, yes, she did. And I’m assuming she spoke them to you as well, or you wouldn’t be here asking this question. I have to give you credit, Doctor. Apparently, you have never spoken of them to anyone else, because I think we would hear about it if you had broken your vow of confidentiality. So I will
confide
in you, Doctor, that my elder daughter was a hateful destructive liar, not the saint some people think she was.”

He felt his own anger rise along with hers.

He’d intended to ask if she knew about her daughter’s fatal condition. He thought it might comfort them to know the killer hadn’t taken away a long life from Priscilla, hadn’t deprived her of marriage, a career, children, future friends, and meaningful years. The cancer was going to steal all that, regardless.

Now he didn’t feel like offering a single word of comfort.

It sounded to him as if Priss had given her family one last chance. She had told the truth, and once again they had rejected it and her.

He leaned in toward her mother. “If you ever want to know the real truth, Mrs. Windsor, I have the baby’s DNA. All you have to do is have your husband come in with a sample of his—”

She slapped him.

“Hey, hold up!”

When he stopped his fast walk to the elevator and turned, he was so unnerved that he could feel the blood drain from his face—which must, he thought, make her slap stand out like finger paint on his pale face.

The young woman chasing him down looked so like his late patient that he nearly blurted “Priscilla—”

As she got closer, the eerily strong resemblance vanished; she was younger than Priss, but looked older.

“Ha!” she said. “For a minute you thought I was her, didn’t you? I’ve spooked a whole lot of people today. So much fun. Speaking of which, what’d you do to piss off my mother?”

“I said something she didn’t want to hear. You’re Priss’s younger sister?”

“Yeah, I’m Sydney.” She laughed again. “I hope you think of something else offensive to say to my mother. That was very entertaining. Who are you, anyway?”

“I was her doctor.”

“Mom’s?”

“Well, yes, at one time. But I meant your sister’s.”

He saw a look of distaste cross her face. “Do you know, if she hadn’t given away all that money, I might be three million dollars richer now?”

“What makes you think she’d have left it to you?”

She gave him a sharp look. “And that’s your business how?”

When he didn’t answer, she said, with a lift of her chin and an unpleasant smirk, “At least she left me her boyfriend. Although, to be honest, I stole him a little earlier than that.”

Sam followed her glance to a dark-haired young man slouched against a wall, the sole of his left shoe propped against the gorgeous wallpaper, his hands crossed behind his back as he rested his weight on them. The propped foot made Sam feel like a grumpy old codger;
he realized that his first thought was:
No manners, no respect for other people’s property. Figures, for a jerk who’d let one sister steal him away from the other sister.
He felt pained on Priscilla’s behalf, but then thought maybe she’d got the better end of that particular bargain. The stolen boyfriend and the thieving sister deserved each other.

“Why didn’t your parents hold the service at their own church?” he asked.

“Because our minister might have said nice things about Priss.”

“Wow.”

“Hey, she’s lucky they didn’t hire a funeral home.”

“All this punishment just for being an unmarried pregnant teenager?”

Sydney shot him a furious look, which he received as an equal match to his own fury at all of them.

“What about you?” he asked her very quietly.

“What
about
me?”

“Your father—”

“Shut up! If you say anything else, I’ll slap you, too.”

Sydney turned away so fast that her long hair swung across her shoulders.

Seeing hostile looks from people around him, Sam continued on to the elevator and took it down, descending in regal solitude because no one wanted to ride with him.

Out on the street, Sam checked his phone.

His receptionist had texted:
Cop wants to talk to you.
She had left no name but did give him a number, which he called immediately.

The man who answered said, “Dr. Waterhouse. Thanks for calling me back. I’d like to talk to you about the murder of Priscilla Windsor. Where are you right now, sir?”

“Just leaving the funeral reception at her parents’ place.”

“Well, that’s a lucky coincidence, because I’m waiting outside there. By any chance, are you tall and handsome, with ridiculously great silver
hair, wearing a really nice gray suit?”

“I think you have me confused with Richard Gere. I’m medium height, mid-fifties, black suit, graying brown hair.”

“Oh, okay, I’ve got you now. I guess we can’t all be Richard Gere. But, really, you’re not so far from George Clooney.”

“Detective …”

“Paul Cantor. Turn left, look ten yards down for a short bald guy in a blue suit that he won’t let his wife throw out.”

They shook hands, crossed over to the Central Park side of the street, and found a bench, where they sat with their backs to the park and their faces toward traffic.

Without a word, the detective handed Sam a long thin piece of notepaper with Sam’s name and office information at the top. Under that were the words
TELL THE TRUTH
,
and then a list with an asterisk in front of each entry.

* Hotdog guy

* Dog lady

* Taxi drivers

* Sydney/Allen

* The Awful Parents

* The Other Awful Parents

* Dustin

All but the last entry had a single line drawn through it, as if each had been taken care of and then crossed off. Additional asterisks followed down the page, but nothing was listed beside them; she had either meant to add more or figured she already had plenty.

“Where’d you find this, Detective?”

“In her fanny pack. Do you have any idea what it is?”

“It’s a bucket list,” Sam informed him, and then he detailed the
facts of the illness that had been set on killing Priscilla until someone took its chance away.

“Ah, some of this explains the funeral,” the detective said.

“I think so.”

“Hot-dog guy. That was amazing.”

“She was an amazing young woman.”

“Five thousand bucks. Makes me wish I’d had a chance to be rude to her, too.”

Sam laughed.

“You liked her?” the cop asked him.

“Oh, yes. She was a genuinely nice person.”

“Who might want to kill her?”

“What? It wasn’t a random guy?”

“We have a witness who saw somebody dressed like a runner near her building. Leaning against it, like he was waiting. Straightened up when she came out. Started walking, as if following her. Crossed a street when she did, turned the direction she did, and kept going after her. It didn’t look dangerous at the time, our witness says; it looked more casual. But that’s a hell of a casual coincidence—that he’d just happen to be hanging out near her building.”