Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness

by Sidney Sheldon

  Grace didn’t care about Connie. Her sisters were long since dead to her. But Lenny! Grace’s memory of their marriage, of Lenny’s love for her, was the one true thing she had left in this world. Without that, there was no hope, no meaning, no point to any of it. Without that love, the anguish was unbearable. She cried out to the heavens.

  “Oh, Lenny. Tell me it isn’t true!”

  But Grace heard nothing, only the echo of her own words in the silence.

  JASMINE SMILED AT THE HUNKY BLOND COP. Usually she only went for wealthy men. But in Detective Mitch Connors’s case, she might be persuaded to make an exception.

  “I’d like to talk about your relationship with Senator Warner.”

  “Certainly. Although I’m not sure how much more I can help you. I already told your colleague everything I know.”

  Mitch frowned. “My colleague?”

  “Yes. She was just here.”

  She?

  “She was asking me all about Jack, and what happened on Nantucket the weekend that Lenny Brookstein disappeared. Didn’t you send her?”

  Mitch’s mouth went dry. He bolted for the elevator, pounding his fist on the call button. It seemed to take forever.

  Should I wait, or take the stairs?

  Fuck it.

  He pushed open the emergency exit door and bounded down the stairs, three at a time. Bursting into the lobby, he looked around. Empty. He ran out to the street, frantically looking to the left and right. Fifth Avenue was busy. The street was choked with afternoon traffic and the sidewalk was full of people. Mitch weaved among them holding out his badge like a talisman, grabbing every petite woman he came across, scanning the features of every female he passed.

  It was no good.

  Grace Brookstein was gone.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  AS SOON AS HE REALIZED GRACE had given him the slip, Mitch sprinted back up to Jasmine’s apartment. “What did you tell her? I want to know everything, word for word.”

  It was quite a conversation. Mitch was used to hearing Lenny Brookstein derided as a fraud and a coward. But in all of the media’s vitriolic portrayals, there had never been so much as a whisper about his sleeping around. As for a full-blown affair, with his wife’s sister? It just seemed so out of character.

  No wonder “the policewoman” had left in such a hurry.

  Mitch tried to figure out what Grace’s next move would be. After so many weeks on the case, he was starting to feel as if he was in her head, almost as if they were psychically connected in some way. It was weird. Technically they barely knew each other. Didn’t know each other. Yet there were times when Mitch felt closer to Grace Brookstein than he had to any of his past lovers, even Helen.

  Her first instinct, he felt sure, would be to head straight to Connie’s house for a confrontation. But then what? Would common sense kick in? Showing up at her sister’s place would be insanely risky. On the other hand, Grace had robbed Davey Buccola at gunpoint. Her appetite for risk seemed to be growing by the day.

  Mitch had interviewed both Grace’s sisters immediately after her escape from Bedford. It was routine procedure to contact family, just in case a suspect tried to make contact. He remembered the way that both Honor and Connie had washed their hands of Grace like a pair of Lady Macbeths, abandoning her utterly in her time of need. Fair-weather friends were bad enough, but Grace seemed to have been cursed by fair-weather family.

  If Lenny really had traded a looker like Grace for an ice maiden like Connie Gray, he must have needed his head read. Mitch thought back to his encounter with Grace on the subway at Times Square. He’d come so close to catching her that day, but it wasn’t his disappointment that he remembered. It was the look on Grace’s face, that haunting combination of vulnerability and strength. Despite her exhaustion and the baggy, drab clothes she was wearing, there was something uniquely compelling about her. In some ways, she reminded Mitch of Helen, back in the early, happy days of their marriage. Both women had an inner beauty, an innate femininity that drew men to them like moths to a flame. Connie Gray was the exact opposite. Connie’s features might be regular and her figure toned and trim, but she was about as feminine as a sumo wrestler. Maybe that’s what Lenny wanted. A tranny version of his wife? Now that really would be sick.

  MICHAEL GRAY ANSWERED THE DOOR.

  “Detective. This is a surprise.”

  Mitch thought the same thing everyone thought when they met Michael. You’re a straight-up, old-fashioned, decent man. You’re too good for these people.

  “Do you have news about Grace?”

  “Nothing concrete. We’re pursuing some new lines of inquiry. I wondered if I might speak with your wife again?”

  “Of course. I’ll see if I can find her.”

  “It’s all right, Mike. I’m here.”

  Connie appeared in the entryway. Mitch thought, Maybe I was a little harsh. In a pretty, floral-print dress, her blond hair drawn back in an Alice band, she looked a lot more attractive than he remembered her. Behind her, an adorable towheaded boy was pushing a wooden train along the floor. Through double doors to Mitch’s right, an older, darker boy was practicing the piano. The whole thing looked like a scene from a Currier and Ives print. Too good to be true?

  Connie led Mitch into a study where they could be alone. Mitch noticed two first-edition Steinbecks in the bookcase, and what looked like an early Kandinsky on the walnut-paneled wall. The Grays’ money troubles were evidently behind them.

  Connie saw him admiring the painting. “It was a present.”

  “A very generous one.”

  “Yes.” Connie smiled sweetly but didn’t elaborate. “How can I help you, Detective?”

  Mitch decided to go for the direct approach. “How long were you and Lenny Brookstein lovers?”

  Blood rushed to Connie’s face, then drained from it. She contemplated denying the affair but thought better of it. He obviously knows. Lying now will only anger him.

  “Not long. A few months. It was over before Nantucket. Before he died.”

  “Who ended it?”

  Connie picked up a silk cushion and dug her nails into the fabric. “He did.”

  “That upset you?”

  A vein in Connie’s temple throbbed visibly. “A little. At the time. As you can imagine, Detective, this is not a chapter of my life story of which I’m particularly proud. Michael has no idea. Nor does Grace.”

  She does now.

  “You lied to the police about your relationship.”

  “I didn’t lie. I concealed. I didn’t see the point in dredging it all up. I still don’t.”

  Mitch thought of Lenny’s body, or what was left of it, dredged up from the bottom of the ocean. Did Connie have a hand in his death? The woman scorned? She had a cast-iron alibi for the day of the storm. Scores of people had seen the three Knowles sisters lunching together at the Cliffside Beach Club. But she could have orchestrated things behind the scenes.

  “What is it that you weren’t proud of, exactly? The affair? Or the fact that Lenny dumped you and went running back to Grace?” Mitch was trying to hit a nerve. If he succeeded in shaking Connie out of her queenly self-control, she might let something slip. “It must have been humiliating, being rejected for your little sister.”

  “I’ll tell you what was humiliating, Detective. Lenny’s ridiculous obsession with Grace. That was humiliating. For an intelligent, dynamic man like that to saddle himself with a half-witted child of a wife? It was laughable. It was pathetic.” The spleen dripped off Connie’s tongue like venom. “Everybody thought so, not just me. Oh, we all paid homage, of course, fawned over the loving couple. But that marriage was a running joke.”

  “You loved him, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You loved him, but he loved your sister.”

  “He was obsessed with my sister. There’s a difference.”

  “Bullshit. Grace was the love of his life. You couldn’t forgive either of them for that, could you, Co
nnie?”

  Reaching into her purse, Connie took out and lit a cigarette. She inhaled deeply and said, “Let me tell you something, Detective. The only love of Lenny Brookstein’s life was Lenny Brookstein. If you don’t know that, you don’t know the man at all.”

  “But you knew him. You abased yourself, prostituted yourself for his pleasure, then got tossed aside like a used rag.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Admit it. You threw yourself at the guy’s feet!”

  The muscles in Connie’s jaw visibly tightened. For a moment Mitch thought she was finally going to lose it. But she reined in her temper. Stubbing out her cigarette, she said calmly, “You’re quite wrong. If you must know, I hated Lenny Brookstein. Hated him.”

  “Is that why you had him killed?”

  Connie burst out laughing. “Oh, dear! Is that what all this has been about, Detective?” She wiped away tears of mirth. “You found out about my affair with Lenny, and all of a sudden I’m the jilted lover, off on some murderous rampage? It’s a little simplistic, don’t you think?”

  Mitch was angry. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you were there that weekend because you wanted revenge.”

  “Yes indeed. And I got revenge.” Standing up, Connie walked over to the painting Mitch had admired earlier, lifted it off the wall and handed it to him. “A gift from my dear departed brother-in-law. A fake, as it happens. Like him. But a pretty addition to the room, I’m sure you’ll agree. I wanted it, so I made Lenny give it to me. I made Lenny give me a lot of things.”

  “You were blackmailing him? Threatening to tell Grace about the two of you?”

  “Blackmailing him? Not at all.” The suggestion seemed to surprise her. “I simply collected what I was owed.” Walking around the room, admiring its array of rare books and objets d’art, Connie smiled contentedly to herself. “Michael, bless his heart, thinks I bought this house with inheritance money. He actually believes that a rich old aunt left me fifteen million dollars.”

  “Lenny gave you the money?”

  “Who else? He wrote the check in Nantucket, two days before he died. Thank God I cashed it promptly. A couple more weeks and that money would have been seized by Quorum’s administrators. As it was…” She smiled smugly, leaving the sentence hanging. “I can say with my hand on my heart, Detective, that Lenny Brookstein’s death was a grievous blow to me. But not because I adored him. I am nobody’s victim. I leave that to my sister. She’s so good at it, you see.”

  LATER THAT NIGHT, MITCH LAY AWAKE thinking about Connie and Grace, and about the man both women had loved. Lenny Brookstein was an enigma. He was not the caricature of evil that the press had made him out to be, of that much Mitch was sure. But neither was he the saint of his wife’s imagination. What he appeared to be was a mess of contradictions. Generous and mean. Loyal and vengeful. Devoted and unfaithful. Brilliant at business, but unable to tell a friend from a foe.

  Had Lenny Brookstein really stolen all that money?

  He was capable of it. But had he done it?

  If so, the poor bastard never got to enjoy it. Someone had seen to that with a meat cleaver. Someone Lenny Brookstein knew and trusted.

  Buccola had provided some tantalizing leads, but all of them had wound up as dead ends: Andrew Preston, Jack Warner, Connie Gray. It was time to take another look at John Merrivale.

  Mitch fell asleep dreaming of stormy seas, Kandinsky paintings and Grace Brookstein’s haunting face.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE NAUSEA CAME IN WAVES.

  At first Grace tried to ignore it. She was under stress. She wasn’t eating properly. After Jasmine Delevigne had told her about Connie and Lenny, she ran back to her miserable room, crawled into bed and stayed there for two days. This was worse than Davey Buccola’s betrayal, worse than being sent to Bedford, worse even than being raped. She only got out of bed to use the toilet and to vomit. The vomiting was getting worse, both more frequent and more violent. She was getting sick.

  It’s probably a virus. I’m depressed. My immune system’s low.

  After forty-eight hours of unbearable nausea, Grace finally dragged herself to the Duane Reade on the corner. With a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes and a muffler covering the bottom half of her face, she mumbled her symptoms to the pharmacist.

  “Uh-huh. When was your last period?”

  The question caught Grace by surprise. “My period?”

  “Is there a chance you could be pregnant, sugar?”

  Grace tried to block out the sounds and images, but they kept coming: The van driver’s face, his cruel, flat black eyes, his voice taunting her. Don’t worry, Lizzie, we’ve got all night.

  “No.”

  “You’re quite sure?”

  “I’m positive. There’s no chance.”

  Grace bought a pregnancy test.

  Ten minutes later, sitting on the broken toilet she shared with three other tenants, Grace peed on the stick for the requisite five seconds, mentally chiding herself for wasting fifteen bucks.

  This is ridiculous. I’m late because I’m exhausted.

  Two pink lines appeared in the results window. Grace’s palms began to sweat. It must be a faulty test. She ran back to the pharmacy and wasted another fifteen bucks. Then another. Each time the white plastic stick taunted her, its pink lines dancing in front of her eyes like the elephants in Dumbo.

  Positive. Positive. Positive.

  Congratulations! You are pregnant.

  Grace felt dizzy. She slumped back on the bed and closed her eyes. Somehow, over these past three weeks, she’d managed to block out the rape. As if she knew instinctively that to let it in, to think about it, would destroy her. But now there could be no more hiding. It was here, inside her, growing and alive like some unwanted alien, a parasite consuming her from the inside out.

  I have to get rid of it. Now.

  A doctor was out of the question. Grace was already using the third of the fake driver’s licenses Karen had made for her at Bedford. This week Grace was Linda Reynolds, a waitress from Illinois. The cards were good enough to fool sales assistants and hotel desk clerks, who only glanced at them for a second. But Grace couldn’t risk showing them to some doctor’s officious assistant who might take a good, long look.

  I’ll have to do this myself.

  Some of the girls in prison had talked about backstreet abortions, appalling, gruesome horror stories involving coat hangers and hemorrhages. Remembering them, Grace started to shake.

  I can’t. I can’t go through with it.

  There has to be another way.

  IN A QUIET CORNER OF QUEENS Public Library, Grace sat at a computer. A quick Google search told her what she needed to know.

  …ingestion may cause gastrointestinal upset, spontaneous abortion, seizures, coma, disseminated intravascular coagulation, hepatic and renal injury and death.

  Spontaneous abortion…

  There was a health-food store that sold herbs a few blocks away.

  Grace headed there.

  “THE ROMANS USED TO USE THIS, you know.” The clerk at the store was in a chatty mood. “It was a common herb for cooking. Of course, what you have here is the essential oil.” She passed Grace a thumb-size glass bottle. “You can’t cook with this. Not unless it’s a stew for your mother-in-law and you’re trying to kill her!” Grace forced a smile. “But a few drops in the tub? Amazing. Your troubles will melt away.”

  If only. “How much do I owe you?”

  “That’ll be fifteen dollars and twenty-two cents.” The clerk dropped the bottle into a paper bag and handed it to Grace. Suddenly her face changed. “Do I know you from someplace? Your face looks familiar.”

  Grace pushed a twenty-dollar bill into her hand. “I don’t think so.”

  “No, I do. I’m sure I do. I never forget a face.”

  “Keep the change.”

  Grace snatched the bag and ran out of the store. The clerk watched her go. It was terrible the way people in
this city lived their lives in such a rush. She seemed like such a nice girl, too. Hopefully the oil would help relax her.

  I’m sure I know her from somewhere.

  MITCH CONNORS MET JOHN MERRIVALE FOR lunch at a restaurant in midtown Manhattan.

  “Thanks for meeting me.”

  John Merrivale stood up and smiled graciously. Mitch was struck by how slight he was. Everything about him seemed faint, from his colorless skin and watery gray eyes to his thin, reedy voice and limp handshake. He’s more ghost than man.

  “N-not at all, Detective. I’m happy to help, if I can. I assume this is about G-Grace?”

  “Actually it’s about Lenny.”

  The gracious smile faded. “Oh?”

  “I’d like to get a better understanding of your relationship with him.”

  “My relationship? I fail to see how my r-relationship with Lenny is of any relevance.”

  Mitch thought, That touched a nerve. Aloud he said, “We’re trying to build as complete a picture as we can of the Brooksteins’ life before Grace was imprisoned. We’re hoping it might help us to predict her movements now.”

  “I see.” John sat down warily.

  “Shall we order?”

  Mitch opted for a steak and salad. John perused the menu for an inordinate amount of time before deciding on the quiche. Weak and insipid, like him, thought Mitch. But there had to be more to John Merrivale than that. You didn’t get to the top of the food chain at an institution like Quorum unless you had a tough side. Or at least some serious smarts.

  “You knew the Brooksteins as well as anyone,” Mitch began. “Grace even stayed with you and your wife during her trial, I believe?”

  “That’s correct.”