Jane smiled when she let herself into her own apartment. It was little more than a closet after a week in William Andrews’s penthouse, and the furnishings were bland. But it was hers. She had felt the heat of the spotlight and now she savored the delights of her anonymity. She kicked off her shoes, changed into jeans, and then scanned a week’s worth of mail while she waited for her coffee to perk. Then she sat down at her computer, logged on to the Times’ morgue, and began searching for Selina Royce.
It didn’t take her long. She started with the name and the year of Kay Parker’s death. When that came up blank, she went a year earlier. Two entries popped up. The first was an article on her move to the Andrews Cable News network from a cable service in San Antonio, Texas. Andrews had acquired the property, installed a new manager, and then brought Selina to New York. The second was a photograph taken at a cable news awards dinner. She recognized Andrews, a bit younger and leaner, and Robert Leavitt, whose hair was longer and parted in the middle. She also picked out Gordon Frier, one of the executives she had met on her trip to Paris. There were three women in the photo, one flashing Kay Parker’s society smile. Jane had to check the caption to identify Kim Annuzio, who, with her hair styled and wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, didn’t at all resemble the executive in slacks and blouse. Then, seated between Andrews and Leavitt, was Selina Royce, terribly serious and very attractive.
Her look was evening-news grave rather than morning-news giddy. She wore her dark hair long and close to her face. Her chin was held high, displaying a long neck that blended into perfect shoulders. Even in the computer reproduction of a grainy news photo, she seemed a happy marriage of brains and body, not at all unlike Kay Parker.
There was William, sitting comfortably between Kay and Selina, touching neither one of them and totally involved with the camera. It was a scene of harmony at a moment of victory, with the two women as alike as a pair of queens flanking the king. Yet within a few months Kay would be dead and William would be paying a monthly stipend to keep Selina in Paris. It seemed impossible. Jane couldn’t imagine what must have happened that morning at the ski lodge.
She went back through all her printouts. Over and over again was the mention of an intruder, a figure who seemed to have arrived from nowhere and disappeared without a trace. Someone Robert Leavitt would have had to pass on the road as he drove up from the inn to William’s aid. She found the newspaper report on the neighbors who had been questioned. What struck her was that none of them knew the others except by name and for a passing nod. They were all successful families who came up to the mountains on weekends precisely to be alone. They were escaping the business and social ties of the city and had no interest in making new friends in the woods. They all said that they knew who Andrews was but had never met him. There was no reason why any of them would be involved in either his business or personal life.
So who was the intruder?‘Jane asked herself. Someone who arrived and left on foot. A hunter who happened on an expensive house that he thought was empty, broke in, and then panicked when he was caught? Or perhaps a professional sent by someone from either Kay’s or William’s past? Social leaders and business dynamos left a wake of drowning enemies yearning to be avenged. But they generally weren’t people who would go to a hit man.
Jane reacquainted herself with the speed of the inquiry. Kay’s body had been shipped, mourned, and cremated in just a few days, without ever being scrutinized by a medical examiner. The local sheriff had never secured the crime scene but had, instead, sent a posse out to search the vast wilderness of the Adirondacks. The state police had been polite and deferential in questioning William Andrews and had been careful that their investigation wouldn’t track mud across his carpet. They simply accepted his version of the tragedy and tried their best not to inconvenience him.
He had testified only once, at the coroner’s inquest, and without any cross-examination. The officials had kept apologizing for asking him to repeat the painful events and seemed more relieved than he was when the ordeal was over. The report specified Kay’s death as a homicide, caused by a massive trauma to the head. It noted that death would have been instantaneous, ending any discussion about whether Andrews should have called a doctor before he called his business associate.
Jane re-read Robert Leavitt’s interview. He had traveled up to the Adirondacks with Andrews and his wife for a business meeting that was part of William’s holiday. Other executives from the company had arrived separately and left that night. Leavitt had been preparing to leave himself when the call came in.
He immediately got into his car and drove the long climb up the twisting mountain road. When he arrived at the lodge, he found William slumped on a sofa, with Kay’s body behind him at the foot of the stairs. Kay, he said, had been gruesomely decapitated. William was wounded in the arm and chest. There was blood all over the steps leading up to the second floor.
Leavitt phoned the police. Had he considered calling a doctor first? No, he said. There was no question that she was dead. No, he hadn’t touched the body. There was no need to. He could tell at a glance that she was gone. But he saw that William needed medical attention right away. He called the doctor down in town. The doctor had already been informed by the police and was on his way.
Why didn’t William Andrews call the police? He was wounded and hardly coherent. Why didn’t Leavitt call the police first, before he started up to the chalet? Because William Andrews seemed vague and confused. Leavitt didn’t know what to make of the call until he reached the lodge. What did Andrews say on the telephone? Just that there had been a tragedy and that Kay was dead. He asked Leavitt to come immediately. Didn’t the fact that Mr. Andrews said his wife was dead suggest that Leavitt should have notified the police? It should have, but it was all so unbelievable. He had been with her just the night before. It seemed more as if something had happened to William. Finally, had he seen anyone coming down the road as he was heading up? Not that he remembered, Robert testified. But he couldn’t be sure. He was fixated on getting to the Andrewses’ house and probably wouldn’t have taken notice of a car going down the hill.
Pretty straightforward, Jane concluded. If it wasn’t an intruder, then the only other suspect was William Andrews. But according to the coroner, Andrews had been sprayed with the blood and gore of his wife’s shattered skull. So he had to have been behind her when she was shot in the face. Who else could have done it? One of the business associates who had been at the meeting? Perhaps someone had intended to threaten William but had been attacked by Kay. Jane could visualize a scene where a wife would jump between her husband and his attacker. But William would have recognized someone from the meeting. And besides, Leavitt probably would have noticed a colleague passing by even if he wouldn’t have been aware of a stranger.
Absent from any of the reports was mention of Selina Royce. She wasn’t involved. She wasn’t a witness. So what could she know that would end her promising career as a television personality and drive her into European exile? What hold did she have on William Andrews that could possibly be worth over a million a year?
Jane re-examined everything, finally focusing on the only still-open questions. What was the meeting about, and who was at the meeting? Answers to those questions might suggest a motive and might produce additional suspects.
In the morning she phoned Roscoe and told him about Selina’s connection to San Antonio. That might be the best place to start his inquiries. Then she added the information about the business meeting the night before the killing. Could that be relevant? The police had never explored it. Then she returned to the city to meet with her caterer and decorator.
There was a message waiting from Ann Packard that set the wedding date for the Saturday four weeks away. Mr. Andrews had freed up his calendar, and she was quite sure that the others would be able to rearrange their commitments.
So it was the Saudi prince who would be inconvenienced, Jane told herself as she called back with a quick thank-you. She oozed that it must have been difficult rearranging so many busy schedules, trying to win her husband’s secretary as an ally.
Eileen McCarty told her that the swimming pool people were up on the roof, checking the dance floor that automatically closed over the pool. “Wonderful!” Jane gushed. All of a sudden things were falling into place. She wanted the dance floor down for the wedding and reception.
The caterer’s meeting also went smoothly. Peter Tipper arrived with an assistant and presented a menu of heavy hors d’oeuvres that included the cuisine of the entire civilized world, as well as dishes from regions still suspected of cannibalism. A taste of each would be more food than a five-course feast. The bar was Dom Pérignon champagne, Macallan twenty-year-old scotch, and Hennessy cognac. The liquor was top-shelf—even the tequila had been aged— and the beer represented eight different countries. Hardly a simple wedding reception for a few close friends, Jane thought. This was her first opportunity to cut the ties to Kay Parker’s extravagance.
While Tipper looked on in horror, Jane began cutting the menu, starting first with the foods she couldn’t pronounce. She reduced the assortment of hot hors d’oeuvres to six and cut the champagne supply in half. Tipper groaned. Then Jane added a beer to the list, a local brew in a tacky green bottle that she had heard Roscoe order a number of times. Eileen took Peter and his aide up to the roof garden to measure for their tent and kitchen setup. The construction estimate, Jane noticed, was more than the annual rent on her apartment.
The decorator, Arnold Kallen, was impressed the moment he stepped off the elevator. As he went from room to room, he rattled off the names of colors, materials, and furnishings, his voice growing higher with each new name that caught his eye. Only once did his glance seem disapproving. He stood near the piano, pursed his lips, and then decided that it should be rotated about twenty degrees to improve the view of those sitting at the piano bar. He pronounced the first floor “glorious” and said he “wouldn’t dream of changing it.”
The second floor was a different story. He suggested exactly what Jane wanted to hear. The guest rooms needed to be brightened, the children’s rooms should be youthful and frivolous, and the office could be modernized. Kallen took copious notes and measurements. He stopped dead when he reached the doorway to the master bedroom, seemingly undecided whether to laugh or genuflect. Then his hands gestured wildly. “Is … Mr. Andrews … comfortable with this?”
“He sleeps across the atrium,” Jane said.
The decorator nodded and tried to be diplomatic with his next question. “Who does … sleep here?”
“No one has for several years. It was Mr. Andrews’s first wife’s room.”
“And both you … and Mr. Andrews … plan on …”
“We plan on sleeping together and sharing the master suite,” Jane said to ease the man’s embarrassment. “I want a very big bed, romantic lighting, and a shower big enough for two.”
“I understand.” The smile on his lips said that he really did.
“I think we also need a Jacuzzi—”
“For two?” he interrupted.
“Why not?” Jane said. Then she added, “And a television that pops up out of something for nights when I’m home alone.”
Arnold Kallen began writing and measuring. “And the things in the closet?” he asked.
She wanted to be glib and suggest a tag sale, but Kay’s closet might be a problem. She couldn’t gauge Bill’s sentimental attachment to her things, or which outfits Cassie might hope to wear. “I’ll have the closet empty before you start,” she promised, wondering if she could get any response from Bill on short notice.
Kallen returned on Saturday to meet with the Andrews children, who were visiting for the weekend. Jane explained that their father hoped they would be spending more time at home, and she wanted to redo their rooms to fit their preferences. Neither Cassie nor Craig showed much interest.
“Who wants to live here?” Cassie demanded. “I like being at school and at the farm.”
Craig mentioned a wall-size screen for his video games so he’d have something to do in the city. “I won’t be here much,” he decided.
Jane knew that Bill would be disappointed, but she wasn’t unhappy that the children would rather be elsewhere. If they were with her, she would probably cause a ruckus by sending them out to find summer jobs. The kids went up to the roof to swim in the pool. Kallen left with instructions to “just make their rooms light and airy.”
She moved her things out of Bill’s room even though she wanted nothing more than to fold up into his embrace. So far, her engagement to Andrews had been a series of trials and disappointments. She wanted to enjoy some of the rewards. But the children shouldn’t see their father bedding down with a girlfriend, so it was important for them to say their good nights from separate doors. Maybe, after the kids were sound asleep …
William arrived late that night and went straight to his own room. A few minutes later he knocked on her door. “I hoped we could spend a few minutes together,” he said when she answered. But it wasn’t the few minutes she was hoping for. He was still in his shirt and tie.
He suggested a nightcap and they went down to the piano bar, where he poured each of them a brandy. Robert Leavitt was on his way over, bringing some papers from the office. His week had not gone smoothly, and he gave her a quick summary of the details. The Federal Communications Commission had rejected his request for an exception, and a cable system he was courting had gone to another bidder. He and Leavitt needed to decide on a counterattack. Then he asked about her week.
She painted it as brightly as possible. The wedding date was set, the guests had been invited, and the caterer had been hired. The children were home and eager to see him. The swimming pool was open, and the dance floor had been fixed. Then she eased into the negatives. He would have to make a decision about the clothes in Kay’s closet. He nodded gravely but didn’t commit himself to doing anything right away. She gave him a quick rundown of the changes she was planning for Kay’s suite. He seemed pained.
“You do want me to change it into our room, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes. Of course.” But he showed no enthusiasm. He could just as well have been agreeing to a dental procedure.
Then she told him about his children and their lack of enthusiasm for personalizing their rooms.
He said he would talk to them. “They’ve been through a lot. Try not to be too hard on them.”
Hard on them? She was offering to redo their rooms. In a sense, promising to re-establish the household that had been blown away by the blast that killed their mother. But now wasn’t the time to plead her case about raising his children. He had been away on a failed mission and seemed discouraged. “You know what? Why don’t we take our drinks up to the pool and go skinny-dipping?”
He smiled as if the idea was outrageous. “This isn’t the tallest building in the neighborhood,” he said.
“Good! We’ll give the neighbors something to talk about.”
“You go,” he said. “I have to wait up for Leavitt.”
Jane felt a twinge of anger. This wasn’t the homecoming she had been expecting. He had taken her report as if he were presiding over a business meeting and seemed disappointed in the message and the messenger. Being married to William Andrews was going to be thorns as well as roses. “Okay, I will,” she said in a demonstration of independence. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to go swimming but rather to show that she, too, could have her own agenda.
She regretted her choice as soon as she stepped out of the cabana. She was wearing a terry robe over her swimsuit, but she still felt the early-fall breeze blowing across the rooftops. She dipped a toe and found the water delightfully warm. But still, she knew how cold the night air would feel when she got out. “Big mouth,” Jane chastised herself as she took off the robe. She went down the steps and slipped into the water, where it was warm and comfortable.
Wonderful! She was in total silence, high above the traffic noise, looking up at stars and out over the lit skyscrapers of New York. Kay Parker certainly knew how to live! Jane could imagine her floating weightlessly there, in her orbit over the earth. But she wondered if Kay and Bill had ever gone skinny-dipping together. That didn’t strike her as likely. Kay wasn’t the type, and he wouldn’t have had the time. Then there were the possibilities introduced by her recent discovery of Selina Royce. Maybe the Andrews-Parker marriage wasn’t quite the paradise that the society writers had constantly reported.
She was beginning to guess at their relationship. Kay was a public persona, a celebrity in her own right, in some ways her husband’s rival for public adulation. In her private life, she was a genuine American princess, playing dress-up with the other ladies at court. And Bill was totally absorbed in his empire, a king who needed a queen for the sake of the peasants. Did they love each other as much as they loved themselves? Did they ever laugh at the ridiculous luck that brought them such privileged lives?
There was a sound, a precisely engineered click followed by a droning hum—a motor starting close to the deep end, where she was swimming. Then a rattling sound as a machine went into action. She looked around. Nothing had changed, but the rumbling left no doubt that something was moving. She stared into the darkness beyond the lit edge of the pool.
It came at her quickly, breaking into the light as it reached the water. A large wooden beam was rolling over the pool, coming straight toward her head. Jane righted herself and reached for the bottom with her foot, trying to run. But at the deep end, she couldn’t touch bottom. The beam was closing quickly. She thought of ducking down and letting it roll over her head. But then she understood precisely what was happening. The dance floor was closing over the swimming pool. The beam coming toward her was the edge of the first panel, followed by others that would seal her under the water.