The Second Time Around (4 page)

On TV Spencer had talked about how anyone who had invested in IBM or Xerox fifty years ago became millionaires. “You'll not only be helping others by buying Gen-stone, but you'll make a fortune.” Liar! Liar! Liar!—the word exploded in Ned's mind.

From Fifth Avenue he walked to where he could get the bus home to Yonkers. The house there was an old two-story frame. He and Annie had rented the bottom floor twenty years ago when they were first married.

The living room was a cluttered mess. He'd cut out all the articles about the plane crash and the no-good vaccine, and scattered them on the coffee table. The rest of the papers he'd tossed on the floor. When he arrived home, he read the articles again, every one of them.

When it grew dark, he didn't bother about supper. He wasn't hungry much anymore. At ten o'clock he got out a blanket and pillow and lay down on the couch. He no longer went into the bedroom. It made him miss Annie too much.

After the funeral the minister had given him a Bible. “I've marked some passages for you to read, Ned,” he'd said. “They may help.”

He wasn't interested in the Psalms, but just thumbing through he'd found something in the Book of Ezekiel. “You have disheartened the upright man with lies when I did not wish him grieved.” It felt as if the prophet was talking about Spencer and him. It showed that God was mad at people who hurt other people, and he wanted them punished.

Ned had fallen asleep, but woke up a little after midnight with a vivid image of the Bedford mansion filling his mind. On Sunday afternoons he had driven Annie past it several times after he bought the stock. She'd been very upset because he had sold the house in Greenwood Lake that his mother left him and used the money to buy Gen-stone stock. She wasn't as convinced as he was that the stock would make them rich.

“That was our retirement home,” she would yell at him. Sometimes she would cry. “I don't want a mansion. I loved that house. I worked so hard on it and made it so pretty, and you never even talked to me about selling it. Ned, how could you do that to me?”

“Mr. Spencer told me I wasn't only helping people by buying his stock, but someday I'd have a house like this.”

Even that hadn't convinced Annie. Then two weeks ago, when Spencer's plane crashed and word got out that the vaccine had problems, she went crazy. “I'm on my feet eight hours a day at the hospital. You let that crook talk you into buying that phony stock, and now I guess I'm supposed to keep working for the rest of my life.” She was crying so hard she could hardly talk. “You just can't get it right, Ned. You keep losing jobs because of that lousy temper of yours. And then when you finally do have something, you let yourself be talked out of it.” She had grabbed the car keys and rushed out. The tires had screeched as she shot the car back into the street.

The next instant kept replaying in Ned's mind. The image of the garbage truck that was backing up. The squeal of brakes. The sight of the car flipping up and slamming over. The gas tank exploding and the flames engulfing the car.

Annie. Gone.

*   *   *

They had met at this hospital over twenty years ago, when he was a patient here. He'd gotten into a fight with another guy at a bar and ended up with a concussion. Annie had brought his trays in and scolded him about giving in to his temper. She was spunky, small, and bossy in a cute way. They were the same age, thirty-eight. They had started going out together; then she moved in with him.

He came here this morning because it made him feel closer to Annie. He could imagine that at any minute
she'd come trotting down the hall and say she was sorry to be late, that one of the other girls hadn't shown up and she'd stayed through the dinner hour.

But he knew that was a fantasy. She'd never be here again.

With an abrupt snapping motion, Ned crumpled the newspaper, stood up, walked to a nearby trash receptacle, and shoved the paper inside. He started toward the door, but one of the doctors who was crossing the lobby called to him. “Ned, I haven't seen you since the accident. I'm so sorry about Annie. She was a wonderful person.”

“Thank you.” Then he remembered the doctor's name. “Thank you, Dr. Ryan.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No.” He had to say something. Dr. Ryan's eyes were curious, looking him over. Dr. Ryan might know that at Annie's insistence he used to come here to Dr. Greene for psychiatric counseling. But Dr. Greene had ticked him off when he said, “Don't you think you should have discussed selling the house with Annie before you sold it?”

The burn on his hand really hurt. When he tossed the match into the gasoline, the fire had flashed back and caught his hand. That was his excuse to be here. He held up his hand for Dr. Ryan to see. “I got burned last night when I was cooking dinner. I'm not much of a cook. But the emergency room's crowded. I gotta get to work. Anyhow, it's not that bad.”

Dr. Ryan looked at it. “It's serious enough, Ned. That could get infected.” He pulled a prescription pad
out of his pocket and scrawled on the top sheet. “Get this ointment and keep putting it on. Have your hand checked in a day or two.”

Ned thanked him and turned away. He didn't want to run into anyone else. He started toward the door again, but stopped. Cameras were being set up around the main exit.

He put on his dark glasses before he got into the revolving door behind a young woman. Then he realized that the cameras were there for her.

He stepped aside quickly and slipped behind the people who had been about to enter the hospital but waited when they saw the cameras. The idle ones. The curious.

The woman being interviewed was dark-haired, in her late twenties, attractive. She looked familiar. Then he remembered where he'd seen her. She'd been at the shareholders' meeting yesterday. She'd been asking questions of people as they left the auditorium.

She had tried to talk to him, but he'd brushed past her. He didn't like people asking him questions.

One of the reporters held a mike up to her. “Ms. DeCarlo, Lynn Spencer is your sister—is that right?”

“My
step
sister.”

“How is she?”

“She's obviously in pain. She had a terrible experience. She nearly lost her life in that fire.”

“Does she have any idea who might have set the fire? Has she received any threats?”

“We didn't talk about that.”

“Do you think it was someone who lost money by investing in Gen-stone, Ms. DeCarlo?”

“I can't speculate on that. I can say that anyone who would deliberately incinerate a home, taking the chance that someone may be inside sleeping, is either psychotic or evil.”

Ned's eyes narrowed as rage filled him. Annie had died trapped in a burning car. If he hadn't sold the house in Greenwood Lake, they would have been there on that day two weeks ago when she was killed. She'd have been on her knees planting her flowers instead of rushing out of the Yonkers house, crying so hard that she hadn't paid attention to the traffic when she backed out the car.

For a brief moment he locked eyes with the woman being interviewed. DeCarlo was her name, and she was Lynn Spencer's sister. I'll show you who's crazy, he thought. Too bad your sister wasn't trapped in the fire the way my wife was trapped in the car. Too bad you weren't in the house with her. I'll get them, Annie, he promised. I'll get back at them for you.

I
drove home not even remotely pleased with my performance during that unexpected news conference. I liked it much better when I was asking the questions. However, I realized that like it or not, I was now going to be perceived as Lynn's spokesperson and defender. It was not a role I wanted, nor was it an honest one. I was still not at all convinced that she was a naive and trusting wife who never sensed that her husband was a conman.

But
was
he? When his plane crashed, he supposedly had been on his way to a business meeting. When he got in that plane, did he still believe in Gen-stone? Did he go to his death believing in it?

This time the Cross Bronx Expressway ran true to form. An accident had it backed up for two miles, giving plenty of quiet time to think. Maybe too much time, because I realized that despite everything that had been
disclosed about Nick Spencer and his company in the past few weeks, there was still something missing, something wrong. It was too pat. Nick's plane crashes. The vaccine is declared faulty if not worthless. And millions of dollars are missing.

Was the accident rigged, and was Nick now sunning himself in Brazil as Sam suggested? Or did his plane crash in that storm with him in the cockpit? And if so, where was all that money, $25,000 of which was mine?

“He liked you, Carley,”
Lynn had said.

Well, I liked him, too. That's why I would like to believe that there was another explanation.

I drove past the accident that had reduced the Cross-Bronx to a one-lane road. A trailer truck had overturned. Broken crates of oranges and grapefruits had been shoved to the side to open the single lane. The cabin of the truck seemed intact. I hoped the driver was all right.

I turned onto the Harlem River Drive. I was anxious to get home. I wanted to go over next Sunday's column before I e-mailed it to the office. I wanted to call Lynn's father and reassure him that she was going to be all right. I wanted to see if there were any messages on the answering machine, specifically from the editor of
Wall Street Weekly.
God, how I'd love to get a job writing for that magazine, I thought.

The rest of the drive went quickly enough. The trouble was that in my mind I kept seeing the sincerity in Nick Spencer's eyes when he talked about the vaccine. I kept remembering my reaction to him: What a terrific guy.

Was I dead wrong, stupid, and naive, everything a reporter should not be? Or was there perhaps another answer? As I pulled into the garage, I realized what else was bothering me. My gut was talking to me again. It was telling me that Lynn was much more interested in clearing her own name than she was in learning the truth about whether or not her husband was still alive.

There was a message on my answering machine, and it was the one I wanted. Would I please call Will Kirby at
Wall Street Weekly.

Will Kirby is editor in chief there. My fingers raced as they pushed the numbers. I'd met Kirby a few times at big gatherings, but we'd never really talked. When his secretary put me through and he got on the phone, my first thought was that his voice matched his body. He's a large-framed man in his mid-fifties, and his voice is deep and hearty. It has a nice, warm tone to it, even though he is known as a no-nonsense guy.

He didn't waste time chatting with me. “Carley, can you come in and see me tomorrow morning?”

You bet I can, I thought. “That would be fine, Mr. Kirby.”

“Ten o'clock okay with you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Fine. See you then.”

Click.

I had been screened by two people at the magazine already, so this was definitely going to be a make-or-break interview. My mind flew to my closet. A pantsuit was probably a better choice for the interview than a skirt. The gray stripe that I'd bought during a sale in Escada
at the end of last summer would be great. But if it turned cold, the way it was yesterday, that would be too light. In which case, the dark blue would be a better choice.

I hadn't felt this combination of being both apprehensive and eager for a long time. I knew that even though I loved writing the column, it just wasn't enough to keep me busy. If it was a daily column, it might have been different, but a weekly supplement that has a lot of lead time isn't much of a challenge once you learn the ropes. Even though I was getting occasional freelance assignments writing profiles of people in the financial world for various magazines, it still wasn't enough.

I called down to Boca. Mom had moved into Robert's apartment after they were married because it had a great view of the ocean and was larger than hers. What I didn't like about it was that now when I visited, I slept in “Lynn's room.”

Not that she ever really stayed there. She and Nick took a suite at the Boca Raton Resort when they visited. But Mom's changing apartments meant that when I flew down for a weekend, I was acutely aware that Lynn had furnished that room for herself before she married Nick. It was
her
bed I was sleeping in,
her
pale pink sheets and lace-edged pillowcases I was using,
her
expensive monogrammed towel I wrapped around me after I showered.

I had liked it a lot better when I slept on the convertible couch in Mom's old apartment. The plus factor, of course, was that Mom was happy and I sincerely liked
Robert Hamilton. He is a quiet, pleasant man with none of the arrogance Lynn displayed at that first meeting. Mom told me that Lynn had been trying to set him up with one of the wealthy widows in nearby Palm Beach, but he wasn't interested.