I'll Walk Alone

by Mary Higgins Clark

  All these random thoughts are going nowhere, he acknowledged silently, as he leaned back in his chair. From down the hall he could hear the relentless sound of hammering and the shrill, ear-piercing whine of machines beginning to polish the marble floors.

  To Kevin, the din of construction was more beautiful than hearing a symphony in Lincoln Center. From the time I was a kid, I told Dad I’d rather go to a construction site than to the zoo, he thought. Even then, I knew I wanted to design buildings.

  The landscaper’s sketches weren’t right, he decided. He’ll have to start all over, or I’ll get someone else. I don’t want the entrance to look like a conservatory, Kevin thought. This guy just doesn’t get it.

  The model apartments. Last night he had studied both Longe’s and Moreland’s submissions for hours. They were both mighty im pressive. He could understand why Bartley Longe was considered one of the foremost interior designers in the country. If he got the job, the apartments would be spectacular.

  But Zan Moreland’s sketches were marvelously attractive, too. He could see how she had studied under Longe, but then broken off from his ideas to pursue her own. There was more warmth, more of a sense of this-is-my-home in the deft way she put small touches in her layouts. And she was 30 percent cheaper in her prices.

  He admitted to himself that he had not been able to get her out of his mind. She was a beautiful woman, there was no doubt about that. Slender, even a shade too thin, those enormous hazel eyes dominating her face … Odd that she was so shy, almost to the point of diffidence, until she got into explaining her vision for the model apartments. Then it was as if a light turned on and her face and voice became animated.

  When she left yesterday, I watched her walk out to the curb and hail a cab, Kevin thought. It had gotten so windy that I wondered if that suit she was wearing was warm enough for her, even though it had a fur collar. I had the feeling that a strong gust of wind would have knocked her to the ground.

  There was a tap on the door of his office. Before he could respond, his secretary, Louise Kirk, was in the office and walking to his desk. “Let me guess. It’s exactly nine o’clock,” he said.

  Louise, a forty-five-year-old pear-shaped dynamo, with a head of fluffy blond hair, was the wife of one of the construction chiefs. “Of course it is,” she replied briskly.

  Kevin was sorry he had given Louise that opening. Now he hoped she wouldn’t repeat her oft-told comparison of herself to Eleanor Roosevelt. As Louise, a history buff, explained it, Eleanor was always exactly on time, “Even to the moment when she descended the stairs in the White House to arrive precisely when the ceremony at FDR’s casket in the East Room was about to begin.”

  But today Louise clearly had other things on her mind. “Did you have a chance to read the papers?” she asked.

  “No. The breakfast meeting started at seven o’clock,” Kevin reminded her.

  “Well, then take a look at this.” Gleeful at being able to be the bearer of startling news, Louise laid the morning papers, the New York Post and the Daily News, on his desk. Both of them had a picture of Zan Moreland on the front page. Their headlines were similar, and sensational. Both alleged that Zan Moreland had kidnapped her own child.

  Kevin stared at the photos in disbelief of what he was seeing. “Did you know her child was missing?” he asked Louise.

  “No, I didn’t connect her name with it,” Louise said. “Don’t forget, I was in the main office yesterday. Of course, I knew the child’s name, Matthew Carpenter. The papers were full of the story when he disappeared, but as I remember they always referred to the mother as Alexandra. I didn’t put two and two together. What are you going to do about it, Kevin? She’s bound to be arrested. Should I return her sketches to her office?”

  “I would say that we have no choice,” Kevin said quietly, then added, “The funny thing is I’d just about decided to give her the job.”

  23

  On Wednesday morning, after celebrating the seven-o’clock Mass, Fr. Aiden watched CNN news as he sipped a cup of coffee in the kitchen of the Friary. Deeply disturbed, he shook his head as the breaking news unfolded that Alexandra Moreland had kidnapped her own child. He watched as the camera showed the same young woman who had come into the Reconciliation Room Monday leave the Four Seasons Restaurant last night. She tried to hide her face when she was rushing into a cab past the reporters and photographers, but there was no mistaking her.

  Then he saw the photos that seemed to be the unmistakable proof that she had abducted little Matthew.

  “I am involved in an ongoing crime and I am unable to prevent a murder that is about to be committed,” she had said.

  Was the ongoing crime the fact that Alexandra Moreland had taken her own son and lied to the authorities about his disappearance?

  Fr. Aiden watched as the news anchorman spoke to June Langren, a nearby diner in the Four Seasons, about the shocking outburst by Ted Carpenter. “I honestly thought he was going to attack her,” Langren said, breathlessly. “My boyfriend jumped up to restrain him if necessary.”

  In the fifty years he had been hearing confessions, Fr. Aiden thought he had heard virtually the full range of iniquities that the human spirit is capable of committing. Many years ago he had listened to the wrenching sobs of a young woman, little more than a girl herself, who had given birth to a child, and in fear of her parents had left it to die in a garbage bag in the Dumpster.

  The saving mercy was that the child had not died, that a passerby had heard the cries of the wailing infant and saved it, he reflected.

  This was different.

  “A murder is about to be committed.”

  She did not say, “I am going to commit a murder,” Fr. Aiden thought. She spoke of herself as an accomplice. Maybe now that those pictures have proven that she stole the child, whoever she is involved with will be frightened off. I can only pray that that will be the case.

  Later that morning after he had reviewed the security tapes with Alvirah and she had gone home, Fr. Aiden opened his calendar. He had several dinner appointments in the next week with generous sponsors of the friars’ ongoing food and clothing charity who had become close personal friends. He wanted to verify the time he was meeting the Andersons this evening.

  His memory was accurate: 6:30, at the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South. Right down the street from Alvirah and Willy, he thought. That’s perfect. I just realized I left my scarf in their apartment last night. I guess Alvirah didn’t notice it or she would have mentioned it when she was here. After dinner, I’ll give them a call and if they’re home, I’ll run over and get it. His sister, Veronica, had knitted that scarf for him, and if she noticed that he wasn’t wearing it on a cold day, he’d be in big trouble.

  As he was leaving the Friary after lunch, Neil was coming out of the chapel, a dustcloth and can of furniture polish in his hands. “Father, did you see that the woman, I mean the one your friend recognized on our security tape, is the one who stole her own kid?”

  “Yes, I did,” Fr. Aiden said abruptly, making it very clear to Neil that he did not wish to hear anything more about it.

  Neil had been about to make the comment that when he had seen the tape it had jostled something in his mind. He’d been walking home to his apartment on Eighth Avenue Monday night around the time that Moreland woman had been caught on the security tape, but just as he got to the corner, a young woman who was walking ahead of him had darted out in traffic and hailed a cab. She damn near got hit by a car, he thought. I got a good look at her.

  That was why he had gone back and run the security tape again, stopping it where Alvirah Meehan had recognized her friend. You’d swear the woman getting in the cab was the one who’s on the tape, he thought. But unless she can change clothes in the middle of the street, it can’t be the same person.

  Neil shrugged. That was what he’d been about to tell Fr. Aiden, but it was clear Fr. Aiden didn’t want to hear it. None of my business anyhow, Neil decided. In his
forty-one years, thanks to his drinking problem, Neil had run the gamut of jobs. The one he’d liked best was being a cop, but that had only lasted a few years. No matter how much you pleaded that you’d go on the wagon, getting drunk three times when you were on duty meant getting tossed out on your ear.

  I had the makings of a good cop, Neil thought reflectively, as he headed for the utility closet. All the guys joked about me that I could see a mug shot once and pick the guy out of Times Square a year later. Wish I’d lasted in the department. Maybe by now I’d be the police commissioner!

  But he hadn’t gone to AA then. Instead, after drifting from job to job, he’d ended up on the streets, begging for handouts and sleeping in shelters. Three years ago when he’d come here for food, one of the friars had sent him to the Inn at Graymoor where they had a rehab program for men like him, and there he’d finally kicked the booze.

  Now, he liked working here. He liked staying sober. He liked the friends he’d made at the AA meetings. The friars called him their majordomo, a fancy way of saying handyman, but still, it had a certain dignity.

  If Fr. Aiden did not want to talk about the Moreland woman, that’s the way it is, Neil decided. Mum’s the word. He probably wouldn’t care anyhow that I saw someone who looked just like her.

  Why should he?

  24

  The elderly man who timidly entered the offices of Bartley Longe was clearly not a potential customer. His thinning white hair was straggly on his skull, his worn Dallas Cowboys jacket in need of replacing, his jeans hanging loose on his body, his feet clad in old sneakers. He made his way slowly to the reception desk. At the first sight of him, Phyllis, the receptionist, took him to be a messenger. Then she dismissed that possibility. The frailness of the man’s body and the sallow complexion of his wrinkled face suggested that he was, or had been, seriously ill.

  She was glad that the boss was huddled in a meeting with Elaine, his secretary, and two fabric designers, and that his door was closed. Bartley Longe would have thought that whatever this man wanted, he didn’t belong in the rarefied atmosphere of these surroundings. Even after six years, kindhearted Phyllis cringed at the way Bartley treated any person with a shabby appearance. Like her pal Elaine, Phyllis stayed at the job for the pretty decent salary, and the fact that Bartley was out of the office often enough to give them all a break.

  She smiled at the obviously nervous visitor. “How can I help you?

  “My name is Toby Grissom. I’m sorry to bother you. It’s just that I haven’t heard from my daughter in six months and I can’t sleep at night because I’m so worried that maybe she’s in some kind of trou ble. She used to work here about two years ago. I thought someone in your office, maybe, might have heard from her.”

  “She worked here?” Phyllis asked, as she mentally reviewed the list of employees who might have quit or been fired around two years ago. “What is her name?”

  “Brittany La Monte. At least that’s her stage name. She came to New York twelve years ago. Like all kids she wanted to be an actress, and she did get a little part off-Broadway now and then.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Grissom, but I’ve been here six years, and I can absolutely tell you that no one named Brittany La Monte was working in this office two years ago.”

  As though afraid of being dismissed out of hand, Grissom explained, “Well, not exactly worked for you here. What I mean is that she made her living as a makeup artist. Sometimes when there were cocktail parties to show off those model apartments Mr. Longe decorated, he asked Brittany to do the makeup for the models. Then he invited her to be one of the models. She’s a real pretty girl.”

  “Oh, that could be why I never met her,” Phyllis said. “What I can do is ask Mr. Longe’s secretary about her. She’s at all those model-apartment parties, and she has a phenomenal memory. But she’s tied up in a meeting now and I know she won’t be free for a couple of hours. Can you come back later?”

  Make it after three, Phyllis reminded herself. King Tut said he was going to his place in Litchfield tonight, and he’s leaving after lunch. “Mr. Grissom, anytime after three would work,” she said sweetly.

  “Thank you, ma’am. You’re very kind. You see, my daughter always wrote to me regularly. She did say she was going on a trip two years ago, and sent me twenty-five thousand dollars to make sure I had something in the bank. Her mother passed away a long time ago and my little girl and I have been real pals. She said she wouldn’t be in touch too often. Every once in a while I would get a letter from her. The postmark would be New York, so I know she’s been back here. But like I say, it’s been six months and no letter, and I’ve just got to see her. The last time she was in Dallas was almost four years ago now.”

  “Mr. Grissom, if we have an address for her, I promise we’ll have it for you this afternoon,” Phyllis said. Even as she spoke she knew that there probably wasn’t any financial record of payment to Brittany La Monte. Bartley always paid people like her off the books so that he could get away cheaper than paying union wages.

  “You see, I just got a pretty bad report from my doctor,” Grissom explained, as he turned to go. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t have long and I don’t want to die before I see Glory again and be sure she’s okay.”

  “Glory? I thought you said her name was Brittany.”

  Toby Grissom smiled reminiscently. “Her real name is Margaret Grissom, after her mother. Like I said, her stage name is Brittany La Monte. But when she was born, I took one look at her and said, ‘Little girl, you’re so gorgeous your mama may call you Margaret, but my name for you is Glory.’ “

  25

  At 12:15, a few minutes after they had spoken, Alvirah called Zan back. “Zan, I’ve been thinking,” she said. “There’s no question but that the police are going to want to talk to you. But before they do, you need to have a lawyer.”

  “A lawyer! Alvirah, why?”

  “Zan, because the woman in those pictures looks just like you. The police are going to be knocking at your door. I don’t want you answering questions without a lawyer beside you.”

  Zan felt the numbness that had pervaded her mind and body begin to change into a deadly calm. “Alvirah, you really aren’t sure whether I’m the woman in those pictures, are you?” Then she added, “You don’t have to answer that. I understand what you are saying. Do you know a lawyer you would recommend?”

  “Yes, I do. Charley Shore is a top-drawer criminal defense attorney. I did a column on him for my newspaper, and we became good friends.”

  Criminal defense lawyer, Zan thought, bitterly. Of course. If I did take Matthew, I committed a crime.

  Did I take Matthew?

  Where would I have taken him? Who would I have given him to?

  Nobody. It can’t have happened that way. I don’t care if I forgot that I stopped in at St. Francis’s the other night. I was so desperately unhappy with Matthew’s birthday coming up that maybe I did go in and light a candle for him. I’ve done that before. But I know that I never could have taken him out of that stroller and put him out of my life.

  “Zan, are you still there?”

  “Yes, Alvirah. Can you give me that lawyer’s number?”

  “Sure. But don’t call him for ten minutes. I’ll get in touch with him first. After I speak to him, he’ll want to help you. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Slowly Zan put the phone back on the cradle. A lawyer will cost money, she thought, money I could use to hire someone new to search for Matthew.

  Kevin Wilson.

  The thought of the architect’s name made her sit bolt upright. Of course he would see those photos and think that she had kidnapped Matthew. Of course he would expect her to be arrested. He’ll give the job to Bartley, Zan thought. I’ve spent so much time on it. I can’t lose it. I’ll need the money more than ever. I’ve got to talk to him!

  She wrote a note for Josh and hurried out of the office, going down in the service elevator, and leaving the building by the service entrance. I
don’t even know if Wilson will be there, she thought, as she hailed a cab. But if I have to sit outside his office all afternoon, I’ll do it.

  I’ve got to ask him to give me a chance to clear myself.

  It took nearly forty minutes in even heavier than usual traffic for Zan to reach the newly named 701 Carlton Place. The cab fare with tip was twenty-two dollars. It’s a good thing I have a credit card, she thought, as she looked in her wallet and realized she had only fifteen dollars in the billfold section.

  It had been her cardinal rule to use the credit card as sparingly as possible. Whenever she could, she walked to her appointments. Funny how you concentrate on something like cab fare, she thought, as she entered the apartment building. It’s like when Dad and Mother died. At the funeral Mass I kept thinking that there was a spot on the jacket I was wearing. I kept asking myself why I hadn’t noticed it. I had another black jacket that I could have worn.

  Is it that I’m taking refuge in trivia again? she asked herself, as she pushed the revolving door and walked into the deafening sound of the machines polishing marble in the lobby.

  Kevin Wilson obviously only wants working space, she thought, as she walked down the equipment-laden corridor to the room he was using as an office. She knew that when everything was in place that area would serve as a delivery drop for tenants’ packages.

  The door of his temporary office was partially open. She knocked, and without waiting for a response went in. There was a woman with blond hair standing at the table behind Wilson’s desk. From the astonished expression on her face when she turned around and saw her, Zan knew she had read the morning papers.