We were both up early the next morning. Beau had meetings all day and said he might be hard to reach, but made me swear I’d leave messages letting him know whenever I went out. After he left, I cooled my heels for a while, and then, as soon as it was nine o’clock, I phoned the upstate coroner’s office. A secretary or receptionist answered, with a level of excitement in her voice that made me suspect I’d caught her in the midst of tabbing file folders.
“Good morning,” I said, “this is Belinda Hogan from the New York City Police press office. I’d like to talk to someone there about the Devon Barr autopsy. Who’s the best person?”
“That would be Hank—Hank Cleary,” the woman said. “But he’s not—oh wait, he’s back. I’ll put you through.”
“What can I do for you?” Cleary asked after I’d reintroduced myself. He was pleasant enough, but there was a hint of defensiveness in his tone.
“I wanted to pass along some information that I thought you should be aware of.”
“Okay,” he said, sounding wary now. “Shoot.”
“As you might expect, we’ve received a ton of calls down here from press snooping around. Mostly they’ve been interested in the anorexia angle. But late on Friday a reporter called and inquired if it was true that Devon Bar had had an abortion. I was surprised somebody on the outside would know that.”
That was a little trick I’d learned from an old reporter I’d once worked with. Sometimes statements worked better than questions when you were talking to people who were supposed to protect information.
“What are you suggesting exactly?” Cleary said.
“That you may have some loose lips up there. I’m not saying anyone leaked it to the press. Someone may have told a friend or family member, and then it got passed on from there. And it may have come from someplace else entirely—like her doctor’s office. But I thought you should be aware.”
“Well, I’m positive no one from this office blabbed it,” he said defensively. “We may not be city folks, but we know enough to keep our mouths shut on a confidential matter like that.”
Bingo. It sounded, at least, as if I’d been right—Devon had had an abortion. It fit with the spoiled, willful Devon I’d known briefly. She wanted what she wanted when she wanted it.
Next question to try to answer: Had Whitney learned of it somehow? I thought suddenly of something that Cap had said to me when I’d questioned him about his conversation in the woods with Devon. He’d told me he’d comforted Devon about losing the baby and mentioned to her that Whitney had spoken to the gynecologist. But still, this wasn’t leading anyplace.
I took a shower next, hoping that the warm water would not only soothe my still-aching muscles but help clear my head. I sensed that there was a thought just out of reach, pestering me the way a pebble in your shoe does—at first not so much, but after a while, to greater and greater distraction. As I was toweling off, I heard my phone ring. To my relief, it turned out to be Collinson.
“I’ve spoken to the troopers in Pennsylvania,” he said, “but I want to hear it from you.”
“Of course,” I said. “That’s why I left you the message. Did you not get it?”
“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently.
I told him the story but didn’t whisper a word about the two suspects in my mind. It seemed unfair to throw them under the bus until I dug up more information.
“We’re going to be working with several different law enforcement agencies and giving this our full attention,” he said. “And I want you to butt out, Ms. Weggins. I appreciate your insights, but this is a police matter.”
“I hear you,” I said. That was my way of making it sound like I was taking his order while I really wasn’t.
The phone rang again as soon as I had disconnected the call. Jeez, I thought, was he checking to make sure that his lecture had sunk in? But it wasn’t Collinson. I froze as someone with a slight Texas twang said my name.
“Hello, Whitney,” I said in reply.
“Have you got a moment to talk?” she asked. So much sweeter-sounding than the last time we’d spoken, but a warning siren was already going off in my brain.
“Sure,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”
“Oh, really?” I said. “The last time we met, you didn’t seem to enjoy talking to me.”
“I know I seemed impatient that day, but I hope you understood what an awkward position you’d put Cap and me in. However, there—there’s something you need to know the truth about.”
“About Cap?” I asked, more than curious where she was headed.
“No, not about Cap, for goodness sake. Why do you keep insisting that this is all about Cap? I need to talk to you about Christian.”
Christian. Was there really something there? Or was she purposely leading me astray?
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me about it.”
“It needs to be discussed in private—I don’t want to get into it on my cell phone. Can you come by my apartment again?”
The siren sound in my head was nearly deafening now. I wanted to hear what she had to say, but I couldn’t take any chances.
“Uh—,” I said, unsure of what to suggest. Should I invite her to my place? Or some kind of neutral ground—preferably with professional snipers posted nearby. “I have a pretty busy day ahead. Would it be possible for you to come downtown to my neck of the woods?”
“I wish I could,” she said. “But I have two women here testing recipes all day for my cookbook. I don’t want to leave them alone in the apartment.”
Clearly, I told myself, if she were the killer, she wouldn’t pull anything in front of two recipe testers. It was hard to imagine her chasing me around the kitchen with a butcher knife while her helpers whipped up a platter of pralines.
“All right,” I told her. “When?”
She said in an hour. I used the time to think through the best strategy to use. Keep it neutral, I told myself. Listen, watch. Don’t provoke. And make sure the minute I walk in that there are definitely others in the apartment.
I chose a cab over the subway to save time but ended up stalled in Christmas shopping gridlock by Macy’s on Thirty-fourth Street. I felt flustered and anxious by the time I finally entered the Darby’s huge apartment building. I gave my name, and the concierge called upstairs for clearance.
“Mrs. Darby says to go right up,” the concierge announced, beaming. He’d obviously detected no homicidal tendencies with Whitney.
When she opened the door, Whitney had on the same kind of let’s-do-brunch outfit she’d been wearing when I’d been at her apartment before—drapy beige slacks; soft cream-colored blouse; big gold earrings. It looked as if she’d just come in from running an errand because a short, fur-lined jacket lay on one of the straight-backed chairs in the hallway and a brown hobo-style bag was nestled on the table with all the silver-framed photos of her and Cap.
“Come in, Bailey,” she said. She smiled, but it seemed about as real as her boobs, and there was something distant about her pale blue eyes. Am I an utter fool to be here? I wondered anxiously. But from far off in the apartment, the kitchen I guessed, I could hear the sound of people chatting and bustling about. The kitchen testers. There’s no way, I reminded myself, that she would try anything nasty with them on the premises.