Nighttime Is My Time Page 26

  Only Mark and I said nothing, Jean thought. I will make a donation, but it’s going to be for scholarships, not buildings.

  She didn’t want to think anymore about Mark.

  She looked at the clock. It was a quarter of five. What should I wear tonight? I didn’t bring all that many changes. I don’t know what kind of people Lily’s adoptive parents are. Do they dress casually, or do they tend to be more formal? The brown tweed jacket and slacks I wore on the drive might be the best choice. It’s a sort of in-between outfit.

  I know those pictures the photographer took at President Downes’ house are going to be awful. I don’t think one of the men even attempted a smile, and I felt as if I were grinning like the Cheshire cat. Then, when that nervy kid Jake Perkins showed up and asked to take a picture of all of us for the Gazette, I thought President Downes would have a heart attack. But I felt sorry for the poor kid because of the way Downes practically threw him out.

  I hope Jake doesn’t have Georgetown on his list of colleges he wants to attend, although he certainly does make life interesting.

  Thinking about Jake brought a smile to Jean’s lips, relieving for the moment the tension that had been building up since she had heard she was going to meet Lily’s adoptive parents.

  The smile disappeared as quickly as it came. Where was Laura? she thought. This is the beginning of the fifth day since she disappeared. I can’t stay here indefinitely. I have classes next week. Why do I persist in believing that I’ll hear from her?

  I am not going to be able to go back to sleep, she finally decided. It’s much too early to get up, but at least I can read. I hardly opened yesterday’s newspaper and don’t know what’s going on in the world.

  She went back across the room to the desk, picked up the newspaper, and brought it back to the bed. She propped up the pillow and began to read, but then her eyes started to close. She did not feel the newspaper slip from her grasp, as she finally fell into a heavy sleep.

  At a quarter of seven her phone rang. When Jean saw the time on the clock next to the phone, her throat closed. It has to be bad news, she thought. Something has happened to Laura—or to Lily! She grabbed the receiver. “Hello,” she said anxiously.

  “Jeannie, . . .it’s me.”

  “Laura!” Jean cried. “Where are you? How are you?”

  Laura was sobbing so violently that it was hard to understand what she was saying. “Jean, . . . help me. I’m so scared. I’ve done such a . . . crazy . . . thing . . . . Sorry . . . . Faxes . . . about . . . about Lily.”

  Jean stiffened. “You never met Lily. I know that.”

  “Robby, . . . he . . . he . . . took . . . her . . . brush. It . . . was . . . his . . . idea.”

  “Where is Robby?”

  “On . . .way . . . California. He’s . . . blam-blaming . . . me. Jeannie, meet me . . . please. By yourself, just by yourself.”

  “Laura, where are you?”

  “In . . . motel . . .. Someone . . . recognized me. I have to . . .go.”

  “Laura, where can I meet you?”

  “Jeannie . . . the Lookout.”

  “You mean Storm King Lookout?”

  “Yes . . . yes.”

  Laura’s sobs became louder. “Kill . . . myself . . .”

  “Laura, listen to me,” Jean said frantically. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. It’s going to be all right. I promise you, it’s going to be all right.”

  At the other end of the line, The Owl swiftly disconnected the phone. “My, my, Laura,” he said approvingly. “You are a good actress after all. That was an Academy Award–winning performance.”

  Laura had slumped back against the pillow, her head turned from him, her sobs subsiding into quivering sighs. “I only did it because you promised that now you wouldn’t hurt Jean’s daughter.”

  “So I did,” The Owl said. “Laura, you must be hungry. You haven’t had a thing since yesterday morning. I can’t guarantee the coffee. The counterman in the delicatessen down the hill was getting too inquisitive about me, so I went to another place. But see what else I brought.”

  She did not respond.

  “Turn your head, Laura! Look at me!”

  Wearily she obeyed. Through swollen eyes she could see that he was holding up three plastic bags.

  The Owl began to laugh. “They’re presents,” he explained. “One is for you, one is for Jean, and one is for Meredith. Laura, can you guess what I’m going to do with them? Answer me, Laura! Can you guess what I’m going to do with them?”

  78

  “Sorry, Rich. No one will ever tell me that it’s only a bizarre coincidence that Gloria Martin, one of the Stonecroft lunch table girls, had a pewter owl in her hand when she died,” Sam said flatly.

  It had been another sleepless night. After the call from Joy Lacko, he had gone straight back to the office. The file on Gloria Martin’s suicide had come in from the Bethlehem police department, and together they had analyzed every word of it, as well as the newspaper accounts of her death.

  When Rich Stevens got to the office at 8:00 A.M., he called them in for a conference. After listening to Sam, he turned to Joy. “What do you think?”

  “At first I thought it was a slam dunk, that The Owl nut case had been killing girls from Stonecroft for the past twenty years and is back in this area,” Joy said. “Now I’m not so sure. I talked to Rudy Haverman, the cop who handled Gloria Martin’s suicide eight years ago. He did a very credible investigation. He told me that Martin was into that kind of junk. She apparently was big for picking up cheap tchotchkes of animals and birds and such. The one she was holding when she died was still in its plastic wrap. Haverman found the vendor who sold it to her in the local mall; she distinctly remembered Martin telling her that she was buying it as a joke.”

  “You say the blood-alcohol level shows that she was smashed when she died?” Stevens asked.

  “She was. It registered at .20. According to Haverman, she started drinking after she was divorced, and she went so far as to tell her friends that she didn’t have anything to live for.”

  “Joy, have you found anything in the files of the other women from the lunch table indicating that one of those pewter owls was found in their hands or in their clothing when their bodies were examined?”

  “Not so far, sir,” Joy admitted.

  “I don’t care whether or not Gloria Martin bought that owl herself,” Sam said stubbornly. “The fact she had it in her hand says to me that she was murdered. So what if she told her friends she was depressed? Most people feel depressed after a divorce even if they’re the ones who wanted it. But Martin was very close to her family and knew how devastated they’d be if she killed herself. She didn’t leave a suicide note, and from the amount of alcohol she’d imbibed, it’s a miracle to me that she managed to get the bag over her head and still hang on to the owl.”

  “Do you agree with that assessment, Joy?” Rich Stevens snapped.

  “I do, sir. Rudy Haverman is convinced it’s a suicide, but he hasn’t dealt with two other bodies with pewter owls in their pockets.”

  Rich Stevens leaned back and folded his hands. “For the sake of argument, let’s say that whoever killed Helen Whelan and Yvonne Tepper may—and I repeat may—be involved in the death of at least one of the deceased Stonecroft lunch table girls.”

  “The sixth, Laura Wilcox, is missing,” Sam said. “Which leaves only Jean Sheridan. I warned her yesterday to trust no one, but I’m not sure if that’s going far enough. She may need actual protection.”

  “Where is she now?” Stevens asked.

  “At her hotel. She called me around nine o’clock last night from her hotel room to thank me for something I gave her yesterday. She’d been at a cocktail party given by the president of Stonecroft Academy, and was having dinner sent up to her room. She’s meeting her daughter’s adoptive parents tonight and said she hoped she’d be able to calm down and get a good night’s sleep.”

  Sam hesitated, then continued.
“Rich, sometimes you’ve got to trust your instincts. Joy is doing a great job digging through the files on the Stonecroft deaths. Jean Sheridan would turn me down flat if I suggested she get a bodyguard, and she’d feel the same way if you offered her protection. But she likes me, and if I tell her I want to hang around with her whenever she leaves the hotel, I think she’d go along with it.”

  “I think that’s a good idea, Sam,” Stevens agreed. “All we need is to have something happen to Dr. Sheridan.”

  “One more thing,” Sam added. “I’d like to put surveillance on one of the reunion guys who’s still in town. His name is Mark Fleischman, Dr. Mark Fleischman. He’s a psychiatrist.”

  Joy looked at Sam, her eyebrows raised in astonishment. “Dr. Fleischman! Sam, he gives the most sensible advice I’ve ever heard from anybody on television. A couple of weeks ago he did a program warning parents about kids who feel rejected at home or at school, and how some of them grow up damaged and emotionally warped. We see enough of that, don’t we?”

  “Yes, we do. But from what I understand, Mark Fleischman got badly hurt both at home and in school,” Sam said grimly, “so maybe he was talking about himself.”

  “See who’s available for surveillance,” Rich Stevens said. “One more thing—we’d better list Laura Wilcox as a missing person. This is the fifth day she’s been gone.”

  “I think that if we were being totally honest, we’d be listing her as ‘missing, presumed dead,’ ” Sam said flatly.

  79

  After she hung up from Laura, Jean splashed water on her face, ran a comb through her hair, threw on her jogging suit, dropped her cell phone in her pocket, grabbed her pocketbook, and rushed out of the hotel to her car. Storm King Lookout on Route 218 was fifteen minutes from the hotel. It was still early, and traffic would be light. Normally a careful driver, she pressed her foot on the accelerator and watched the speedometer climb to seventy miles an hour. The clock showed that it was two minutes past seven.

  Laura is desperate, she thought. Why does she want to meet me there? Is she planning to hurt herself? The mental image of Laura getting there first and maybe being desperate enough to climb over the railing and throw herself off haunted Jean. The Lookout was hundreds of feet above the Hudson.

  The car skidded on the final turn, and for a frightening moment Jean was not sure if she could straighten it, but then the wheels righted and she could see that a car was parked near the telescope at the observation site. Let it be Laura, she prayed. Let her be there. Let her be all right.

  Her tires screeched as she pulled into the parking area, turned off her engine, got out, and rushed to fling open the passenger door of the other car. “Laura—” Her greeting died on her lips. The man behind the wheel was wearing a mask, a plastic mask that was the face of an owl. The eyes of the owl, with black pupils set in pools of yellow iris, were surrounded by tufts of white down that gradually changed in color, deepening to brown around the beak and lips.

  He was holding a gun.

  Terrified, Jean turned to run, but a familiar voice ordered, “Get in the car, Jean, unless you want to die here. And do not speak my name. It is forbidden.”

  Her car was only a few feet away. Did she dare try to run for it? Would he shoot her? He was raising the gun.

  Numb with fear, she stood uncertainly; then, playing for time, she slowly started to put her foot into the car. I’ll jump back, she thought. I’ll duck. He’ll have to get out to shoot me. I may be able to get back in my car. But in a lightning-quick gesture, he grabbed her arm, and pulled her the rest of the way into the car, then reached past her and slammed the door.

  In an instant he was backing up, turning onto Route 218, heading toward Cornwall. He ripped off the mask and grinned at her. “I am The Owl,” he said. “I am The Owl. You must never call me by any other name. Do you understand?”

  He’s insane, Jean thought as she nodded. There were no other cars on the road. If one came along, could she lean over and blow the horn? Better to take her chances here on the road than let him get her alone someplace where she couldn’t get help. “I am . . .an . . . ow–owl . . . and . . . and . . . I . . . lllive . . . in . . . a . . .” he chanted. “Remember, Jeannie? Remember?”

  “I remember.” Her lips began to form his name and then froze before any sound came. He’s going to kill me, she thought. I’ll grab the wheel and try to cause an accident.

  He turned and smiled at her, an openmouthed smirk. The pupils of his eyes were black.

  My cell phone, she thought. It’s in my pocket. She shrank back against the seat and fumbled for it. She managed to slide it out and edge it to her side where he couldn’t see it, but before she could attempt to open the cover and dial 911, The Owl’s right hand shot over.

  “We’re getting into traffic,” he said. His strong fingers, crooked like talons, flew to her neck.

  She jerked back away from him and, with her last conscious thought, pushed the cell phone between the seatback and the cushion.

  When she woke up, she was tied to a chair; there was a gag on her mouth. The room was dark, but she could make out the figure of a woman lying on the bed across the room, a woman in a dress that sparkled and caught the tiny glimmers of light that broke through the sides of the thick shades.

  What happened? Jean thought. My head hurts. Why can’t I move? Is this a dream? No, I was going to meet Laura. I got in the car and—

  “You’re awake, Jeannie, aren’t you?”

  It was an effort to turn her head. He was standing in the doorway. “I surprised you, didn’t I, Jean? Do you remember the school play in the second grade? Everybody laughed at me. You laughed at me. Remember?”

  No, I didn’t, Jean thought. I felt sorry for you.

  “Jean, answer me.”

  The gag was so tight that she wasn’t sure if he could hear her response: “I remember.” To be sure he understood, she nodded her head vigorously.

  “You’re smarter than Laura,” he said. “Now I must go. I’ll leave you two together. But I’ll be back soon. And I’ll have someone with me you’ve been dying to see. Guess who?”

  Then he was gone. From the bed Jean heard a whimpering sound. Then, her voice muffled by the gag but still audible, Laura began moaning: “Jeannie, . . . promised . . . wouldn’t hurt Lily . . . but he’s going . . . going to kill her, too.”

  80

  At a quarter of nine, on his way to the Glen-Ridge House, Sam decided that it was not too early to call Jean. When she didn’t answer her room telephone, he was disappointed but not worried. If she had dinner in her room last night, she has probably gone to the coffee shop for breakfast. He debated about calling her on her cell phone but decided against it. By the time I place the call, I’ll be there, he thought.

  The first sense that something might be wrong came when he could not find her in the coffee shop, and again when she did not answer her room phone. The desk clerk could not be sure if she had gone out for a walk. He was the man with the funny colored hair. “That’s not to say she didn’t go out,” he explained. “Early morning is a busy time for us, with people checking out.”

  Sam saw Gordon Amory coming out of the elevator. He was dressed in a shirt and tie and an obviously expensive dark gray business suit. When he saw Sam, he went over to him. “By any chance have you spoken to Jean this morning?” he asked. “We were supposed to have breakfast together, but she didn’t show up. I thought she might have overslept, but she doesn’t answer in her room.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” Sam said, trying to hide his growing anxiety.

  “Well, she was tired when we all got back here last night, so maybe it slipped her mind,” Amory said. “I’ll catch her later. She said she’ll be around until tomorrow anyhow.” With a brief smile and a wave of his hand he was on his way to the front door of the hotel.

  Sam took out his wallet and looked for Jean’s cell phone number but couldn’t find it. Exasperated, he decided that he must have left it in the pocket of
the jacket he’d been wearing the day before. There was one person he knew, however, who might have it—Alice Sommers.

  As he dialed Alice’s number, he realized again how much he anticipated hearing the sound of her voice. I had dinner with her the night before last, he thought. I wish we had plans for tonight.

  Alice did have Jean’s number and gave it to him. “Sam, Jean called me yesterday to say how excited she is about meeting Lily’s adoptive parents. She also said there was a chance that over the weekend she’ll actually meet Lily. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  A reunion with the daughter you haven’t seen in nearly twenty years. Alice is thrilled for Jean, but it has to be one more kick-in-the-teeth reminder to her that Karen’s been gone practically the same amount of time, Sam thought. He was disappointed to realize that whenever he was emotionally touched, he covered himself by sounding somewhat abrupt. “It’s great for her. Alice, I’ve got to run. If you happen to hear from Jean, and I haven’t spoken to her, ask her to give me a call, okay? It’s important.”

  “You’re worried about her, Sam, I can tell. Why?”

  “I’m a little concerned. There’s a lot going on. Listen, she’s probably just out for a walk.”

  “Let me know the minute you hear from her.”

  “I will, Alice.”

  Sam snapped the phone closed and walked over to the hotel desk. “I’d like to know whether Dr. Sheridan ordered room service this morning.”

  The answer came quickly: “No, she did not.”

  Mark Fleischman was walking through the front door into the lobby. He spotted Sam at the desk and went over to him. “Mr. Deegan, I want to talk to you. I’m worried about Jean Sheridan.”

  Sam looked at him coldly. “Why do you say that, Dr. Fleischman?”

  “Because in my opinion, whoever is communicating with her about her daughter is dangerous. With Laura missing, Jean is the only woman of the so-called lunch table girls who is both alive and unharmed.”