Toni sank gratefully onto the sofa in the apartment she’d been occupying for the past week. Michael ordered Chinese food, and she helped herself from the cardboard containers spread out on the glass-topped coffee table in the living room. The wine she’d had earlier in the Waldorf Lounge helped calm her nerves, but she found she had little appetite for the cashew chicken, sweet-and-sour pork and honey-walnut shrimp. She took a few bites, then leaned back on the sofa.
“Not hungry?” Michael asked. “Try to eat something.”
Since he’d gone to the trouble of ordering in the food, Toni returned to her plate and ate another mouthful. “It’s delicious. All my favorites.”
“The problem with Chinese food is that it cools off so quickly.”
“I thought the problem was that you’re hungry again an hour later.” She tried for a smile, but it didn’t quite work.
“That, too.” He sat on the carpet on the other side of the coffee table. “You bounce back quickly, don’t you? That business this afternoon would have sent an ordinary woman to bed for the next two weeks.”
“I’ve tried to blot it out of my mind. I have to, you know. There’s been too much of it. I need to focus my attention on something ordinary and nonthreatening.”
“Is the Rolodex file non-threatening enough?”
Pushing the cartons of food out of the way, she retrieved the Rolodex and placed it on the coffee table.
Michael sat down next to her. “How many modeling agencies are there in New York that Craig might have worked with?”
Toni shrugged. “More than one, for sure. Photographers do have favorite models, but they often need a fresh face, too.”
She glanced at the first card. It contained a masculine name that Toni didn’t recognize. Perhaps an up-and-coming male model.
Then, as she flipped to the next, another name jumped out at her. “Senator Ingram.” She read off the name, remembering the spread Ted Flax had done for Architectural Monthly at the senator’s Virginia estate. She told Michael about it, then added, “That’s odd, this card being in here.”
He moved around the table and flipped to another card. He paused a moment. “Here’s a name I recognize.”
“Who? A model?”
“This name doesn’t belong to any model. Unless it’s a huge coincidence. Richard Carstairs.”
“Carstairs?”
“I met him once at a party my ex-wife dragged me to. One of the jet setters, or beautiful people, or whatever they call themselves these days.”
“A Social Register type?”
“Yes. I wonder if there are any other people I know.” He turned the cards slowly, scanning them. “Justin De La Ware.”
“You know him, too?”
“Barely.” He looked again. “And here’s Wes Ogilthorpe.”
Toni clapped a hand to her cheek. “Oh, my God. This isn’t Craig’s Rolodex. It must be Ted’s. He photographed those people for the home design and architectural magazines. He must have been using Craig’s office along with his own.” Her face grew pinched with worry. “I need to return this to him. I’ll drop it by after filming on Monday.”
“I’m sure he’ll understand,” Michael said.
Toni sighed. “So much for investigating people Craig and Suzanne might have known.”
She couldn’t help but return to the subject of the pictures Craig had taken just before he was killed. “I wish I could see them again.”
Michael picked up his suit coat from a nearby chair and pulled out his cellphone. “You mean these? Sorry. When you phoned me from Suzanne’s house today, I just dashed over there as soon as possible.” He shook his head. “They slipped my mind.”
She stared at him without answering.
He tapped a few places on his iPhone and then handed it to her. The same photos she’d seen in the squad room appeared. She looked up at him. “How did you get these?”
He returned to his seat. “After I dropped you off last night, I went back to the station and visited a guy I know who works in the evidence room. I asked him if I could take pictures of Craig’s photos with my cell.”
“And he agreed?”
“He said he needed permission and left to make a phone call. When he came back he said I couldn’t do it.”
Toni frowned. “So how—?”
“The photos were just sitting there, and he was gone about five minutes.” He smiled. “I knew that was his signal for me to go ahead.”
She stared at the tiny images on the phone. “This is great.”
Michael used his thumb and forefinger to enlarge the pictures. Then he rose to his feet again. “With luck we’ll get to see blowups of each photo.” He pointed down the hall. “Are you familiar with the spare bedroom?”
“It looks like an office.”
“It is an office, and unless I’m very much mistaken it has a computer and printer. I can put the disc in the computer and print out copies of the photos.” As he spoke he got to his feet and strode quickly down the hall to the second bedroom.
Toni followed, flipping on the overhead light. Michael turned on the computer and color laser printer, connected his iPhone, downloaded the photos, and cued them to print. Within ten minutes they held a stack of eight-by-ten photos, and Toni carried them back into the living room.
They arranged the prints on the coffee table. She clustered each group according to the background. In some she posed at the antique roll-top desk, others at the oak filing cabinet, still others in front of the old-fashioned steamship posters.
As if her life depended on it—and she was beginning to think it did—she studied each of the prints with a new determination to find the link to Craig’s murderer. Throughout the entire ordeal of the past ten days, she remained staunchly convinced that Craig had unwittingly captured a vital clue on film. It was buried somewhere, waiting to be discovered, within the dozens of pictures.
“Especially these,” she said. One group drew her attention and held it longer than any of the others. As if peering through a trick mirror that took a single image and reproduced it endlessly, she stared at close range at a dozen Toni Abbotts. Each wore the same white organdy dress, not yet stained with Craig’s blood.
“It’s like reading a book that has only an ending, and never discovering what happened before that.” Her gaze returned to the reproductions on the table. “What did happen that night? I have to know.”
Again she studied the prints. What had she been thinking while the shutter clicked? Whatever it was, she hadn’t allowed it to show in her face. Nevertheless, her eyes expressed a strong emotion. Negative vibes? Fear? No, more a sense of foreboding. As if she knew what was about to happen to Craig.
She told herself that was completely ridiculous. Something, then, that was about to happen to her? Perhaps the dilemma occupying her mind. She’d been worried Leo wanted the writers to kill Alexandra, and so far they hadn’t agreed. So, kill Toni Abbott, and you kill Alexandra. Was Leo desperate enough to resort to murder?
She held up one batch of prints in particular, and after turning on the lamp next to the sofa, brought them closer to the light. She studied them for a long moment in silence, willing her memory of that night to jog loose. She had better than average concentration, and although she’d never studied at the Actor’s Studio, considered herself something of a method actress. She knew how to recreate the past in the present. Except those few crucial minutes in her past were missing, which made her future highly uncertain.
“Anything?” Michael prompted.
“There’s really nothing remarkable about them. I mean, it’s plain that they are simply publicity photographs.”
She shuffled through them again. There was the antique desk with her perched on the edge, then half a dozen shots where she stood near the file cabinet. In some, Craig captured the open window on film. Also the brightly lighted billboard across the street. She supposed he meant to block that from the finished prints. Hardly surprising, of course, but not even the shadow of another person appeared in any of them.
She told Michael how that billboard tortured her. “When Craig asked me to turn my head, I looked out the window for a few seconds. I remember seeing the billboard and wishing desperately for some of that cola it advertised.”
“You remember that?”
She turned her head quickly to face Michael, excitement mounting. She pulled the memory in, talking quickly. “Yes, I remember quite clearly.”
“What else do you remember? Try. Maybe something else will come back to you. You said when you saw Suzanne’s body, you remembered finding Craig on the floor. Maybe you can remember what happened just prior to that.”
“Someone fired a gun. The shots fired on the set of Beekman Place brought that memory back, but it’s still hazy.” Only bright lights and the sound that froze her blood. Had she seen the murder and blotted it from her mind? And did the killer realize too late what she’d seen?
She pressed her lips together, lifted her chin and closed her eyes, but nothing new materialized.
“I’m sorry. That’s all.” She frowned.
“You’re doing fine.”
“There’s something there, but I just don’t recognize it.”
“It will come.”
Would it come in time to save her life?
Toni stood and paced the floor, her voice rising. “I refuse to live every day of my life afraid to go out the front door. I can’t look over my shoulder every time I go into a store or step out of a cab. I have to live. I have to work.”
He rose and went to her, put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t take chances. Be alert.”
“I will.”
“Call me Monday. Promise?”
“It may be late, depending on when we stop filming. Plus, I have a very early makeup call. If the writers decide to let Alexandra recover, I’ll need the bandages again and a complete facial makeover.”
“What if Alexandra doesn’t survive?”
Toni shivered at the thought. “Then Emma is going to have a new challenge: to make me look like a corpse!”