I stared at her.
She grinned up at me. “Unlike my husband, I was wise enough to not bring any of my adventures to my home. That’s where Terry was betrayed by his ego. He thought he could get away with anything, that I’d never catch him.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to him?”
“I think he knew I knew. I think that was part of the excitement for him. Twisted bastard, right? Still think anything about our marriage was healthy?” She took another drink of vodka and snorted with laughter, nearly choking. “I should’ve slept with you while he was alive, Nick! Why didn’t we?”
“You’re drunk,” I said again.
She set the bottle down and bumped the back of her head against the surface behind her. She closed her eyes and started crying.
“You have no business spending the night here. I’m getting you a room,” I said.
She nodded her head, blue mascara streaking down her face.
CHAPTER 22
Dusk turned out to be a club downtown near Wall Street. Not just a club but a gay club. Interesting. I drove Carmen to the Plaza Hotel and got her checked in. It was a nice room. She was drunk and I did my best to not let her make a spectacle. She wouldn’t stop crying. Before leaving I showed her the matchbook and asked if it meant anything to her. I wasn’t sure how lucid she was, but she stared at the matchbook with glassy eyes and shook her head.
“Never heard of it,” she said.
She was asleep on the bed, snoring and fully dressed, by the time I managed to slip out to the elevator.
Ten minutes later I was across town and picked up Whitney.
“Still no word from Ellen,” she said as I pulled the Mercedes into traffic on Forty-Third Street. “I’m very worried.”
I handed her the matchbook. “This was on the kitchen floor in Terry’s apartment. I found it when I took his widow home.”
Whitney turned it over in her hand. “I’m lost,” she said, passing it back.
“It might be nothing,” I admitted, “but I called the number on the flap, and turns out that place is a gay bar.”
“Great, so what does that mean to us?” she said.
“Seems curious is all. Terry was the straightest dude I ever met. He was all about the ladies. I’m confident I knew him as well as anyone could, and I think after all these years I would have sensed if he had any other interests, if you get my drift. So why would there be a matchbook from a gay club in his kitchen?”
“I’ve no clue.”
“Same here.”
“So why don’t you ask him?”
I changed lanes, accelerating down Third Avenue.
“That might be a problem,” I said.
“How so?” she asked.
“Terry drowned in his bathtub the night before last.”
The news had exactly the impact I’d anticipated. She shrank back into her seat and her mouth gaped open. “The same night we both last heard from Ellen?” she asked.
I nodded. “Weird, huh?”
“That gave me chills.”
“Whitney, you need to tell me why you are worried about Ellen. Why did you come to New York?”
Whitney put her face in her hands and slumped forward.
“Nick, you need to understand that what I have to tell you is going to be very hurtful,” she began.
“That’s fabulous to know,” I groaned. “So go ahead, lay it out there for me.”
She took a breath. “Okay, but again I’m sorry.”
“Let’s get this over with.”
“Well, first of all, Ellen never loved you. I’m sure she cares for you a great deal, but her relationship with you was never real, you were a pawn. She was only using you to get to Terry.”
Ellen’s face blinked into mind, as clear and lovely as if she was standing directly in front of me. A thousand memories of our year together flooded in, and suddenly, I felt short of breath.
“That’s not possible,” I said.
“Why would I lie, Nick?”
“I don’t even know who you are!” I said. “I spotted you following me a few hours ago, and you presented yourself as Ellen’s friend from out of town and I took your word for that, but at this point in the game I have no reason to just take your word for absolutely anything and everything until I can verify who you are. Right now, I have to tell you, I’m having some serious doubts. If you ask me, right now I think you sound completely crazy.”
“Believe me when I say that it only gets crazier from here.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“That’s just a chance you have to take, because of the two of us I’m the only one who has some idea what might be going on.”
“So start explaining. Tell me why you think Ellen is in danger, and why was she sleeping with my best friend behind my back? You need to give me some answers, and give them to me fast, or I’m of half a mind to pull over and let you take a walk. Am I making myself clear?”
“Crystal. You can put away the attitude now. I came to you because Ellen told me you were a good guy and that you were trustworthy. She said you were a great dad, and she loves Nate. I came to you because I knew you would care enough about Ellen to want to help her even if I told you the truth. She said if there was trouble to go to you. So that’s what I did.”
Trouble. You said it, sister, I thought. My mind was officially blown. We stopped at a light and I glared at her. This woman had popped into my life from thin air a few hours ago and was asking me to dive straight into her craziness. If nothing else, I had to give her credit for being ballsy.
“Ellen has a complicated family history,” she said.
“Yeah, well, who doesn’t?” I said.
“Let’s just say that her life has been a bit less idealistic than an episode of Ozzie and Harriet.”
“So I’m guessing she came from a broken home.”
She nodded. “So did I, but my point is that Ellen’s background contains a good deal more drama than the average person. She never knew her father, and her mother died when she was very young. She really has no memory of her mother at all.”
“That’s rough, but knowing Ellen the way I do, I can’t say I’m shocked. What happened to the mother?”
“She was murdered.”
“Ouch. And here I was hoping for something less tragic like cancer. How did it happen?”
“Ellen was less than a year old. Her mother was working her way through college, taking classes here and there, and she was walking home late one night and was assaulted.”
“Assaulted?”
She lowered her head a moment and said the words slowly. “Stabbed to death.”
I twisted my face. “That’s awful.”
Her eyes came back up. “Her mother’s name was Katie and she was my best friend.”
“Did they find the killer?”
“No. It was a winter night and there was snow on the ground. All they found was some blood and footprints in the snow. The story was a big deal on campus. Nobody wanted to go out alone for weeks.”
“What school?”
“Harvard.”
Her answer took me by surprise and she could see the shock on my face. “Katie was a very smart girl,” she said, “but she struggled because she needed money and working cut into her study time.”
“I can relate,” I said. “How did you meet her?”
“We worked together in Boston. I remember the day she started. It was an instant bond, and from that day forward we were closer than sisters.”
“Did she already have Ellen?”
She shook her head no. “She got pregnant about eighteen months later. Ellen was a tiny baby so she didn’t really start showing until fairly late in the pregnancy. Katie had a fabulous body before she got knocked up, and she managed to lose the weight and get her amazing figure back super quickly. It definitely affected her job performance, mostly because she was tired all the time and nursing.”
“What kind of work?”
Wh
itney averted her eyes, shifting in her seat. “That’s not something you need to know.”
“I didn’t realize it was a sensitive topic.”
“It’s not sensitive, I would simply prefer not to discuss it.”
I honestly didn’t care one way or another but was mildly intrigued by her reaction to my question. It seemed like a benign question to me. It was small talk. I hadn’t been probing. Everybody has crap jobs when they are young. That is the purpose of education, to climb out of the gutter and to make something better of your life. I didn’t have the first clue about what kind of person Whitney Greene was or what her background might be.
She was silent for a long beat, her mind grappling with how much to reveal and how much to hold back. Apparently, she was trying to decide how much to trust me. I allowed her the space to make whatever decisions she needed to make.
“So Ellen was still a baby when Katie was murdered?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Who raised her?”
“Me. I adopted her.”
Wow. That was a twist I certainly hadn’t seen coming.
“You raised her?”
“Yes. I’ve been her mother for twenty-four years. She called me mommy, then mom, and now just calls me Whitney. I changed a million diapers, fed her a million bottles of formula, rocked her to sleep hundreds of nights, cleaned up vomit, bathed her, brushed her hair, bought every stitch of clothing for nearly two decades, taught her about boys, about sex, about love, about forgiveness, and everything I knew about how to survive in this cold world without losing your mind. Then one day when she was seventeen she went to school and didn’t come home. I found a note on her bed telling me that she loved me but that she needed to explore and find herself. I was devastated. I didn’t see her again for several years.”
We were downtown and traffic had bottlenecked. A delivery truck idled six inches from my bumper and treated us to an ample serving of exhaust spewing from his tailpipe. I double-checked the address on the matchbook to make sure I knew where to turn. I found myself suddenly looking upon Whitney Greene with fresh eyes. This woman had raised the woman I had been in a relationship with for the past year. Whitney was Ellen’s mother. If not by birth, by every other definition of the word. No wonder Ellen had told her about me. Whitney wasn’t just a friend, she was all the family Ellen had.
“She didn’t finish high school?”
Whitney shrugged. “Eventually she got her GED, but she was never a committed student. She just didn’t care. She was easily distracted by everything.”
“Well, she’s attending Columbia.”
“She won’t finish. I’m proud that she’s making an effort but it won’t last. She’s never finished anything in her life. I love the girl to pieces, but she’s a quitter. There’s plenty of damage inside her. I did the best job I could, but I wasn’t prepared to be a mother and made some huge mistakes. I had no idea how hard it would be. I’ve been married three times and the first two ended because Ellen was such a problem.”
“How much does she know about Katie?”
“Everything. I’ve never believed in secrets.”
“Do you think that was wise?”
“Probably not, but I felt she deserved to know, and I still do. It was a judgement call and it was very likely a huge mistake, time will tell, but I’m willing to live with the consequences.”
“What are the consequences?”
“Nick, is there really any need to explain?”
“No,” I said. Then I shifted gears in the conversation again. “Stop dodging, Whitney. Tell me what brought you here. Why did you feel she might be in danger?”
“Where are we going?” she asked. “Why are we downtown?”
“I’m following a hunch,” I said, “but answer my question.”
She was calm for a moment as her thoughts focused. She relaxed and put her head against the headrest. The tightness left her face and I noticed again how attractive she was. The years had clearly been hard on her, but she had a natural beauty that most woman would kill for. She had high cheekbones and a perfect nose, and her lips were full without looking artificially enhanced.
“The affair with Terry has been going on nearly as long as she’s been in the relationship with you,” she said, and her tone was soft and nearly apologetic, as if she was sorry that her daughter had treated me with such disrespect. “Please don’t take that personally, Nick.”
There was no more air in me. I gripped the steering wheel in both hands as my vision went fuzzy. I prayed I wouldn’t run over a mother pushing a baby stroller across the street. I tried to swallow but there was a walnut-size lump in my throat. That’s weird because for months I had battled to find my true feelings for Ellen. I knew she was trouble. I knew the age gap was a problem. I knew that we were a toxic combination of people. I knew there was very little chance of anything truly significant developing between us, yet the relationship was a year old now and still intact. So to hear Whitney telling me it had all been a sham was too much to make sense of, especially the way it had been thrust into my ear suddenly, and without warning, as I navigated dicey Manhattan traffic.
“Just keep talking,” I managed to say though my throat was severely constricted.
“Ellen came to New York because of Terry,” she continued. “She had tracked him here, found out where he worked and where he lived, and was very diligent about learning every aspect of his life. She couldn’t let him know that she was targeting him or that she had come to this city with the specific intent of locating him. In order to get close to him and be in the orbit of his world, she then targeted you. You were her gateway to Terry Burgess.”
I was confused and said as much. “Why this crazy interest in Terry?”
“It’s such a huge, complicated mess.”
“Tell me!”
“Pull over,” she said, gesturing.
I double-parked but left the car in gear.
“I didn’t want you to have a wreck.”
“Don’t worry about my abilities as a driver!”
“Put the car in park and kill the engine,” she ordered.
“What are you talking about? We are wasting time.”
“Do it,” she said.
I shrugged and did as directed.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I said.
“I’m going to tell you something about Ellen that will blow your mind.”
I sighed and couldn’t help but smile and even let out a small laugh. “Listen, Whitney, after the last couple of days I’ve had, nothing you could tell me could blow my mind more than it’s already been blown.”
“Ellen came to New York because she believed that Terry Burgess was her biological father,” she said.
I’d been wrong. Nothing in the world could have blown me away more than that.
CHAPTER 23
“I told you her past is complicated,” Whitney said as I gulped air and did a piss-poor job of trying to compose myself. It felt like she had swung a tire iron across my ribs. I could barely breathe.
My vision looked like I was staring out through a kaleidoscope. Bright colors and shades of light swirled and cascaded. I was stunned. No, stunned is just too small a word to describe the state of disbelief I found myself stumbling through. I was glad Whitney had made me pull to the curb and shut down the engine.
“I’m going to give you style points for understatement,” I said. I probably sounded like a zombie. “You have now messed up my brain in a big way. I hope you understand that.”
“I’m truly sorry, Nick. There’s just no good way of conveying that kind of information.”
“You are talking about my girlfriend and my best friend.”
“It’s a bigger mess than you can imagine,” she said.
“What is going on, Whitney? Are you telling me she was having a sexual affair with her own father? If so, you are going to have to excuse me while I open the door and barf in the street.”
I wasn’t kidding. I felt my
breakfast coming up in a hurry. The idea of Ellen involved in a consenting incestuous relationship turned my stomach completely inside-out. Again my imagination went into overdrive, producing volumes of lewd imagery. Blaaaaahhhh!
I closed my eyes and gripped the wheel hard, my face draining of color.
Just then Whitney reached out and put her hand on my shoulder, her eyes softening again. “No, Ellen was wrong. Terry Burgess was not her father. It took awhile for her to piece it together and figure things out. She didn’t start sleeping with him until she knew for sure. At least that is what she told me.”
“Why would she think such a crazy thing?” I asked, still reeling.
“Because Terry’s background and physical description matched all the criteria. Ellen and I were both certain that he was the one, so she moved to New York to find out for sure. It was a long process, and it took years to get to that point. Then we were both devastated when she discovered he wasn’t the one.”
“How did you suspect him?”
“That is such a long, complicated story, Nick.”
“I’d suggest you get started.”
“There is too much you don’t understand. Ellen is simply not the woman you thought she was. I know you have feelings for her, but now is the time to let that go. Please don’t take it personal. I can’t say that enough. I’m sorry she used you, but she really does care about you. This is all about Ellen and her personal mission.”
“Mission? Mission to do what?”
“To find the man who murdered her mother.”
“What does that have to do with Terry Burgess or her suspicion that he might be her biological father?”
“Because we are convinced that the person who impregnated Katie is also the person who killed her. That is why Ellen came to New York, to find out for herself if Terry Burgess was her father, and then kill him.”
Again, very glad I had pulled over. Because that is not the kind of thing you need to hear while operating a motor vehicle or heavy machinery. In fact, I think that’s printed directly in the Mercedes owner’s manual. If not, it damn well should be. I thought about Detectives Curry and Ballard, and wondered how much of this they could possibly know. I had a feeling they knew next to nothing. It seemed reasonable to assume that all they had was a drowning victim in Terry Burgess and a missing person in Ellen Ingram. I wished I was them. After all, ignorance is bliss. I think I’m beginning to understand why. Whitney Greene had stepped into my life uninvited and pulled back the curtain to reveal the Wizard of Oz. I would have preferred to live with the mystery of it all.
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