Ken and Don listened with sober concentration when I told them about my meetings in Westchester and the call I’d received that morning from the police in Briarcliff Manor.
“Gut reaction, Carley?” Ken asked. “Is this an elaborate performance to convince everyone that something else was going on? The housekeeping couple tell you that it was obvious Nick Spencer and Vivian Powers were lovebirds. Is it possible you were getting too close to the truth? Do you think she was planning to go to Boston for a while, live with Mommy and Daddy, then start a new life in Australia or Timbuktu or Monaco once the heat was off?”
“Absolutely possible,” I said. “In fact, if that’s the way it is, I have to tell you that I think leaving the door open and a table and chair knocked over was a bit much.” Having said that, I hesitated.
“Looking back, I think she was frightened. When Vivian opened the door for me, she kept the safety chain on for a couple of minutes before she let me in.”
“You were there around eleven-thirty?” Ken asked.
“Yes.”
“Did she give any indication of why she was frightened?”
“Not directly, but she did say that the accelerator on Spencer’s car had jammed only a week before his plane crashed. She had begun to think neither one was an accident.”
I got up. “I’m going to drive up there,” I said. “And then I’m going back to Caspien. Unless this is a total charade, the fact that Vivian Powers called me to say that she thought she knew the identity of the reddishhaired man may mean that she had become a threat to someone.”
Ken nodded. “Go ahead. And I have a few connections. There aren’t that many people who went into St. Ann’s Hospice to die and then later walked out. It certainly shouldn’t be that hard to identify this guy.”
I was still new on the job. Ken was the senior on this cover story. Even so, I had to say it: “Ken, when you find him, I’d like to be along when you talk to him.”
Ken considered for a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough.”
* * *
I have a pretty good sense of direction. This time I didn’t need my road map to find my way to Vivian’s house. There was a lone cop stationed at the door, and he looked at me suspiciously. I explained that I had seen Vivian Powers the day before and had received a phone call from her.
“Let me check,” he said. He went into the house and came back quickly. “Detective Shapiro said it’s okay for you to go in.”
Detective Shapiro turned out to be a soft-spoken, scholarly-looking man with a receding hairline and keen hazel eyes. He was quick to explain that the investigation was just beginning. Vivian Powers’s parents had been contacted, and in view of the circumstances had given permission for entry to her home. The fact that the front door was open, the lamp and table overturned, and her car still in the driveway had left them gravely worried that she had been the victim of foul play.
“You were here yesterday, Miss DeCarlo?” Shapiro confirmed.
“Yes.”
“I realize that with the dismantling of the house and the mover’s boxes, it’s hard to be sure. But do you see anything different about the premises than when you were here yesterday?”
We were in the living room. I looked around, remembering that it had been the same jumble of packed boxes and bare tables that I was looking at now. But then I realized there was something different. There was a box on the coffee table that had not been there yesterday.
I pointed to it. “That box,” I said. “She either may have been packing it or going through it after I left, but it wasn’t here before.”
Detective Shapiro walked over to it and pulled out the file that was on top. “She worked for Gen-stone, didn’t she?” he asked.
I found myself giving him only the information I was absolutely sure of and saying nothing of my suspicions. I could imagine the look on the detective’s face if I told him, “Vivian Powers may have staged this disappearance because she’s meeting Nicholas Spencer, whose plane crashed and is presumed dead.” Or would it make more sense to him if I said, “I am beginning to wonder if Nicholas Spencer was in fact the victim of foul play, that a doctor in Caspien was the victim of a hit-and-run driver because of laboratory records he was holding, and that Vivian Powers disappeared because she was able to identify the man who collected those records.”
Instead, I limited myself to saying that I had interviewed Vivian Powers because I was cowriting a cover story on her boss, Nicholas Spencer.
“She called you after you left, Miss DeCarlo?”
I guessed that Detective Shapiro was aware he was not getting the full story.
“Yes. I had discussed with Vivian the fact that some records of lab experiments belonging to Nicholas Spencer were missing. As far as she knew, the man who picked them up, saying he had been sent by Spencer, was not authorized to do so. From the brief message she left on my machine, I got the impression she might be able to identify that person.”
The detective was still holding the Gen-stone file folder, but it was empty. “Is it possible she made that connection when she was going through this file?”
“I don’t know, but I certainly think it’s possible.”
“Now the file is empty, and she’s missing. What does that say to you, Miss DeCarlo?”
“I think there is the possibility that she may have been the victim of foul play.”
He gave me a sharp look. “On the drive from the city, did you happen to have your car radio on, Miss DeCarlo?”
“No, I did not,” I said. I didn’t tell Detective Shapiro that when I’m working on an investigative story such as this, I treasure quiet time in the car to think and to weigh the possible alternative scenarios with which I’ve been presented.
“Then you didn’t hear the report of a rumor that Nick Spencer has been spotted in Zurich, observed there by a man who had seen him a number of times at stockholders’ meetings?”
It took me a long minute to digest that question. “Are you saying that you think the man who claims to have seen him is credible?”
“No, only that it’s a new angle in the case. Naturally, they’ll check out the story thoroughly.”
“If that story checks out, I wouldn’t worry too much about Vivian Powers,” I said. “If it is true, my guess is that she’s on her way to meet him right now, if she isn’t there already.”
“They were involved?” Shapiro asked quickly.
“Nicholas Spencer’s housekeeping couple believed they were, which could mean that the so-called missing records are nothing but part of an elaborate cover-up.”
“Didn’t I hear that the front door was open?” I asked Shapiro.
He nodded. “Which is why leaving that door open may have been an effort to draw notice to her absence,” he said. “I’ll be honest, Miss DeCarlo. There’s something phony about this setup, and I think you’ve told me what it is. I bet that right now she’s winging her way to Spencer, wherever he is.”