I'll Walk Alone Page 28

  My son, he thought. She didn’t want me. I gave her a child and she claims she didn’t know she was expecting him when she dumped me.

  Thank you very much for your kindness and good-bye, he said to himself, playing her role. You never expected to have a child, so you don’t have to pay for him. That wouldn’t be fair. But how nice of you to check out the apartment I moved into and then the one that I rented after Matthew disappeared. How kind to see that the plumbing and the heating and the light fixtures work.

  Of course it wouldn’t be fair, Ted raged, because you really didn’t want to share him. He was yours. You told me to start a trust fund for him but that really wasn’t expected of me. Well, lady, that trust fund is going to pay for speeding your little precious into eternity today.

  I wonder if she’s home now? I didn’t bother to watch her last night. I was too tired and worried, but now Larry is on his way to Middletown. With any luck, things will work out.

  Ted turned on his computer and entered the code that would get him into Zan’s apartment. Then, horror-struck, he watched as, directly facing the camera, Zan shrieked his name.

  85

  Cold and stiff, Penny Hammel was waiting in the woods behind Sy’s old farmhouse. After studying the childish drawing and being sure that she was right, that Gloria Evans resembled Zan Moreland, she had driven down the road and called Alvirah and left a message. Then she came back and saw that the Evans car was back, so she drove around the road again and took up her vigil.

  She couldn’t let Evans get in that car and drive away. If I’m right that she had Matthew Carpenter in Sy’s house, I can’t let her disappear again, Penny thought as she stamped her feet and flexed her fingers to keep them from freezing. If she tries to leave, I’ll follow her to see where she goes.

  She wondered if she should try calling Alvirah again. But she was sure that the minute she got the message Alvirah would call back. I called her at home and on her cell phone, Penny reasoned. But after a while she thought, Maybe I should try once more.

  She took her phone out of her pocket and opened it. Her fingers were inside her mittens. Impatiently, she pulled off a mitten but before she could go to her list of numbers, her phone rang.

  As she had hoped, it was Alvirah. “Penny, where are you?”

  “I’m watching that farmhouse I told you about. I don’t want that lady to get away and she was packing this morning. Alvirah, I’m sure she has a child in there. And she looks like Zan Moreland.”

  “Penny, be careful. I called the detectives who are on this case. They’re calling the Middletown police. They’ll be there in a few minutes. But you — “

  “Alvirah,” Penny interrupted. “There’s a white truck stopping in front of the house. It’s parking in the driveway. The driver is getting out. He’s carrying a big box. Why would she want any big box if she’s planning to leave? What would she want to put in it?”

  86

  Billy Collins, Jennifer Dean, and Wally Johnson were being driven in a squad car to Ted Carpenter’s apartment. Billy had briefed the other two on Kevin Wilson’s call. “We never looked at the father,” he berated himself. “Carpenter never made a single false move. Never. Outraged at the babysitter falling asleep. Outraged at Moreland for hiring a young babysitter. Then publicly apologizing to Moreland. Then outraged after the pictures in the paper. He was playing us all along.”

  Billy’s cell phone rang. It was Alvirah relaying Penny Hammel’s message. Billy turned to Jennifer Dean. “Get the Middletown police to the Owens farmhouse on Linden Road pronto,” he snapped. “Tell them to proceed with caution. We have a tip that Matthew Carpenter may be hidden there.”

  Ted Carpenter’s apartment was downtown. “Turn on the siren,” Billy directed the officer who was driving. “That guy has got to be feeling cornered.”

  But even as he said it, he had a feeling it would be too late.

  When they arrived, the crowd milling around the building told him that what he had feared might have happened. Even before he got out of the squad car, he knew that the body that had just plummeted through the canopy and was lying on the sidewalk was that of Ted Carpenter.

  87

  Help me, Brittany prayed. I don’t deserve it, but help me. With a smile she waved to Larry Post, as she walked over to the living room window. She still had her cell phone in her pocket. He was opening the cover of a large box. She could see rows of hundreds lined up in it, each packet with a printed tape around it.

  I’ll open the door, she thought. Maybe I can stall him. I don’t have the security system on. If he tries to open or break a window, he could do it in a minute. He thinks I’d never call the police for help. I don’t have a chance. But maybe…

  “Hi, Larry,” she called. “I know what you’ve got. I’ll open the door for you.”

  As she turned her back to him, she took out the phone and dialed 911. When an operator answered, she whispered, “Home invasion. I know the man. He’s dangerous.” Knowing that the local police were familiar with the location of the farmhouse, she cried, “The Owens farmhouse. Hurry. Please hurry.”

  88

  I’m going in there, Penny decided. If that guy gets Evans and the child into that truck, no telling what will happen. I’ll bring in the drawing and say that I found it when I was walking and thought it had to belong here. The cops may be on the way, but those 911 calls can get mixed up.

  She hurried from her observation post in the woods. She ran across the field and stumbled over a heavy rock. Some instinct made her bend down and hoist it up. Maybe I’ll need this, was the thought that ran through her head. She rushed up to the house and looked in the kitchen window. The Evans woman was standing there. The man Penny had seen carrying the box from the truck was a few feet away from her, holding a gun.

  “You’re too late, Larry,” Brittany was saying. “I dropped Matthew in a mall an hour ago. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it if you had your car radio on. It’s a big story, but I guess it won’t make Ted too happy.”

  “You’re lying, Brittany.”

  “Why would I lie, Larry? Isn’t that the plan? That Matthew would be in a place where he’s surely found, and I go home with the money and we’re all happy—happy that we’re finished with it?

  “I know Ted is worried about leaving me out there as a potential problem, but you can reassure him that I won’t be one. I want a life again. If I turn him in, I’ll go to prison, too. And now you’ve brought the money. All of it, I guess. All six hundred thousand dollars. The trouble is that I can’t celebrate because my father just died.”

  “Brittany, where is Matthew? Give me the key to the closet where you hide him. Ted told me about it.”

  Brittany saw the look of desperation in Larry Post’s eyes. He’d find the closet easily enough. It was right at the end of the hall and he would find a way to open it even without a key. How could she stop him before help came?

  “I’m sorry, Brittany.” Larry was pointing the gun at her heart. His eyes were devoid of emotion.

  Penny had not been able to hear what was being said, but she could see that the man in the kitchen with Evans was about to shoot her. There was only one thing she could do. She pulled back her hand and with her ample strength sent the rock she was holding crashing through the window.

  Startled at the slivers of glass that cascaded around him, Larry Post fired the gun but the shot sailed over Brittany’s head.

  Realizing her one chance, Brittany threw herself on Larry, causing him to lose his balance, stumble, and fall. He opened his hand to protect himself from smashing against the stove and dropped the gun.

  Brittany swooped down and picked it up as police cars raced up on the lawn. Holding it on Larry Post, she said, “Don’t move! I don’t care if I use it on you and I know how to do it. My daddy and I used to go hunting together in Texas.”

  Without taking her eyes off him, she backed up and opened the kitchen door for Penny. “The blueberry lady,” she said. “Welcome. Matth
ew Carpenter is in the closet down the hall,” she said. “The key is behind the server in the dining room.”

  Larry Post scrambled to his feet and began to run. He threw open the front door and ran into a sea of blue uniforms. Other policemen pounded past them into the house. Margaret Grissom/Glory/ Brittany La Monte had slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. The gun she was holding was dangling from her hand.

  “Drop the gun! Drop the gun!” a cop shouted.

  She laid it on the table. “I only wish I had the courage to use it on myself,” Brittany said.

  Penny found the key and rushed to the closet, then paused. Slowly she opened it. The little boy, who had obviously heard the shot, was huddled in the corner, his expression terrified. The light was on. She had seen enough of his pictures in the paper to be sure it was Matthew.

  As a broad smile came over her face and tears filled her eyes, Penny bent down, picked him up, and held him close to her. “Matthew, it’s time you went home. Mommy has been looking for you.”

  89

  Detectives Billy Collins, Jennifer Dean, and Wally Johnson were standing in the lobby of the late Ted Carpenter’s trendy apartment building. The detectives from the local precinct had cordoned off the area around Carpenter’s body and were waiting for the arrival of the crime scene unit and the medical examiner’s van.

  Their expressions grim, they were desperate to hear the outcome of Billy’s urgent call to the Middletown police to respond to the possibility that Matthew Carpenter was being held in the Owens farmhouse.

  Was Alvirah Meehan’s friend in Middletown correct? Was it possible that a woman who strongly resembled Zan Moreland was hiding Matthew Carpenter all this time? And following Kevin Wilson’s phone call about the camera in Zan’s apartment, where was Larry Post now? They had just run his name through the computer at headquarters, and discovered that he had served time for manslaughter. It’s a sure bet that he’s got some part in this whole scenario about Matthew and not just the bugging of Moreland’s apartment, Billy thought.

  Billy’s cell phone rang. Holding their breath, Jennifer Dean and Wally Johnson watched as a broad smile came over Billy’s face. “They’ve got the kid,” he said, “and he’s okay.”

  Jennifer Dean and Wally Johnson answered in unison. “Thank God,” they said, “thank God.”

  Jennifer, her voice low, said, “Billy, we were all wrong about Zan Moreland. Don’t beat yourself up. Everything pointed to her.”

  Billy nodded. “I know it did. And I’m very happy to be wrong. Now let’s call Matthew’s mother. The Middletown police are on their way to our precinct with him.”

  Fr. Aiden O’Brien heard the breaking news from the police officer who was guarding him at the hospital. His condition now upgraded to “critical but stable,” he whispered a prayer of thanksgiving. The sacred seal of the confessional that had cloaked his sure and certain knowledge that Zan Moreland herself was a victim would no longer haunt him. Her innocence had been proven in another way. And her child was coming home.

  90

  Zan and Kevin raced to the Central Park Precinct to find Alvirah and Willy already there. Billy Collins, Jennifer Dean, and Wally Johnson were waiting for them. Billy had told Zan on the phone that the Middletown Police assured him that while Matthew was very pale and thin, he looked okay. He’d explained to her that while ordinarily the police would want to have Matthew checked out by a doctor right away, that could be done later today or tomorrow. Billy had told them to get him home.

  “Zan,” he cautioned her, “from what they know so far, Matthew has never forgotten you. Penny Hammel, the woman we can thank for finding him, showed the police a drawing that they think Matthew made. She found it in the backyard of that farmhouse. I hear it looks a lot like you and it has the word ‘Mommy’ printed on the bottom. But it would be a good idea if you brought a toy or a pillow or something that he loved. It might comfort him after what he’s been through.”

  From the moment she entered the precinct, other than fiercely thanking and hugging Alvirah and Willy, Zan had not said another word. Kevin Wilson, his arm protectively around her, was carrying a large shopping bag. When they heard the sound of sirens approaching the entrance to the precinct, Zan reached into the bag and pulled out a blue bathrobe. “He’ll remember this,” she said. “He loved to cuddle with me inside of it.”

  Billy Collins’s phone rang. He listened and smiled. “Come into this private room,” he said gently to Zan. “They’re bringing him in downstairs now. I’ll go get him.”

  Less than a minute later, the door opened and little Matthew Carpenter stood bewildered and looked around. Zan, with the robe draped over her arm, ran to him and dropped to her knees. Trembling, she folded him into the robe.

  Tentatively, Matthew reached for the lock of hair that was falling over her face and held it against his cheek. “Mommy,” he whispered, “Mommy, I missed you.”

  Epilogue

  One year later

  Zan, Alvirah, Willy, Penny, Bernie, Fr. Aiden, Josh, Kevin Wilson, and his mother, Cate, watched with hearts overflowing as six-year-old Matthew, now restored to being a fiery redhead, blew out the candles of his birthday cake.

  “I got them all,” he announced proudly. “With only one breath.”

  Zan ruffled his hair. “Good for you. Do you want to open your presents before I cut the cake?”

  “Yes,” the boy answered decisively.

  He’s made a remarkable recovery, Alvirah thought. Zan had brought him regularly to a child therapist and he had blossomed from the timid child whom Zan had wrapped in her bathrobe when Penny brought him home to an outgoing, happy little boy who would occasionally still cling to Zan saying, “Mommy, please don’t leave me.” Most of the time he was an enthusiastic first-grader who couldn’t wait to go to school and be with his friends.

  Zan knew that as Matthew got older and began to ask questions, she would have to deal with his inevitable anger and sadness about what his father had done and how he had died. It will be one step at a time, she and Kevin had agreed. And they would handle it together.

  The party was being held in Zan’s apartment in Battery Park City, but she and Matthew wouldn’t be there much longer. she and Kevin had chosen their wedding day to be just four days from now, on the anniversary of Matthew’s return home. Fr. Aiden would be presiding at the ceremony. After the wedding, they would be moving into Kevin’s apartment. His mother, Cate, who had already become Matthew’s trusted babysitter, relished her soon-to-be role as grandmother.

  Alvirah thought of the tabloids she had read this morning over breakfast. On page three they were rehashing the story of Matthew’s kidnapping, the impersonation of Zan, the suicide of Ted Carpenter and the sentencing of Larry Post and Margaret Grissom/Glory/ Brittany La Monte. Post had received life in prison and La Monte got twenty years.

  As Matthew began to open his packages, Alvirah turned to Penny. “If it weren’t for you, this wouldn’t be happening.”

  Penny smiled. “Thank my blueberry muffins and the truck I saw in the foyer that day and then the drawing that I found stuck in the bush behind Sy’s farmhouse. As Bernie had to admit, sometimes being nosy can pay off. The most important thing, the only thing, is that Matthew is safe. The reward money from Melissa Knight is a bonus.”

  She means it, Alvirah thought indulgently. Penny really means it. Melissa Knight had used every trick in the book to weasel out of paying the reward, but in the end she had written the check.

  Now Alvirah watched as Matthew, suddenly serious, finished opening his presents and put his arms around Zan. He brushed a lock of her hair against his cheek.

  Then he said contentedly, “Mommy, I just had to make sure you’re still here.” Matthew smiled. “Now, Mommy, can we please cut the cake?”

  Read About the Inspiration Behind Other Classic Novels by Mary Higgins Clark

  Stillwatch

  When I was about twelve years old, there was a murder in the rectory of our local parish. The
priests were lingering over coffee. The housekeeper, a young woman of twenty-eight, lived in the basement with her husband and five-year-old daughter.

  Suddenly shots were heard. The priests rushed downstairs. The housekeeper’s husband had murdered her and killed himself. The next day the newspaper read, “Their five-year-old daughter, bathed in the blood of her mother, was screaming and screaming.”

  That was the basis for Stillwatch. I wondered how much the little girl remembered of the terrible scene after she grew up. I decided to set the book in Washington because it is obviously the center of the political world in America and I wanted to use that background as well.

  Weep No More My Lady

  At the time I wrote that book I had just gone to a famous spa, Maine Chance in Arizona. It was the ultimate in luxury and something I could never have afforded if I hadn’t by then become a successful writer. I asked myself, wouldn’t it be interesting if in a place like this, where everyone is waited on and pampered, that a killer is stalking his victims and waiting in a wet suit at the bottom of the pool to drown them? The prospect gave me the shivers, and I was on my way. Incidentally, that was the first book that Alvirah Meehan appeared in, and she’s been my good friend ever since.

  While My Pretty One Sleeps

  When I was eighteen, I worked on Saturdays in a Fifth Avenue department store because I have always loved clothes. At that time, Dior had just changed the fashion landscape when he came out with his new look. I thought, suppose a talented young woman is murdered for the fashion look she has created and twenty years later her daughter uses fashion to find her mother’s killer. Just for the record, when I wrote that book I was a widow. Many people have asked if my husband was the inspiration for it because of my description of the man who is the father of the main character. My answer was no. I dreamed up the man I wanted and twenty years later I found him.