No Place Like Home

by Mary Higgins Clark

  She considered how to go about getting access to other photos, then got up and popped another piece of bread in the toaster. “Why not?” she asked herself out loud. There’s somebody else who might just have some pictures of Liza. When I talked to Marcella Williams last week, she said something about how sour Liza looked at her mother’s wedding to Ted Cartwright. I’ll make her house my first stop today. Maybe I’d better call to be sure I don’t miss her. She’ll wait for me if she knows I’m coming. Otherwise she might get on her broom and fly away, off to dig up dirt on someone else.

  Dru caught her reflection in the glass door of the dish cabinet. Seeing it, she stuck out her tongue and began to pant. With these bangs I really do look like a sheepdog, she thought. Well, I haven’t got time to waste at the salon, so I’ll cut them myself. Who cares if they’re uneven? One thing about hair is that it grows back. Some people’s hair grows back, she added with a silent chuckle as she thought of her editor, Ken Sharkey.

  The toast sprang up. As usual, it was brown on only one side. She spun it around and dropped it back in. Something else, I’ve got to get a new toaster, she decided as she pushed down the lever. This one is getting to be a pain in the neck.

  The second slice of toast in front of her, Dru continued to mentally lay out her day. I’ve got to find out who Zach is. Maybe I’ll stop at the police station and see if Clyde Earley is around. Not that I’m going to tell him who I think Celia Nolan really is, but maybe I can start talking about her and see what happens. Clyde loves the sound of his own voice. It would be interesting to see if he has even a clue that Celia Nolan is possibly or even probably Liza Barton.

  Possibly or probably—those were the key words. The Kelloggs might be distant cousins, and might have an adopted daughter Celia’s age, but that still wasn’t conclusive proof that Celia was Liza. There was something else, Dru thought. Clyde Earley responded to Ted Cartwright’s 911 call the night of the shooting. He might know if there was a guy named Zach in the picture. Whoever he is, Zach has to have been significant at that time, otherwise why would Liza have been so traumatized when she spoke his name?

  Her mind made up, Dru quickly did the little tidying up that her coffee and toast breakfast required, went upstairs, tossed the quilt over her bed in some attempt to restore it to order, went into the bathroom and showered. Wrapped in a terrycloth robe that almost concealed her generous proportions, she opened the window, tested the air, and decided that a running suit was just about perfect for the temperature. The running suit that’s never been run in, she thought. Well, nobody’s perfect, she told herself by way of consolation.

  At nine o’clock she phoned Marcella Williams. Bet anything by now she’s been on the treadmill for an hour, Dru thought, as the phone rang for the third time. Maybe she’s in the shower.

  Marcella picked up the receiver just as the answering machine clicked on. “Hold on,” she said above the recorded message.

  She sounds irritated, Dru thought. Maybe I did catch her in the shower.

  The recorded message stopped. “Mrs. Williams, this is Dru Perry of the Star-Ledger. I do hope I’m not calling too early.”

  “Oh, not at all, Ms. Perry. I’ve been on the treadmill for an hour, and was stepping out of the shower when the phone rang.”

  The thought of Marcella Williams with a towel wrapped around her and dripping on her carpet made Dru feel good about the timing of her call. “I write a feature called ‘The Story Behind the Story’ for the Sunday edition of the Star-Ledger,” she explained.

  “I know that feature. I always look forward to reading it,” Marcella interrupted.

  “I’m preparing one on Liza Barton, and I know you knew the family intimately. I wonder if I could come and interview you about the Bartons and, of course, Liza particularly.”

  “I’d be delighted to be interviewed by a fine writer like you.”

  “Do you happen to have any pictures of the Bartons?”

  “Yes, of course I do. We were great friends, you know. And when Audrey married Ted, the reception was in the garden of her home. I took a slew of pictures of all of them, but I have to warn you, there isn’t a single one where you’ll see Liza smiling.”

  This is my lucky day, Dru thought. “Would eleven o’clock be convenient for you?”

  “Perfect. I do have a lunch date at 12:30.”

  “An hour will be more than enough. And Mrs. Williams . . . ”

  “Oh, please, call me Marcella, Dru.”

  “How nice. Marcella, will you just think and try to remember if Audrey or Will Barton or Ted Cartwright had a friend named Zach.”

  “Oh, I know who Zach is. He’s the riding instructor Will Barton had at Washington Valley stables. That last day, the day he died, Will rode out ahead of him and got on the wrong trail. That’s why he had that fatal accident. Dru, I’m standing here dripping. I’ll see you at eleven.”

  Dru heard the click of the phone, but stood for a long minute before the mechanical voice reminded her to either make another call or hang up. The fatal accident, she thought. Zach was Will Barton’s riding teacher. Was it Zach’s fault that Will Barton died? Had he been careless to let Barton ride off without him?

  A final possibility occurred to Dru as she started down the stairs. Suppose Barton’s death was not an accident and, if it wasn’t, when did Liza learn the truth about it?

  58

  At one o’clock, Ted Cartwright rounded the corner of the Washington Valley Club House and headed to the stable. “Is Zach around?” he asked Manny Pagan, one of the grooms.

  Manny was brushing a skittish mare that had been given a too-strenuous workout by its insensitive owner. “Easy, easy, girl,” he was muttering soothingly.

  “Are you deaf? I asked if Zach is around,” Cartwright shouted.

  An annoyed Manny was about to snap, “Find him yourself,” but when he looked up, he realized that Cartwright, whom he knew by sight, was trembling with fury. Instead, he said, “I’m pretty sure he’s eating his lunch at the picnic table over there,” and pointed to a grove of trees about a hundred yards away.

  Ted Cartwright covered the ground with rapid strides in seconds. Zach was eating the second half of a baloney sandwich when he arrived. Ted sat down opposite him. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he asked, his voice now a menacing whisper.

  Zach took another bite of the sandwich and a swig of soda before he replied. “Now that’s no way for a friend to talk to a friend,” he said mildly.

  “What makes you think you can go over to my town houses and tell my sales rep that I am giving you the model unit?”

  “Did she tell you that I called, and that I’m planning to move in over the weekend?” Zach asked. “I tell you, Ted, that place where I’m living has turned out to be sheer hell. The landlady’s kids are having parties every night, playing the drums till I think my ears are gonna bust, and here you have that nice place in the middle of all those other nice places, and I just know you want me to have it.”

  “I’ll call the police if you try to set one foot inside it.”

  “Now why do I think that won’t happen?” Zach asked, as he looked pensively past Cartwright.

  “Zach, you’ve been bleeding me for over twenty years now. You’ve got to stop or you won’t be around to bleed me any more.”

  “Ted, that constitutes a threat, and I’m sure you don’t mean it. Maybe I should be going to the police. The way I look at it, I’ve been keeping you out of prison for all these years. Of course, if I’d spoken up back then, you’d probably have served your time by now and would be starting all over—without your road and bridge construction company and your town-house developments and your business complexes and your string of gyms. You could be giving speeches to school kids as part of the Scared Straight program.”

  “There is also a penalty for blackmail.” Cartwright spat out the words.

  “Ted, that town house is a drop in the bucket to you, but it would be a comfort to me. These old bones are deve
loping aches and pains. Much as I love taking care of my horses, they’re a lot of work. And then there’s the matter of my conscience. Suppose I were to wander down to the Mendham police station and say that I knew about an accident that wasn’t an accident at all, and tell them that I have proof, but before I say another word, I’ll have to be guaranteed immunity from prosecution. I think I mentioned this before.”

  Ted Cartwright stood up. The veins in his temples were bulging. His hands were gripping the edge of the picnic table as if that was the only way he could keep them from flailing at the man he was facing. “Be careful, Zach. Be very careful.” His words were clipped, and sharp as a dagger.

  “I am being careful,” Zach assured him cheerfully. “That’s why, if anything happens to me, the proof of what I’m saying will be found immediately. Well, gotta get back. I have a nice lady coming in for a riding lesson. She lives in your old house—you know, the one where you were shot? She’s kind of intriguing. Claims she had a ride on a pony only once in a while, but she’s fibbing. She’s a pretty good horsewoman. And what’s more, for some reason, she’s real interested in that accident you and I know about.”

  “Have you been talking to her about it?”

  “Oh, sure. Everything but the good stuff. Think it over, Ted. Maybe you’ll even want your sales rep, Amy, to have the refrigerator stocked for me when I move in on Saturday. That would be a nice welcoming gesture, don’t you think?”

  59

  At two o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, Paul Walsh, Angelo Ortiz, and Mort Shelley gathered in Jeff MacKingsley’s office to review their findings in what the media was now calling the “Little Lizzie Homicides.” They had all brought paper bags with sandwiches and coffee or a soft drink.

  At Jeff’s request, Ortiz started with his report. He gave them a quick rundown of his interview with Lena Santini, Charley Hatch’s ex-wife, and what she had told him about Robin Carpenter’s relationship with Charley.

  “You mean Carpenter’s story yesterday was a bold-faced lie?” Jeff asked. “How stupid does she think we are?”

  “I saw Carpenter this morning,” Mort Shelley said. “She sticks by her statement that she hasn’t spoken to Charley in three months. She explained away the so-called birthday date by saying it was his idea and she left a message for him that it wouldn’t happen. She absolutely denies being in Patsy’s that night.”

  “Let’s get pictures of Robin Carpenter and Charley Hatch and show them to the maître d’, the bartender, and all the waiters at Patsy’s,” Jeff said. “I think we have enough to get a judge to let us access her phone records. We’ll subpoena her credit card charges, and her E-ZPass statement. We’ve already got the judge’s order to get Charley Hatch’s phone records. We should be receiving them later today. We’d better take a look at his credit cards and E-ZPass as well. Either Carpenter or the ex-wife is lying. Let’s find out which it is.”

  “I don’t see Lena Santini as a liar,” Ortiz objected. “She was quoting what Charley told her about Robin Carpenter. By the way, she even asked if she could put a couple of those carved figures of his in the coffin. I told her we couldn’t release them.”

  “Too bad she didn’t ask for that skull and crossbones Charley carved in the Nolans’ front door,” Mort Shelley observed dryly. “That was good craftsmanship. I was surprised to see that it was still there yesterday.”

  “Yes, we had plenty of time to stare at those doors when Celia Nolan wouldn’t let us in,” Paul Walsh said mildly. “I understand that you’re planning to see her today, Jeff.”

  “I’m not seeing her today,” Jeff said shortly. “When I called her she referred me to her lawyer, Benjamin Fletcher.”

  “Benjamin Fletcher!” Mort Shelley exclaimed. “He was Little Lizzie’s lawyer! Why on earth would Celia Nolan go to him?”

  “He got her off once before, didn’t he?” Walsh asked quietly.

  “Got who off?”

  “Liza Barton, who else?” Walsh asked.

  Jeff, Mort, and Angelo stared at him. Enjoying the astonishment on their faces, Paul Walsh smiled. “I lay odds with you that the deranged ten-year-old who shot her mother and stepfather has now resurfaced as Celia Nolan, a woman who flipped when she found herself back in home sweet home.”

  “You’re absolutely crazy,” Jeff snapped. “And you’re the reason she ran to get a lawyer. She’d have cooperated with us if you hadn’t been in her face about the time it took her to drive home from Holland Road.”

  “I have taken the time to look up Celia Nolan’s background. She is adopted. She is thirty-four years old, exactly Liza Barton’s present age. We all felt the impact of seeing her in those riding clothes yesterday, and I’ll tell you why. I’ll admit she’s taller than Audrey Barton. And her hair is darker than Audrey Barton’s, but I suggest that is because of her visits to the salon—I happened to notice that her roots are growing in blond. So I’m making a flat statement: Audrey Barton was Celia Nolan’s mother.”

  Jeff sat silently for a minute, not wanting to believe what he was beginning to believe—that perhaps Paul Walsh was on to something.

  “After I saw Celia Nolan in riding clothes, I made a few inquiries. She’s taking lessons at the Washington Valley Riding Club. Her teacher is Zach Willet, who happens to be the teacher who was giving Will Barton riding lessons at the time of his death, the result of a fall with his horse,” Walsh continued, barely able to conceal his satisfaction at the impact he was making on his colleagues.

  “If Celia Nolan is Liza Barton, do you think she holds Zach Willet responsible for her father’s death?” Mort asked quietly.

  “Let me put it this way: if I were Zach Willet, I wouldn’t want to be alone with that lady for long,” Walsh answered.

  “Your theory, Paul—and it is still a theory—completely overlooks the fact that the house was vandalized by Charley Hatch,” Jeff told him. “Are you suggesting that Celia Nolan knew Charley Hatch?”

  “No, I am not, and I accept the fact that she never met Georgette before a week ago Tuesday when she moved into the house. I do say that she became unbalanced when she saw the writing on the lawn and the doll with the gun and the skull and crossbones and the splattered paint. She wanted revenge on the people who put her in that position. She was the one who found Georgette’s body. If she is Liza Barton, there’s an explanation for why she knew her way home. Her grandmother lived only a few streets away from Holland Road. She admits that she was driving past the house where Hatch was working in the exact time frame when he was killed. Even those pictures we found are a way of begging us to recognize her.”

  “That still doesn’t fly so far as blaming Celia Nolan for killing Hatch. How would she have found out that he was the one who vandalized the house?” Ortiz asked Walsh.

  “The garbageman was talking about Clyde Earley taking Hatch’s sneakers and jeans and carvings out of the trash bag,” Walsh responded.

  Jeff began to feel solid ground for his instinctive reaction to Walsh’s theory. “Are you suggesting that Celia Nolan, even if she is Liza Barton, happened to hear the gossip of a garbageman, figured out where Charley Hatch, whom she’d never met, was working, somehow got him to be standing at the break of the hedge in the road, shot him and then went off to have a riding lesson?”

  “She put herself on that road at the right time,” Walsh insisted stubbornly.

  “Yes, she did. And if you hadn’t pushed her against the wall she might be talking to me right now and telling me something that would be helpful to us about seeing another car on the road or a person on foot. Paul, you want to pin everything on Celia Nolan, and I agree that it will make a great story: ‘Little Lizzie Strikes Again.’ I’m telling you that someone else hired Charley Hatch. I don’t for a minute believe Earley’s story. It’s too pat, too convenient. I bet Clyde went through that garbage when it was on Hatch’s property. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took it and Hatch knew it was gone. Then Earley could come back and put it in the trash barrel again and wait
to have a convenient witness see him open it after it’s been abandoned. If Hatch panicked, whoever hired him may have panicked as well. And my guess is that Georgette Grove learned who ordered the vandalism and paid for it with her life.”

  “Jeff, you’d have made a great defense lawyer for Celia Nolan. She is very attractive, isn’t she? I’ve noticed the way you look at her.”

  When he saw the prosecutor’s icy stare, Walsh realized he had gone too far. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “But I stand by my theory.”

  “When this case is over, I am sure you’ll be happier reassigned to another division in the office,” Jeff said. “You’re a smart man, Paul, and you could be a good detective, except for one thing—you get a theory, and you’re like a dog with a bone. You don’t keep an open mind and never have, and frankly, I’m sick and tired of it and of you. Here is what we’re going to do now.

  “We should be getting Charley Hatch’s phone records later today. Mort, you prepare an affidavit for the judge to get the phone records of not only Robin Carpenter, but also of Henry Paley and Ted Cartwright—both their personal and business phones. I want to know about all incoming and outgoing calls any of them made or received over the past two months. I think we have sufficient grounds to ask for them. I also want Carpenter’s and Hatch’s credit card bills and E-ZPass statements. And I am going to petition the Family Court to allow us to unseal the adoption records of Liza Barton.”

  Jeff looked at Paul Walsh. “I will lay you odds that even if Celia Nolan is Liza Barton, she is a victim of what is going on. I have always believed that as a child, Liza was the victim of Ted Cartwright’s misdeeds, and I believe that now, for whatever reason, someone is trying to trap Celia Nolan into being accused of committing these murders.”