You Belong to Me Page 6

  “A very persuasive airhead,” Susan said ruefully. “What do you think of that Disney castle my father built for her?”

  They laughed.

  “But you’re still pretty hurt and uncomfortable about the situation?” he suggested. “Sorry; you’re the psychologist, not me.”

  When you don’t want to give an answer, ask a question, Susan reminded herself. “You’ve met my father and sister,” she countered. “What about you? Any siblings?”

  He told her that he was an only child, the product of a late marriage. “My father was too busy making money to court anyone until he was in his forties,” he explained. “Then he was too busy amassing wealth to pay much attention to me or my mother. But I must assure you that with the human misery I read and hear about every day at the foundation, I count myself very lucky.”

  “In the grand scheme of things, you probably are,” Susan agreed. “Me, too.”

  It wasn’t until they were sipping espresso that Regina Clausen’s name came up. Alex Wright couldn’t tell her very much more than what he had said on the phone. He’d sat at the same table as Regina at a Futures Industry dinner. He found her to be a quiet, intelligent lady. It seemed impossible to think that someone with her background could just disappear.

  “Do you put any stock in that call you got on the program?” he asked. “The one from the woman who sounded so nervous?”

  She had already decided that she would not discuss with anyone the ring Regina Clausen’s mother had given her. That ring, with the same “You belong to me” inscription “Karen” had mentioned, was the only tangible object that might link Regina’s disappearance and Karen’s experience with an aborted shipboard friendship. The fewer people who knew about it, the better.

  “I just don’t know,” she told him. “It’s too early to be sure.”

  “How did you ever happen to do a radio program in the first place?” he asked.

  She found herself telling him how Nedda had introduced her to the former host. She also told him about having worked for Nedda while in law school, about quitting her job in the Westchester County District Attorney’s office, and going back to school.

  Finally, over brandy, Susan said, “I’m the one who’s usually the listener. Enough about me. Much too much about me, in fact.”

  Wright signaled for the check. “Not nearly enough,” he said briskly.

  All in all, it had been a very nice evening, Susan decided as she slipped into bed.

  She saw that it was ten of eleven. She had been home twenty minutes. When she had tried to say good-bye at the front door of her brownstone, Alex said, “My father told me to always see a lady safely home. And then I assure you I’ll be on my way.” He had insisted on going upstairs with her and waiting while she opened her apartment door.

  Nothing like a little old-fashioned courtesy, Susan thought as she turned off the light.

  She was tired but found she could not stop reviewing the events of the day, going over what had happened and what had not happened. She thought about Donald Richards, author of Vanishing Women. He had been an interesting guest. Clearly he would have liked to be invited to the hoped-for meeting with “Karen.”

  Somewhat uncomfortably, Susan remembered her swift rejection of his hint that he would like to have input into anything Karen might disclose if she kept the appointment.

  Would she ever hear from Karen again? she wondered. Would it be wise to make a plea on tomorrow’s show for the woman to contact her, if only by phone?

  As she started to fall asleep, Susan sensed a warning bell in her subconscious. She stared into the darkness, trying to pinpoint what it was that had set off her internal alarm. Clearly there was something that had happened or that she had heard earlier that day, something that she should have paid attention to. But what was it?

  Realizing that she was too tired to focus now, she turned over and settled in for the night. She would think of it tomorrow; surely that would be plenty of time.

  19

  Hilda Johnson slept for five hours before she awoke at ten-thirty, feeling both refreshed and somewhat hungry. A cup of tea and a piece of toast would go down well, she decided, as she sat up and reached for her robe. She also wanted to see if they would show her again on the eleven o’clock news.

  After she watched the news, she would get back into bed and say a rosary for Carolyn Wells, that poor woman who had been hit by the van.

  She knew that Captain Tom Shea would be at the precinct station by 8 A.M. sharp. She would be there, waiting for him. As she knotted the belt of her chenille robe, Hilda mentally reviewed the face of the man whom she had seen push Mrs. Wells into the van’s path. Now that the shock had worn off, she could remember his face even more clearly than she had seemed to at the time. She knew that in the morning she would have to give the police sketch artist a complete description of the man.

  Nearly seventy years ago, she had been a good art student herself. Her grammar school teacher, Miss Dunn, had been very encouraging, saying Hilda had a real talent, especially for sketching faces, but then at age thirteen she had had to go to work, and that left no time for that sort of thing, she thought regretfully.

  Not that she had given up sketching entirely, of course. Over the years she often had taken a pad and pen with her to the park and made pen-and-ink drawings that she would frame and give to her friends for their birthdays. She hadn’t done it lately, though. There were only a few friends left, and besides, her fingers were too swollen with arthritis to hold a pen easily.

  Still, if she could get that man’s face down on paper now, while it was still fresh in her mind, it would be that much easier when she went to the police in the morning.

  Hilda crossed to the secretary that had been her mother’s, and which occupied a place of honor in her tiny living room. She opened the desk section below the mahogany-and-glass cabinet and pulled up a chair. In a drawer was a box of stationery her friend Edna had given her last Christmas. The sheets were large and sunny yellow, and there was lettering across the top that read, “A bon mot for you from Hilda Johnson.”

  Edna had explained that a bon mot was a clever saying, and the executive-size paper was something she knew Hilda would enjoy. “Not like those little cards that just about give you the space to write two lines.”

  It was also the perfect size for making a quick sketch to help Hilda anchor her memory of the thug who had grabbed that poor woman’s manila envelope and then pushed her. With painfully stiff fingers, Hilda slowly began to draw. A face started to emerge—not a profile, but more like he was facing three-quarters of the way toward her. Yes, his hair had grown like this, she reminded herself. She drew his ear, well-shaped, close to his head. His eyes had been far apart, and they narrowed as he focused on Wells, his lashes, long, his chin, determined.

  When Hilda put the pen down, she was satisfied. Not bad, she thought, not bad at all. She glanced at the clock; it was five of eleven. She turned on the television, then went into the kitchen to fill the kettle.

  She had just lit the gas beneath it when the buzzer sounded from downstairs. Who in the name of God at this hour? she wondered as she went into the tiny foyer and picked up the receiver of the intercom.

  “Who is it?” She did not attempt to conceal her irritation.

  “Miss Johnson, I’m so sorry to disturb you.” The man’s voice was low and pleasant. “I’m Detective Anders. We have a suspect in custody who may be the person you saw push Mrs. Wells today. I need to show you his picture. If you recognize him, we can hold him. Otherwise we’ll have to let him go.”

  “I thought no one believed me when I said someone pushed her,” Hilda snapped.

  “We didn’t want it to leak that we were on the tail of a suspect. May I come up for just a minute?”

  “I guess so.”

  Hilda pushed the buzzer that unlocked the lobby door. Then with a feeling of self-satisfaction, she went back to the desk and looked at her sketch. Wait till Detective Anders sees this, she
thought.

  She heard the old elevator when it lumbered to a stop on her floor; after that she made out the faint sound of footsteps.

  She waited until Detective Anders rang the bell before she opened the door. Must be getting cold, she thought—his coat collar was turned up, and he wore a slouch hat pulled down low on his forehead. Plus he was wearing gloves.

  “This will only take a minute, Miss Johnson,” he said. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

  Hilda cut short his apology. “Come in,” she said briskly. “I’ve got something to show you too.” As she led the way to the desk, she did not hear the soft click of the closing door.

  “I did a sketch of the guy I saw,” she said triumphantly. “Let’s compare it with the picture you have.”

  “Of course.” But instead of a sketch, the visitor laid down a driver’s license with a photo ID.

  Hilda gasped. “Look! It’s the same face! That’s the man I saw push that woman and grab the envelope.”

  For the first time, she looked directly up at Detective Anders. He had removed his hat, and his coat collar was no longer turned up around his neck.

  Hilda’s eyes widened in shock. Her mouth opened, but the only sound that came from it was a faint murmur: “Oh, no!” She tried to step back, but she bumped into the desk behind her. Her face went ghastly pale as she realized that she was trapped.

  Beseechingly she raised her hands. Then in futile protest she turned her palms outward to shield herself from the knife her visitor was about to plunge into her chest.

  He jumped back to avoid the spurting blood, then watched as her body sagged and crumbled to the threadbare carpet. A fixed, staring look began to settle in Hilda’s eyes, but she managed to murmur, “God . . . won’t . . . let you . . . get . . . away . . .”

  As he reached over her to take his driver’s license and her sketch, her body shuddered violently, and her hand fell on his shoe.

  Shaking the hand off, he walked calmly to the door, opened it, checked the hallway, and in four paces was at the fire exit staircase. When he reached the lobby, he opened that door a crack, saw no one coming, and an instant later was on the street, heading home.

  The realization of how narrow had been his escape washed over him. If the cops had believed that old bag and gone to talk to her that afternoon, she might have drawn the sketch for them. It would have been in all the papers tomorrow.

  As he walked, his right foot began to feel heavier and heavier. It felt almost as if Hilda Johnson’s thick-fingered hand were still lying on it.

  Had her dying words put a curse on him? he wondered. They had reminded him of the mistake he had made earlier today—the mistake that Susan Chandler, with her trained prosecutor’s mind, might just possibly uncover.

  He knew he couldn’t let that happen.

  20

  Susan’s sleep was restless, filled with troubling dreams. When she awoke she remembered fragments of scenes in which Jane Clausen and Dee and Jack and she were all present. She remembered that at one point Jane Clausen had been pleading, “Susan, I want Regina,” while Dee stretched out her hand and said, “Susan, I want Jack.”

  Well, you had him, Susan thought. She got out of bed and stretched, hoping to relieve the familiar clutch at her heart. It bothered her deeply that after all these years, a dream like that could bring all the memories flooding back. Memories of herself at twenty-three, a second-year law student working part-time for Nedda. Jack, a twenty-eight-year-old commercial photographer, just beginning to make a name for himself. The two of them in love.

  Enter Dee. Big sister. Darling of fashion photographers. Sophisticated. Amusing. Charming. Three men in line, wanting to marry her, but she had wanted Jack.

  Susan went into the bathroom and reached for the toothpaste. She brushed her teeth briskly, as if by that action she could obliterate the bitter aftertaste she always experienced when she remembered Dee’s tearful explanation: “Susan, forgive me. But what is between Jack and me is inevitable . . . maybe even necessary.”

  Jack’s agonized nonexcuse: “Susan, I’m sorry.”

  And the crazy part, Susan thought, is that they were right for each other. They did love each other. Maybe even too much. Dee hated the cold. If she hadn’t been so in love, and such a good sport, she would have insisted Jack quit dragging her to ski slopes. If she had succeeded in keeping him at home, he wouldn’t have been caught in the avalanche. And maybe he would be alive today.

  On the other hand, Susan thought as she turned on the hot water in the shower, if Jack and I had ended up together, I might be dead too, because I surely would have been on that slope with him.

  Her mother had understood. “I realize that if it had been the other way ’round, Susan, if you’d been attracted to someone Dee cared about, you would have removed yourself from the picture. But something you have to accept, even if you find it hard to understand, is that Dee always has been somewhat jealous of you.”

  Yes, I would have removed myself from the picture, Susan thought as she slipped off her robe and stepped under the steaming water.

  By seven-thirty she was dressed and was having her usual breakfast of juice, coffee, and half an English muffin. She turned on Good Day, New York to catch the news. Before she could see more than the opening montage, however, the phone rang.

  It was her mother. “Just wanted to catch you before you got too busy, dear.”

  Pleased to hear that her mother sounded upbeat, Susan pressed the mute button of the TV remote control. “Hi, Mom.” And thank God she still expects to be called Mom, she thought, and not Emily.

  “Your program yesterday was fascinating. Did that woman who phoned show up at your office?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Not surprising. She sounded pretty worried. But I thought you’d be interested to know that I once met Regina Clausen. I was with your father at a stockholders’ meeting; that was in the B.B. days, so it would be about four years ago.”

  B.B. Before Binky.

  “Needless to say Charley-Charles was trying to impress Regina Clausen with the terrific investments he’d made, a fact I reminded him of during our financial settlement, but which, of course, he then tried to deny.”

  Susan laughed. “Mom, be charitable.”

  “Sorry, Susan, I didn’t mean to make a crack about the divorce,” her mother said.

  “Sure you did. You do it all the time.”

  “That’s true,” her mother agreed cheerfully. “But I really did call to tell you about Regina Clausen. She got quite chatty with us—you know what a schmoozer your father can be—and she told us that on her next long vacation, she was planning to go on a cruise. She clearly was excited about it. I told her I hoped the people on board wouldn’t keep bothering her for investment advice. I remember she laughed and said something about looking forward to having some fun and excitement, and that did not include discussing the Dow Jones average. She said her father had had a heart attack in his forties, and that before he died he talked with regret about the vacations he’d never made time for.”

  “What you’re telling me just serves to reinforce the theory that she did have some kind of shipboard romance,” Susan said. “Certainly it sounds like she was open to the idea and probably would have been receptive.” She thought of the turquoise ring Jane Clausen had given her. “Yes, I think that’s what happened to her, a well-concealed shipboard romance.”

  “Well, what she said clearly helped put a bug in your father’s ear. We separated shortly after that. He had his plastic surgery, got rid of his gray hair, and started running around with Binky. Incidentally he’s encouraging Dee to take a cruise now. Did she tell you about that?”

  Susan looked at the clock. She didn’t want to cut her mother off, but she needed to be on her way. “No, I didn’t know Dee was thinking about a cruise herself. But then I missed her call yesterday,” she said.

  Her mother’s voice became troubled. “I’m worried about Dee, Susan. She’s down. She’s l
onely. She’s not springing back. She’s not strong like you.”

  “You’re pretty strong yourself, Mom.”

  Her mother laughed. “Not consistently, but I’m getting there. Susan, don’t work too hard.”

  “Meaning find a nice guy, get married, be happy.”

  “Something like that. Anybody interesting you haven’t told me about? When Dee phoned she mentioned someone she met at the Binky-Charley party who seemed very smitten with you. She said he was terribly attractive.”

  Susan thought of Alex Wright. “He’s not bad.”

  “According to Dee he’s much more than ‘not bad.’ ”

  “Bye, Mom,” Susan said firmly. After she hung up, she put her coffee cup in the microwave and turned up the TV sound again. A reporter was talking about an elderly woman who had been stabbed to death in her Upper East Side apartment. Susan was just about to turn off the TV when the anchorman replayed the segment from the previous evening’s news that included the report that Hilda Johnson, the murder victim, had called the police, claiming that the woman who had been run over on Park Avenue had been deliberately pushed during a mugging.

  Susan stared at the television, realizing that the prosecutor in her was refusing to believe that these two events were coincidental, while the psychologist in her was wondering what kind of out-of-control mind could commit two such brutal crimes.

  21

  Even though he had found her terribly irritating, Captain Tom Shea of the 19th Precinct had been fond of Hilda Johnson. As he pointed out to his men, the bottom line was that usually there was some validity to Hilda’s complaints. For example, a derelict she accused of hanging around the playground in the park turned out to have a record of minor sex offenses against young children. And the kid she complained about who kept riding his bike around her neighborhood got caught red-handed mugging an elderly pedestrian.

  Standing now in Hilda Johnson’s apartment, Captain Shea felt both anger and tenderness at the sight of the limp, chenille-covered remains of the old woman. The crime photographers had taken their pictures. The coroner had done his job. It was okay to touch her.