The Lost Years

by Mary Higgins Clark

  “I should have gotten a search warrant Tuesday,” Simon Benet said, confirming Rita’s guess at what he had been thinking. “And now Stewart’s been gone for twenty-four hours. At least we know that Alvirah Meehan tracked her to Chambers Street yesterday morning.”

  The phone on Simon’s desk began to ring. “What now?” he muttered as he picked up the receiver.

  It was Alvirah Meehan. “I couldn’t sleep, so I walked over to Lillian’s apartment this morning at eight o’clock. It’s only six blocks or so from Central Park South. I’m not much for early morning walks. Willy likes them but today I just couldn’t stay in bed.”

  Simon waited patiently, somehow sure that Alvirah was not calling to discuss her exercise routine.

  “Just as I got there, the doorman pointed out to me Lillian’s cleaning woman, who was on her way in. I told her I was worried about Lillian, and she let me go upstairs to the apartment with her. She has a key, of course.”

  “You were in Lillian Stewart’s apartment!” Benet exclaimed.

  “Yes. It’s all in perfect order. I have to say Lillian’s very neat. But can you believe that her cell phone, I mean the one with the phone number she gave me, is sitting on the coffee table in the living room?”

  Benet knew it was a rhetorical question.

  “I turned it on, of course, to check the cell phone’s number, and I recognized it. Then I looked to see if she had listed anything in the phone’s daily calendar for today.”

  Benet pushed a button on his phone. “Mrs. Meehan, I mean Alvirah, my partner Detective Rodriguez is here. I’m putting you on speakerphone.”

  “That’s a good idea. She’s a very smart young woman. Anyhow, Lillian’s calendar shows that she had scheduled an eight o’clock breakfast meeting this morning with some of the professors in her department at Columbia. I’ve already phoned there. She didn’t show up and she didn’t call them. She also has an appointment with her hairdresser at eleven o’clock this morning at Bergdorf Goodman. Let’s see if she keeps that one.”

  “Wait a minute, Alvirah,” Rita interrupted. “You told us yesterday morning that when Ms. Stewart came out of the bank, she was talking on her cell phone.”

  “She was talking on a cell phone and I did tell you that. But she sure wasn’t talking on the cell phone that’s sitting on the cocktail table in her apartment, so she must have more than one.”

  The detectives waited as Alvirah hesitated, then said firmly, “You want to know my opinion? Lillian Stewart is going to turn out to be a vanishing act, just like Rory Steiger. And you know what else I think? Sad to say, when she promised to sell that parchment to Richard Callahan, she may have been putting herself in mortal danger.”

  “I think you may be right,” Benet said quietly.

  “All right. That’s all I have for now. I’ll be at Bergdorf’s in the beauty salon at eleven o’clock. Whether she shows up or not, I’ll call you.” With a decisive click as she disconnected, Alvirah was gone.

  The detectives looked at each other, but before they could react to what they had just heard, the phone on Simon’s desk rang again.

  He picked it up and identified himself.

  “Detective Benet, this is Richard Callahan.”

  “Where are you, Mr. Callahan?” Simon asked brusquely.

  “I’ve just parked outside the courthouse. I apologize for not keeping my appointment with you yesterday. If you hadn’t been there now, I would have asked to speak to someone else in the prosecutor’s office.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Benet said curtly. “I’m here and so is Detective Rodriguez. Our office is on the second floor. We’ll be waiting for you.”

  57

  Kathleen’s mind was filled with images that came and went fuzzily. People were moving all around and talking to her.

  Rory was angry. “Kathleen, why are you standing at the window? Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “The gun will get dirty…”

  “Kathleen, you’re dreaming. Go to bed now.”

  Jonathan’s arms around her. “Kathleen, it’s all right. I’m here.”

  The noise.

  The man looking up at her.

  The door closing.

  The girl with the long black hair.

  Where is she?

  Kathleen began to cry. “I want to…,” she moaned. What was the word? The girl was in that place. “Home,” she whispered. “I want to go home.”

  Then the man with his face covered came back. He was floating across the room to her and the girl with the black hair.

  Mariah.

  He was pointing the gun at them both now.

  Kathleen sat up in bed and grabbed the water glass from the table. She pointed it at the man and tried to pull the trigger but couldn’t find it.

  She threw it across the room at him.

  “Stop!” she screamed. “Stop!”

  58

  Chief Assistant Prosecutor Peter Jones was in his office, not far from where Richard Callahan was being questioned by Simon Benet and Rita Rodriguez. After discussing with them the call from Wally Gruber’s defense attorney Joshua Schultz, he had gone to his boss, Prosecutor Sylvan Berger, and filled him in on what was developing. Berger decided that he should call Schultz back. “Tell him to give us the stolen plates and the E-ZPass tag information, and if it checks out, we’ll go to the next step with him,” Berger had said.

  Schultz had agreed and the report had been quickly received. The plates had been stolen six months ago. The stolen E-ZPass that Gruber claimed to have used when he drove back from Mahwah after he burglarized the home of Lloyd Scott had been on a car that had been driven from New Jersey the night Jonathan Lyons died. The time that the car traveled city-bound over the George Washington Bridge coincided with the approximate time it would have taken Gruber to reach the GW Bridge from Mahwah if he had been in the Scott home and heard the shot that killed Lyons.

  Now, at the direction of the prosecutor, Jones was calling Joshua Schultz back. When Schultz answered, Jones said, “Give us the name of the fence who has the Scott jewelry. If your client is telling the truth, and we get the jewelry back, this office will make a recommendation to the judge that Mr. Gruber’s cooperation be taken into consideration at his sentencing.”

  “How much consideration?” Schultz demanded.

  “We will make a significant recommendation to the judge in New Jersey who will be hearing the Scott burglary and to the judge in New York who hears the case of the burglary charges against Mr. Gruber there. But he absolutely has to do some prison time.”

  “What does he get for giving you the face of the person who ran out of the house after that professor got shot?”

  “Let’s make this a two-step process. If Gruber’s story checks out on the jewelry, we’ll talk more about what further consideration we can give him for the sketch. As you well know, Mr. Schultz, your client is remarkably clever at inventing ways to track wealthy people, break into their homes, and, in the Scott case, ransack their safes without setting off the alarms. So he may be clever enough to invent this story about the face he claims he saw, too.”

  “Wally didn’t invent it,” Schultz snapped. “But I’ll talk to him. If you get the jewelry back, you’ll go to bat for him in New York and New Jersey?”

  “Yes. And if he ends up doing a composite that leads to something, there’s no question that he’ll get more consideration.”

  “Okay, that sounds all right for now.” Schultz laughed, a short gruff bark. “You know, Wally’s kind of vain. He’ll be flattered to hear you think he’s so clever.”

  Now we wait and see, Peter Jones thought as he hung up the phone. He leaned back in the chair in his small office, thinking that for months, every time he had walked into the prosecutor’s roomy office, he had had the feeling that one day soon it would be his.

  Now that feeling was fading.

  And there was something else the prosecutor had told him to do. It was time to inform Lloyd Scott that the ma
n who broke into his house claimed he saw someone fleeing from the Lyons home seconds after Jonathan Lyons was shot. And that someone wasn’t Kathleen Lyons.

  59

  Mariah’s office was on Wall Street. After another sleepless night and unable to stay in her parents’ house any longer, despite wanting to be near her mother, she had driven into New York at six A.M. Thursday morning and gone into work. Long before anyone else came into the suite where she rented her own space, she was at her desk going through her e-mail and the regular mail that the receptionist/secretary had left for her.

  It was pretty much as she had expected. The e-mails she had been receiving and sending to her clients basically covered anything of importance. But it was good to be here with the television on, watching the markets all over the world as they began to open or close. It was also a place that was a refuge from everything that had happened during the last week and a half, particularly the bombshell that Richard had been planning to buy the parchment from Lillian.

  She could vividly see the look on Richard’s face when they were all sitting at the dinner table only the night before last and he had again denied ever having seen the parchment. She had watched his expression as he nodded in agreement with Father Aiden’s stern reminder that the parchment, which probably would be proven to be sacred, was the property of the Vatican.

  The once and maybe future Jesuit, she thought scornfully. Well, the Bible says that the soldiers cast dice for Christ’s robe. Now, two thousand years later, some of my father’s so-called dear friends may have been casting dice for the letter Christ may have written to Joseph of Arimathea. A letter thanking Joseph for his kindness.

  Mariah thought about Lillian’s message to Richard: “I’ve decided to accept your two-million-dollar offer. Get back to me.”

  His offer, Mariah thought. How many offers did she have, and where did they come from? If nobody at the table except Richard was lying, who are the other experts Dad may have consulted? The detectives were checking Dad’s phone records. I wonder if they came up with anyone?

  If Lillian doesn’t show up, has something happened to her?

  It was unthinkable that Richard would harm Lillian, just as unthinkable as it was that her mother had shot her father.

  There, at least, I can take some comfort, Mariah promised herself. Richard may be the antithesis of everything I thought him to be, but he isn’t a murderer. Dear God, let Lillian show up. Let us be able to find the parchment.

  There were a few letters she should answer. She turned off the television, drafted her responses, and e-mailed them to her secretary to print out and mail. It was almost eight A.M., and she knew the early birds would be arriving soon. She didn’t want to run into anybody. At the wake she had told her friends that she understood how much they grieved with her, but for the immediate future, she needed to concentrate on taking care of her mother and assisting her defense attorney.

  Since then, she had received many e-mails that began in a similar way. “Love you, Mariah. Thinking of you. No need to respond.” Nice, but no help.

  She left the office and took the elevator down to the main floor. She decided that her next stop would be her apartment in Greenwich Village.

  She retrieved her car from the parking lot and drove the short distance to Downing Street. Her apartment was on the third floor of a town house that had been a private residence eighty years ago. She had been here only once, to get clothing, since the fateful night she had rushed out to New Jersey when her second call to her father at ten thirty P.M. had not been answered.

  Her apartment was small. It consisted of a living room, a bedroom, and a kitchen, which barely accommodated a stove, a sink, a microwave oven, and a few cabinets. Dad helped move me in here, she thought. That was six years ago. Mom had already been diagnosed as having signs of early Alzheimer’s. She was getting repetitive and forgetful. I offered to move home and commute. Dad practically threw me out. He said I was young and had my own life to live.

  Aware that the apartment felt stuffy, Mariah opened the window and welcomed the sound of the street noise. Music to my ears, she thought. I love the house, but what happens now? Even when this nightmare is over and Mom is allowed to come home permanently, she certainly couldn’t come live here. I’ll have to move back to Mahwah. But how long can I pay full-time caregivers?

  She sat down on the club chair that her father used to sit in before he retired. Once every week or ten days, he would walk over from NYU and have a drink with her here at around six o’clock. Then they would go out to their favorite Italian restaurant on West 4th Street. By nine o’clock, he would be on his way home.

  Or on his way to Lillian’s, an uncomfortable voice in her mind whispered.

  Mariah tried to push aside her speculation on that possibility. Eighteen months ago, when she’d found out about Lillian, the intimate dinners they had both enjoyed had stopped. I told Dad I didn’t want to interfere with his precious time with Lillian…

  To distract herself from the guilt she felt at that memory, she looked around the living room. The walls throughout the apartment were a soft yellow shade that gave an illusion of space. Dad went through the swatches of paint with me, she remembered. He had a much better ability to judge the finished product than I ever did.

  The painting over the couch had been his gift to her on move-in day. It was one he had bought in Egypt on an expedition and depicted the sun setting over the ruins of a pyramid there.

  Everywhere I look, either here or at the house, something reminds me of him, she thought. She walked into the bedroom and picked up the picture of her parents taken about ten years ago, before the onslaught of the Alzheimer’s. Her father’s arms were locked around her mother’s waist and they were both smiling. I hope that in some way his arms are still around her and protecting her, Mariah thought. She needs his protection now, more than ever.

  What will happen to Mom in court tomorrow?

  She was about to call Alvirah to see if she had heard anything more when the land line on the night table beside her bed rang. It was Greg. “Mariah, where are you? I called the house and Betty said you had left before she came in and you’re not answering your cell phone. I’ve been worried about you.”

  Mariah had turned off her phone because she was afraid that Richard might contact her again. She did not want to repeat her performance of the night before, when she had broken down at the sound of his voice at Lloyd’s dinner table. Now she said apologetically, “Greg, my cell phone was off. As you can imagine, I’m not thinking straight.”

  “Neither am I. But I am worried about you. Your father’s girlfriend and your mother’s caregiver have both disappeared in the last few days. I can’t let anything happen to you.”

  He hesitated, then said, “Mariah, I’m a pretty good judge of people. I know you are devastated at the thought that Richard would buy the parchment from Lillian. I don’t know whether he did or he did not, but if anything has happened to Lillian, I doubt very much that Richard is responsible.”

  “Why do you say that, Greg?” Mariah asked quietly.

  “Because it’s what I believe.” Greg paused, then said slowly, “Mariah, I love you and I want your happiness above everything. At all of your father’s dinners, I sensed that there was a growing attraction between you and Richard. If it turns out that he would buy a stolen and sacred object, I frankly hope that whatever your feeling is for him, it will change.”

  Mariah chose her words carefully. “If you saw a growing attraction between us, I have never been aware that it existed. And certainly, judging from that phone message, if Richard is what I think he is, I want no part of him ever.”

  “That’s good news,” Greg said. “And I’m going to give you plenty of time to think of me as a guy worth spending your life with.”

  “Greg,” Mariah began to protest.

  “Forget I said that. But, Mariah, I am dead serious now. I’ve done some of my own investigation. Charles Michaelson is a fraud. He’s been trying
to find a buyer for the parchment. I can even give you the name of the man who heard about it from his contacts. He’s Desmond Rogers, a well-known collector. Mariah, I beg you, don’t let Michaelson get near you. I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to be responsible for Lillian’s disappearance and the disappearance of your mother’s caregiver, too. And, Mariah—maybe even for your father’s death.”

  60

  Lloyd Scott was in his office on Main Street in Hackensack, a block away from the courthouse, when he received a call from Assistant Prosecutor Peter Jones.

  “You’re telling me that the crook who broke into my house may have seen someone running from Jonathan’s house right after he was shot!” Lloyd exclaimed. Anger creeping into his tone, he demanded, “When in God’s name did you find this out?”

  Peter Jones had been fully anticipating the hostile response. “Lloyd, I got the call from Gruber’s attorney, Joshua Schultz, a little less than twenty-four hours ago. As you well know, many defendants with serious charges pending try to tell us that they have valuable information on some other case. As you also well know, they’re not trying to help the prosecutor out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re looking to get their sentences reduced.”

  “Peter, I couldn’t care less about what this guy’s motives are, and I’m speaking as the owner of the house he broke into,” Lloyd answered, his voice rising. “Why didn’t you call me right away?”

  “Lloyd, calm down and let me tell you what happened yesterday. After I got the call from Schultz, I spoke to the prosecutor immediately. We followed up right away on Gruber’s claim that he was using a stolen E-ZPass tag when he drove back to New York after breaking into your house. His attorney gave us the information about the stolen tag and the record checked out. E-ZPass only activates on the George Washington Bridge going from New Jersey to New York, not the other way around. So we don’t know when Gruber drove out to New Jersey, but we know when he drove back.”