All Around the Town

by Mary Higgins Clark

  “How long can you hold off?”

  Sarah’s voice became unsteady. “What would be the point? I think if anything, taking the pressure off Laurie to remember might in the long run be beneficial to her. Let it go.”

  “No, Sarah.” Justin pushed back his chair and walked over to the window, then was sorry he had. Across the garden, Laurie was standing in the solarium, her hands resting on the glass wall, looking out. Even from where he was, he could sense the feeling of a trapped bird longing to fly. He turned to Sarah. “Give me a little longer. How soon do you think the judge will allow her to go home?”

  “Next week.”

  “All right. Are you busy tonight?”

  “Well, let’s see.” Sarah spoke rapidly, obviously trying to rein in her emotions. “If I go home, one of two things will happen. The Hawkinses will come bursting in to deposit more of their possessions and want to take me to dinner. Or else Sophie, whom I love dearly, will be there, sorting through my parents’ closets and relieving me of the job I’ve put off—giving away their clothes. The third alternative is that I’ll try to figure out a brilliant defense for Laurie.”

  “Surely you have friends who ask you out.”

  “I have lots of friends,” Sarah said. “Good friends, cousins too, terrific people who want to help. But, you see, at the end of the day I can’t start explaining to everyone what’s going on. I can’t stand listening to the empty promises that something will turn up, that it’s all going to be just fine. I can’t bear to hear that none of this would have happened if Laurie hadn’t been kidnapped all those years ago. I know that. That knowledge is driving me mad. Oh yes, I also don’t want to hear that after all Dad was in his seventies and Mother had that operation a few years ago and the prognosis wasn’t great and maybe it was a blessing they went together. You see, I do accept that. But I don’t want to hear it.”

  Justin knew that one comforting word would reduce Sarah to tears. He didn’t want that to happen. Laurie would be joining them momentarily. “I was going to suggest that you have dinner with me tonight,” he said mildly. “Here’s something I want you to see now.”

  From Laurie’s file, he pulled out an eight-by-ten photograph. Faint lines crisscrossed back and forth over it.

  “This is an enlargement of the picture Laurie tore up the day she was admitted here,” he explained. “The man who reconstructed it did a good job. Tell me what you see in it.”

  Sarah looked down at the photograph, and her eyes widened. “The way this was before, I didn’t see that Laurie was crying. That tree. That dilapidated house. And what’s that, a barn behind it? There’s nothing like that in Ridgewood. Where was this taken?”

  Then she frowned. “Oh, wait a minute. Laurie went to a nursery school three afternoons a week. They used to take the kids on excursions to parks and lakes. There are farmhouses like this around Harriman State Park. But why would this picture have upset her the way it did?”

  “I’m going to try to find out,” Justin said, switching on the video camera as Laurie opened the door.

  * * *

  Laurie forced herself to look at the picture. “The chicken coop behind the farmhouse,” she whispered. “Bad things happen there.”

  “What bad things, Laurie?” Justin asked.

  “Don’t talk, you jerk. He’ll find out and you know what he’ll do to you.”

  Sarah dug her nails into her palms. This was a voice she had never heard before, a young, strong, boyish voice. Laurie was frowning. Even though her face seemed to have lost its contours, her mouth was set in a determined line. One hand was smacking the other.

  “Hi,” Justin said casually. “You’re new. What’s your name?”

  “Get back inside, you!” It was Leona’s catlike tone. “Listen, Doctor, I know that bossy Kate has been trying to go around me. It won’t happen.”

  “Leona, why are you always the troublemaker?” Justin demanded.

  Sarah realized he was trying a new tactic. His voice was belligerent.

  “Because people are always pulling things on me. I trusted Allan and he made a fool of me. I trusted you when you told us to keep a journal, and you stuck that picture in it.”

  Laurie’s hair was tumbling over her face. She was brushing it back with an unconsciously seductive gesture.

  “That’s impossible. You didn’t find this picture in your journal, Leona.”

  “I certainly did. Just the way I found that damn knife in my tote bag. I was so nice when I went to Allan’s for the showdown and he looked so peaceful I didn’t even wake him up, and now people are blaming me because he’s dead.”

  Sarah held her breath. Don’t react, she told herself. Don’t distract her.

  “Did you try to wake him up?” Justin might have been commenting on the weather.

  “No. I was going to show him. I mean there’s no way I can escape. The kitchen knife that was missing. Sarah. Sophie. Dr. Carpenter. Everybody wants to know why I took it. I did not take the knife. Then Allan makes a fool of me. You know what I decided to do?” She did not wait for an answer. “I was going to show that guy. Kill myself right in front of him. Let him be sorry for what he did to me. No use going on living. Nothing’s ever going to be good for me.”

  “You went to his house and the big window was open?”

  “No. I don’t go in windows. The terrace door to the study. The lock doesn’t catch. He was already in bed. I went into his room. For Pete’s sake, have you got a cigarette?”

  “Of course.” Donnelly waited until Leona had settled back, the lit cigarette between her fingers, before he asked, “What was Allan doing when you went in?”

  Her lips curved in a smile. “He was snoring. Can you believe it? My big scene wasted. He’s curled up in bed like a little kid, arms all wrapped around the pillow, hair sort of tousled, and he’s snoring.” Her voice softened and became hesitant. “My daddy used to snore. Mommy used to say that was the only thing about him she’d change. He could wake up the dead when he started snoring.”

  Yes, Sarah thought, yes.

  “And you had the knife?”

  “Oh, that. I put my tote bag down on the floor by the bed. I had the knife in my hand by then. I laid the knife on top of the bag. I was so tired. And you know what I thought?”

  “Tell me.”

  The voice changed completely, became that of four-year-old Debbie. “I thought of all the times I wouldn’t let my daddy hold me or kiss me after I came back from the house with the chicken coop and I laid down on the bed next to Allan and he never knew, he just kept on snoring.”

  “Then what happened, Debbie?”

  Oh please, God, Sarah thought.

  “Then I got scared, afraid he’d wake up and be mad at me and tell the dean on me again, so I got up and tiptoed out. And he never even knew I was there.”

  She giggled happily like a little girl who had played a trick and gotten away with it.

  * * *

  Justin took Sarah to dinner at Neary’s Restaurant on East Fifty-seventh Street.

  “I’m a regular here,” he told her, as a beaming Jimmy Neary rushed to greet them. Justin introduced Sarah. “Here’s someone you’ve got to fatten up, Jimmy.”

  At the table he said, “I think you’ve had a tough enough day. Want to hear about Australia?”

  Sarah wouldn’t have believed that she could eat every bite of a sliced steak sandwich and french fries. When Justin had ordered a bottle of Chianti, she’d protested. “Hey, you can walk home. I’ve got to drive.”

  “I know. It’s only nine o’clock. We’re going to take a long walk back to my place and have coffee there.”

  * * *

  New York on a summer evening, Sarah thought as they sat on his small terrace, sipping espresso. The lights on the trees surrounding the Tavern on the Green, the lush foliage, the horses and carriages, the strollers and joggers. All this was a world away from locked rooms and prison bars.

  “Let’s talk about it,” she said. “Is there an
y chance that what Laurie, or rather Debbie, told us today—about lying down with Allan Grant and then leaving him sleeping—is true?”

  “As far as Debbie knows it’s probably true.”

  “You mean that Leona might have taken over when Debbie started to leave?”

  “Leona or an alter personality we haven’t met so far.”

  “I see. I thought Laurie remembered something when she saw that picture. What could it be?”

  “I believe there probably was a chicken coop wherever Laurie was kept during those two years. That picture reminded her of something that happened there. As time goes on we may be able to learn what it was.”

  “But time is running out.” Sarah did not know she was going to cry until she felt the tears gushing down her cheeks. She held her hands over her mouth, trying to stifle racking sobs.

  Justin put his arms around her. “Let it out, Sarah,” he said tenderly.

  86

  IT WAS Brendon Moody’s theory that if you waited long enough you’d get a break. His break came on June 25, from an unexpected source. Don Fraser, a junior at Clinton, was arrested for selling drugs. Realizing he’d been caught redhanded, he hinted that in exchange for leniency, he could tell them something about Laurie Kenyon’s whereabouts the night she killed Allan Grant.

  The prosecutor guaranteed nothing but said he’d do what he could. Dealing drugs within a thousand feet of a high school could mean a mandatory three-year sentence. Since the place where Fraser was picked up was just at the edge of the thousand-foot zone, the prosecutor agreed that he would not press for the within-school-zone offense if Fraser came up with something significant.

  “And I want immunity from prosecution for what I’m telling you,” Fraser insisted.

  “You’d have made a good lawyer,” the prosecutor told him sourly. “I’ll say it again. You give us something helpful, and we’ll help you. That’s as far as I’ll go right now. Take it or leave it.”

  “All right. All right. I happened to be on the corner of North Church and Maple the night of January twenty-eighth,” Fraser began.

  “Happened to be! What time was that?”

  “Ten after eleven.”

  “All right. What happened then?”

  “I’d been talking to a couple of friends. They’d left and I’d been waiting for someone else who never showed up. It was cold, so I figured I’d take off and go back to the dorm.”

  “This is ten after eleven.”

  “Yes.” Fraser picked his words carefully. “All of a sudden this chick comes out of nowhere. I knew it was Laurie Kenyon. Everybody knows who she is. She was always getting her picture in the paper because of golf and then when her folks died.”

  “How was she dressed?”

  “Ski jacket. Jeans.”

  “Was there any sign of blood on her?”

  “No. Not a bit.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “She came over to me. The way she was acting, I thought she was going to try to pick me up. There was something real sexy about her.”

  “Back up a minute. North Church and Maple is about ten blocks from the Grant home, isn’t it?”

  “About that. Anyhow she came up to me and said she needed a cigarette.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Now this doesn’t get used against me?”

  “No. What did you do?”

  “I thought she meant grass, so I pulled some out.”

  “And then?”

  “She got mad. She said she didn’t like that stuff and wanted a real cigarette. I had some with me and told her I’d sell her a pack.”

  “You didn’t offer her one?”

  “Hey, why should I?”

  “Did she buy cigarettes from you?”

  “No. She went to reach for her purse and then said something funny. She said, ‘Damn it. I’ll have to go back. That stupid kid forgot to bring it.’ ”

  “What kid? Forgot to bring what?”

  “I don’t know what kid. I’m sure she was talking about her purse. She said to wait twenty minutes. She’d be back.”

  “Did you wait?”

  “I figured why not? Maybe my other friend would show up too.”

  “You stood there.”

  “No. I didn’t want to be seen. I got off the sidewalk and stood between two bushes on the lawn of the corner house.”

  “How long before Laurie got back?”

  “Maybe fifteen minutes. But she never stopped. She was running like hell.”

  “This is very important. Was she carrying her bag?”

  “She was hanging onto something with both hands, so I guess so.”

  87

  BIC AND OPAL listened with rapt attention to the tape of Sarah’s conversation with Brendon Moody about the testimony of the student drug dealer. “It’s consistent with what Laurie told us,” Sarah explained to Moody. “Debbie, the child alter, remembers leaving Allan Grant. None of Laurie’s personalities will talk about what happened after she went back.”

  Bic remarked ominously, “Sneaking out of a man’s house—going back and committing murder—terrible.”

  Opal tried to stifle her jealousy, comforting herself with the knowledge that it wasn’t going to go on much longer. Sarah Kenyon would be out of the house in a matter of weeks, and Bic wouldn’t have access to the condominium.

  Bic was replaying the last part of the tape. “The judge is going to allow Lee to leave the clinic on July eighth. That’s next Wednesday,” he said. “We’re going to pay a visit to Ridgewood to welcome Lee home.”

  “Bic, you don’t mean to face her.”

  “I know what I mean, Opal. We’ll both be conservatively dressed. We won’t talk about prayer or God, much as it hurts me not to bring the Lord into our every activity. The point is, we must befriend her. Then, just in case she does get too much memory back, we’ll be all mixed up in her mind. We won’t stay long. We’ll apologize for intruding and take our leave. Now try this on and let’s see how cute you look.”

  He handed her a box. She opened it and took out a wig. She went to the mirror, put it on and adjusted it, then turned for him to see. “My Lord, it’s just perfect,” he observed.

  The phone rang. Opal picked it up.

  It was Rodney Harper from station WLIS in Bethlehem.

  “You remember me?” he asked. “I was the station manager when you broadcast from here all those years ago. Proud to say I own the place now.”

  Opal motioned for Bic to pick up the extension as she said, “Rodney Harper. Of course I remember you.”

  “Been meaning to congratulate you on all your success. You folks have sure gone a long way. Reason I called today is that a woman from People magazine was in here talking to me about you.”

  Opal and Bic exchanged glances. “What did she ask?”

  “Oh just about what kind of folks you were. I said Bobby was the best damn preacher we ever had in these parts. Then she wanted to know if I had a picture of you from those days.”

  Opal saw the sudden alarm on Bic’s face and knew it mirrored her own. “And did you?”

  “I’m sorry to say we can’t find a one. We moved the station to a new facility about ten years ago and got rid of a heap of stuff. I guess your pictures got caught in the throwaway bags.”

  “Oh that doesn’t matter,” Opal said as she felt her stomach muscles begin to relax. “Wait a minute. Bobby’s on the line and wants to say hello.”

  Bic cut in with a robust greeting. “Rodney, my friend, it’s a treat to hear your voice. I’ll never forget you gave us our first big break. If we hadn’t been in Bethlehem on your station and getting known, I don’t know we’d be on the ‘Church of the Airways’ today. Even so, if you do come across some old picture, I’d appreciate if you just tore it up. Looked too darn much like a hippie in those days, and it kind of doesn’t go with preaching to the older folks in the ‘Church of the Airways.’ ”

  “Sure, Bobby. Just one thing I hope you won’t mind. I di
d take that reporter from People to see the farmhouse where you lived those two years you were with us. Son of a gun. I missed the fact it had burned down. Kids or some bum, I suppose, broke in and got careless with matches.”

  Bic rounded his thumb and first finger, then winked at Opal.

  “These things happen, but I’m real sorry to hear that. Carla and I loved that snug little place.”

  “Well, they took a couple of pictures of the property. I heard the reporter say she wasn’t sure if she’d even use them in the article, but at least the chicken coop was still standing and that was proof enough for anyone that you came from humble beginnings.”

  88

  KAREN GRANT reached her desk at nine o’clock and sighed with relief that Anne Webster wasn’t already in the office. Karen was having a hard time hiding her anger at the agency’s retiring owner. Webster did not want to complete the sale of the agency to Karen until mid-August. She had been invited on an inaugural flight of New World Airlines to Australia and didn’t intend to miss it. Karen had been hoping to go on that one. Edwin had been invited too, and they’d planned to enjoy it together.

  Karen had told Anne that there was really no need for her to come in to the office anymore. Business was slow and Karen could handle it herself. After all, Anne was almost seventy, and the trip from Bronxville to the city was taxing. But Anne was proving unexpectedly stubborn about hanging on and was making a crusade of taking regular clients out to lunch and assuring them that Karen would take just as good care of them as she had.

  Of course there was a reason for that. For three years Webster would get a percentage of the profits, and there was no question that even though the travel business had been abysmal for nearly two years, the mood was changing and people were starting to do more traveling.

  As soon as Anne was totally out of the way, Edwin could use her office. But they’d wait until the late fall to move in together. It would look better for Karen to testify as the grieving widow at Laurie Kenyon’s trial. Except for Anne hanging around and that damn detective dropping in so much, Karen was blissfully happy. She was so crazy about Edwin. Allan’s trust fund was now in her name. One hundred thousand or better a year for the next twenty years, and in the meantime those stocks were increasing in value. In a way she wasn’t sorry not to get the principal now. She might not always be crazy about Edwin, and if anything, his tastes were more expensive than hers.