The Lost Years

by Mary Higgins Clark

  Richard’s cell phone rang. With a murmured apology he stepped back and fumbled through his pockets for it. He did not realize that Alvirah, who was standing directly behind him, stepped back as well. Automatically she switched on the microphone in her sunburst pin, turning it to the highest amplifier setting.

  By the time Richard finally answered the call, it had already gone to voice mail. Even without the microphone, Alvirah could hear Lillian’s agitated and sullen voice as Richard played the message. “Richard, I’ve decided to accept your two-million-dollar offer. Get back to me.”

  The distinct click at the end of her message was echoed by the sound of Richard’s phone as he snapped it closed.

  36

  As soon as Willy, Alvirah, and Father Aiden were in the car on the way home from dinner, Alvirah played back the message Lillian had left on Richard’s cell phone. The shock and disbelief she had felt on hearing it was also the reaction of the two men. There was no question in the mind of any of them that when Lillian said she had decided to accept Richard’s offer, she was referring to the Vatican letter.

  “It sounds to me as if she’s had other offers,” Willy observed, “if Richard is willing to pay two million dollars for it.”

  “My guess is that any offers would have to be anywhere from one million on up,” Alvirah said. “I wouldn’t have thought Richard had that kind of money. Being a college professor isn’t exactly like being on Wall Street.”

  “He was brought up on Park Avenue,” Father Aiden said. “I know that his grandfather was a very successful businessman. My question is, what would Richard do with the parchment?”

  “My guess is that he might want to see it returned to the Vatican Library,” Alvirah said hopefully.

  “That would be a noble thing, but the fact is Richard has denied ever having seen the parchment. Now we know he is not only aware that Lillian has it, but he has actually been trying to buy it,” Father Aiden pointed out. “So that means Richard’s motives are suspect. I’m sure he knows collectors who would pay a fortune to get their hands on that parchment just for the thrill of owning it.”

  Alvirah sadly admitted to herself that what Father O’Brien had said made plenty of sense. “Those two detectives made appointments to meet with Richard and Charles and Albert and Greg tomorrow,” she said. “That will keep them pretty busy. I wouldn’t like to have them cross-examining me if I had anything to hide.”

  “They don’t cross-examine anyone,” Willy pointed out. “That only happens in a trial. But I guess they will try to pin them down.” Then he added, “How about that missing caregiver? Alvirah, did we ever meet her?”

  “Rory? I think once last year, but she was on her way upstairs with Kathleen. I didn’t get much of an impression of her.”

  “She was at Kathleen’s side in the funeral parlor and throughout the day of the funeral,” Father Aiden said. “She was certainly very attentive to her.”

  “Maybe she forgot she had that dinner and took off,” Willy suggested. “Mariah told the cops she was paying her for the week, but that it would be Friday at the earliest before Kathleen could be released to go home. Rory wouldn’t be the first one to forget a dinner date. Maybe she just decided to go away for a couple of days. My bet is that she’ll show up by Friday.”

  “I don’t think it’s all that simple,” Alvirah said. “Even if she went away, why isn’t she answering her cell phone?”

  They were all silent for the next fifteen minutes until they reached the E-ZPass toll plaza at the George Washington Bridge leading into Manhattan. Then Willy asked, “Honey, do you think it might have been better if you had played your recording of that message for those detectives right on the spot?”

  “I thought about it, but I decided it was too soon,” she replied. “Richard could say the offer she was talking about was to buy Lillian’s car, and they had joked about the amount. I have to pay another visit to Miss Lillian tomorrow morning. I’ll take her by surprise and play the tape for her. You heard the way she sounds on it. She’s nervous and frightened, and when someone is in that condition, she needs a good friend to help her see things clearly. I’ll be that good friend.”

  Albert West and Charles Michaelson had quarreled on their way to the dinner. Albert’s point-blank statement that he thought that Charles had seen the parchment and might even have it in his possession had evoked a scathing response from Charles.

  “Just because you helped me out when I had that problem doesn’t give you the right to accuse me of lying about the parchment,” Charles had said, his anger blazing. “As I’ve said over and over again, Jonathan told me he was going to show me the parchment, but then he got killed. I have no idea where it is. My guess is he would have given it to Lillian for safekeeping so his nut-job wife wouldn’t get her hands on it and tear it up. Do I need to remind you what she did to those pictures? And, Albert, while we’re on the subject, what about you? How do I know that you don’t know a lot more about what’s happened? You’ve made some pretty good money over the years selling antiquities. You certainly would know how to connect to a buyer in the underground market.”

  “As you well know, Charles, I worked for interior designers buying antiques that had been offered for sale in the legitimate market,” Albert had snapped. “I have never gotten involved with buying or selling or trading biblical documents.”

  “There’s always a first time when big money is at stake,” Charles retorted. “You’ve lived on a professor’s salary. You’re about to retire on a professor’s pension. You won’t be able to do much globe-trotting on that income.”

  “The same applies to you, Charles, but, unlike you, I’ve never made a nickel defrauding a collector.”

  That conversation had ended when they reached Mariah’s home.

  On the way back to Manhattan, the tension escalated. Each had now been asked to appear at the prosecutor’s office tomorrow to give a statement to the detectives.

  Both were aware that the detectives would inevitably check their cell phone records. Notwithstanding Kathleen’s arrest, it was clear that the detectives were probing further into the circumstances surrounding Jonathan’s death, the missing parchment, and now the missing caregiver.

  Greg’s apartment at the Time Warner Center overlooked Central Park South. When he arrived home after the dinner, he stood for a long time at the window watching the panorama of late-night strollers on the sidewalks rimming the park. By nature he was intensely analytical and he once again reviewed the events of the evening in his mind.

  Was it too much to hope that Mariah was beginning to really care about him? He had sensed that, for just a moment, she had responded to his ardent embrace but then pulled back. The secret of winning her was to get her mother out of this mess, he thought. Even if the prosecutor had enough evidence to prove that Kathleen had killed Jonathan, if she was also found to be insane, then the judge just might let her come home as long as she had round-the-clock security. I can help Mariah get the right psychiatrists and I can also afford to provide the security for her mother, he thought.

  How much money could Mariah possibly have at this point? he asked himself. Jonathan is dead. His pension can’t be that much. He’s been paying caregivers for a long time so he was probably getting pretty well drained. Mariah won’t want to sell the house. She wants her mother to keep living in it. If her mother ends up back there, the security will cost a fortune. Even before any trial, if her mother is released on Friday, the judge is going to insist that the security start right now.

  Those detectives seem to think that Rory’s disappearance may have something to do with Jonathan’s death. Do they think that Rory took off because she was somehow involved? Or do they think that somebody got rid of her because she knew too much about something?

  Greg shrugged, walked into his den, and opened his laptop. It wasn’t too soon to start looking up the leading court psychiatrists, he decided.

  Richard drove back to his apartment near Fordham University, exult
ant that Lillian had decided to accept his offer. I’ll keep my side of the bargain, he thought. I will never say that I got it from Lillian. She’s told me that she has two other offers, but I believe her when she says she never actually admitted to anyone that she had it. Richard smiled as he pulled into his garage. She sure fell for the story I gave her, he thought.

  She shouldn’t be so gullible.

  37

  On Wednesday morning, Detectives Simon Benet and Rita Rodriguez were in their office reviewing the newest developments in the increasingly complex case of the murder of Professor Jonathan Lyons.

  They had run a background check on the missing Rory Steiger. To their astonishment they learned that her real name was Victoria Parker and that she had served seven years in prison for stealing money from an elderly woman who had employed her as a caregiver.

  “Well, our Rory is not only missing now but went missing from parole three years ago,” Rita said, a hint of satisfaction in her voice. “She was a crook when she worked as a caregiver before, and maybe she’s still a crook. She could easily have overheard Professor Lyons talking on the phone about the parchment. And she certainly knew how easy it would be to set up Kathleen as the killer.”

  “Kathleen Lyons is not off the hook,” Simon said flatly. “I agree that Rory or Victoria, or whatever she wants to call herself, may very well have stolen the parchment. She certainly would be smart enough to know that we’d probably run a check on her as part of the whole investigation, and she was smart enough to take off.”

  “She was also smart enough to ditch her cell phone,” Rita pointed out. “The telephone company reported that there’s no signal coming from it, so we can’t track it. That lady sure knows how to disappear. And if she did take the parchment, maybe she heard enough dinner conversation in that household to know about the underground market and how she could sell it.” She hesitated, then said, “Simon, I know you weren’t happy when I said it the other day. But particularly now, with this new information about Rory’s record and her taking off, I am very concerned that Kathleen Lyons may be innocent.”

  For a moment Rita was afraid to look at Simon, half-expecting him to explode. But he didn’t. Instead he said, “Let’s look at it this way. If Rory took the parchment, she may already have found a buyer. Father Aiden said that Jonathan Lyons was upset because an expert he had consulted had only been interested in the monetary value of the parchment. I don’t believe for one minute that those four guys who were in his house last night don’t know anything more. I can’t wait to talk to each one of them separately this afternoon.”

  “I think we should get an application in to the judge today to get their phone records for the last month,” Rita said. “Lillian’s convenient amnesia about the numbers of those prepaid phones means we can’t check those records. But, Simon, we have to consider another possibility. If Rory got paid by someone to steal that parchment, then delivered it to that person, she would not only have outlived her usefulness, but she would be a threat. Maybe whoever it was got rid of her. There were a lot of personal items in her apartment that she could have easily taken with her if she left on her own. And don’t forget that her car is still in the garage.”

  Rita began to speak more rapidly. “And her friend Rose said that Rory had invited her to a celebration dinner but hadn’t said what it was about. Rory said she wanted to surprise her. Maybe Rory was going to celebrate that she’d been paid off for stealing the parchment. But I don’t think she’d ever admit that to Rose. She was probably planning to tell Rose something like she’d gotten a job offer somewhere else for a lot more money. My gut says Rose was on the level when she told us that she has no idea why Rory didn’t meet her.”

  “Who knows? Maybe Rory realized she was in danger, got nervous, and just took off.” Simon drummed his fingers on his desk, always a sign that he was trying to make a decision. “I’m a long way from believing that Kathleen Lyons is innocent. Don’t forget, that last night at dinner she was ranting about her husband and his girlfriend, then a few hours later he was dead. And don’t forget that Kathleen knew how to use a gun. But I do think that we should meet with Prosecutor Jones and let him know about all this.”

  Rita Rodriguez nodded, careful not to show her satisfaction that Simon was clearly retreating from his original position that Kathleen beyond any doubt had murdered her husband.

  38

  On Wednesday afternoon, Assistant Prosecutor Peter Jones sat in his office with its floor-to-ceiling case files trying to absorb the information that had just been handed to him by Benet and Rodriguez. It was clear to him that Rita flat out believed that a mistaken arrest had been made. And it was clear that Simon was no longer confident that Kathleen Lyons was the killer.

  Jones, forty-six, tall, and ruggedly handsome, a twenty-year veteran of the prosecutor’s office, was hoping for the top job when the boss retired in five months. His reputation as an aggressive but fair trial attorney gave him every reason to believe that he was the strongest candidate. But now a tsunami of dread was engulfing him. He thought of his own seventy-two-year-old mother, who had been showing early signs of dementia. The thought of her being led away in handcuffs for an offense she did not commit made his throat dry. A mental image of the frightened and bewildered Kathleen Lyons trembling in front of the judge burned in his mind.

  If we’ve made a big mistake the newspapers will have a field day, he thought as beads of sweat formed on his forehead. They’ll run that picture of her looking pathetic over and over. It was on all the front pages yesterday. I might as well forget about the big job. I went over that evidence with a fine-tooth comb, he reminded himself grimly, and I still think she did it. For God’s sake, she was in the closet holding the gun and covered with his blood!

  But now with that caretaker woman turning out to be an ex-con and disappearing, it’s a whole new ball game, he admitted to himself.

  The buzzer on his office phone sounded. He was about to tell his secretary that he didn’t want to talk to anybody when she told him that a Mr. Joshua Schultz, an attorney from Manhattan, was on hold and was asking to speak to him about the Kathleen Lyons case. “He claims that he has some important information for you, Peter,” she said, her voice skeptical. “Do you want to talk to him?”

  What more can be coming? Peter asked himself. “Put him through, Nancy,” he said.

  “Assistant Prosecutor Peter Jones speaking,” he said briskly.

  “First, Mr. Jones, thank you very much for accepting my call,” a smooth voice with a distinct New York accent said. “I’m Joshua Schultz and I practice criminal defense in Manhattan.”

  “Yes, I have heard of you,” Peter said. And from what I’ve heard you’re no great shakes in court, he thought.

  “Mr. Jones, I am contacting you with information that I believe is of the utmost importance in the Jonathan Lyons murder case. I represent a defendant named Wally Gruber, who is charged with a residential attempted burglary in Riverdale and also a residential burglary in Mahwah. My client is in custody at Rikers Island, and there is a detainer from New Jersey for the Mahwah case.”

  “I’m aware of the Mahwah case,” Peter Jones said tersely.

  “I have spoken to my client and he recognizes that he has little defense to the case in your jurisdiction. We have been informed that his fingerprints have been recovered from the scene. We have also been made aware that there is an ongoing investigation by the New York City police regarding other house burglaries in which the owners had parked their cars at the Manhattan garage where Mr. Gruber was employed prior to his recent arrest.”

  “Go on,” Peter said, unable to even guess where the conversation was going.

  “Mr. Jones, I am proffering to you that my client has informed me that when he was on the second floor of the Mahwah home during that burglary, he heard a gunshot coming from the house next door. He hurried to the window and saw someone running out of that house. I am not going to divulge now whether it was a man or woman, but I can
say that the person’s head and face was covered by a scarf, which the person then pulled down, and that my client was able to see the face clearly. Mr. Gruber explained to me that there is a lamppost halfway down the front walkway that illuminated the area.”

  There was a long pause as Peter Jones digested the fact that Schultz was obviously referring to the murder of Jonathan Lyons. “What are you trying to tell me?” he demanded.

  “What I am saying to you is that Mr. Gruber has seen the picture of Kathleen Lyons in the newspaper, and he is emphatic that she is not the person who ran from the house. He is confident that he could sit with your composite officer and assist in producing a very accurate sketch of the person he saw. Of course, in exchange for his cooperation, he would expect considerable assistance from you in receiving reduced sentences in both New York and New Jersey.”

  Peter felt as if the world was caving in on him. “It sounds pretty convenient that Mr. Gruber just happened to be there on that night and at that moment,” he said sarcastically. “The owners of the house next door to the Lyons residence were away for several weeks and that burglary could have been committed at any time during that period.”

  “But, Mr. Jones, it wasn’t committed, as you put it, at any time during that period.” Schultz’s voice was now equally sarcastic. “It was being committed at the same time that Jonathan Lyons was being murdered. And we can prove that to you. Mr. Gruber drove his own car to New Jersey that night, but he was using stolen license plates and a stolen E-ZPass tag. At my request, his cousin went to a storage unit that Mr. Gruber rents and retrieved the plates and the tag. I have them. The tag is from an Infiniti sedan owned by an Owen Morley, a long-time customer of the garage where Mr. Gruber worked. Mr. Morley is in Europe this month. The tag will show a debit for that night. I am sure that if you check the account tied to the E-ZPass tag he used, it will corroborate my client’s admission that he drove across the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey to New York approximately forty-five minutes after Jonathan Lyons was shot.”