Kiss of Death

Two more lights on my phone console flashed. Outside at her desk, Betty was being kept busy. “Yes,” I said. Short of a catastrophe, Betty never interrupted me when I was on a personal call. “Tell me.”

“I’ll give you the detailed report in writing, but the shorthand version is that I tracked him halfway around the world. After Sheriff Maysfield got you away from Ray Wilson, the creep disappeared completely for two years.”

“There wasn’t any trace of him until he surfaced in San Pedro, California, at the Port of Los Angeles,” Bobby said. “He was calling himself Raymond Woods then, and worked on cargo ships sailing the Far East routes. Did that for thirteen years, and most of the time he was out of the country. Back in San Pedro, he suddenly disappeared, and surfaced a year later, in Oklahoma, using the name Ray Wyatt. Tended bar for a while—that’s when his fingerprints entered the system again. Three weeks after he started, he was fired for drinking on the job and left Oklahoma. He probably wandered around the country, doing odd jobs in the underground economy, never lighting in one place long enough to show up on the official radar. Finally, a little more than a year ago, he stopped moving around. That’s when his Social Security number popped up.”

I had the sensation that my stomach was filled with ice water. Cold perspiration dampened my hairline; I felt it beading on the top of my skull. My hands—one holding the receiver and one on my desk—were clenched so hard the knuckles were white. I forced my voice to sound calm as I asked the most important question in this conversation: “Where is he now?”

“That’s the crazy thing,” Bobby said. “Maybe this guy is nuts, or he just thinks that after all these years he’s safe, but he’s living in a town called Belle Valley, Ohio. It’s only two hundred miles from Downsville, West Virginia—where he’s still on the wanted list—and he’s calling himself Ray Wilson again.”

“It’s nothing visible. I got a look at him from a distance. He’s got both his legs and both his arms. I’m guessing it’s alcoholism or drugs or a mental disorder. It’ll take a little more digging to find out the specifics.”

“Forget about him for now. I need you to come back to New York right away and help Nancy. We’ve uncovered five suspects—people who might have murdered Veronica Rose.” Quickly, I told him about the two couples from Boston who had reason to hate her, and about my conversations today with Link Ramsey and Jay Garwood.

“We’ve got to find out who the real killer is before Nancy has to go on trial,” I said. “Or at least we have to come up with someone else who looks so guilty that the prosecutor will have to drop the charges against Nancy. Right now, she’s the only person they’re even considering.”

“Tomorrow’s Friday. Let’s get together in the evening for a meeting with Walter and Nancy, and Nancy’s lawyer, if he’s available. We’ll make plans for the investigation over dinner. How’s seven o’clock at my apartment? And Chinese food?”

“Agreed. Oh, Bobby, about what you’ve been doing? Don’t bother to write a report. We need to concentrate on saving Nancy. Just give me your bill for time and expenses tomorrow night, when we have a moment alone. I’ll send you a check the next morning.”

After we said good-bye, I replaced the receiver and thought about what Bobby had told me: Ray Wilson was in Belle Valley, Ohio. Now that I knew he was alive, and where he could be found, it was time to make some plans.

Taking a clean white legal pad from my desk, I began a list of the things I had to do in the next couple of weeks. First, I’d go to a library tomorrow and use a computer there to look up information about Belle Valley, Ohio, and get driving directions. I had to do it at a library so as not leave any trace of my interest on either my office or home computers.

Next, I’d start taking money out of my savings account, three or four thousand dollars at a time, well below an amount that would attract attention. I’d make the first withdrawal this evening, just before six, when the bank closed. Already, at home, I had ten thousand dollars of emergency cash in the bedroom closet safe. Keeping hidden emergency money was a habit my late husband, Ian, had taught me when we were traveling in dangerous parts of the world.

“You never know when cash for a bribe could mean the difference between life and death,” he had said. Twice, before Ian was killed in the crash of our Land Rover, we were captured by separate sets of poachers who discovered us photographing evidence that they’d slaughtered elephants for the ivory and a rhino for its horn. Rhino horns, ground to powder, were thought to be aphrodisiacs—primitive Viagra. The money we had hidden in boxes of film had saved our lives.

AT FIVE O’CLOCK, I insisted that Betty go home. “Tommy’s getting back from the Affiliates meeting tonight,” I said, “and I’m meeting with the breakdown writers tomorrow morning, so we might have a long day.”

She reached into the bottom drawer of her desk for her handbag and said with a smile, “Then I’m taking off.” She came out from behind her desk, but paused. “Oh—do you want me to order lunch in for the breakdown meeting?”

I waited until the elevator doors had closed behind Betty, and then went back into my office and took a key from the collection hanging from a hook beneath my desk. Quickly finding the key marked “Small Props,” I crossed the floor to a door behind Stage 35. The stage was dark; the last scene of the day using that set had wrapped an hour ago.

The room where small props such as hospital I.D. tags, police and fire department badges, passports, and such were kept in filing cabinets was not much bigger than a storage closet.

My first act was to open the drawer marked “Misc. Devices” and remove a lock pick. I knew we had one because a few months ago I’d written a scene in which Link Ramsey’s character used it to get into a bad guy’s office. I slipped it into my pocket.

Next, I went to the drawer marked “Driver’s Licenses” and rummaged through them until I came to a Chicago license with a picture on it of a woman about my age. The name on the license was “Charlotte Brown.” She’d been a minor character in the story three years ago. The actress who’d played Charlotte had short dark hair, bangs that brushed the top of her eyebrows, and she wore glasses.

For my purpose, the only thing that was wrong with the license was the expiration date, but I could have that changed by one of our studio prop artists. Tommy called them “our forgers” because they were so skillful at making fake documents that looked real. He joked that we paid them well so they wouldn’t use their talents for crime. All I had to do was tell one of them that I needed the expiration date changed on the license to use as a prop in a future storyline.

I stared at the picture on the laminated rectangle in my hands. Unlike Charlotte’s short dark hair, mine is shoulder length, and a kind of blondish reddish shade Matt says is the color of marmalade.

With a pair of clear, nonprescription glasses, and a short black wig that I could buy at any one of a thousand shops in the city and customize, I would look enough like Charlotte Brown to pass for her.