No Place Like Home

by Mary Higgins Clark

  It was quarter of twelve when he arrived there. The enticing aroma that hinted of tomato sauce and garlic made Jimmy remember that he had only coffee and a bagel for breakfast that morning, and that had been at six A.M.

  Business first, he thought, selecting a seat at the bar. The restaurant had not yet begun to fill with the luncheon crowd, and there was only one other customer there, sipping a beer on a corner stool. Jimmy brought out his pictures and laid them on the bar. “Cranberry juice,” he ordered, as he flashed his badge. “Recognize either of these people?” he asked the bartender.

  The bartender studied the pictures. “They look familiar, especially the woman, like they might have passed by the bar on their way to a table. But I can’t be sure.”

  Jimmy had better luck with the maître d’, who definitely recognized Robin. “She comes in here sometimes. She might have been with that guy. I think she was once, but that’s not usually who she’s with. Let me ask the waiters.”

  Jimmy watched as the maître d’ went from one waiter to the other. He disappeared upstairs to the second-floor dining room, and when he returned he had a waiter in tow and was wearing the satisfied look of a man who had completed his mission.

  “Dominick will fill you in,” he said. “He’s been here forty years, and I swear he never forgets a face.”

  Dominick was holding the pictures. “She comes in once in a while. Good looking. The kind you notice when she’s around, you know, a little sexy. That guy I saw only once. He was with her a couple of weeks ago, shortly before Labor Day, I’d say. Reason I remember, it was the guy’s birthday. She ordered a slice of cheese cake and had us put a candle on it. Then she gave him an envelope. I could see she’d laid some nice change on him. He counted it at the table. Twenty hundred dollar bills.”

  “That’s a nice birthday present,” Jimmy agreed.

  “The guy was a real class act. He counted them out loud: One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, and so on. When he got to two thousand, he put them in his pocket.”

  “Did she give him a birthday card?” Jimmy asked.

  “Who needs a birthday card when you get that kind of cash?”

  “I just wonder if that was all birthday cash, or did she have a little job for him to do, and she was paying him for it. You say she comes in here with some other guy. Do you know his name?”

  “No.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Sure.”

  Jimmy got out his notebook and began jotting down the description of Robin Carpenter’s other dinner companion. Then, feeling inordinately pleased with the success of his morning, he decided it would be in the line of duty to have some of Patsy’s linguini.

  69

  Paul Walsh was sufficiently sobered by his boss’s threat of reassignment, and willingly accepted the job of checking out the validity of Zach’s landlady’s statement that he had been planning to move into a town house that Ted Cartwright was giving him.

  At nine thirty on Thursday morning, Paul was talking to Amy Stack, who in indignant detail told how Zach Willet had the nerve to play a practical joke on her and Mr. Cartwright. “He sounded so convincing when he said that Mr. Cartwright was giving him the model unit. I feel like such a dope for believing him.”

  “What did Mr. Cartwright say when you told him about Zach claiming the town house?”

  “At first, he didn’t believe me, but then I thought he’d go into orbit. That’s how mad he was. But then he started to laugh, and explained it was just a silly bet they had made, and said that Zach was acting as if he’d really won.”

  “But bet or no bet, it was not your impression that Mr. Cartwright had any intention of giving Zach Willet that town house?” Walsh asked.

  “Even if he did save Mr. Cartwright’s life years ago, Zach Willet had no chance in the world of ever setting foot in that condo,” Amy said in the tone of a person taking an oath.

  “Did Mr. Cartwright spend the day here yesterday?”

  “No, he was in somewhere between nine and ten, but only stayed a short while. He said that he was coming back at four o’clock to meet with the contractor, but I guess he changed his mind.”

  “That certainly was his prerogative,” Walsh said, with a hint of humor. “Thank you, Ms. Stack. You’ve been very helpful.”

  * * *

  The news of Zach’s death had spread through the Washington Valley Riding Club. The idea that someone had shot him seemed unthinkable to the people who worked in the stables. “He wouldn’t harm a fly,” a scrawny old-timer named Alonzo protested when Paul Walsh asked if Zach Willet had any enemies. “Zach kept to himself. Never got in an argument in the fifty years I’ve known him.”

  “Do you know if anybody had it in for him for any reason?”

  No one could think of anything until Alonzo remembered that Manny Pagan had made some comment about Ted Cartwright getting into an argument with Zach yesterday. “Manny’s exercising a horse in the ring. I’ll get him,” Alonzo offered.

  Manny Pagan came over to the stable, leading his horse. “Mr. Cartwright practically shouted at me. I never saw a guy so mad in my life. I pointed out where Zach was eating lunch at the picnic table and saw Cartwright go charging over to him. I could see from here that he was arguing with Zach. I swear there was steam coming out of his ears when he passed me a few minutes later on his way back to his car.”

  “That was yesterday at lunchtime?”

  “That’s right.”

  Paul Walsh had learned what he had come to find out and was anxious to get out of there. He was allergic to horses and could feel his eyes beginning to water.

  70

  “Benjamin Fletcher, returning your call,” Anna announced on the intercom.

  Jeff MacKingsley drew a deep breath and picked up the receiver. “Hello, Ben,” he said warmly. “How are you?”

  “Hello, Jeff. Nice to hear from you, but I’m sure you’re not interested in the state of my health, which could be better in case you actually are interested.”

  “Of course I’m interested in how you’re doing, but you’re right, that’s not the reason I called. I need your help.”

  “I’m not so sure I’m feeling very helpful, Jeff. That viper you call a detective, Walsh, has been pretty busy intimidating my new client.”

  “Yes, I realize that and I’m sorry. I apologize.”

  “I heard about Walsh making a big fuss because he thinks my client moved fast when she didn’t know if a killer might still be lurking around. I don’t take kindly to that.”

  “Ben, I don’t blame you. Listen to me. Do you know that your new client, Celia Nolan, is actually Liza Barton?”

  Jeff heard the sharp intake of breath at the other end of the phone and knew that Benjamin Fletcher had not been aware that Celia and Liza were the same person.

  “I have absolute proof,” he said. “Fingerprints.”

  “You better not have fingerprints from the juvenile case,” Benjamin Fletcher said sharply.

  “Ben, for now, never mind where or how I got them. I need to talk to Celia. I won’t ask her one word about the two homicides last week, but there’s something else I do have to talk to her about. Do you remember the name Zach Willet?”

  “Sure. He’s the guy who was giving her father riding lessons. Even when she wouldn’t say anything else in the detention center, she kept repeating his name. What about him?”

  “Zach was shot while he was in his car sometime last evening. Celia must have had an appointment to meet him. Her fingerprints are on Zach’s car door and on his doorbell. I don’t for one single minute think that she had anything to do with Zach’s death, but I need her help. I need to know why she was meeting him, and why Zach told me on the phone only yesterday that he might be coming in to see me with Celia. Will you let her talk to me? I’m worried that there may be other lives at risk—including hers.”

  “I’ll talk to her, then make a decision. Of course, I must be present if she ends up agreeing to meet with you,
and at any point, if I say stop, you stop. I’ll call her now and try to get back to you later today,” Fletcher said.

  “Please,” Jeff urged. “As soon as you can. Whatever time and place is convenient for her, I’ll be there.”

  “Okay, Jeff, and I’ll tell you another thing. With all those people you’ve got working for you, have someone protect her. Make sure nothing happens to that pretty lady.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” Jeff said grimly. “But you’ve got to let me talk to her.”

  71

  Jack had won the bet. I agreed that my eyes still looked tired, but insisted that it was because I had a headache, and not because I was so stressed. Instead of paying him one hundred trillion dollars, I took him to lunch at the coffee shop and bought him an ice cream cone for dessert. I kept on my dark glasses and told Jack the light hurt my eyes because of the headache. Did he believe me? I don’t know. I doubt it. He’s a smart and perceptive kid.

  After that, we drove into Morristown. Jack had outgrown all his last year’s clothes, and really needed some new sweaters and slacks. Like most children, he didn’t think much of shopping so I stayed with the list of essentials that I had jotted down. What frightened me was that I realized I was anticipating not being with Jack. In case I’m arrested, he’d have these clothes.

  We arrived home to find there were two messages on the phone. I tricked Jack into carrying his new clothes upstairs and putting them in his bureau “all by yourself.” As always, I was so afraid it was one of the Lizzie Borden messages awaiting me, but both were from Benjamin Fletcher, with instructions for me to call him immediately.

  They are going to arrest me, I thought. They have my fingerprints. He’s going to tell me I have to turn myself in. I misdialed twice before I finally reached him.

  “It’s Celia Nolan, returning your call, Mr. Fletcher,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.

  “First thing a client has to learn to do is to trust her attorney, Liza,” he told me.

  Liza. With the exception of Dr. Moran in my early days of treatment, and the time Martin’s mind was wandering, I have not been called Liza since I was ten years old. I had always envisioned someone throwing the name at me unexpectedly, and ripping away my carefully constructed persona. The matter-of-fact way in which Fletcher said my name helped to reduce the shock that he knew who I was.

  “I wasn’t sure whether or not to tell you yesterday,” I said. “I’m still not sure if I can trust you.”

  “You can trust me, Liza.”

  “How did you know it was me? Did you recognize me yesterday?”

  “Can’t say that I did. Jeff MacKingsley told me about an hour ago.”

  “Jeff MacKingsley told you!”

  “He wants to talk to you, Liza. But first, I must be absolutely certain that if I allow you to do this, it will be in your best interest. Don’t worry, I’ll be there with you, but I’ll say it again, I am very concerned. He tells me that you left your fingerprints on a doorbell and on a car door where a dead body was found. And as I told you, he also knows you are Liza Barton.”

  “Does that mean I am going to be arrested?” I could barely make my lips form the words.

  “Not if I can help it. This is all very unusual, but the prosecutor tells me that he believes you had nothing to do with it. However, he does think you can help him find out who did.”

  I closed my eyes as relief flooded every inch of my body. Jeff MacKingsley did not believe I was involved in Zach’s death! Would he believe me when I told him that Zach had seen Ted Cartwright cause my father’s death? If he did, maybe, just maybe, he had been right when he said that I’d be all right. I wondered if he had known I was Liza when he made that statement.

  I told Benjamin Fletcher about Zach Willet. I told him about my suspicion that my father’s death had not been an accident, that I had been taking riding lessons from Zach so that I could get to know him. I told Fletcher that yesterday I had promised Zach one million one hundred thousand dollars if he would tell the police what really happened when my father went over that cliff.

  “How did Zach respond to that, Liza?”

  “Zach swore that Ted Cartwright had charged my father’s horse and forced it onto the dangerous trail, and then spooked it by firing a gun. Zach kept the bullet and the casing, and even took pictures of the bullet lodged in a tree. All these years, he’s kept the evidence of Cartwright’s guilt. He told me yesterday that Cartwright has been threatening him. In fact, while I was with him yesterday, Zach got a call on his cell phone. I’m sure it was from Ted Cartwright, because although Zach didn’t refer to the caller by name, he just laughed and sarcastically told him that he didn’t need to live in his condominium because he’d received a better offer.”

  “You’re going to be giving Jeff MacKingsley some mighty powerful stuff, Liza. But tell me this: how did your fingerprints get on that car and doorbell?”

  I told Fletcher about my appointment to see Zach, about him not answering the bell, and then seeing him in the car and panicking and rushing home.

  “Does anyone else know you were there, Liza?”

  “No, not even Alex. But I did call my investment adviser yesterday and asked him to be ready to wire the money I promised Zach to a private bank account. He can verify that.”

  “All right, Liza,” Benjamin Fletcher said. “What time is good for you to go to the prosecutor’s office?”

  “I’ll need to get my babysitter. About four o’clock would be all right.” Or at least as “all right” as going into the Morris County courthouse will ever be for me, I thought.

  “Four o’clock, it is,” Fletcher said.

  I hung up the phone, and from somewhere behind me, Jack asked, “Mommy, are you going to be arrested?”

  72

  Most of the investigators in the prosecutor’s office had been pulled off their own units to concentrate on the Mendham homicides. At three o’clock, the group analyzing the phone records of Charley Hatch, Ted Cartwright, Robin Carpenter, and Henry Paley were ready to report their findings to Jeff.

  “In the last two months, Cartwright has been in touch with Zach Willet six times,” Liz Reilly, a new investigator, announced. “The last time was yesterday afternoon at 3:06.”

  “Mrs. Nolan may have heard that call,” Jeff commented. “That would be just about the time she’d have been finishing her ride with Zach.”

  “Cartwright and Henry Paley have been talking to each other a lot in the last few months,” Nan Newman, one of the veteran investigators, reported, “but there was no contact on either of Henry’s phones between him and Charley Hatch.”

  “We know Paley and Cartwright were working together to strongarm Georgette Grove into selling that property on Route 24,” Jeff said. “Paley’s a lowlife, and he hasn’t accounted for his whereabouts when Hatch was shot. I need to know where he was before I rule him out as a player in any of these crimes. I’ve asked him to come in with his lawyer. They’ll be here at five o’clock, and Ted Cartwright is coming at six with his lawyer.

  “We know Robin Carpenter is a liar,” he continued. “She lied about the date in Patsy’s with her brother. His E-ZPass shows that he drove into New York at six forty that night, which is exactly what his ex-wife told Angelo. In Patsy’s Restaurant, Robin was seen giving Hatch what appeared to be two thousand dollars, which in my book is one generous birthday present, unless he was also going to do her a favor for it.

  “There are no calls from Carpenter to Hatch since last Friday. I believe that she was using a prepaid phone with no subscriber name to contact him. She must have told him to get one, too, because the woman whose lawn he was cutting saw him holding two phones. My guess is that one was his usual cell phone and the other was unregistered. I also think that when he answered that call, he made an appointment to meet someone at the break in the hedge.

  “Of course, we can’t be sure that it was Robin who made that last call, but I’ll bet the ranch that Charley Hatch was finished the mi
nute whoever hired him learned that his jeans and sneakers and carvings had been confiscated. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would have stood up to intense questioning.”

  The investigators were listening quietly, following Jeff’s reasoning, hoping for an opportunity to make a significant contribution to his analysis of the series of events leading up to the homicides.

  “Ted Cartwright hated Georgette Grove, and he wanted her property, which gives him at least a motive in killing her,” Jeff continued. “We know he was working in some way with Robin Carpenter, and that they were dating, maybe still are. It’s a possibility that Zach Willet has been bleeding Ted all these years since Will Barton died. We’ll know more about that when we talk to Mrs. Nolan.

  “I think that with any luck, we’re going to crack these cases open in the next few days,” he told the staff, then saw that Mort Shelley had opened the door to his office. They exchanged glances, and Shelley answered Jeff’s unspoken question: “He’s where he said he’d be. We’ve got a tag on him.”

  “Make sure you don’t lose him,” Jeff said quietly.

  73

  This was the courthouse in which the trial had taken place. As I walked through the corridors, I remembered those terrible days. I remembered the inscrutable gaze of the judge. I remembered being afraid of my lawyer, not trusting him, yet being forced to sit next to him. I remember listening to the witnesses who testified that I meant to kill my mother. I remember how I tried to sit up straight because my mother was always after me not to slouch. It was a problem for me, because I was tall for my age, even then.

  Benjamin Fletcher was waiting for me inside the main door of the prosecutor’s office. He was better dressed than he had been when we met in his office. His white shirt looked reasonably crisp; his dark blue suit was pressed; his tie was in place. He took my hand when I came in, and he held it for a moment. “It would seem I owe a little ten-year-old girl an apology,” he said. “I got that child off, but I admit that I bought Cartwright’s version of what happened.”