Nighttime Is My Time: A Novel (35 page)

Laura's breathing became gasping gulps, then formed into barely coherent words: "Cleaner's bags… cleaner's bags… no… no… no."

Even with the dark shades over the windows, a little light managed to seep into the room. Jean could see the outline of plastic bags suspended by hangers that had been hooked over the arm of the lamp by the bed. She could see writing across the front of the one directly facing her. What was it? Was it a name? Was it…? She couldn't quite make it out.

Her shoulder was touching the edge of the heavy shade. She threw her weight to one side, then to the other, until the chair moved a few inches, and the shade caught on her shoulder and was tilted away from the window frame.

The added light made the thick black marker pen writing on the plastic bag clear enough to be read: lily/meredith.

82

Jake could not skip his first class at 8:00 a.m., but as soon as it was over, he rushed to the studio. In his opinion the prints of the pictures he had taken yesterday looked even better in daylight than they had under the overhead light in the late afternoon. He congratulated himself as he studied them.

The McMansion on Concord Avenue really looks so "see me, I'm rich," he thought. The house on Mountain Road is such a great contrast to it—middle-class, comfortable suburban, but now with a mystique about it. At home that evening he had checked the Internet and confirmed that Karen Sommers had been murdered in the corner bedroom on the right side of the second floor. I know Dr. Sheridan used to live next door when she was growing up, Jake thought. I'll stop at the hotel and see if she can confirm that was Laura's room. It probably was. According to the floor plan of the Sommers murder on the Internet, it's the other large bedroom on that floor. It makes sense that precious only-child Laura got it. Dr. Sheridan will probably tell me. She's been nice —not like old "Throw-Him-in-Jail" Deegan.

Jake put the prints of yesterday's pictures in the bag with his extra film. He wanted to have them available while he was shooting, in case he needed them for comparison.

At 9:00 a.m. he was approaching Mountain Road. He had decided that it wouldn't be smart to park in the street. People noticed strange cars, and that cop might recognize his pride and joy. At times like this he wished he hadn't painted it with zebra stripes.

I'll have a soda and a Danish, leave my car at the deli, and walk up to Laura's house, he decided. He had borrowed one of his mother's oversized shopping bags from Bloomingdale's. There'd be no car and no camera in sight. I can sneak down Laura's driveway and get my pictures of the back of the house. I hope the garage doors have windows. That way I can tell if there are any cars parked inside.

At 9:10 he was sitting at the counter of the delicatessen at the foot of Mountain Road, chatting with Duke, who had already explained that he and Sue, his wife, had owned the place for ten years, that it used to be a dry cleaner, that they were open from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and that they both enjoyed being here. "Cornwall is a quiet town," Duke said as he whisked an imaginary crumb from the counter, "but a nice town. You say you go to Stonecroft Academy? That's pretty Tony. Some of the reunion people were in here. Oh, there he goes."

Duke's eyes had darted to the window that faced Mountain Road.

"There who goes?" Jake asked.

"The fellow who's been coming in early mornings and some late evenings to pick up coffee and toast or coffee and a sandwich."

"Know who he is?" Jake asked, not really caring.

"Nope, but he's another one of your reunion people, and he's been coming and going all morning. I saw him go out in his car, come back a little while later, and now he's on his way again."

"Uh-huh," Jake said as he got up and pulled some squashed dollar bills out of his pocket. "I feel like stretching my legs. Is it okay if I leave my car outside for about fifteen minutes?"

"Sure, but not more than that. As it is, we don't have enough parking spots."

"Don't worry. I'm in a hurry, too."

Eight minutes later Jake was in the backyard of Laura's former home, taking pictures. He photographed the back of the house and even took a couple of shots of the kitchen through the door. A grill covered the glass pane over the door, but looking in, he could see a fair amount of the room. It could be a display kitchen in Home Depot, he thought. The counters that he could see were bare—no toaster, no coffee pot, no canisters, no cutsie-pie plates or trays or radio or clock. Absolutely no sign of occupancy. I guess for once in my life I was wrong, he decided reluctantly.

He studied the tire tracks on the driveway. There have been a couple of cars here, he thought. But that could be from the guy who rakes the leaves. The garage doors were closed and didn't have windows, so he couldn't check for cars.

He went back up the driveway, crossed the street, and took several more pictures of the front of the house. I guess that'll do it, he thought. I'll go and develop them right away. Then I'll phone Dr. Sheridan and ask her if she remembers which bedroom was Laura's when they were kids.

It would have been more fun to have found Laura Wilcox and Robby Brent holed up here, he thought as he put the camera back in the shopping bag and started down the hill. But what can you do? You can cover a story, but you can't invent one.

83

After her first class, West Point yearling Meredith Buckley rushed to her room for a final review of her notes for the exam in linear algebra, the course that was proving to be the toughest of her second year at West Point.

For twenty minutes she focused intensely on the notes. As she was putting them back in the folder, the phone rang. She was tempted not to answer it, but thinking that it might be her father calling to wish her luck on the exam, she picked it up and then smiled. Before she could speak, a cheerful voice was saying, "May I have the pleasure of inviting Cadet Buckley, daughter of the distinguished General Charles Buckley, to share another weekend with her parents and myself at my home in Palm Beach?"

"You don't know how wonderful that sounds," Meredith said fervently as she thought of the glamorous weekend she had enjoyed with her parents' friend. "I'll come anytime except, of course, when West Point has other plans for me, which is just about always. I hate to seem rude, but I'm heading into an exam."

"I need five, make that three, minutes of your time. Meredith, I was at a class reunion at Stonecroft Academy in Cornwall. I think I mentioned to you I was going to it."

"Yes, you did. I'm so sorry, but I simply can't talk now."

"I'll be fast. Meredith, a classmate of mine who attended the reunion is an intimate friend of Jean, your birth mother, and has written a note to you about her. I promised to deliver the note to you personally. Tell me when to be in the museum parking lot, and I'll be waiting for you with it in hand."

"My
birth
mother? Someone who was at your reunion
knows
her?" Meredith could feel her heart pounding as she gripped the phone. She looked at the clock. She absolutely
had
to get to class. "I'll be finished with my exam at eleven-forty," she said hurriedly. "I could be in the parking lot at ten of twelve."

"That works out for me. Ace your exam, General."

It took all of Cadet Meredith Buckley's training to force herself to put out of her mind the realization that in a little more than an hour she would know something tangible about the girl who at age eighteen had given birth to her. The only information she had so far was that her mother had been about to graduate from high school when she learned she was pregnant and that her father had been a college senior who was killed in a hit-and-run accident before she was born.

Her parents had talked to her about her birth mother. They had promised Meredith that after she was graduated from West Point, they would try to learn her identity and then arrange a meeting between them. "We have no idea who she is, Meri," her father had told her. "We do know, because the doctor who delivered you and arranged the adoption told us, that your birth mother loved you deeply and that giving you up was probably the most unselfish and difficult decision she would ever have to make in her whole life."

All this ran through Meredith's mind as she tried to concentrate on the linear algebra exam. But she could not block out the awareness that every tick of the clock brought her closer to greater knowledge of the mother she now knew as Jean.

As she handed in her exam and rushed toward Thayer Gate and the military academy museum, she realized that the reference to Palm Beach had solved the question her father had asked her yesterday on the phone.
That's
where I lost my hairbrush, she remembered suddenly.

84

A stony-faced Carter Stewart came into the hotel at ten o'clock, while Sam was sitting in the lobby. Sam made a beeline for him, catching him at the desk. "Mr. Stewart, I'd like to have a word with you if I may."

"In a minute, Mr. Deegan." The clerk with the wood-chip-colored hair was behind the desk. "I need to see the manager, and I need to get into Mr. Brent's room again," Stewart snapped at him. "The production company has received yesterday's package. Apparently there is one more script that is vitally needed, and I have been asked to do the proverbial good deed once more. Since the script was not on top of the desk, it will involve going
through
the desk."

"I'll summon Mr. Lewis immediately, sir," the clerk said nervously.

Stewart turned to Sam. "If they do refuse to let me go rummaging through Robby's desk, I don't care. I will have paid the debt of gratitude that my agent insists I owe him. He has now agreed that it has been paid in full. He doesn't know it yet, but that gives me the moral right to fire him, which I intend to do this afternoon."

Stewart turned back to the clerk. "Is the manager here, or is he out in the field picking flowers?"

What a nasty human being, Sam thought. "Mr. Stewart," he said, his tone icy, "I have a question, and I need to know the answer to it. A few nights ago, I understand you, Mr. Amory, Mr. Brent, Mr. Emerson, Dr. Fleischman, and Mr. Nieman were joking about working together on the evening cleaning crew of an office building managed by Mr. Emerson's father."

"Yes, yes, something about that came up. That was the spring of our senior year. Another tender memory of my glorious time at Stonecroft."

"Mr. Stewart, this is very important. Did you hear anyone mention that Dr. Sheridan had been a patient of a Dr. Connors who had an office in that building?"

"No, I did not. And, besides, why would Jean have been a patient of Dr. Connors? He was an obstetrician." Stewart's eyes widened. "Oh, my. Have we a little secret about to come out, Mr. Deegan? Was Jeannie a patient of Dr. Connors?"

Sam looked at Stewart with loathing. He wanted to kick himself for the way he had framed the question, and he wanted to punch Stewart for his leering response to it. "I asked you if someone had made that statement," he said. "I did not for one instant suggest that it was true."

Justin Lewis, the manager, had come up behind them. "Mr. Stewart, I understand you wish to go into Mr. Brent's room and go through his desk. I am afraid that I really can't allow that. I spoke to our law firm yesterday after I let you take those scripts, and they were quite upset about it."

"There we are," Stewart said. He turned his back on the manager. "My business here is pretty well wrapped up, Mr. Deegan," he said. "My director and I have completed going over his suggested changes for my play, and I have had quite enough of hotel life. I'm going back to Manhattan this afternoon, and I wish you good luck waiting for Laura and Robby to bob to the surface."

Sam and the hotel manager watched him exit the lobby. "That is one nasty guy," Justin Lewis told Sam. "It's obvious that he hates Mr. Brent."

"Why do you say that?" Sam asked quickly.

"Because a note Mr. Brent left on his desk referring to Mr. Stewart as 'Howie' obviously got under his skin. From what Mr. Stewart said, it was Mr. Brent's idea of a joke, but then Mr. Stewart asked me if I knew that saying about 'he who laughs last laughs best.' "

Before Sam could comment, his cell phone rang; the caller was Rich Stevens. "Sam, we have a call in from the Cornwall cops. A car was spotted in the Hudson. It was partially submerged, but caught on rocks, which is why it didn't go all the way down. There's a body in the trunk. It's Robby Brent, and it appears he's been dead for a couple of days. You'd better get over there."

"Right away, Rich." Sam snapped his phone closed. "
He who laughs last laughs best
." When
Laura and Robby "bob to the surface
." Bobbing, as in water? he wondered. Was Carter Stewart, once known as Howie, not only a celebrated playwright but a psychopathic killer as well?

85

At ten o'clock Jake was back in the darkroom at the school, developing his latest set of pictures. The ones he had taken of the back of the Mountain Road house really didn't contribute anything to his story, he decided. Even the door with its decorative grill had a Norman Rockwell, down-home feeling. The shot into the kitchen wasn't bad, but who wanted to look at bare countertops?

This morning was basically a waste, Jake decided. I shouldn't have bothered cutting my second class. As the quick shot he had taken of the house from the front began to develop, he could see that it was a little out of focus. He might as well deep-six it. He'd never use it in the article.