The Insider (20 page)

CHAPTER 18

Jay stood on the porch of a large Victorian home overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. A few hours earlier he had landed at Boston’s Logan Airport after leaving Sally at McCarthy & Lloyd’s front entrance and grabbing the cab to La Guardia. Upon landing at Logan, he’d rented a car and driven an hour and a half northeast of Boston to the end of Cape Ann and the tiny fishing village of Gloucester. He’d eaten a crab-cake lunch at a small seafood place on the docks, and learned from his waiter where the Lanes had lived. They had been well known in town, and the waiter confirmed that they had died in a plane crash a year ago and that their only child, Sally, was living on the West Coast. The last he had heard, there were no longer any Lanes living in Gloucester.

Jay glanced over his shoulder at the rental car. He had told everyone on the arbitrage desk that he was visiting his friend at TurboTec, but he had no intention of going to New Hampshire. He was going to spend the next two days searching for answers about whatever the hell was going on. His eyes narrowed as he gazed at the lush gardens lining each side of the driveway. Since landing at Logan he’d been fighting the prickly sensation that he was being watched.

Before leaving McCarthy & Lloyd that morning, Jay had gone on-line and reviewed several articles from back copies of the
Boston Globe
. He had printed out Joe and Patsy Lane’s obituaries as well as an account of the airplane crash and their double funeral. The funeral article reported that a man named Franklin Kerr had delivered a stirring eulogy for Sally’s father at the service. And Kerr’s wife, Edith, had done the same for Sally’s mother. The article had described the Lanes and Kerrs as lifelong friends and neighbors. Jay stared at the door. This seemed the best place to start looking for answers.

He rapped on the Kerrs’ door with his left hand—the knuckles of his right still throbbed from the impact with Bullock’s chin. Moments later he heard footsteps and the door swung open.

“Can I help you?” The elderly woman wore a sleeveless white blouse, green slacks, and a wide-brimmed sunbonnet. A yellow ribbon hung down from the side of the brim onto her gray hair.

Jay noticed that her head and age-spotted hands shook constantly, a sure sign of Parkinson’s disease. “Mrs. Kerr?”

“Yes, I’m Edith Kerr.”

“My name is Jay West. I was a classmate of Sally Lane’s at Harvard Business School.” He hoped Edith wasn’t too familiar with Harvard, because he’d never been there and wouldn’t be able to answer even the most basic questions about the grounds.

Edith smiled and stepped forward, opening the door wider and extending her hand. “How do you do?”

“Fine, thanks.” Jay took her hand, fighting the pain as she squeezed his fingers.

“Do you live in Gloucester now?” Edith asked. “You don’t look familiar. Not that I get into town much these days.”

“No. I was passing through Boston on business,” Jay explained. “I’ve never been to Cape Ann, and I’ve heard Sally say many times how pretty it is. I thought I’d see for myself.”

“What do you think?”

“Sally was right. It’s beautiful.” It was, too. The coastline was a picturesque mix of rocky cliffs and sandy beaches. Gorgeous old homes dotted the cliffs as well as the rugged, heavily wooded hills inland. The village was a collection of small, weather-beaten clapboard homes and churches centered around a south-facing harbor filled with fishing vessels hanging long black nets off tall booms.

“What can I do for you?” Edith asked.

Jay gestured to his left. Several hundred yards away was the Lanes’ house. “Sally had given me her address here in Gloucester. I stopped by the house but no one was home. In fact, the house looks as if it isn’t occupied.” Jay smiled self-consciously. “I know it’s a shot in the dark, because she probably doesn’t live around here anymore, but I was hoping to see Sally. I’ve lost touch with her since Harvard, but we were kind of… well, I liked her very much. I thought I could at least say hello to her parents while I was out here, even if she isn’t around. I had dinner with them on several occasions when Sally and I were in school. They were very nice.”

Edith placed her hand on Jay’s arm. “Why don’t you come in?”

“Thanks.” Jay followed Edith into a den off the main hallway and sat opposite the older woman in a large chair. “Have you lived in Gloucester long?” he asked.

“All my life. I grew up here. My husband, Frank, and I were Joe and Patsy’s neighbors and close friends for almost forty years.” She placed her hands on her lap and looked down. “Frank passed on a few months ago. Now I’m all alone.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“My gardens keep me busy.”

Jay paused. “You must have known Sally pretty well.”

“Very well. I watched her grow up. Frank and I were her godparents.” Edith stood up, walked to the fireplace, and picked up a silver frame from the mantel. She gazed at the picture for a moment, then moved to where Jay sat and handed the frame to him. “There’s Sally.”

Jay glanced at the photograph. Sally stood between an older couple. “With Joe and Patsy.” It was only a guess that the other two people in the picture were her parents.

“Yes,” Edith agreed quietly.

Jay studied the picture a little longer. Suddenly the images blurred before him. “I’d really like to see them again.” His pulse was racing and he was doing his best to keep his voice steady. “Just to say hello, you know?”

“Sure,” she said quietly.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. Edith’s expression had turned somber.

She motioned toward the hallway. “Why don’t we take a walk?”

“All right,” he said slowly, handing her back the frame, which she replaced on the mantel.

Edith moved from the hearth into the hallway, and Jay got up to follow. But he hesitated at the den’s doorway and glanced at the picture once more. He was almost certain that the young blond woman in the picture wasn’t Sally Lane. A very close likeness, but not Sally. Not the one he knew from McCarthy & Lloyd.

Twenty minutes later Jay and Edith stood on a sandy beach, admiring a large stone home rising before them. Constructed on a rocky bluff at the end of a point overlooking the Atlantic, the Lane house wasn’t as grandiose as Oliver and Barbara’s mansion, but it was impressive, particularly because of the magnificent view it commanded.

Large swells rolled in continuously, pounding the rocks at the base of the bluff below the mansion. Jay felt cool drops from the spray, even from this spot a hundred feet away. With the hot sun beating down on him, the spray was refreshing.

He glanced to his right toward a line of old oak trees at the edge of the beach. He was almost certain the dark blue sedan had been tailing him all the way from Logan Airport. The sedan had exited the highway just before Gloucester, but Jay was sure he’d seen the same car pass several times in front of the restaurant where he’d eaten lunch. He squinted and held his hand up against the sun’s bright rays. There was no one in the woods, not that he could see, anyway. He glanced back up at the house on the hill.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Edith commented.

“Yes,” Jay agreed. “The Lane family is in the fishing business, correct?”

“They were,” Edith confirmed. “Joe’s great-grandfather started the business. Joe sold the company for a good deal of money two years ago.”

They lapsed into silence, both staring up at the house.

“Was there something you wanted to tell me, Edith?”

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t help but notice the strange tone in your voice every time you mention the Lanes.” He nodded up at the house. “And I thought maybe you were going to take me to their house when we left your place, but I doubt we’d get over that fence from here.” A ten-foot-high chain-link fence ran around the base of the bluff.

Edith clasped her hands together. “I should have told you before, but it’s still so difficult.”

“What is?”

“After Joe sold the business, he and Patsy moved to Florida.”

“I see. I guess I won’t get to—”

“They were killed in a plane crash a few months later.”

“Oh, no,” Jay whispered.

“Yes.”

“My Lord, was Sally—”

“No, no,” Edith interrupted. “She’s fine. I believe she’s working for a firm on the West Coast.”

“Thank God.”

A long pause ensued before Jay finally broke the silence. “Did Joe Lane own a red sports car?”

“A sports car?” she asked hesitantly.

“Yes, a British sports car called an Austin Healey.” He knew the question sounded strange, but he wanted to confirm his suspicions.

Edith put her hand to her mouth, trying to remember. “I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“I’ve always been interested in British sports cars, and Sally once told me that her father owned a Healey when she was young,” Jay continued, trying to sound convincing. “But she said the salt air out here chewed it up pretty badly, and he had to sell it. I was wondering if the car was still in town, because I might want to buy it.”

“The salt and the weather out here are rough on everything,” Edith agreed. “But I don’t remember Joe owning any British sports cars. He certainly could have bought one. He had enough money. But he wasn’t really interested in cars. Any he bought were made in this country. He was a big believer in buying American.”

Jay shrugged. “I must have been wrong. I must have been thinking of someone else.” He reached into his shirt pocket and touched the Polaroid Barbara had taken on the sailboat. “Sally sure is a pretty girl, isn’t she?”

“Beautiful. She always was, from the time she was little. You know how sometimes girls go through that awkward stage during adolescence? That never happened to Sally. She was beautiful all the way through.”

Jay pulled out the Polaroid. “I still have this picture of her.”

“Let me see.” Edith moved closer so that her arm was touching his. She studied the photograph intently, then stepped back, a strange expression on her face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, watching her eyes narrow, as if she were taking a mental picture of him. He sensed that suddenly she wasn’t certain she wanted to continue their conversation.

Edith pointed a shaking finger at the photograph. “That’s not Sally,” she said crustily.

“Are you certain?” he asked, his voice barely audible over the pounding surf.

The elderly woman checked the photograph once more, then nodded. “Yes. Oh, the woman in your picture looks a lot like Sally, almost the spitting image of her, but it isn’t she.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“For one thing, Sally had a scar on her chin. It was noticeable. Enough that you’d see it in this picture. It was her only imperfection. She tripped on the front walkway when she was thirteen and hit her chin. Split it wide open. Frank and I took her to the hospital because Joe and Patsy had gone out to run an errand. It was July, right about this time of year.” She pointed to the picture once more. “The woman in your photograph doesn’t have a scar.”

Jay thought back to Saturday evening on the Brooklyn Heights promenade. He’d touched Sally’s chin as he stared at her, but he couldn’t remember seeing a scar. “Maybe she had plastic surgery to fix it.”

Edith shook her head. “No. Sally was deathly afraid of doctors. I had suggested plastic surgery once at the Christmas Eve party Joe and Patsy used to host every year. Sally wouldn’t hear of it.” Edith laughed. “I think she was a little irritated that I mentioned it. She was so afraid of doctors. And water,” Edith added.

Jay’s eyes flashed to Edith’s. “Sally was afraid of water?” The Sally he knew had jumped off Oliver’s boat in the middle of Long Island Sound.

“Deathly afraid,” the elderly woman said. “She wouldn’t go near it. She wouldn’t even get on a boat. It’s ironic when you think about where she grew up and what her family did.”

Jay put the photograph back in his pocket and glanced out over the ocean. For the last week he had been trying to determine the name of the financial firm Sally had taken a job with on the West Coast after Harvard. He had tried to pry the name out of McCarthy & Lloyd’s human resources department but had run into a stone wall there. Strangely, neither Oliver nor Bullock would tell him the name of the firm, and Harvard had been no help, either. When he first contacted the school, a clerk in the placement area had promised to find the name of the firm, agreeing that it ought to be on record. However, the man had called back the next day to say that they had no record of the name of the firm, nor a forwarding address for Sally. Jay had ordered a yearbook and was going to try to contact classmates to see if any of them knew the name of the firm, but perhaps there was no need to follow that angle any longer. He already had his answer. The woman he had come to know was a fraud.

“What business did you say you were in again?” Edith asked.

“I didn’t.” Jay glanced away from the water and looked Edith straight in the eye. “The truth is that I work with the woman in the photograph I showed you. She claims to be Sally Lane, but I guess she isn’t.”

“Why would she claim to be Sally Lane if she isn’t?”

Jay saw a flicker in the elderly woman’s eyes, as if she had a great deal to say but wasn’t certain she should. “I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”

They were silent for a few moments, then Edith bid Jay good-bye. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Thanks.”

“I hope you find answers to your questions,” she said over her shoulder.

“Me too,” Jay muttered. He’d had a nagging feeling that something was amiss ever since coming to McCarthy & Lloyd. An alarm had gone off the day before when Ted Mitchell had ambled across the trading room to announce that Bell Chemical was being taken over. Now it was screaming at him.

“It’s funny,” Edith said loudly over the sound of the waves. She had stopped twenty feet away.

“What is?” Jay asked, walking quickly toward her. “Please,” he urged, still sensing her hesitance. “If you have something to say that you think might be important, I really wish you would.”

“The people in town will say that I’m just an old gossip, but there was always something strange about Joe Lane. I hate to sound so catty about a man who was my best friend’s husband, but it’s true.”