I told him that would be fine.
Foster was very cordial when he answered the door that night. ‘‘You look frozen,’’ he observed sympathetically.
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Actually, it wasn’t a particularly cold evening, so, if any
thing, I had turned a little less blue than usual. ‘‘I always look that way,’’ I said. ‘‘Except for maybe the third and fourth weeks in July.’’
He smiled and helped me off with my coat. ‘‘So, coffee?’’
he asked when I was seated in the same impossibly deep sofa that had dwarfed me the last time I was there. ‘‘I even have some tea to offer you now, if you’d prefer—a really excellent blend.’’
‘‘No, nothing, thanks.’’
‘‘Are you here about the check stubs?’’
It hadn’t dawned on me he might think that. The fact is, when I didn’t hear from Fielding Saturday afternoon, I knew it was because he had nothing to tell me. Still, I figured it might be better to start with the stubs and then work my way around to the real reason I’d come. ‘‘Well, I did want to know how you made out.’’
‘‘Absolutely nothing,’’ Foster said dejectedly. ‘‘Almost four hours’ worth of stubs, and I didn’t come across a single name I recognized as belonging to either a dentist or a doctor. Which isn’t to say there wasn’t one. Just none I was familiar with.’’
‘‘You tried. I’m sure Sergeant Fielding realized it was a long shot.’’
‘‘That may be, but it would have meant the world to me if I’d been able to help.’’
‘‘Uh, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about, too.’’
‘‘Of course. What’s that?’’
‘‘I was wondering if you’d ever been to your sisters’
apartment before Saturday.’’
‘‘With the way Merry feels about me?’’ The implied de
nial was punctuated with a short, harsh laugh. ‘‘What makes you ask?’’
‘‘I was walking behind you after you got off the elevator. And when you came to the end of the hall, you didn’t even hesitate for a second; it was apparent you knew just which way to turn.’’
Foster smiled a very tight little smile. ‘‘I hate disappoint
ing you, but there is a simple explanation. And it’s not that I’d been there on the night of February tenth to do away with my sisters.’’
‘‘I’m sorry,’’ I murmured, ‘‘but I have to ask.’’
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He nodded curtly, but he seemed to relax then. ‘‘Actu
ally, I was in the building before. Only once—the last time I was in New York. But I never even set a toe in the apartment.’’
‘‘That was in . . . ?’’
‘‘Back in October. I’d come to town a few weeks earlier than I’d expected, y’see, and I thought I’d just pop up there and surprise Mary Ann. Merry wasn’t supposed to be at home that evening; she was supposed to be doing a play. Anyway, when I arrived at the building, there was a large group of people going in at the same time, and I more or less attached myself to them. The doorman didn’t even no
tice me, unfortunately, so I went up unannounced. Sneaked up, actually.’’
‘‘Why did you say it was unfortunate the doorman didn’t notice you?’’
‘‘I might have spared myself and Merry some trauma if he had done.’’
‘‘She was home?’’
‘‘Oh, yes. She was there, all right. And it was she who answered the door.’’
‘‘Didn’t she ask who it was?’’
‘‘I said it was Chuck, this neighbor Mary Ann had men
tioned in a couple of her letters—I was still thinking it was Mary Ann, of course. And then, when Merry opened the door . . .’’ Moving forward in his chair, Foster spoke in
tently now, his eyes fixed on my face. ‘‘It’s a bit difficult to explain, Desiree, but y’see, while I never had a problem telling my sisters apart, I was expecting to see Mary Ann, so I wasn’t really looking at Merry, if you take my meaning. And they did look quite alike, y’know. But in any event, before Merry had a chance to say a word, I went to kiss her. She backed away from me with the most revolted ex
pression on her face! It was as though I were a leper! And, of course, that’s when I knew. But the whole incident was terribly distressing for us both.’’
‘‘What happened then?’’
‘‘Merry informed me that Mary Ann wasn’t at home and
promptly shut the door in my face. But I promise you, I was only too delighted to get the hell away from there.’’
‘‘Do you have any idea why Meredith wasn’t performing
that night?’’
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‘‘She had a sinus infection, Mary Ann told me later, so she had to take a few days off from the play.’’
Then, leaning back in his chair again, Eric Foster said quietly, ‘‘And that was the last time I saw my sister Merry.’’
Back home a short time later, I reviewed everything I’d just heard. And I had to admit it. Foster’s explanation would certainly account for his knowing the way to his sisters’ apartment. (Although I usually get lost the first ten times I go anywhere. But then, not everyone is as addlebrained as I am.) Still, I wondered if Mary Ann had ever said anything to Peter about her brother’s impromptu visit. I was about to try to reach him when the phone rang. It was Ellen, wanting to verify that I was still alive and anxious for the details of my meeting with Foster. As soon as I could manage to get off the phone with her, I made the call to Peter.
‘‘Mary Ann never said a word to me about any visit from
Eric,’’ he told me. ‘‘Anyway, I don’t think she did.’’
Okay, so there was no confirmation that Foster had gone there that night. But on the other hand, there was abso
lutely no reason to doubt what he’d told me.
Then it occurred to me to phone Larry Shields.
I got right to the purpose of the call. ‘‘I just wanted to know what made you go and see Showboat that time—the production Meredith was in, I mean.’’
‘‘Why do I think this is some kind of a trap?’’ he de
manded, a sharpness in his voice.
‘‘It’s not; I swear. In fact, this has nothing to do with you.’’
He hesitated before answering grudgingly, ‘‘All right. I went because this friend of mine was the director.’’
‘‘I was hoping it might be something like that. Do you think you could find out from him if Meredith missed any performances in October with a sinus infection?’’
‘‘I guess I could try,’’ he agreed reluctantly.
It took about twenty minutes for Shields to get back to me. ‘‘I spoke to Raphael, the director, and he remembers Merry being out sick for a few days, but he didn’t know just when it was. So he called the understudy, and she says Merry was out for three days in October with a sinus prob
lem. And if anyone would know, she would.’’
‘‘I imagine she would. Thanks, Larry; thanks a lot.’’
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‘‘Yeah,’’ he said a little caustically, ‘‘glad to help.’’
Well, that was that. It all seemed to check out, so once again I’d had a promising lead fizzle out on me. (And what was with Larry Shields, anyway?)
I can’t tell you how depressed I felt for the rest of that evening thinking about all of these recent blind alleys of mine.
And very soon I was going to feel worse. Much worse. . . . Chapter 25
The following morning, I got the news that really kicked me in the teeth.
It came in a phone call from Fielding just before ten. ‘‘I found out something very interesting about your client,’’ he told me evenly.
‘‘What?’’ I asked the question calmly. I didn’t have a clue that
anything could actually be wrong.
‘‘You know the dinner he had with that friend of his the night of the shootings?’’
‘‘What about it?’’
‘‘It never happened.’’
‘‘Never happened?’’ I repeated stupidly.
‘‘To put it another way, your client lied.’’
‘‘I’ll be right down.’’
When I got up from the chair, my knees buckled, and going down in the elevator, my heart began racing wildly. It wasn’t until I was in the taxi on my way to the precinct that I calmed down a little.
Even if Peter did lie about that dinner, it didn’t mean he had anything to do with the shootings. Peter wouldn’t do anything like that. He couldn’t do anything like that. Of this I was one thousand percent sure.
When I got to the station, Fielding was on the phone. He motioned for me to have a seat next to his desk. Corco
ran, happily, was nowhere to be seen.
Fielding’s call didn’t last more than another couple of minutes. And then he began his destruction of my entire nervous system.
‘‘On Sunday, we finally looked into Winters’s alibi,’’ he told me. ‘‘Corcoran and I dropped in at that restaurant he claims he had dinner at.’’
‘‘ Claims? Didn’t you check with his ex-roommate? The two of them had dinner together.’’
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‘‘Of course we checked,’’ Fielding snapped. ‘‘We ques
tioned the roommate weeks ago, and he confirmed your kid’s story. That’s why we didn’t look into it any further. But we should have gone and talked to them over at the restaurant regardless, right at the beginning. Just as a mat
ter of course. Only at that time there were a lot of other things going on, and we didn’t really consider the kid a suspect, anyway.’’
‘‘So why now?’’ I asked through parched lips.
‘‘Because with the way we’ve been striking out all over the place, we decided to go back to square one and rethink everything. And I—’’ He stopped talking abruptly, scowl
ing. ‘‘What the hell’s the matter with me? What am I going into all these explanations for? The bottom line is, the kid lied. The restaurant he says he and his friend ate in that Monday night is closed on Mondays.’’
‘‘Is that all?’’ I said, momentarily relieved. ‘‘You know how spacey Peter can be sometimes.’’ Not liking the sound of that once it came out, I quickly added, ‘‘Especially with the kind of stress he’s been under.’’ Fielding glared at me stonily. ‘‘He probably got the name mi—’’
‘‘Save your breath,’’ he broke in. ‘‘We talked to the roommate yesterday, kid named Norman Flynt. And after a few potent threats, Flynt admitted he and your client didn’t break bread together the night of the shootings, after all.’’
Suddenly I felt as though aliens had zapped all the strength from my body.
‘‘They planned to,’’ Fielding was saying. ‘‘And as a mat
ter of fact, they were talking on the phone at six-fifteen that night, deciding where to eat, when someone rang Winters’s doorbell. He went to open the door, and when he got on the phone again, he told Flynt he’d call him back in a few minutes. He called back in a few minutes, all right—
to cancel.
‘‘The next day, Flynt went back home to Maine, and then, that night, he got a call from your client. It was to ask him to swear to that phony alibi he’d involved him in.’’
‘‘Did Flynt tell you where Peter really was Monday night?’’ My heart seemed to be pounding right in my ears, so loudly I could barely hear my own question.
‘‘Uh-uh,’’ Fielding replied. ‘‘Swears he doesn’t know. Ac
cording to Flynt, Peter said he couldn’t tell anybody the
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truth about where he was. Flynt says he agreed to go along with him anyway, because he’s sure Winters is no mur
derer.’’ Then, after a pause, he put in darkly, ‘‘I wish I could be that sure.’’
‘‘Look. If Peter lied—’’
‘‘If?’’
‘‘Okay, okay. When Peter lied, he must have had a good reason. He was crazy about Mary Ann. And besides, Peter’s no murderer. I know it.’’
‘‘You sound just like the roommate.’’ I was about to expand and cite my client’s virtues when Fielding conceded,
‘‘But if you want the truth, I don’t think Winters did it, either. Only not thinking and knowing aren’t exactly the same thing.’’
‘‘Have you talked to Peter yet?’’
‘‘Corcoran and I paid him a little visit at seven o’clock this morning. But we couldn’t get a damn thing out of him. So I made arrangements to cut off his hospital visits imme
diately. We can’t take the chance of anything happening to the victim, especially not after the poor woman’s come this far.’’
‘‘But you’ve got a guard stationed right there in the room,’’ I protested.
‘‘That’s true. But still, anything goes wrong, I gotta live with myself. No way anyone who’s under even the slightest suspicion gets into that room.’’
‘‘But Peter had no motive for shooting those girls.’’
‘‘No motive we know of. Maybe he and the girlfriend had an argument—just like her sister and Shields did. Or maybe it was about money. Your client could stand to in
herit a bundle, for all we know.’’ He shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘‘God, I’d like to get my hands on that will,’’ he murmured fervently. A pause. ‘‘If there is a will,’’
he reminded himself just as I was about to do it for him.
‘‘But Peter thought Mary Ann was going to be out with a friend that night, remember?’’ I pointed out instead.
‘‘Yeah? Who says she didn’t call and tell him her plans had changed?’’
What could I say to that? I elected to go down fighting, though. ‘‘You know, Tim, you’re making a terrible mistake not allowing Peter into that hospital room anymore. You know as well as I do he’s no killer. And right now he could
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be doing that girl more good than her doctors. More good than all of them put together, in fact.’’
‘‘This is not negotiable,’’ Tim stated flatly. And the ex
pression on his face told me he meant it.
‘‘I’ll go have a talk with him,’’ I put in hastily. As soon as I got outside, I started hunting around for a pay phone. Would you believe the one that used to be almost directly in front of the police station had been ripped out? I mean, talk about chutzpah! On my second try, I found a phone with only the receiver removed. I had to go four blocks away before I lucked out and got an entire instrument that was actually in working order. It wasn’t easy making that call, either. Not with the way my hands were trembling.
‘‘I want to see you,’’ I told Peter.
‘‘Oh. You spoke to the police,’’ he said softly.
‘‘All right if I come over?’’
‘‘Uh, look, Desiree, I’m really sorry. But there’s nothing I can tell you.’’
‘‘We have to talk.’’
‘‘Okay,’’ he agreed, sighing.
Peter lived in a narrow six-story building on West Thirtyeighth Street. He buzzed me in before I even had a chance to ring the doorbell.
‘‘I saw you from the window,’’ he explained when he opened the door.
This was the first time I’d ever been to Peter’s apartment. Small and neatly—but far from luxuriously—furnished, it was a homey place, comfortable and lived-in. Besides the obligatory sofa, chairs, and tables, there were a pair of bookcases with a whole lot of books in them and a large faux walnut wall unit that held the rest of the essentials: TV, VCR, CD player, and four or five racks jammed with videocassettes and CD albums. Prints and photographs dec
orated the walls, and a
colorful Indian rug covered most of the light wood floor. ‘‘This is nice,’’ I remarked, trying to take some of the edge off my visit.
‘‘Nothing fancy, but it suits me fine,’’ Peter responded, reaching for a polite smile.
I sat down in one of the club chairs next to the sofa, and he took the sofa. I didn’t waste any time in confronting him. ‘‘What’s going on, Peter?’’ I demanded.
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‘‘I can’t talk about it, Desiree, honestly. But I swear to you I had nothing to do with the shootings. You believe me, don’t you?’’
‘‘Of course I do. But what I believe doesn’t matter. You know, I suppose, that until you level with Sergeant Fielding, you won’t be allowed anywhere near Mary Ann. (I had my fingers crossed when I said the name.)
‘‘I was talking to her neurologist just before you got here, and I think I managed to persuade him to try and get the police to change their minds. Dr. Baker feels my visits could be really important to Mary Ann’s recovery.’’
‘‘Even if he does go to bat for you, I wouldn’t count on his convincing the police of anything. They figure it’s their only way of getting you to cooperate with them.’’
‘‘Baker’s a highly respected neurologist, so it’s conceiv
able they will listen to him,’’ he insisted stubbornly. You can’t imagine how frustrated I was at this point. Still, with the thimbleful of patience I had left, I said rea
sonably, ‘‘I don’t understand you, Peter. If your visits could make a difference in Mary Ann’s recovery, how can you possibly put yourself in a position where you may not be allowed to see her anymore?’’
‘‘I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it,’’ he replied, looking totally miserable.
‘‘Well, whatever you did that night, you can tell me, any
way,’’ I pressed. ‘‘I’d never repeat anything without your permission.’’
‘‘It would be easier for me to tell the police than you,’’
was the startling response.
My brief meeting with Peter left me in shock. What could
he have meant by its being easier to tell the police than me? Was it because he was so ashamed of what he’d done?
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