The porter opened the door for the police, who flooded into the apartment with guns drawn. Lights were turned on in every room, and the officers poked through every closet. One of them went outside and flashed a light into the corners of the patio and the overhang of the roof. Another went upstairs to the roof and searched the cabana rooms and the space behind the planters. The burglar, it seemed, had vanished.
“You ever see anything like this?” one policeman asked another as they looked behind the racks in the wine cellar.
The response was a head shaken in awe. “Did you see the beach club up on the roof? Where do people get this kind of money?”
“No wonder they hear footsteps and see ghosts.”
Robert Leavitt came through the open door while the search was still in progress, and Jane rushed into his arms. “Thank God you’re here,” she said, holding on to his arm. “These people think I’m crazy.”
He sat her down on one of the living-room sofas and brought her a snifter of brandy. “The alarm system calls me if there’s an emergency here,” Leavitt explained. “I didn’t know you were in the apartment until Bill called me and said you were in trouble.”
“Make them believe that,” she said, gesturing to the prowling policemen. “They keep asking me what drugs I’ve been taking.”
A plainclothes detective sat down across from them, found out how Leavitt fit in to the picture, and began his interview. Jane took him step-by-step through the events of the evening since her fiancé first called her. She went over the light that had appeared on her telephone, disappeared, and then come back on—proof that someone had been in the house. When she had tried to call out, all the lines were blocked. She told him about the crash somewhere in the living room, a lamp or vase that had been knocked over. Then the footsteps on the stairs, and finally the hand turning her bedroom doorknob. She had forgotten about her cell phone until it rang—her fiancé, who had forgotten to tell her something but found the telephones dead when he tried to call back. She had followed his instructions.
The officer listened patiently, jotting down an occasional note. Then he told Jane and Robert the results of the search. The elevator hadn’t gone up to the penthouse all evening, so he was having trouble understanding how a burglar could have gotten in. Someone could have walked up the fire stairs or taken an elevator to a high floor and then gone up the fire stairs. But the fire doors were locked from the inside, and there was an alarm down in the lobby whenever one opened. Then there was the penthouse security system. Anyone coming through the front door or the service door would set off an alarm unless he punched in the right code within twenty seconds.
“Someone was in here,” Jane interrupted.
The detective nodded but continued with his report. The police had checked the phone system as soon as they arrived. They had gotten a dial tone on every line. He had just spoken with the telephone company, and there had been no service interruption detected by the computers.
“You can disable this phone system just by pulling one electronic card in the control box,” Leavitt said in Jane’s defense.
“You could,” the officer answered, “but you’d have to use a key to open the box. There are no scratches, and the lock wasn’t jimmied.”
Then he raised the issue of the crash that Jane had heard. “A vase or a lamp?” he asked her.
“Or a dish, a glass, a bottle,” she answered sharply. “I heard something break down here.”
But there was nothing broken, the detective told them. They hadn’t found a broken lamp or a shattered dish. If an intruder knocked something over, there would be broken pieces on the floor. Unless he had paused to clean up his mess, which wasn’t the general m.o. of second-story men.
“You think I dreamed this whole thing?” Jane challenged.
The detective raised his palms in a helpless gesture.
Leavitt showed a momentary flash of anger that he instantly brought back under control. “Ms. Warren isn’t a hysterical woman,” he said. “She’s a competent journalist who checks things out very thoroughly.”
“I’m not criticizing the lady,” the detective responded evenly. “What I’m saying is that there is absolutely no evidence of a break-in, nor anything to suggest that an outsider was in the apartment. The fingerprints on the outside of the bedroom doorknob are the same as the ones on the inside—Ms. Warren’s. Nothing was disturbed, nothing stolen. So I can file a report, we can keep an eye on the building, and we can call back every couple of days to see if anything new has turned up or turned up missing.”
Order slowly returned. The police left, stationing one man in the hallway as protection against someone returning. The porter came back up twice to see if there was anything he could do for his prize residents. One by one, Robert Leavitt turned off the lights.
At three in the morning he started to leave, but Jane prevailed upon him to stay for another brandy. He agreed and poured one for her as well, and decided that if Jane didn’t mind, he would crash in one of the guest rooms. She was delighted that he would be able to stay.
“Does all this strike you as eerily familiar?” she asked when they were both seated at the piano bar.
“No, not really. We’ve never had a problem here. I guess we’ve just assumed that the security is foolproof.”
“Not here,” she said. Then she asked, “Weren’t you the first one on the scene when Bill’s first wife was killed?”
Leavitt nodded, still not sure of her point.
“Bill’s wife was killed by an intruder the police were never able to identify. Officials began to doubt that there had been an intruder. Now, when I’m going to marry Bill and become the second Mrs. Andrews, another vanished intruder appears, tries to break in to my bedroom, and then disappears without a trace.”
“I suppose it is spooky when you look at it that way,” Robert conceded.
“It’s a lot more than spooky when I may be in line for the same fate.”
He smiled, dismissing her concerns. “Jane, this was most likely just a common burglar. Vacant penthouses are probably irresistible to them. And it may not have been even that. Couldn’t the telephone problem have gotten you on edge? You’re not used to the sounds in the city, and maybe your imagination was playing—”
“You think I made all this up?”
“No, of course not,” Leavitt assured her. “I think it was all very real to you. And calling the police was exactly the right thing to do. I just don’t believe that whatever happened tonight has any connection with … eight years ago.”
They sat quietly for a moment. Jane saw no point in arguing her case. She had to admit that to the police, and probably to Robert, a break-in at her lofty perch was unlikely, and there was absolutely no evidence of an intruder. But then she remembered there were a few facts on her side that nobody had yet considered. “Would it change your mind any to know that someone has been snooping in my apartment?”
His calm expression tensed. “When? Tell me about it.”
“Last week. Twice, when I was out with Bill.” She explained the first occasion when the person was still in the apartment and she had heard him let himself out. Leavitt was concerned, not just about the intrusion but about her walking in on the guy. His escape out the door was fortunate, he thought. If Jane had confronted him, she could have been killed. Then she told him of finding her notes reordered. She had particularly noted which page was on top just before she left with Bill, and that page had been moved when she returned.
“What were the notes about?” he asked, joining her in trying to figure out a motive.
She hesitated, and then told him, “I’ve been looking into Kay Parker’s murder. Just to try to understand Bill’s grief. The printout was on my desk, and I checked to be sure there was nothing showing that might be hurtful to him.”
“And that’s what the person was looking at?”
“Yes,” she said. “At least, it seems that way.”
Leavitt sat thoughtfully, then raised his hands in surrender. “I don’t get it. Why would anyone care? That was eight years ago, and it was a dead end even then.” He offered another interpretation. “Is it possible that you found Kay’s death disturbing … frightening? Could you be carrying that image around with you, maybe putting yourself in her place?”
Her anger showed. “Look, I didn’t imagine that someone got into my apartment. Someone was there—twice! And I didn’t dream up tonight. There was someone in the house, and he came up the stairs looking for me.” But even as she said it, she had a moment of doubt. Was it possible she was imagining that Kay’s gruesome ending might also be hers?