Twenty minutes later she was knocking on the door of Roscoe Taylor’s town house. He was smiling when he opened it but was suddenly concerned when he saw who was there. “Jane … my goodness, Jane … come in, come in.” He backed away and followed her into the living room, where a baseball game was on television. “Damn Red Sox,” he said as he snapped it off.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” Jane started, but he cut her off.
“This is a surprise. What brings you here?”
“You don’t want to know. Let’s just say that I’m caught between two husbands. One is spying on me, and the other one nearly drowned me. I need a friend.”
“Of course, of course. But first a drink and then something to eat. I’ve got some fish—frozen, I’m sorry to say. But if you have a couple of cocktails before, it isn’t half bad.”
She slumped into a soft chair and accepted the martini he brought her with loving care. Then he returned with his own.
“To your recent promotion,” Jane said, raising her glass.
He blushed. “I’m glad you already know. It saves me the embarrassment of telling you about it.”
“What embarrassment? You’ve earned it, Roscoe.”
He sat down, his fingertip tracing the rim of his glass “I may have earned it, but that’s not why I got it. I got it for dropping our investigation into that news anchor in San Antonio. Pure and simple, I took the money and ran. What’s embarrassing is the way they pulled it off,” he said. “There’s nothing subtle about the William Andrews team. John Applebaum called me at three o’clock and told me they were creating a new position. ‘To improve editorial quality right through the organization.’ And I had the experience and the integrity that they were looking for. He said they appreciated that at this stage of my career I might not want to take on new responsibilities. So he told me to sleep on it, and if I wanted to ‘join the team,’ to give him a call in the morning.” He shook his head. “ ‘Join the team.’ I didn’t like the sound of joining anyone’s team, and that was even before I knew what they meant.
“At five o’clock, your husband’s gunslinger, Robert Leavitt, called. He said he had heard the news and hoped I would be joining the team. Then he told me, ‘There’s just one little matter I should call to your attention.’ Selina Royce, he said, was a very difficult episode for the company. ‘It’s not something that we’re eager to go through again.’ It was pretty clear. Team members join in the cover-up.”
Jane sighed. “That’s from a guy who couldn’t remember whether there had ever been a Selina Royce.”
“I should have told him to go fuck himself,” Roscoe lamented. He lifted his drink and downed nearly half of it.
“No, you did the right thing,” Jane insisted. “Whatever you learned probably couldn’t have been all that important. And you deserve the job and the recognition.”
“Thank you,” he said softly, as if his sins had just been forgiven. He finished his drink and then asked Jane, “Another?”
“Not if I’m ever going to stand up and walk.”
When he returned with his refill, Roscoe began talking before he reached his chair. “I will tell you what I did find out. That is, if you want to hear some sly innuendo about your husband.”
She sighed. “I suppose I asked for this….”
“There’s no need to know. I can take it with me to my new job in the clouds.”
“I’d go crazy wondering what it was,” Jane decided.
Roscoe leaned back into his storytelling posture. “William Andrews must have seen her on her San Antonio station, or met her at some sort of cable event. Whatever, he approached Selina Royce and offered her a position with the Andrews network. She accepted. Who in hell wouldn’t want to move from San Antonio to New York? Trouble was that she had an ironclad contract with the station. She couldn’t leave for another two years. When Andrews heard about it, he tried to buy out her contract. According to my sources, he offered two million for a contract that was paying her less than one hundred thousand.”
Jane gasped. “What kind of ratings did she have? The whole audience?”
“I don’t know,” Roscoe answered impatiently. “But whatever she had, her station owner turned Andrews down cold. Selina was his property, and no matter how much William Andrews was worth, he couldn’t have her.”
“So he bought the whole cable system,” Jane surmised.
“You’ve got it!” Roscoe said. “The whole company. He attached it to one of his Southwest properties, fired the owner, and brought Selina to headquarters. He paid five million just to get an evening news anchor from San Antonio.”
“He was in love with her,” Jane said.
Roscoe shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. I mean, William Andrews could have had any woman on the planet.”
“So what happened?” Jane asked.
“She disappeared,” Roscoe answered. “Do you know she never did a network news show?
They sat thoughtfully, staring at each other. Jane finally ventured, “If he was keeping her as a mistress, Kay might have found out. And from what I’ve learned about the first Mrs. Andrews, she wouldn’t have put up with it for a minute. So, suppose she told Andrews to get rid of her. And suppose Selina learned that she was on the way out?”
“Yeah, then Selina might have reason to kill Kay Parker,” Roscoe agreed. “Or maybe Kay came after Selina, and Selina beat her to the draw.”
Jane found herself nodding at the logic. “Either way, Selina would be Kay Parker’s killer. But why in hell is Bill paying her a hundred thousand a month?”
Roscoe pursed his lips. “Well, if he was in love with her …”
“He’d be paying to keep her out of the hands of the police,” Jane said, finishing the thought.
“Or,” Roscoe continued, “suppose William Andrews had someone else kill his wife. Then Selina would have him by the short hairs.”
“No,” Jane insisted. “If he had Kay Parker killed in order to have Selina, then why wouldn’t he still have her?”
Roscoe looked at her sadly. “Maybe he does.”
Jane pulled back as if he had aimed a blow at her.
“I don’t know anything like that,” Roscoe hastened to assure her. “We’re just speculating here, and we could be miles off the mark.”
“But what you’re suggesting is that Selina is still his mistress, and he keeps her in Paris so that there won’t be any second thoughts about Kay’s death.” Jane sighed. “But if that’s true, then where do I fit in? I mean, if he’s having a happy affair with the woman of his dreams, then why would he bother to marry me? I don’t bring one damn thing to the party!”
Roscoe asked, “Isn’t it possible that he’s fallen out of love with Selina, and into love with you?”
Jane snickered. “He’s still spending a lot more on her than he is on me.”
“Maybe he has to in order to keep her from stirring up a fuss. Isn’t it possible that he has to pay her so that he’s free to love you?”
She shook her head. “Thanks for the compliment, Roscoe. But it isn’t very likely. He was paying her long before he ever met me.”
Again they sat in quiet thought. Roscoe broke in with “None of this really makes any sense. There has to be a simpler explanation.”
“But if there is,” Jane pointed out, “why wouldn’t he tell me about it?”
The implications of Roscoe Taylor’s report tormented her during the train ride back to the city. How could her husband still be in love with Selina? She had just spent a week alone with him, and his every gesture told her that he loved her deeply. He had rushed to marry her when he had every opportunity to postpone the wedding. Was it possible for a man to be in love with two women at once?
Why was he paying Selina Royce? If she killed Kay, why would he have gone to such lengths to protect her? Perhaps he felt guilty that he had brought her into his life. Maybe he felt that he had a hand in the deadly confrontation. That might explain his covering up for her and helping her escape. But all that money over all those years? Wouldn’t she have a life of her own by now?
Then, that night, Bill told her he had to leave for Paris. “Something just came up …,” he started to explain.
“Take me with you. I love Paris!”
“Oh, I don’t think so. It’s just a quick trip. All business.”
“It’s business to you,” Jane countered, “but it’s a joy to me. I won’t be in the way. I’ll go to the Picasso, or maybe the Orsay. I’ll sit in a sidewalk café and see if I can get picked up by a Frenchman.”
He laughed. “You’ll have no trouble doing that. I’ll take you if you promise to stay in the museums.”
“It’s a deal.”
“I’ll send a car,” he said. “We landed at La Guardia, but I think they may have moved the plane up to Westchester for maintenance.”
“See you on the plane,” Jane bubbled.
Museums like hell, she thought as soon as she hung up. This was her chance to find out exactly what her husband’s relationship was with the woman who had probably once been his mistress.