They helicoptered to New York on Sunday afternoon, setting down at La Guardia, where the company jet was waiting to whisk William off to Europe. Jane transferred to a limo and was driven back to her apartment in Connecticut. The long drive gave her plenty of time to rerun the highlights of her weekend.
Andrews had displayed a romantic interest in her but also a very practical one. She inferred the romantic interest from the flattering things he said to her and the way he took her hand when they were alone. The practical one was much less subtle. He needed someone to take Kay Parker’s place, oversee his household, and raise his children. She reran her trip back home in the helicopter, trying to decide which was more important to him.
He began as they lifted off by thanking her for enduring the disappointing weekend. He had hoped that a happy family setting might show another side of him. Now he hoped that the disaster with his children didn’t make him look like an overindulgent fool. “They’re usually better than you saw,” he said. “By no means angels! They can be difficult and self-centered, like all adolescents. But they were absolutely awful this weekend. You saw them at their very worst.”
He went on to explain some of the fun things they did together. He and Cassie often worked side by side in the kitchen, putting together gourmet meals. And he frequently was able to accompany her to the horse shows she competed in. He and his son had assembled a fantastic radio-controlled airplane that they were going to fly together, and he had usually been one of the better-behaved parents at Little League games.
But as he elaborated, he startled himself with the realization of how infrequently he had joined his children. There had been only one occasion when he and Cassie had cooked together, and that was nearly a year ago. Worse, she had given up competitive riding two years ago. Craig had been out of Little League for the past two seasons, and the plane was still awaiting the new engine that he had promised to bring home. In the end, all he could say in his own defense was how quickly the time had passed. “I can do better,” he promised himself. “I have to do better.”
She had cut him some slack, repeating that his children’s conduct was due to the arrival of another woman on their mother’s turf. She believed he intended to make a greater effort and was certain that he was a wonderful father.
Then he had talked about her. She was easy to talk to, he said, and fun to be with. He laughed over their foibles in the kitchen when they had tried to prepare dinner. On a more serious note, he admired the way she had downplayed her fall from the horse. Jane decided that he had clearly been more emotional when talking about the needs of his family and that his primary interest in her was as a patch for the gaping hole Kay’s death had left in his life.
That kind of relationship, Jane knew, just wouldn’t work. First of all, there was no way she could ever replace his first wife. She didn’t want to, his kids didn’t want her to, and even if everyone had loved the idea, she simply wasn’t up to the task. Kay had been sensational. Jane was about average. Second, she had just come out of similar relationship in which she had sacrificed her independence to someone else’s agenda. Art had succeeded at nothing, yet he still managed to make her feel insignificant. How much more lost would she be in Bill’s giant shadow?
He had expressed his affection and admiration. But he had never mentioned that he loved her. Nor did the word come instantly to her. She admired William Andrews, liked his style, and basked in his attention. But she hadn’t even asked herself if she loved him, probably because she was afraid of the answer.
She decided that she should break off the relationship. She could argue truthfully that she just wasn’t ready to get serious with anyone. She was still too close to a relationship in which her commitment had been ridiculed. Or she could engage in a bit of a fib and claim that she was still in love with Art. There had to be some way of putting it without adding to the pain of loss that he already felt. Or maybe the relationship would die a natural death. If she made herself less available and stalled for time, Andrews might well get caught up in some global takeover that fulfilled all his emotional needs. By the time he got back to thinking about his personal life, someone else might be on the scene.
Moments later she decided that she should probably stay involved with him. She didn’t like the idea of someone else on the scene. The lineup of women—socialites, business tycoons, actresses, models— who would gladly throw themselves at William Andrews probably reached halfway to the moon. Why should she be so damn honest with her feelings? He was honest, gentlemanly, and lavishly attentive. She might well learn to love him.
Back and forth she went as the car plodded up the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut. At Greenwich she decided to see just where his interest would take them. By Stamford she had decided on an unambiguous no. In Fairfield she thought it best to let time take its course. But when she stepped out of the limo at the door of her apartment building, she was back to saying yes. As she unpacked, Jane realized that she was no closer to deciding how she should react to his attentions than she was before the weekend.
But she was certain of one thing. Kay Parker’s murder was the fulcrum of Bill’s life. If she ever hoped to understand him, she would have to understand exactly what had happened that so badly afflicted him. She would get on the Internet and connect with all the newspapers that would have covered the violent death of Kay Parker. And their stories would give her leads into police investigations, coroner’s reports, and all the official records that would accompany a murder. She was going to learn about Andrews before and after, assess the damage, and then decide if there was any chance of recovery.
The next morning she sought out Jack Dollinger. He was flattered that she was tapping on the door of his cubicle, rather than he looking in on her, and bounded to his feet in the hope of being helpful. “What can I do for you?” he began.
She sat slowly in his side chair, her manner indicating that she needed his confidence. He settled behind his desk. “Something wrong?” he whispered.
“No, I don’t think so. There’s just something you said the other day that I’d like to clarify.”
“Sure …” He was eager to get into a discussion of something that he had said.
Jane leaned closer to his desk. “We were talking about William Andrews and the death of his first wife. You said something about unanswered questions, and I just want to hear what was unanswered.”
“Well, the biggest unanswered question was ‘who done it?’ The police never charged anyone. Hell, they never found anyone they could even think of charging.”
“You were with the Post at the time?”
He nodded. “Assistant news editor. Really news editor because my boss was never there.” He raised his hand to his mouth and mimicked a man tossing down a shot of hard liquor.
“What do you remember about it? I suppose it was very sensational.”
“At the Post?” He laughed. “The other papers thought we were committing murders just so that we could be first on the scene. If it wasn’t a sensation, we certainly would have made it into one.”
“So what can you tell me about it?”
“Oh God! Eight years ago. Let me think.” He pulled open a drawer to use as a footrest and then leaned back in his swivel chair. “Well, first of all, it was Kay Parker’s story. Andrews was a very visible person, starting to build his fortune in radio and television networks and wireless telephones. But he hadn’t reached star quality yet. Kay, on the other hand, was America’s dream girl. You didn’t have to caption her photos. Everyone knew who she was. Sort of like Grace Kelly.”
Jane frowned. “Grace Kelly?”
He laughed. “My God, how young are you that you don’t remember Grace Kelly? She was in the movies. Blond, beautiful, and very cultured. Sort of an ice maiden in her public life. Everyone in America was wondering which of the leading men she was going to marry, when all of a sudden she announced her engagement to the prince of Monaco. An honest-to-God prince, soon to be king of a country. Yet all of America was up in arms. The nerve of that oily European to deflower America’s virgin queen. She became the queen of the country, but no one thought of her as Rainier’s wife. The poor bastard never was thought of as a king. He was always that Italian earl or whatever that Grace Kelly married.”
Jane smiled. “Like Jackie Kennedy.”
He nodded eagerly. “Right. Onassis was a billionaire and an international celebrity, but in the United States he became the damn Greek who seduced Jackie Kennedy.”
“So she was the story,” Jane said to get him back on track.
“Yeah, we dredged up all the old photos of her. Queen of the Cotillion, benefactor of hungry children, patron of the arts. We had shots that showed cleavage, thigh, and midsection that we always ran next to the photo of her covered body being loaded into a hearse. We really milked it! Circulation was up twenty-five percent all week.”
“But there was no killer,” Jane reminded him. “How did you keep the story current?”
“Rumors,” Dollinger said. Then he chuckled. “We were shameless. We found a new suspect every afternoon over lunch, just in time for the evening edition. First she had a lover, a mystery man who had vowed that if he couldn’t have Kay, no one would have her. Then Andrews had a lover, a producer for his New York television station. That gave us two days’ headlines. First he had killed his wife so that he could enjoy the assets of his mistress. Then the next day, the mistress had shot Kay Parker so that she could marry William Andrews.”
“What about the intruder who shot both of them?” Jane asked.
“Intruders didn’t sell newspapers. We followed the ‘lover’ angles until we couldn’t find any lovers. When we finally fell back on the intruder, the police had declared his trail cold. We moved seamlessly from the carnally motivated murder to the pageantry of the funeral. The shots of William Andrews with his two kids looking over the flower-draped coffin was front page. Half our readers were torn with sympathy, and the other half thought that he was the killer.”
Jane interrupted with a question. “There were people who thought that he had murdered his own wife?”
“Sure, except no one could find the supposed mistress. I remember that private citizens were actually following him, hoping that he would lead them to the other woman. It was sort of comical, even at the time.”
“What did you think?” Jane asked.
Jack Dollinger shrugged. “I guess I decided that it might just as well have been an intruder. No one else turned up, and there was no other woman Andrews took up with.”
“And the police? Did they have any ideas?”
He shook his head, remembering the irony that surrounded the question. “There was only one police officer, a sergeant who also ran a gas station or something. All he knew was what Andrews had told him. When the state troopers got involved, the sergeant sort of vanished. And then the troopers couldn’t find anything. In the end, everyone was looking for an intruder. But his footprints were buried under a couple of feet of snow.”
Jane stood up. “If you had to do another story about it, where would you start?”
“I wouldn’t! Now that I work for William Andrews, digging up the dirt of his wife’s murder could put me out on the street.” Then he let his feet fall to the floor. “Why? Did Roscoe ask you to do some digging?”
“No, just curious. I’ve met the man and I thought I’d like to know more about him.”
John thought. “Well, there was a paper up in Albany that really took the lead. The Union, I think it was. But I don’t know whether it’s still in business.”
“Thanks!” She repeated the name. “The Albany Union.” Jane dialed into its morgue and began entering keywords and dates. It took only a few minutes for her to come up with KAY PARKER SHOT TO DEATH.
Prominent socialite Kay Parker was killed today by an intruder who entered her ski chalet in the Adirondacks in an apparent attempted robbery. Her husband, communications executive William Andrews, was also shot and was flown to Plattsburg Medical Center, where he is listed in stable condition.
A family spokesman, Robert Leavitt, said that the murder occurred early this morning. Kay Parker left the second-floor bedroom and was confronted by an intruder in the kitchen on the first floor. William Andrews rushed down the stairs to his wife’s aid. Leavitt could not say whether Mr. Andrews had been shot separately, or had been hit by the same shotgun blast that killed his wife. Andrews was unable to provide any description of the shooter.
Sergeant Peter Davis of Mountain Ridge said Mr. Leavitt, who was staying at an inn near the town, summoned him to the scene. Apparently Andrews, despite his wounds, was able to telephone Leavitt. Leavitt, who is a vice president of the communications company owned by Andrews, went to the house and then phoned the sheriff. Davis said that he had organized a search party to cover the countryside surrounding the crime scene. Poor visibility and falling snow are hampering the search, he said, and there are no leads yet.
That was the substance to the first account of the crime. The story continued with a profile of Kay’s life in New York society that ran another two columns. There was also a two-paragraph biography on William, naming the communications companies and stations that he had acquired in the previous six months. The paper’s late edition carried a stock photo of Kay at a charity ball, as well as a brief sidebar indicating that William Andrews was now listed as being in satisfactory condition.
Jane went to the next morning’s New York papers. The Times carried the intro in the lower left corner of the front page, and then the full story on page six of its news section. There was a map of the Adirondacks with a blowup of the Mountain Ridge area and a locator for the chalet. Pictures showed the chalet, smiling portraits of Kay and William, and a photo of two of the posse members in snow-encrusted ski clothing, sipping coffee. The article described Mountain Ridge as a crossroads town with a population of less than fifty that existed as a general store for the surrounding seasonal homes. Sergeant Davis, it mentioned, also owned the gasoline station.
“The town is ill-equipped to investigate the killing or to manage the interests of such a high-profile crime,” the reporter allowed, quoting several leading citizens. “State police have taken over the investigation.”
The Daily News ran the headline SOCIALITE SNUFFED. The story added nothing to the details of the crime but gave lavish coverage to Kay Parker’s life in the limelight. William Andrews may have been the intended victim, the reporter speculated. His aggressive business style had made him many enemies.
The Post, where Jack Dollinger was working at the time, had highlighted the lurid. Under a subtitle VICTIM DECAPITATED, it informed its readers that Kay Parker had been hit in the face at point-blank range by a shotgun blast that carried away her head. It also hinted that the notion of an intruder was “highly suspect” and wondered why William Andrews called a business associate instead of calling either the police or a doctor.
Jane backed away from the images on her monitor. Even after all these years, the details of Kay’s death were tough to take. It was easy to appreciate why William’s initial actions were frantic and lacked judgment. Impossible to appreciate was the impact that such gory details must have had on the children. No wonder they seemed hostile. She wandered off to get herself a cup of coffee and ran into Roscoe Taylor at the vending machine.
“How was your weekend?” he asked.
“Very nice,” she said, but then she guessed that he already knew many of the details. So she added, “I was out at Andrews’s horse farm in New Jersey. It’s a lovely place, but I could do without the horses.”
He stirred sugar into his paper cup. “You and our new boss seem to be hitting it off rather well.”
“His kids were there,” she rushed to point out, “along with his groundskeeper and house manager. They had planned a very full schedule with a lot of it on horseback. So I’ll be standing up most of the time during the next few days.”
“Jack said you were interested in the murder of his first wife. Are you planning on writing a book?”
“Just curious,” she said, dismissing the topic lightly. She decided not to share any more confidences with Jack Dollinger. When she got back to her desk, she escaped from the old newspaper files and clicked onto the financial markets. It was time for J. J. Warren to get back to work.
Art was waiting in front of her apartment when she got home at the end of the day, supposedly to reassure her that he hadn’t been at her computer going through her records. “I swear, Jane, it wasn’t me,” he told her in the elevator with puppy-dog sincerity. “And anyway, I never would have hidden and sneaked out when you weren’t looking.”
“Well, someone was here,” she said as she opened the apartment door. “Someone who knew I was out for the evening.”
He shrugged. “Not me! Honest to God!”
But his real reason for being there became immediately obvious. “So how was the weekend?” His leer told her that he was hoping for salacious details.
“I fell off one of his damn horses.” She busied herself with dinner, taking down a big pot to cook the spaghetti. Art began setting the table for two. Jane let him continue.
“Actually, the horse bolted. I’m lucky I didn’t break my neck.”
“Got any wine?” He was nosing around in the cabinet where they used to keep their liquor.
“Next shelf. In the back,” Jane answered.
He pulled out a jug. “This?” he asked disdainfully. “This stuff has been aged in the truck. Didn’t I teach you anything about wine?”
“Only that we couldn’t afford it,” she said. She lit the gas under the water. Art set two glasses on the counter and poured from the jug into each. He tasted his own and reacted with horror but settled into a kitchen chair and took another sip.
“So you fell off a horse. Did Big Bill gather you in his arms and carry you to his bedroom?”
“As a matter of fact, he did.”
His eyes widened. “To bed?”
“Even better! To his Jacuzzi.”
“No shit? You and the television mogul were together in his hot tub?”
The phone rang. She lifted the handset from the wall mount, said hello, and then smiled pleasantly. “Give me just a second,” she said. “I want to get to a different phone.” She covered the mouthpiece and snarled at her former husband. “I want to hear you hang this up as soon as I’m on the other phone.”
“It’s him, isn’t it? Your bathing partner?”
“Just hang it up and make sure the water doesn’t boil over.” She set down the phone and went to her bedroom. The instant she was back on the line, she heard Art curse and the handset rattle to the floor. Only after another indecipherable mumble did the kitchen phone click off.
“Who was that?” Andrews said, making no effort to hide his alarm.
“My ex,” Jane said. “He’s probably looking for something that he left behind. Sounds as if he can’t find it.”
He was in Vienna, just back from a dinner meeting. He had been thinking about her all the way across the Atlantic and throughout his day in Europe, and there was something that he had discovered. Something, he said, that he hadn’t mentioned before. “I love you very much.”
Her heart misfired. There was an awkward pause when she knew she was supposed to say that she loved him, too. But she let the moment pass.
“So I’m cutting my meetings short. There’s something I have to do in Paris first thing in the morning, and after that I’ll be heading back. Can we get together for a drink or something?”
“You’ll be exhausted,” she warned.
“I’ll catch a nap on the plane.” Then he added, “Please. I really miss you.”
She agreed and he promised to pick her up at her apartment.
“It was an accident,” Art said as soon as she stepped back into the kitchen. “I reached for the phone and burned my hand on the damn stove. When I jumped, I knocked the phone onto the floor. Look!” He thrust his burned hand in front of her eyes. “You can see the mark.”
Jane didn’t look closely. “Better put some butter on it,” she advised. She began breaking the pasta into the boiling water.
Art crept up next to her. “You’re not mad?” he asked.
“Why would I be mad? It wasn’t my hand.”
He stepped around her so that they were face-to-face. “What happened?”
“Bill Andrews just told me that he loved me.”
Art kept prodding all through their dinner, but Jane seemed to have gone off to another world. No matter how indiscreet the questions, she refused to be rattled. Yes, she had met his children. No, they weren’t particularly friendly. Yes, it was quite an estate, but no, she hadn’t an inkling as to how many acres. Yes, she had been in his hot tub. No, he hadn’t been in with her. They were putting the dishes into the washer when he asked the question that she knew was coming. “So, did you have sex with him?”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit personal?”
“It’s a fair question. You spent the weekend with the guy and then he tells you he loves you. You must have done something to pique his interest.”
“I’d rather not discuss it,” she said.
“Then you did get laid!”
“You can think whatever you want.”
“I think you gave him the time of his life. I always said you were great in bed.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
“Wrong? Hey, I remember you between the sheets. I bet he never had it so good.”
“You’re wrong about us having sex. He was a perfect gentleman.”
Art didn’t listen. “You know, just thinking about it gets me jealous. That was the one thing you were great at, and I don’t like the idea of him getting what I’m not getting….”
“Art! Read my lips. Bill and I didn’t sleep together. The only reason I was in his Jacuzzi was that I was sore from the fall. He didn’t even stay in the room.”
He screwed the cap back onto the jug and put it into the cabinet. “Do you ever think about our getting back together?”
“Who?”
“You and me!”
“Never! Not once.”
“I was happy living here with you,” he admitted.
“You’re still living here,” Jane said. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be rid of you. But I don’t want you here tomorrow. He’s picking me up for a drink, and I don’t want you here either before or after.”
Art smiled. “So, tomorrow is going to be the big night!”
“Whatever it is, I’m hoping you won’t be part of it. Even if you think you might have lost a disk or a notebook or left your pen on my coffee table. Understood?”
“Sure! Of course!” Then, as if the thought had just occurred to him, “I wonder if he has any interest in the theater.”
“Art, don’t you dare.”
“Don’t dare what? I was just wondering. Lots of business tycoons get into the arts just to show their human side. He might really enjoy getting into Broadway….”
Jane’s fists clenched. “I swear, if you bring your plays over for him to read …”
“For God’s sake, Jane, give me some credit. I just thought that if he was looking to get involved, producing a Broadway play or even off-Broadway…”
“No! Don’t even think about it.”
He raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Okay, okay. But if he should happen to mention it…”
“He won’t,” Jane promised, and led her former husband to the front door.
Then she remembered Bill’s telephone call. He loved her. He was cutting short his business trip so that he could be with her. That changed everything. He was tall, handsome, dynamic, considerate, filthy rich, and he loved her. So maybe she should be answering the question of whether she loved him. Or at least whether she thought she might fall in love with him. Because tomorrow just might be the biggest night of her life, and she ought to be ready with the answers to all the important questions.