Nighttime Is My Time Read online

  At twelve o’clock Sam Deegan tapped on the door of the district attorney’s office and walked in without waiting for a response.

  Rich Stevens was poring over notes on his desk and looked up, his expression showing irritation at the abrupt interruption.

  “Rich, sorry to barge in, but this is important,” Sam told him. “We’re making a big mistake if we don’t take the threat to Jean Sheridan’s daughter seriously. I had a message to call Craig Michaelson, the lawyer who handled the adoption. We just connected. Michaelson has been in touch with the adoptive parents. The father is a three-star general at the Pentagon. The girl is a second-year cadet at West Point. The General called her and asked if she had ever met Laura Wilcox. The answer is absolutely not. And she doesn’t remember where she lost the hairbrush.”

  There wasn’t a trace of annoyance left in Rich Stevens’ expression as he leaned back in his chair and entwined his fingers, always a sign to those who knew him that he was deeply concerned.

  “That’s all we need,” he said, “to have the daughter of a three-star general being threatened by some nut. Are they putting a bodyguard on the girl at the Point?”

  “From what Michaelson tells me, she has two big exams, one tomorrow, one Friday. She laughed at the suggestion that she’d leave the grounds. The father didn’t want to upset her by telling her about these threats. He and the mother are flying up tomorrow to meet Jean Sheridan. The General wants to come in here and talk to you Friday morning.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Michaelson didn’t want to give that information over the phone. The girl knows she’s adopted, but until this morning the General and his wife had no idea of the identity of the natural parents. Jean Sheridan swears she never told anybody about the baby until she started getting the faxes. I say whoever found out about the baby and knew who had adopted her, learned it at the time she was born. Michaelson is sure his records were never seen by anyone. Jean Sheridan suspects the leak occurred in the doctor’s office where she was a maternity patient, which at least gives us a starting point in trying to figure out who might have had access to the records.”

  “Then if Laura Wilcox isn’t involved in the threats and didn’t send that last fax apologizing for them, I’ve stuck my neck out by calling her disappearance a publicity stunt,” Rich Stevens said bitterly.

  “We can’t be sure about that part of it yet, Rich, but we can be pretty damn sure that she’s not the one threatening the girl. Which raises the question, if Laura didn’t send that fax, was it sent to make us drop the investigation?”

  “Which is what I told you to do. All right, Sam. I’ll pull you off the homicides. I wish we knew the name of the cadet. I’ll ask you again: Is the General positive that she’s safe?”

  “According to Michaelson, she is because of the tests. He says that if she’s not in class, she’s studying in her room. She assured her father she wouldn’t leave the West Point campus.”

  “Then with all the security at West Point, she should be all right, at least for the present. That’s a relief.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. Being on the grounds of West Point didn’t save her natural father’s life,” Sam said grimly. “He was a cadet. Two weeks before graduation he was the victim of a hit-and-run driver. They never found the person who killed him.”

  “Any question that it wasn’t an accident?” Stevens asked sharply.

  “From what Jean Sheridan tells me, it never occurred to anyone that Reed Thornton—that was his name—was deliberately run down. They believed the driver panicked and then was afraid to turn himself in. But in light of all that’s been happening, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to look at the file on that case.”

  “Run with it, Sam. God Almighty, can you just see what the media will do if they ever get their hands on this? Three-star general’s daughter, a West Point cadet, threatened. Her natural father, a cadet, died in a mysterious accident at the Point. Her natural mother is an acclaimed historian and a best-selling author.”

  “There’s more,” Sam said. “Reed Thornton’s father is a retired brigadier general. He still doesn’t know he has a granddaughter.”

  “Sam, I’ll ask you one more time: Are you sure, are you positive that the girl is safe?”

  “I have to accept the fact that her adopted father is satisfied that she’s safe.”

  As Sam got up, he noticed a pile of notes on Rich Stevens’ desk. “More tips about the homicides?”

  “Sam, in the couple of hours you’ve been out, I’ve lost count of how many calls have poured in about suspicious-looking men. One of them came from a woman who swore she’d been followed out of the supermarket. She got the guy’s license plate number. The suspect turned out to be an FBI agent who’s visiting his mother. We’ve had two calls about strange cars in schoolyards. Both of them turned out to be fathers waiting for their kids. We have a nut who confessed to the murders. The only problem is he’s been in jail for the last month.”

  “Any psychics call yet?”

  “Oh, sure. Three of them.”

  The phone on Stevens’ desk rang. He picked it up, listened, then put his hand over the speaker. “I’m holding for the governor,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

  As Sam left the room, he heard the district attorney saying, “Good morning, Governor. Yes, it is a very serious problem, but we’re working round the clock to . . .”

  To find the perpetrator and bring him to justice, Sam thought. Let’s hope that happens before any more pewter owls get planted on dead women.

  Including a nineteen-year-old West Point cadet—that chilling possibility darted through his mind as he walked down the corridor to his own office.

  69

  “Lily . . . Meredith. Lily . . . Meredith,” Jean whispered over and over as she walked up Mountain Road, her hands in her pockets, her sunglasses hiding the tears of happiness she could not stop shedding.

  She wasn’t sure why she had wandered up that street except that when she rushed out of the coffee shop, she knew she wasn’t ready to go back to the hotel. She passed houses that had belonged to neighbors years ago. How many of them still live here? she wondered. I just hope I don’t run into anyone I know.

  She slowed her step as she came near the house she had lived in. When she had driven by on Sunday morning, she hadn’t had the chance to really study what the present owners had done with it. She glanced around. There was no one on the street to observe her. For a moment she stopped and put her hand on the split rail fence that now enclosed the property.

  They must have added at least two more bedrooms when they renovated, she decided as she studied the house. When we lived here, there were only three bedrooms, one for each of us—Mother, Dad, and me. When we were kids, Laura used to ask me about that: “Don’t your mother and father sleep together? Don’t they like each other?”

  I had read in an advice column in one of those women’s magazines that no woman should have to sleep in the same room with her husband if he snored a lot. I told Laura my father snored a lot. She said, “So does mine, but they still sleep together.”

  I said, “Well, mine do, too, sometimes.” But they didn’t.

  Now she looked up at the second floor at the two center windows. Those are the windows of my room, Jean thought. God, how I hated the flowered wallpaper. It was so busy. When I was fifteen, I begged Dad to cover the walls with bookshelves. He really was handy with projects like that. Mother objected, but he did it anyhow. After that, I called my room the library.

  I remember the first day I was sure that my period was late and the days that followed when I prayed it would come. I promised God I’d do anything He wanted if I could just not be pregnant.

  Well, now I’m glad I was, Jean thought fiercely. Lily . . . Meredith. I may meet her as soon as this weekend. At some point I’ll probably slip and call her Lily, then have to explain, although maybe by then she’ll understand. I wonder how tall she is. Reed was over six feet, and he told me that his father an
d grandfather were taller than he was.

  Lily is safe—that is absolutely the most important thing in the world. But Craig Michaelson is sure that she never met Laura. So how would Laura know about the faxes?

  Jean had intended to turn and start back to the Glen-Ridge but instead impulsively walked past her old house, up to Laura’s former home. She stopped and stood in front of it.

  As she had observed from the car on Sunday morning, the house and grounds were being maintained regularly. The house looked freshly painted, the flagstone walk was bordered with autumn flowers, and the lawn was swept free of leaves. Even so, with the shades drawn in every window, the house had a closed, unwelcoming look. Why would anyone buy a house, renovate it, keep it up, and not enjoy living in it? Jean wondered. She had heard a rumor that Jack Emerson owned it. He’s supposed to be quite the ladies’ man. I wonder if he’s kept it as a love nest for his girlfriends. If he does own it, now that his wife has moved to Connecticut, it would be interesting to see if he still needs it.

  Not that I care, God knows, Jean thought as she turned and started back to the hotel. With a conscious effort she tried to put her anticipation about meeting Lily aside and concentrate on Laura and the new scenario that had been evolving in her mind.

  Robby Brent.

  Had Robby Brent been behind the faxes about Lily? she asked herself, trying to reason through that scenario. Maybe he’s the one who found out I was pregnant. Maybe now he realizes that he could be prosecuted for sending those threats and wants Laura to take the blame because he suspects I would feel sorry for her.

  It’s possible, Jean decided as she passed the delicatessen and reluctantly waved to Duke, who was tapping on the window and waving at her. Robby Brent is just nasty enough to have somehow found out about Lily, and then, when the reunion came up, have sent those faxes as a cruel joke. I understand that he does a couple of benefits a year. It’s possible he met Lily’s family that way. Look how rotten he was, the way he ridiculed Dr. Downes and Miss Bender at the dinner. Even the way he presented his check to Stonecroft was an insult.

  It was a scenario that made sense to her. If Robby sent those faxes and the hairbrush, he had to be worried about criminal prosecution, she reasoned. If he planned the publicity stunt with Laura, then that has backfired. In that case, he probably will be in touch with his producers to figure out a story. The media are going to hound them for an explanation.

  On the other hand, Jack Emerson worked evenings in Dr. Connors’ office and might have gotten into his files. Besides that, I need to know why Mark asked the clerk about my receiving a fax and then was disappointed to learn I didn’t get one. Well, at least I can find that out fast enough, Jean thought as she turned onto the walkway that led to the Glen-Ridge.

  When she stepped into the lobby, the warmth inside enveloped her, and she realized that she had been shivering. I ought to go up and soak in the tub, she reflected. Instead, she went to the front desk where a now busy Amy Sachs was checking in the early arrivals of the Starbright Electrical Fixtures Company event. She picked up the in-house phone, but when the customer Amy was waiting on was searching in his bag for his wallet, Jean managed to catch the clerk’s eye and ask, “Any mail?”

  “Not a bit,” Amy whispered. “You can count on me, Dr. Sheridan. No more mistakes with your faxes.”

  Jean nodded as she gave the operator Mark’s name. He answered on the first ring. “Jean, I was worried about you,” he said.

  “You’ve been worrying me, too,” she said in an even tone. “It’s nearly one o’clock, and I haven’t had anything but half a cup of coffee all day. I’m going to the coffee shop. I’d be glad if you’d join me, but don’t bother to stop at the desk and check to see if I’ve had any new faxes. I haven’t.”

  70

  True to his word, when he left President Downes’ office, Jake Perkins went directly to the classroom that had become headquarters for the newspaper. There he dug through the files of Gazette pictures that had been taken during the four years that Laura Wilcox had been a student at Stonecroft. In preparation for the reunion, he had looked through the yearbooks and found pictures of her. But now he wanted to get others, maybe some that were a little more candid than the yearbook shots.

  In the next hour he found some photos that were right on target. Laura had been in a number of school plays. One of them was a musical, and he found a great picture of her performing in a chorus line, a standout in a Rockette-like group, with her high kick and dazzling smile. No question, she was a knockout, Jake thought. If she were in school now, there isn’t a guy I know who wouldn’t be trying to get her attention.

  He snickered to himself as he thought of the way in which a boy would have tried to win favor with a girl back then, probably by offering to carry her books. Today he’d offer to drive her home in his Corvette, he thought.

  It was when he came across the graduation picture of Laura’s class that Jake’s eyes widened. He used a magnifying glass to examine the faces of the graduates. Laura, of course, looked beautiful, with her long hair spilling over her shoulders. She even managed to be attractive while wearing that stupid mortarboard. It was Jean Sheridan’s picture that shocked him. Her hands were clasped together. There were tears welling in her eyes. She looks sad, Jake thought, really sad. You’d never guess she’d just walked off with the History medal and a full scholarship to Bryn Mawr. From the expression on her face, you’d swear she’d just been told she had two days to live. Maybe she was sorry to leave this place. Go figure.

  He moved the magnifying glass from one to the other of the graduates, looking for the honorees. One by one he picked them out. They’ve all changed a lot, he thought. A couple of them looked like real losers back then. Gordon Amory, for example, was almost unrecognizable. Boy, was he ugly, he thought. Jack Emerson was Fat Boy even then. Carter Stewart needed a haircut—no, make that a total makeover. No-neck Robby Brent was already going bald. Mark Fleischman looks like a beanpole with a head on it. Joel Nieman was standing next to Fleischman. Some Romeo, Jake thought. If I were Juliet, I’d have killed myself at the thought of being stuck with him.

  Then he noticed something. Most of the graduates had inane grins on their faces, the kind people save for group pictures. The biggest smile, however, was on the face of one guy who wasn’t looking directly at the camera but instead was staring at Jean Sheridan. Talk about contrasts, Jake thought. She looks as if she’s lost her last friend, and he’s wearing an ear-to-ear grin.

  Jake shook his head as he looked at the pile of pictures on the table in front of him. I have enough now, he thought. Next he would talk to Jill Farris, the teacher in charge of the Gazette. She’s a good sport, Jake thought. I’ll convince her to let me use the picture of Laura dancing on the front page of the next issue, and the graduation picture on the back page. Between them, they bring out the theme of the story—the had-it-all girl who’s now on the skids and the nerds who made it big-time.

  His next stop was the studio where the camera equipment was kept. There he ran into Ms. Farris, who let him sign out the heavy old-fashioned camera that he delighted in using when he was on a photo shoot. In his opinion it had a sharpness that no digital camera could possibly match. The fact that it was a backbreaker did not faze him when he was on an important assignment, especially since this assignment was one he had dreamed up himself.

  He did admit to himself that his newly acquired driver’s license and the ten-year-old Subaru his parents had bought for him made his jaunts around town considerably easier than when he used to play roving reporter on his bicycle.

  Camera over his shoulder, notebook and pen in one pocket, recorder in the other in case he happened to run into someone worth interviewing, Jake was on his way.

  Can’t wait to do the house where Laura Wilcox grew up. I’ll shoot from both the front and the back. After all, it was the house where that medical student, Karen Sommers, was murdered, and the police were sure then that the killer went in the back door. That will
add another human interest touch to the story, he decided.

  71

  Carter Stewart spent the better part of Wednesday morning in his suite at the Hudson Valley Hotel. He had arranged to meet that afternoon with Pierce Ellison, the director of his new play, and would be going to Ellison’s home. They were scheduled to discuss fixes the director wanted, but first Stewart wanted to make some script changes on his own.

  Thank you, Laura, he thought, smiling maliciously as he made subtle alterations to the character of the scatterbrained blonde who is murdered in the second act. Desperation, he thought—that’s what I was missing. On the surface she’s twinkling, but we’ve got to feel how frantic and frightened she really is, that she’ll do anything to save herself.

  Carter despised interruptions when he was writing, a fact his agent, Tim Davis, knew very well. But at eleven o’clock the jarring ring of the phone shattered his concentration. It was Tim.

  He began with a profuse apology: “Carter, I know you’re working, and I promised I wouldn’t bother you unless it was absolutely necessary, but—”

  “It had better be absolutely necessary, Tim,” Carter snapped.

  “The thing is, I just got a call from Angus Schell. He’s Robby Brent’s agent, and he’s going nuts. Robby promised to send in his edits on the scripts for his new TV show by yesterday at the very latest, and they still haven’t arrived. Angus has left a dozen messages for Robby but hasn’t heard from him. The sponsor is already furious about the publicity stunt the media say Robby is pulling with Laura Wilcox. They’re threatening to bail out on the series.”

  “Which is of no importance to me whatsoever,” Carter Stewart said, his tone frigid.

  “Carter, you told me the other day that Robby was going to show you the edits he made. Did you see them?”

  “No, I did not. As a matter of fact, when I took the trouble to go over to his hotel for the purpose of reviewing those edits, he was not there, nor have I heard from him since. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was working very well until you interrupted me.”