I'll Walk Alone Page 26

  She was ordered to surrender her passport and could not leave the country.

  Kevin tried to imagine what it would be like to stand in front of a judge and have charges like that hurled at him. He had been a juror in a manslaughter trial once and had watched the frightened defendant, a twenty-year-old kid who’d been high on drugs when he rammed a car, killing two people, sentenced to twenty years in prison.

  His story was that someone had slipped something into his soda. Kevin still wondered if that was possible, but the kid had a history of being arrested for pot.

  I am not the woman in those photos. Why against all the odds do I believe her? Kevin asked himself. I know, I absolutely know, that she is telling the truth.

  His cell phone rang. It was his mother. “Kev, did you see the newspaper about the Moreland arrest?”

  You know I did, Mom, he thought.

  “Kevin, are you going to hire that woman after all this?”

  “Mom, I know it sounds crazy but I believe that Zan is a victim, not a kidnapper. Sometimes you just know something about someone else and that’s the way I feel.”

  He waited, then Cate Wilson said, “Kevin, you’ve always had the biggest heart of anyone I know. But sometimes people aren’t deserving of it. Just think about that. Good-bye, dear.”

  She had disconnected.

  Kevin debated, then pushed Zan’s number again. He hung up when her voice started to direct him to leave a message. I’ll get back to you.

  It was nearly 1:30. You’re not going to get back to me, he thought.

  He got up, put a few dishes in the dishwasher, and decided to go for a walk. A walk that will take me to Battery Park City, he thought. I’m going to Zan’s apartment and knock on her door. If nothing else, I would guess that this job is more important to her than ever—her legal bills have to be piling up already.

  He was reaching in the closet for his leather jacket when the phone rang again. It better not be Louise crowing about Zan’s arrest, he thought. If she is, I’ll fire her.

  His “Hello” was close to a bark.

  It was Zan. “Kevin, I’m sorry. I left my cell phone in my coat last night and the ringer was off. Do you want me to meet you at Carlton Place?”

  “No, I’ve had enough of being on the job for a week. I’m just about to go out for a walk. You’re fifteen minutes away. May I come to your apartment and we can talk there?”

  There was a moment of hesitancy, then Zan said, “Yes, of course, if that works better for you. I’ll be here.”

  73

  Come on, Matty, eat your hot dog,” Gloria coaxed. I made a special trip to the store to get it for you today.”

  Matthew tried to take a bite, then put it down. “I can’t, Glory.” He thought she’d be mad, but she just looked sad and said, “It’s a good thing this is the end, Matty. Neither one of us is going to last, the way we’re living.”

  “Glory, why did you pack up my stuff? Are we moving to a new house?”

  Her smile was bitter. “No, Matty, I told you, but you don’t believe me. You’re going home.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “Where are you going?”

  “Well, for a while I’m going home to visit my daddy. I haven’t seen him in the whole time you haven’t seen Mommy. After that, well, I guess I’ll try to get my career on track. Okay, I’m not going to make you eat that hot dog. How about some ice cream?”

  Matthew didn’t want to tell Glory that nothing tasted good anymore. She had packed away almost all his toys and cars and coloring books and crayons. She had even taken the picture he was drawing of Mommy, the one he had put back in the box because he didn’t want to finish it. He didn’t want to throw it away, though. And she had packed the bar of soap that smelled like Mommy.

  Every single day he kept trying to remember what it was like to be with Mommy. Her long hair that sometimes tickled his nose. Her robe and how it felt when she wrapped him inside with her. All the animals in the zoo. Sometimes he said their names over and over when he was in bed. Elephant. Gorilla. Lion. Monkey. Tiger. Zebra. Like A, B, C, D. Mommy had told him that it was fun to put letters and words together. E is for elephant. He knew he was forgetting some of them and he didn’t want to. Glory sometimes gave him DVDs with animals in them, but it wasn’t the same as seeing them with Mommy at the zoo.

  After lunch, Glory said, “Matty, why don’t you watch one of the movies on your DVD. I have to finish packing. Close the door of your room.”

  Matthew knew that Glory probably wanted to watch television. She did that every day, but never let him see it. His television only worked on the DVD setting, and he had a lot of movies. But he didn’t want to watch one now.

  Instead when he went up to his room, he laid down and pulled the blanket up over him. He forgot and his hand crept under the pillow for the soap that smelled like Mommy, but it wasn’t there. Matthew was so sleepy, he closed his eyes and hardly noticed that he was crying.

  Margaret/Glory/Brittany finished the hot dog that Matthew had barely touched and sat reflectively at the kitchen table. She looked around. “Crummy house, crummy kitchen, crummy life,” she said aloud. Her anger at herself for having gotten into this situation in the first place had been mingled with a sense of sadness. It had come over her during the night and she knew it had to do with her father.

  Something was wrong with Daddy. She knew it in her bones. Her hand reached for her cell phone, but then she pulled it back. I’ll be with him by tomorrow night, she thought, I’ll surprise him.

  She said it aloud. “I’ll surprise him.”

  The words sounded hollow and even foolish to her ears.

  74

  Alvirah was reveling in her story as she sat at Billy Collins’s desk, and word for word she described her meeting with Tiffany Shields to him and his fellow detective Jennifer Dean. The shoebox with the sandals Tiffany had given her was on the desk. She had taken one of the sandals out. What she didn’t know was that she had placed it on top of Brittany La Monte’s photo, which Collins had hastily turned over, facedown.

  “I don’t blame Tiffany,” she said. “She’s had one hard time of it being lambasted by the media and all the do-gooders. When she thought Zan had kidnapped Matthew, you can understand why she’d feel furious and betrayed. But when I explained to her that Zan had never blamed her, and reminded her that she would be under oath in a trial, she soon changed her tune.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Billy said. “Ms. Moreland bought two pairs of identical shoes and had a third pair that was very similar, except for the strap.”

  “You’ve got it,” Alvirah said heartily. “We talked about it, and Tiffany remembered a little more. Zan told her that she had ordered them online and by mistake got two pairs in the same color. Then when she realized that the sandals looked so close to a pair she already owned, Tiffany said, Zan just gave her one of the new pairs.”

  “Tiffany’s memory seems to move around a bit,” Jennifer Dean suggested. “Why is she so positive that Zan Moreland was wearing the sandals with the thinner strap that day?”

  “She remembered because Zan happened to be wearing the same ones that Tiffany was, the pair with the thin strap. She said she had noticed it that day, but she wasn’t in the mood for joking and Zan was nervous and in a hurry.”

  Alvirah looked at the two detectives. “I came straight here after I talked to Tiffany. I didn’t happen to have with me those pictures showing Zan wearing one pair of sandals when she supposedly kidnapped Matthew and a different pair when she came back to the park after he was gone. But you do. So go look at them. And tell your experts to study them. And then wonder why any woman about to kidnap her child would bother to go home and change her shoes.”

  Billy and Jennifer Dean looked at each other, once again knowing what the other was thinking. If what Alvirah Meehan was telling them was true, the case against Zan Moreland was unraveling. They had both been startled by the resemblance of Brittany La Monte to Zan Moreland, once Wally Joh
nson pointed it out, and by the fact that La Monte was a makeup artist who had disappeared in exactly the time frame when Matthew Carpenter had been kidnapped, and who had worked for Bartley Longe, the rival Zan Moreland insisted was responsible for Matthew’s disappearance.

  In this high-profile case it was necessary to move very carefully. Billy did not want to admit that he was shaken — more shaken than he had ever been in any investigation he had ever worked.

  We spoke to Longe, Billy thought. We dismissed him as a suspect. But now? With all this going on? Was the ex-cop Neil Hunt on target when he said he saw someone who looked like Zan Moreland getting into a cab near that church? He even remembered the hack number so we could check cab records for Monday night at that time. That was next on Billy’s list.

  Was Tiffany Shields a reliable witness? Probably not. The kid had changed her version of the morning she began to babysit Matthew Carpenter to suit her imagination.

  But what if she was right about the shoes?

  Alvirah was getting up to go. “Mr. Collins, last night after her terrible experience of being arrested and placed in a holding cell, Zan Moreland, Matthew Carpenter’s mother, begged me to start out with the premise that I believed in her innocence. The minute I decided to do that, I sought out Tiffany and reminded her that she’d be under oath in a trial and she told me what I believe is the truth.”

  Alvirah took a deep breath. “I think you’re a decent man who wants to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. Why don’t you do what Zan begged you to do, too? Assume that she is innocent. Really investigate the man she believes to be responsible for Matthew’s disappearance, Bartley Longe, and start digging. You see, even though she’s been arrested, she still got the big job instead of Longe — of decorating some fancy new apartments. If Longe did figure out how to kidnap Matthew, and if Matthew is still alive, this might be enough to make him try to get back at Zan again and with the only weapon he may have. Her son.”

  Billy Collins stood up and extended his hand to Alvirah. “Mrs. Meehan, you are quite right. Our job is to protect the innocent. That is all that I am free to tell you right now. I’m very grateful that you encouraged Tiffany Shields to tell you what is perhaps a more accurate account of what happened when she met Ms. Moreland at her apartment the day Matthew disappeared.”

  As he watched Alvirah make her way to the exit, his instinct was telling him that she was the one on the right track and that time was running out.

  As soon as she was out of sight, he yanked open the drawer and pulled out the photos of Zan Moreland that had been in newspapers all over the world these past few days, the original ones of her at the park after the kidnapping and the ones that just surfaced from the British tourist. He laid them on the desk and reached for a magnifying glass. He studied them and handed the glass to Jennifer.

  “Billy, Alvirah’s right. She’s not wearing the same shoes,” Jennifer whispered.

  Billy turned over the photo montage of Brittany La Monte and aligned it with the other pictures. “What could a good makeup artist do to change a similarity to a look-alike?” he asked Dean.

  It was a rhetorical question.

  75

  When Zan opened the door for Kevin at 1:45, he looked at her for a long minute, then, feeling as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do, he put his arms around her. For long seconds they stood still, her hands at her side, her eyes searching his.

  Kevin said firmly, “Zan, I don’t know how good your lawyer is, but what you need is a private detective agency to turn this situation around.”

  “Then you do believe that I’m not a wacko?” Zan’s tone was tentative.

  “Zan, this is me. I trust you. Trust me.”

  “I’m sorry, Kevin. My God, you’re the first person to say you believe me. But it goes on. The Mad Hatter’s tea party goes on. Look around you.”

  Kevin looked around the warm and tastefully decorated living room with its eggshell walls, roomy pale green sofa, striped chairs, and deep green and cream geometric carpet. Both the couch and the chairs had open boxes on them from Bergdorf’s.

  “These just arrived this morning,” Zan said. “They’re charged to my account. I didn’t buy them, Kevin, I didn’t buy them. I spoke to a salesclerk in Bergdorf’s I know pretty well. She said she didn’t handle the sale Monday afternoon, but she recognized me and was a little hurt that I hadn’t asked for her. She said that I bought the same suit a few weeks ago. Why would I do that? The one I have is in the closet. Alvirah thought she saw me on the security camera in the church on Monday evening wearing a black suit with a fur collar. I didn’t wear that suit Monday evening. I wore it the next day, when I met you.” Zan threw up her hands in a gesture of despair. “Where does it end? How can I stop it? Why? Why?”

  Kevin covered her hands with his. “Zan, hang on. Come on. Sit over here.” He guided her to the couch. “Have you ever noticed anyone following you?”

  “No, but Kevin, I feel as if I’m living in a fishbowl. I’ve been arrested. Someone is impersonating me. The media is hounding me. I feel as if someone is walking in my footsteps, shadowing me, imitating me. That person has my child!”

  “Zan, let’s go back. I saw the photos of the woman you swear is not you in the paper, taking your son out of the stroller.”

  “She was wearing the same dress that I have, the same everything.”

  “That’s my point, Zan. When did you wear that dress on the street where you could be seen?”

  “I went out on the street with Tiffany. Matthew was asleep in his stroller. I grabbed a cab to Sixty-ninth Street to go to the Aldrich town house.”

  “That means even if someone saw you, and wanted to look like you, in the space of an hour or so, she would have had to find a dress that was exactly like yours.”

  “Don’t you see? One of the columnists brought that up in the newspaper. They said it would be impossible for anyone to do that.”

  “Unless someone saw you while you were getting dressed, and already had a dress identical to the one you chose to wear?”

  “There was absolutely no one in the apartment except Matthew while I was getting dressed.”

  “And this identical clothing continues to this day.” Kevin Wilson stood up. “Zan, do you mind if I look around the apartment?”

  “No, take your time, but what for?”

  “Just humor me.”

  Kevin Wilson walked into the bedroom. The bed was made and piled with pillows. A picture of a smiling child was on the night table. The room was orderly, with a single dresser, a small writing desk, a slipper chair. The valance of the large picture window matched the blue and white pattern on the bed.

  But even though Kevin’s subconscious was aware of the pretty bedroom, his eyes were darting around the room. He was thinking of the time three years ago when a client had bought a condo after a bitter divorce between the sellers. When the workmen started to pull out the wiring, they had discovered a spy camera in the bedroom.

  Was it possible that Zan might have been under scrutiny when she chose the dress she was wearing the day Matthew disappeared? And was it possible that she was still under scrutiny from an unknown observer?

  With that in mind, he went back to the living room. “Zan, have you got a stepladder?” he asked. “I need to take a look around this place.”

  “Yes, I have one.”

  Kevin followed her to the hall closet, then reached past her and took the ladder from her hands. She followed him into the bedroom as he stood on it and slowly, carefully, began to examine and run his finger over the crown molding on the bedroom walls.

  Directly opposite her bed, and over the dresser, he found what he was looking for, the tiny eye of a camera.

  76

  The Post and the Times were delivered to the Aldrich town house every morning. Maria Garcia put them in the pocket on the side of the breakfast tray for Nina Aldrich, who enjoyed breakfast in bed. But before Maria brought up the tray, she looked at the h
eadline with Zan Moreland’s cry, “i AM NOT THE WOMAN IN THOSE PHOTOS,” splattered across the front page.

  Mrs. Aldrich lied to the police, Maria thought, and I know why. Mr. Aldrich was away and Bartley Longe dropped in on her. And stayed. And stayed a long time. She knew she was keeping that young woman waiting and she didn’t care. And then she lied bald-faced to those detectives. It was easier than to try to make an excuse for keeping Ms. Moreland waiting so long.

  She brought up the tray and Nina Aldrich, propped up on pillows, grabbed the Post and saw the front page. “Oh, they did arrest her?” she said. “Walter will be furious if I’m dragged in to testify. But I’ll simply repeat what I told the detectives, and that will be that.”

  Maria Garcia left the bedroom without answering. But by noon, she could stand it no longer. She had the card Detective Collins had given her and, being careful to see that Mrs. Aldrich was not on her way down in the elevator, dialed his number.

  In the precinct, Billy Collins was waiting for Bartley Longe who, in a rage, had accepted Detective David Feldman’s invitation to come in to the Central Park Precinct. Billy picked up the phone. He heard a tremulous voice say, “Detective Collins, I’m Maria Garcia. I’m afraid to call you because I don’t have my green card yet.”

  Maria Garcia, the Aldrich housekeeper, Billy thought. What now? His voice soothing and reassuring, he said, “Mrs. Garcia, I didn’t hear you tell me that. Is there something else that you want to say?”

  “Yes.” Maria took a long breath, then nervously burst out, “Detective Collins, I swear on my mother’s grave that Ms. Moreland was told by Mrs. Aldrich to meet her here at the town house that day almost two years ago. I heard her and I know why she’s lying about it. Bartley Longe, the designer, had stopped in to see Mrs. Aldrich on Beekman Place. They were having an affair. She let poor Ms. Moreland do all the work to get the job and gave it to him instead when he started flattering her. But that day, she was leaving to meet Ms. Moreland here on Sixty-ninth Street when Mr. Longe arrived. She knew perfectly well that Ms. Moreland was waiting for her, and that she’d sit there waiting until Mrs. Aldrich decided to show up.”