Murder Off the Page

by Con Lehane

  He didn’t.

  “I’ve learned you solve mysteries, an amateur detective; what I write about in books.” She laughed gently, which caused a spasm of coughing. “I have my own mysteries, I guess, a mysterious mystery writer.” She colored the words with bitterness.

  He didn’t know where this was going. Yet he felt an opening to give her a chance to rethink her first response. “When I mentioned Shannon Darling, I thought her name might have reminded you of someone. You might have met her in the past—”

  The cough again. She slumped in her stiff wooden straight-backed chair. “Can we move to the couch?”

  The front of the house was a large open space, living room and dining room, armchairs in the corners of the living room behind her, bookcases against two walls. Two couches faced each other in the middle of the room. “Would you help me, please? To the couch. Hold my arm. I don’t want to fall.”

  He placed his hand under her elbow and she leaned into him as he led her to the couch. Her body was light, insubstantial like a bird’s, yet something feminine about her, a warm scent, a softness, a kind of seductive ardor that enveloped her, made her attractive. When she was seated, he went to sit on the couch across from her but changed his mind and sat on the couch beside her.

  “The woman I asked you about was interested in letters written to you by a man named Dillard Wainwright.”

  She winced as if she’d been slapped. “Oh yes, Dillard. I considered burning those letters. Obviously, I didn’t. They portray the truth at a certain time. We write to try to get to some kind of truth, don’t we? One day, someone might find some kind of truth using my books, my journals, my letters. That’s why I donated everything to the library, why I didn’t burn the letters.”

  Over the next half hour, speaking into the fading light of the autumn afternoon, she told him about her life, which was immeasurably sad. Her first husband, with whom she had a child, ridiculed and demeaned her. “There’s a kind of cruelty between a man and a woman that doesn’t involve assault or physical violence, yet is equally destructive to the woman it is aimed at. I won’t tell you more than that. I was a fool to allow it, yet I did. And to my regret, I allowed it to happen to my child by leaving her with him. The sins of the mother are revisited upon the daughter.” She met his gaze as if to sear her meaning into his brain.

  Jayne Galloway’s first husband didn’t take her mystery writing seriously. He called it her hobby. After the publication of one of her books, she received a letter from Dillard Wainwright, out of the blue, praising the book. She read some of his as yet unpublished writings and found his writing appealing. “We began an affair of letters. We fell in love through books. Or that was what I thought. Writers are a fragile lot, at least I was. None of us—at least none of the writers I know—think we’re any good. We suspect we’re frauds about to be found out as soon as our next book comes out. Dillard was a scholar; his praise was important to me.

  “As it turned out, in his own way, Dillard was as much of an asshole as my first husband, if not as cruel. He was manipulative. He wanted an introduction to the world of publishing. I was fairly successful at the time, despite my doubts. The publisher would invite me to New York and throw a little party for the launch of my books. That’s what the love of my life, Dillard, the man for whom I’d forsaken all others including my daughter, wanted: an introduction to that world.

  “It took a long time for me to realize I’d been had like a local yokel in the spell of a sideshow barker.” She glared into the space in front of her and caught up with herself. “I’m not sure I wanted to tell you all of that or why I did. You came to ask me about the collection, about my books I hope, not my personal life.” She coughed quietly into a tissue she held in her hand.

  “The woman I’m asking you about was most interested in those letters. They didn’t bear much on your writing. I was puzzled she’d have such a narrow interest.”

  He wasn’t close enough to Jayne Galloway on the couch that either could reach out and touch the other, yet she seemed to want to try to do it, to reach for him. “Well, now you know what they have to do with. Perhaps this woman wanted to write about that part of my life. People like sordidness. You don’t know what it is to have deserted your child.”

  Ambler thought about his son. He understood more than she knew about neglecting a child. He tried again. “Because her research interest was so personal, as I said, I thought you might know her. She registered in the library and the hotel under an assumed name.”

  Jayne Galloway waited a moment before shaking her head. “I understand your interest, especially since there’s a murder involved. This woman couldn’t possibly be my daughter.…” For a second she froze. She’d said something she hadn’t meant to, “… if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I didn’t know you had a daughter until you told me just now. But it does seem possible. She might—”

  Jayne Galloway suffered another bout of coughing. Each time she coughed quietly as if clearing a tickle in her throat. Yet she’d grown pale and frailer than he’d first thought. The coughing fit brought tears to her eyes. “My daughter has no interest in me. I’m not hiding. She could find me if she wanted to. She doesn’t want to find me.”

  “I’m sorry.… I’m sorry to bring up such a painful subject.”

  “My first husband was an alcoholic and no more interested in her than he was in me, uninvolved in her care, handing her off to nannies. I should never have left her with him. He committed suicide while she was in college. She blamed me for that also.… And why shouldn’t she?

  “She put herself through college with a small inheritance from her grandmother and attended medical school on a fellowship. She’s married with a child of her own.” Jayne Galloway had hired a private detective who’d found her daughter. They’d had a reunion of sorts. “I tried to make amends. She wasn’t interested. Why should she be?”

  Ambler didn’t like browbeating a dying woman, raising painful memories, yet he couldn’t ignore the possibility that Shannon Darling was Jayne Galloway’s daughter, and he needed to understand why Jayne Galloway insisted she couldn’t be. “Do you know what your daughter’s married name is?”

  Her tone of voice took on an edge now, anger boiling up, edging toward him. “I found her. I visited her. Her husband didn’t like me. He doesn’t want her to have anything to do with me. That wasn’t right either, a husband keeping his wife from her mother. She was too much under his influence, as I was with her father. I never heard from her again after that. She wrote me out of her life. I don’t know her name.” She sounded irritated. “You had questions about my papers?”

  He told her about the literary prize he couldn’t track down but said it wasn’t important. He could get back to her. The sun had gone down. Shadows seeped into the room. Jayne Galloway turned to watch the darkening windows behind him. “Do you by any chance know where I can find Dillard Wainwright?”

  A strange look came over her face, as if she’d drifted away from him to some time and place of her own. Her answer was dismissive. “He’s at a college in Massachusetts. I forget the name.”

  “One last thing,” Ambler pulled the grainy photo from the hotel video Mike Cosgrove had given him and handed it to her. “On the chance you might have seen her without knowing who she was.”

  She looked at the photo and there it was again, that shock of recognition. This time she was ready for it. She held the photo a moment longer before handing it back to him and shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t.”

  Chapter 6

  “I almost wish I hadn’t gone to see her,” Ambler told Adele the evening he returned from Long Island. Johnny was spending the night at his grandmother’s, so they had a dinner at a wine and tapas bar off Tenth Avenue near Adele’s apartment. The restaurant was small and cramped, but quiet. He told her about his afternoon on Long Island.

  Adele ate small bites of the tiny appetizers and sipped from her glass of white wine, watching Ambler as she l
istened. “I shouldn’t judge,” she said when he’d finished. “But deserting her husband and young daughter to run off with someone who pulled the wool over her eyes … it’s difficult to feel a lot of sympathy.”

  “She paid a heavy price.”

  Adele looked at him quizzically. Of course, she wouldn’t understand the sympathy he felt for Jayne Galloway. Adele hadn’t spent part of an afternoon with the dying woman, didn’t see how pain and regret and loss create a presence that requires you to recognize its humanity. Galloway’s story wasn’t a noble one, and she was lying about at least part of it. Still, she’d suffered and something about her suggested she’d learned kindness through her suffering, so he’d forgive her if she had something to hide. People lied for a lot of reasons, not all of them self-serving or evil. He remembered now that Jayne Galloway’s books were dark, with cruel and domineering men, a great deal of retribution. He could see now where that came from.

  Adele tried to meet his gaze. “I’m not saying you can’t feel sorry for her. Go ahead. Why did you go out there anyway? You thought Shannon was her daughter?”

  “I thought she might know something about Shannon. I didn’t know she had a daughter until she told me.”

  “She recognized Shannon when she saw the photo and didn’t want to tell you? You think this means Shannon is her daughter?”

  “Her daughter’s name is—or was until she got married—Sandra Galloway.”

  “You could tell Mike Cosgrove what you found and let him sort it out.”

  “I could.…”

  Adele smiled fetchingly and then winked. “We want to get McNulty out of harm’s way first, right?”

  She said she’d do a genealogical search on Sandra Galloway. She might find a marriage license or a medical license. Meanwhile, Ambler wanted to track down Dillard Wainwright. No reason for Wainwright not to be forthcoming if he’d sent someone to do research on Jayne Galloway. It was unlikely he’d know about the murder, and Ambler checking on a researcher’s bonafides wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for a Special Collections librarian.

  That night when he got home, he began his search of the faculties of New England colleges for Wainwright. He was sifting through faculty biographies on the Tufts University website when Adele called.

  “I think I’m getting somewhere,” she said.

  “I’m surprised you’re calling so late.”

  “Because I think I’m getting somewhere and wanted to tell you and knew you’d be up trying to find that man … Wellington?”

  “Wainwright.… It’s nice to hear your voice at night. You sound dreamy.”

  “You sound grumpy … or you did. Now you sound nice.”

  Her voice had a soft murmur in it. Ambler felt a stirring of desire he often felt for her, sometimes from a whiff of her hair, sometimes a tremor in her voice; other times it was a memory of touching her, the softness of her mouth when he’d kissed her what felt like ages ago. At the same time, he felt the emptiness of his apartment. Johnny was at his grandmother’s. The dog slept next to the door waiting for his nightly walk.

  That murmur in Adele’s voice was, perhaps unintentionally, an invitation for him to flirt with her. He didn’t. When she wanted to be, she was a tantalizing flirt. Her sigh was a surrender of some sort and her tone became matter-of-fact, the tone she used to answer a question from a reader in the library, except for an underlying hum of excitement. She’d found Sandra Galloway.

  “I’ll look up marriage licenses tomorrow. She went to medical school in New York and did her residency at NYU and Bellevue. I’m hoping she got married here. It would make sense.”

  Ambler returned to his search. Around midnight, he realized he should look up one of Wainwright’s books. The author biography should include his academic affiliation. And there he was, professor of English at Pine Grove College. He’d call him in the morning.

  Something Ambler learned in his time looking into murders and calling people to ask questions was not to leave a message asking for the person he was looking for to call back. If he did that he’d have to wait until they got around to it, if they ever did. His call wasn’t an important matter to them. It was important to him. So when he called Wainwright’s number at Pine Grove College in the morning, he didn’t leave a message. He’d keep calling until he reached him.

  Adele traced Sandra Galloway to Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a practicing dermatologist and married. Her married name was Dean. Her husband’s name was Simon. “That wasn’t so hard,” she said. “But you probably could have asked her mother.”

  “I did. She didn’t know her daughter’s married name or wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Is Shannon Darling and Dr. Sandra Dean one and the same? Should I call her?”

  “If you have her home address, I think I’ll go and see. You might not get an answer over the phone. If she is Shannon, she’s hiding. If she isn’t, she’ll think you’re nuts.”

  That afternoon, Ambler left work early. Johnny’s after-school nanny, Denise Cosgrove, Mike’s daughter, would deliver him to Adele’s apartment after school. Ambler would be back for him that evening. Greenwich was an easy commute. He caught a Metro-North train at Grand Central with the early homebound commuters, arriving in Greenwich in less than an hour. He found a taxi in front of the station. The cab followed narrow winding roads past long driveways that led to mansions deep within the trees and shrubs and deposited him at the midpoint of a circular bluestone gravel driveway under a portico in front of a large stone mansion that was closer to the road than most of the other homes in the area. He stood for a moment taking in the sculpted gardens, lawns, shrubs, and hedges before he rang a doorbell and waited for what he expected might be a butler to open the front door.

  Instead, a bright-eyed, pink-cheeked, blonde-haired girl about Johnny’s age came from the side of the house before he could ring the bell. She wore jeans, her hair was in a ponytail, and she carried a size-appropriate baseball bat.

  “I hope that’s not for me,” Ambler said.

  “T-ball.” She appraised him for a few seconds. “I suppose you’re looking for my dad. Whom should I say you are?”

  Ambler smiled. Part refined young woman, part-tomboy, the little girl was as cute as a button. “What about your mom?”

  A troubled look came over the child’s face. The light in her blue eyes dimmed. “She’s not here.” He sensed she wanted to say more.

  “I was really looking for her. Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  Anger smoldered under her troubled expression. “I don’t know when she’ll be back. She won’t—” She caught herself. “You better talk to my dad.” She turned and walked up the steps to the front door but turned back. “Do you know my mom?”

  He was stuck. The frankness of the little girl appealed to him. “To tell you truth, I don’t know if I know her or not. That’s why I’m here.”

  The girl looked puzzled but not disbelieving. “That’s a funny thing to say. You’re not a patient are you?” She answered the question without his help and went on. “Are you a doctor?”

  “No.” He held out his hand. “I’m Ray Ambler. I’m a librarian.”

  She held out her hand. “Carolyn Dean. I go to the library sometimes after school.”

  “Actually, I work at the big library on Fifth Avenue in New York. Have you ever been there?”

  “Mom used to—” She paused. After a moment, she went on. “We go to the city at Christmas to look in the store windows and to shop and we always go to the library.” She paused, this time for emphasis. “The lions have wreaths with big red ribbons around their necks.”

  “Yep. They do. Every year. Is your mom traveling?” He felt dishonest slipping in the question. He didn’t like the possibility the little girl had anything to do with the woman he knew as Shannon, that she had even the remotest connection to a murder. But children too often are acquainted with evil. More ominous, he saw Shannon in the quick flash of her smile, the squint when she stopped to think f
or a moment. He didn’t know what was in store for Carolyn but feared for her happy days of childhood.

  “My mom travels sometimes.” She looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes at the same time. “You’ll have to ask my dad. It’s weird what you said. How come you don’t know if you know my mother?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I think I need to talk to your dad.”

  Worry narrowed her eyes. “Is my mom in trouble?”

  He fought back the urge to ask why she thought that. He didn’t want to use trickery to get her to answer a question when she didn’t know what her answer was contributing to. He’d done it many times to witnesses or suspects in the past but he didn’t want to do it to her. He couldn’t bring himself to reassure her with a lie either. “I have a grandson about your age,” he said instead. “He lives with me.”

  Something sparked in her eyes. “Why doesn’t he live with his mom and dad?”

  He was sorry he brought it up. What could he say? Because his dad is in prison and his mother was murdered? “He can’t. His mother died.”

  “Oh.” She bowed with such solemnity that it carried unexpected sincerity. “I’ll get my dad.”

  Ambler waited in the doorway. He wasn’t concerned about using a bit of subterfuge on Simon Dean. If his wife Dr. Sandra Dean was also Shannon Darling, there was a good chance the man didn’t know his wife had a second identity. Ambler didn’t know this for sure himself. He planned to tell Mr. Dean that while he was cataloging Jayne Galloway’s papers he came across some questions he hoped Dean’s wife could answer about her mother. Dean wouldn’t, Ambler hoped, ask how he tracked down Jayne Galloway’s estranged daughter.

  He had no idea how Dean would react to his questions. If Ambler simply confirmed Sandra Dean was Sandra Galloway, this would be something but not much. If Sandra Dean was missing, this would add something else. If Mr. Dean knew his wife had gone to the city to do research on her mother at the library, this would be something indeed.

  When Simon Dean appeared a moment later, walking behind his daughter with his hand on her shoulder, he wore the startled expression of someone interrupted from deep thought and met Ambler’s gaze with one that was not unfriendly but cautious.