“Oh God,” Jennifer whispered, her legs weakening. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against the cold glass. Across Fifty-ninth Street, dozens of floors below her, was the entrance of the park, where a half-dozen men stood loitering, standing out in the cold day. They were selling drugs, she knew, calling out to people as they passed by on their way to the subway.
Kathy Dart broke into her thoughts. “I think it would be good if we could talk in person,” she said.
Jennifer nodded. She was crying again, and finally she managed to say “I would love to talk to you.” She turned away from the window and went to her desk to pull out a handful of tissues. Kathy Dart was still speaking, telling her how difficult it was to have this special gift, to be open to such communication, to be sensitive to altered lives.
“But I’m not that kind of person, Kathy,” Jennifer finally protested. “I never played with an Ouija board or did automatic writing.”
“What kind of person, Jennifer?” Kathy Dart said quietly. “Do you believe in God?”
“Yes, of course. ! guess so. I mean, I did once.”
“And angels? And the devil? And miracles? Of course you do. Or did. And you believed in life after death, too. It’s a tenet of Western culture. We were all raised to believe in a God or some Supreme Being that established order in our universe. Even the Big Bang theory is a stab at trying to explain ourselves, why we are here on earth, the meaning of our lives.” Kathy Dart sighed. They had been talking for over twenty minutes and both were getting tired. “Listen, after all of this, I still haven’t told you why I really called, or what upset Habasha this morning.”
Jennifer waited. She had returned to her leather chair and was sitting behind her wide desk. The telephone console was flashing, and she was sure that Joan had returned to her desk and was in the outer office taking her calls.
“Habasha was disturbed about you. He is painfully vague about much of his information but said you were in danger.”
Jennifer did not answer. She thought of the New York Post headlines and realized again that the police were still searching for her.
“There is a man
I have only a name
a first name.” Kathy Dart was speaking slowly, as if she were still trying to decide how much to tell her.
“Yes?” Jennifer asked quickly, raising her voice.
“David. Do you know a man named David?”
“Of course I do,” Jennifer whispered. She suddenly lost all her strength. “David Engle. He’s the husband of my friend Margit. She just committed suicide.”
“Be careful, Jennifer. I am sorry to have so little to tell you. Usually I do not like to do this—give people bits and pieces of information—but I am taking a chance with you. I feel you are someone special. Special to me, to all of us.”
“Thank you,” Jennifer whispered gratefully. “I’m not afraid,” she added, surprising even herself.
“Good! Remember, you are not alone. You have your guides with you always. Your guardian angels, as we used to call them in Catholic school. And you have me. Please call me. We must keep in touch. I feel—I know—we are important in each other’s lives.”
When Jennifer finally hung up the phone, she sat very still at her desk and watched the lights of her phone flash. Then, impulsively, she pushed down one of the buttons and reached out to pick up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Jenny?”
Jennifer recognized the voice at once. “Yes?”
“Is that you, Jenny? I’m so used to getting that secretary who guards your palace door.”
“Yes, David, it’s me.” Jennifer knew her voice sounded stiff and distant, but she couldn’t bring any warmth to her words.
“I’m calling to ask if you can come by later today for a drink. I have some things I need to talk to you about.”
“I’m sorry, David. I have to meet Tom right after work,” Jennifer said. The last person she wanted to see was David Engle.
“Jenny, please. I really need someone to talk to.”
“I understand, David, but I can’t. I—” Jennifer suddenly stopped talking.
“Jenny? Are you there?”
“Yes, David. All right, I’ll come about four.” Now Jennifer was smiling. There, in the far corner of her office, in front of the wall of bookshelves, Margit Engle sat on the leather sofa and nodded to Jennifer, encouraging her to accept the invitation from her husband.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JENNIFER LISTENED TO DAVID Engle lie to her. He was telling her about Margit’s death—how she had said good night, gone to her bedroom, closed the door, and swallowed a dozen Valium. And how he had found her later, on the floor at the foot of the bed. He started to cry as he spoke. Jennifer guessed that he had been drinking most of the day.
Jennifer sat on the sofa and sipped her white wine, watching him. Now he was talking about their sons. They were both home from school and handling the funeral details.
“I couldn’t face it,” he confessed to Jennifer, coming back to where she was sitting on the sofa.
Jennifer realized how worn down he was. He couldn’t be more than fifty, but he had aged since she had spent the night at the apartment. His whole body sagged, his face was gray. Gray from beard bristles. Gray from the long winter without sun. He looked like a corpse.
“Margit was a much better parent than I was,” David said. He told her how when the boys had pneumonia, she had slept for a week on the floor in their bedroom. “And I was the goddamn doctor,” he swore, sobbing again.
Jennifer didn’t go to him. She was crying, too, but her tears were for Margit, the mother of his children, his wife for twenty-three years, the woman whom he had murdered in her sleep.
“I made friends with people easily,” he said next, pulling himself together, “but it was Margit whom they came to love.” He leaned forward in the chair, gesturing with one hand and spilling his drink. “Like you! Like you! You were my friend, too, but Margit took you away from me.”
“David, please!”
He waved off her protest. “Don’t you tell me about Margit. I knew her. I knew what she was like.” He was crying, and he kept rambling on, claiming that Margit had stolen all his friends, turned them against him.
Jennifer set her drink down on the coffee table.
“David, I’m going to have to go,” she said softly, reaching for her coat.
David did not respond. He was still leaning forward, staring at the rug.
“Go?” he said finally, looking up, blinking into the light. Jennifer was now standing.
“I’ll telephone the boys later to find out about the service. I would like to say something, if you don’t mind. I’ll speak to Derek about it.” She walked past him but did not bend over to kiss him on the cheek as once she would have. He would turn on her next, she knew. His self-pity was engulfing everyone he knew.
“You were my friend first, Jennifer, or have you forgotten?” The ringing phone startled him, and he stood staring at it. After a moment, Jennifer stepped around him and picked up the receiver. “Hello, the Engle residence,” she said calmly.
“Hello, is
Jenny, is that you?”
“Yes, Tom. Hello.”
“What in God’s name are you doing there? Is David with you?”
Jennifer sighed and closed her eyes. She was tired of men shouting at her.
“Yes. What is it?” She glanced over at David. He was standing in the middle of the foyer, staring at her. His eyes were glassy.
“Get out of there,” Tom whispered, “get out of that apartment and away from him. What in the world possessed you to go see him? Jenny, the son of a bitch is a killer. You were right! I called the coroner’s office when I got back downtown. I was doing it just as a favor, you know, so at least if you asked again, I’d have the facts, and the tests on Margit’s skin had come back. There was lidocaine in the tissue. He did it, Jenny. Like you said.”