Fatal Impressions (12 page)

Back on Cornelia Street, Dinah found Jonathan where she had left him, in the library, on the telephone. He told her that he was asking everyone he knew for advice, assistance, and favors. He had talked to Rob, to Greg Fry, and to the lawyers, as well as to numerous friends, and he was more than ready to take a coffee break. He listened attentively to her summary of her meeting with Coleman and the Byrds. He’d help with their plans, including enlisting Rob to assist them with listening devices at DDD&W. He returned to the library and the telephone, and she settled at the big table in the dining area to catch up on gallery paperwork. But she kept an ear tuned in his direction, and as the morning sped by, she could hear his growing frustration with the lawyers.

When she called him to lunch, he looked tired and exasperated. He relaxed a little after he’d eaten a chicken salad sandwich and sipped a glass of pinot grigio. But when she asked him how things were going, he frowned and shook his head.

“Too damned slow. The DDD&W people are sloths,” he said.

“Anything new?”

“Greg Fry is putting together everything Rob’s asked for—copies of the Fry Building lobby security sign-in and sign-out records for the last six months, the security camera’s films for six months, the personnel department’s files on the lobby guards, and the voice tape of the woman who called in the murder. And he’s lending us a suite on the fifty-fourth floor where Rob’s people can hang out, and where they can put the equipment to record your bugs. The suite is ostensibly rented to Rob. His name will be on the door.”

“My goodness! That’s a big help!” Dinah said.

Jonathan nodded. “Greg’s a good friend. Those jerks at DDD&W are being obstructive, but we’ll get what we want before we go to bed Sunday night if I have to keep them up all night tonight to do it.”

Dinah was worried about the Fry Building voice tape: Ellie’s tape. She hoped the girl wouldn’t get in trouble. She wished she could reach Ellie. But she’d done all she could until DDD&W reopened on Monday.

While Jonathan was eating lunch, Sebastian Grant, the senior Hathaway lawyer—a.k.a. the Cobra—lost it. Sick of the complaints of the DDD&W lawyers, presumably echoing the protests of their masters, he shouted into his phone, “If the incompetent management at DDD&W
will
deliver imbecilic letters to the wife of Jonathan Cabot Lodge Hathaway the Third on a Saturday morning, they’ll be bloody lucky if all they lose is a Saturday and Sunday on the golf course! For God’s sake, get to work, or I’m coming over, and if I do, every one of you will regret it.”

When a junior associate asked a more senior associate if Mr. Hathaway really answered to all those names, his senior snapped, “Of course not. But those dopes at DDD&W knew exactly what the Cobra meant, and so should you.”

Grant, who overheard their conversation—he was thought to have supernatural hearing and eyes in the back of his head, and reveled in his reputation—agreed. An associate who said anything that stupid was probably too slow-witted to succeed in the realm of Sebastian Grant.

The DDD&W lawyers stopped whining and went to work. Maybe they hoped to spend a few hours with their families over the weekend. Grant smiled his serpentine smile, and everyone who saw it shuddered. They knew that not one person would see his home again until the Cobra had everything he wanted.

Rob, struggling with jet lag, had a restless night, and as a result, overslept Saturday. He didn’t arrive at his office until nearly noon, but even so, he found nothing about Dinah’s situation waiting for his attention. The guys covering Cornelia Street must not have come up with anything, and his computer kids were silent. He sent a nudging e-mail to ­­Pete, who was supposed to check on the Victor girls, asking him to get in touch as soon as possible.

Around two, information began to trickle in. The team questioning Cornelia Street residents had turned up a witness, the old lady who owned Carmine’s, a wholesale bakery two doors away from the Hathaways’ townhouse. The bakery was open all night baking bread and loading it on delivery trucks under Mrs. Carmine’s supervision. She’d seen Dinah come home around one Friday morning, and her light go out at half past one. She swore Dinah didn’t leave the house again until the driver picked her up a little before six, when the old lady was leaving the bakery to walk to her apartment down the block. The prosecutors would suggest that Mrs. Carmine had fallen asleep and missed Dinah’s nocturnal wanderings, but her employees—including her live-in housekeeper—swore she never slept until after the last loaded delivery truck departed, and she was in bed in her apartment.

Not that Rob wanted Dinah on trial. But Mrs. Carmine’s statement should give the NYPD pause. The police wouldn’t find anyone who’d seen Dinah during the critical period, since she hadn’t left the building, and if anyone—like Harrison—had planned to set her up with a lying witness, it was too late; everyone had been interviewed. One potential trap had been sprung. Rob didn’t know for sure that Harrison was dirty, but his attitude was strange, and there was nothing to be gained by assuming he was clean. He’d have to check Harrison out thoroughly, but meanwhile, he e-mailed Mrs. Carmine’s statement to his friend at One Police Plaza. He wanted it on record with a trustworthy person.

When the files from the Fry Building arrived, Rob turned them over to his assistant to organize and asked him to leave everything on his desk. He’d look at them on Sunday. At five he told everyone to go home and followed them out the door. Tonight he was cooking dinner for Coleman, and he needed to get started on the meal, and to make sure his apartment was in order.

At eight o’clock Saturday night, Jonathan told the lawyers that he’d be back on the telephone on Sunday at nine a.m. and signed off. He and Dinah ate lentil soup Dinah had made, walked Baker, and turned in early. Neither slept much, but they both pretended, lying apart and silent, wishing the night would end but dreading what morning might bring.

Loretta had a blind date with a young man who worked at an advertising agency, and she hoped he’d look like
Mad Men
’s Don Draper. She was meeting her date in the bar of the Algonquin Hotel, which she’d read about. On this, her first visit to the historic hotel, she planned to stand out. She was wearing a red velvet cocktail suit that looked more like Christmas than spring, but it was freezing outside and felt like Christmas. Anyway, it was Saturday night! At the Algonquin, she handed her black cape to the cloakroom attendant and leaned over to greet the magnificent cat napping on a luggage rack. Then she turned to face the room. She wasn’t surprised to see that every eye was on her. She smiled at her admiring audience and waited for her date to step up and claim her.

Coleman had accepted Rob’s invitation to Saturday dinner at his apartment with trepidation, but so far he’d behaved. She was glad, because she wanted him to remain her friend, and this evening would determine whether that was possible. She mentally crossed her fingers.

She snuggled in the corner on the brown corduroy sofa, squashy pillows around her, Dolly in her lap, and sipped a Virgin Mary. Dinner smelled divine—basil, garlic, Parmigiano-Reggiano. “I like your open kitchen, so we can talk while you cook,” she said.

He smiled over his shoulder. “Would you reconsider moving in with me? You have an open invitation.”

She frowned. “Rob, you promised. For the hundredth time, I don’t want to move in with you. I’ve told you over and over: I’ll never live with anyone. You know I love my apartment. I’ll never move out of it—I expect to live there when I’m old and gray.”

“I keep thinking you’ll change your mind,” he said.

“I’ll never change my mind. I wish you’d stop bringing it up—you know I hate it. Let’s change the subject. Did you see Heyward when you were in London?” The subject of her half-brother was uncomfortable but a lot better than Rob’s trying to push her in a direction that didn’t interest her.

Rob set the colander of cooked pasta in the sink to drain and turned to look at her.

“Yes, ma’am, I certainly did. He asked about you. I told him about
First Home
,
and he asked me to congratulate you. It would have been nice if you’d
told him about it, since his money enabled you to buy it.” He poured the drained
spaghetti into a big cream-colored pottery bowl, adding tiny steamed green beans and sliced boiled new potatoes from another pot. When he stirred in the pesto sauce, the scent of basil and garlic grew stronger.

Coleman’s mouth watered. Rob’s words had stung her conscience but hadn’t cooled her appetite.

“I know. I’m embarrassed I haven’t written him. I would have, if it weren’t for Simon. I hate the thought of that creep reading my letters,” she said.

“You’re safe on that score. Simon’s been in a Swiss clinic since a week or so after the night he was injured. Getting beaten with a baseball bat repeatedly by a lunatic is no joke. He had a lot of bones broken in his face—cheeks, nose, chin—and in both hands, and all his front teeth were smashed. Heyward says he’ll be in the clinic for months. He’s lucky to be alive. Meanwhile, Heyward’s bought a house in London and visits Simon on weekends. He says he can’t take Switzerland except in small doses, but it sounds to me like it’s Simon he can’t take. I think Heyward’s lost interest in that jerk but feels obliged to help him.”

This was welcome news, if true. “Do you mean Heyward may be breaking off his friendship with Simon?” Coleman asked.

“I think he would if Simon weren’t in such desperate straits, both physically and financially. Heyward now knows how awful Simon is, and he’s embarrassed that he was so taken in by him. When he apologized to all of us for defending Simon, believing we were wrong about that creep, I was the only one who responded. I feel sorry for Heyward—so smart about so much but completely fooled by Simon.

“I think Rachel has softened toward Heyward—he’s helping her straighten out the financial mess Simon made. Simon owes Rachel a lot of money, which he has no intention of paying—probably doesn’t have it. Meanwhile, they’re still legally bound together in the ownership of the Ransome gallery, which means
she
still has to pay him,” Rob said.

Coleman thought about the changes of attitude toward her half-brother. If both Rob and Rachel had decided to forgive Heyward, she should at least try
.
With Simon out of the way, maybe she and Heyward could be friends. “Is Heyward coming to New York anytime soon?” she asked.

Rob shook his head. “He’s kept his house here, but he didn’t mention plans to visit. I’m sure he’d come if you invited him.”

“Is dinner nearly ready? I’m starved,” Coleman said. More pressure. But maybe the pressure wasn’t coming from Rob this time. Maybe her conscience—her own personal Jiminy Cricket—was telling her it was time to heal old wounds, to forget the past, and move on.

Heyward hadn’t known of her existence until he was thirty-one and she was twenty-seven, but he
could
have known, if he’d bothered to look at the family papers. Coleman hadn’t known family papers existed, let alone a half-brother. She’d learned Heyward was her half-brother only a few months ago. Her mother had given birth to a son before she married Coleman’s father. Coleman had never had more than a few brief conversations with Heyward, but she couldn’t help feeling angry knowing that when she and Dinah had been so poor, he was already a billionaire. He could have made their lives much easier.

She had to admit that after he moved to New York last year, he’d been more than generous to her, and he
was
her closest relative. Her only relative other than Dinah. Coleman didn’t care if Heyward was gay, but she despised Simon, with whom he’d been infatuated. Maybe she’d write to Heyward and thank him for all he’d done for her, all he’d made possible. Right now, she’d concentrate on the pasta.

“Food’s fabulous,” she said.

He smiled. “I could be your full-time cook. Could start with breakfast tomorrow, if you’ll stay over.”

Coleman took a deep breath. She’d had enough. “Get off it, Rob. I don’t eat breakfast. I sleep in my own apartment. Anyway, I have work to do—I’m leaving right after dinner,” she said.

Rob sighed and poured himself another glass of Chianti Classico.

Back in her apartment, Coleman put aside the article she was editing and thought about Rob. Why
wouldn’t
he be her friend? Until he’d started nagging her about staying over, living with him—all the stuff she’d told him she didn’t want to hear—she’d planned to tell him about the letter offering to buy her magazines. She’d wanted to know what he thought about it. She
needed
him as a friend. He’d ruined this evening by his insisting on more than she could ever give him. Oh well, she hadn’t heard any more from Colossus. Maybe Jonathan had persuaded them to leave her alone. Maybe she’d meet another man, a male friend to whom she could turn for help and advice, who didn’t want to marry her, or change her into someone else. A mommy in Darien? Never. She had too much to do.

Bethany and Zeke were celebrating Zeke’s promotion at
ArtSmart
with a special Saturday night dinner at his apartment. Zeke had told her he’d arranged several surprises for her. Bethany loved Zeke’s surprises and couldn’t wait to see what he was up to. She had a surprise for him, too, but she was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like it. She hated making him unhappy. Most of the time Zeke was the happiest person she knew. He was lucky and was grateful for his good fortune—his family, his financial security, and for Bethany’s company.

Zeke lived alone in a big Central Park West apartment with a spectacular view of the park. He was the only child and grandchild of a well-off and doting Long Island family, who gave him everything he ever thought of wanting, and a lot he hadn’t thought of. But he wasn’t spoiled—far from it. He worked like a beaver, smiling all the time. He was sweet as strawberry shortcake, and lots of fun. Plenty smart, too. Bethany was in love with him, although she certainly hadn’t expected to be when she first went out with him nearly five months ago. She hadn’t seen how anything permanent could come of their relationship then, and she still didn’t, but she’d decided to enjoy being with him while it lasted.

She let herself in and hung her coat in the foyer. Surprise number one: the apartment was full of roses—white, pink, yellow, golden; large and small; buds and full blossoms; in vases and bowls and pots. Every room looked and smelled glorious. Something cooking smelled good, too. Roast duck? That meant Zeke’s cook was here, although she didn’t normally come in on weekends. Bethany had thought Zeke would have a restaurant meal delivered by one of those waiters in black tie from At Your Service. Wherever the food came from, Zeke didn’t cook it; Zeke couldn’t heat pizza in the microwave without burning it. Good in the kitchen he was not—but nearly everywhere else he was superb. She smiled, thinking about the many ways he pleased her.

Zeke emerged from the kitchen, resplendent in a brown velvet smoking jacket and a cream-colored silk shirt. Another surprise—he was a crewneck sweater and khakis kind of guy. He grabbed her and kissed her hard. None of those polite little pecks on the cheek for Zeke: he was a great kisser. When he came up for air, he said, “Like the roses?”

“Love ‘em. Love your outfit, too. You look like you walked out of a Cary Grant movie. And what about those kitchen smells? What’s cookin’? And
who’s
cookin’? I thought Hattie was off tonight.”

He grinned, his cute-ugly face lighting up. “Hattie came, cooked, and went. I wanted to be alone with you, so we’re serving ourselves. Hey, I like what you’re wearing. New?”

That was another good thing about Zeke: he always noticed her clothes. He loved her arty wardrobe, which she pieced together from ethnic shops and thrift stores and remnants. Her cloth-of-gold dress barely covered her long legs, and its halter neckline exposed a lot of bosom. The fabric was expensive, but she hadn’t needed much, and Coleman had helped her make the dress. Coleman, who’d sewed since she was a child and began designing her own clothes and a lot of Dinah’s when they were in high school, encouraged Bethany’s experiments and helped with the tough parts. She and Coleman and Dinah were all clothes-crazy, and proud of it.

“I wanted to show off all the topaz and cat’s eye and amber jewelry you give me. See, I’m wearin’ the earrings you gave me for Christmas, and one of the necklaces. You keep tellin’ me you’re tryin’ to match my eyes, and now I’m matchin’ back,” Bethany said.

“God, Bethany, what an opening! I planned to wait till after dinner, but I can’t. I want to give you this.” He took a black velvet box out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

She opened the box and stared at the ring inside. The metal was gold, the enormous stone a clear golden yellow, surrounded by lighter yellow stones.

“Good heavens, Zeke. I’ve never seen anything like this—it’s gorgeous.”

“It’s a canary diamond, with yellow diamonds around it. It’s an engagement ring. Will you marry me, Bethany? I love you so much.”

Bethany had read that when a person was about to die, her whole life flashed before her eyes. She wasn’t about to die, unless you could die of joy, but her head was spinning, and she saw pictures unreeling in her head. Herself as a child playing with her cousins and Dinah and Coleman in the clear brown shallows of the river that ran through Slocumb Corners, North Carolina, where they lived. The Byrd matriarch, Aunt Mary Louise: tall, ageless, benevolent, in a bright red caftan and turban. The family massed around her—cousins, aunts, her mother. The country school she’d attended. The simple white church where she and her family worshipped, and the lawn around it where they had picnics after Sunday services. The cemetery where her father was buried. The scent of the air—pine trees, honeysuckle, magnolias. The tiny cottage where her mother lived alone since Bethany left for college, and, later, New York.

“What is it, Bethany?” Zeke asked, his voice strained. “Please don’t say no. Don’t you love me?”

She looked up at him, her eyes wet. “Oh, Zeke, I do love you, you know I do. But we can’t get
married
. It would never work.”

He smiled. “Give me a list of all the reasons it won’t work. I bet they’re paper tigers.”

“Well, there’s your family—”

Zeke laughed. “Oh, they’ve known for months I was going to marry you, if you’d have me.”

Her eyes widened. “They did? Did you ask them if it was all right?”

“No, idiot, I’m thirty-three, I don’t need anyone’s permission to get married. I told them almost as soon as I met you that I was in love with you, and after they met you, they were in love with you, too. They’ve been urging me to marry you, but I didn’t want to ask you until I was pretty sure you’d say yes—don’t tell me I’m wrong! My parents are wild about you, and thrilled their only son is finally ready to settle down. They have visions of grandbabies dancing in their heads.”

She shook her head. “But you’re white and I’m not. They can’t like that.”

“No, you’re not white—you’re an absolutely gorgeous shade of golden brown. My parents are leftover hippies, card-carrying liberals. They’ve marched for every cause, they’ve done their best to try to make things right wherever they’ve seen injustice, and they practice what they preach. They’re thrilled at the prospect of a nonwhite daughter-in-law, especially if that potential daughter-in-law is wonderful in every way and named Bethany Byrd.”

“You’re Jewish, and my family has this unusual religion—”

“My family isn’t religious, and they think your religion sounds interesting. They’d like to know more about it. Is it really based on some kind of voodoo, like Coleman says?”

Bethany laughed. “No, Coleman’s teasin’ when she says that. She loves my church; she tried to join it when she was five, and she’s always been a tiny bit huffy she wasn’t welcomed with open arms. They
would
have welcomed her if she’d been bigger and older—we admit members by Baptism—submersion—and she was way too little. We believe in old-time religion. Did you ever see Judith Jamison dancin’
Revelations
with the Alvin Ailey ballet? It’s like that: music, clappin’, lovin’, weepin’, dancin’, swayin’. We eat a lot of meals together—picnics and potluck dinners at the church. We believe in faith, family, and miracles. If we got married, you wouldn’t have to embrace our religion, just respect it. But you would have to change your name—you know that. You’d become a Byrd? Your family won’t care?”

Bethany had described this family custom when they first met as a matter of interest, not with any thought that it would ever arise between them. The Byrds were matriarchal, and they believed that having the same family name bound them closer together. The custom originated in Africa, but it became a rule in the time of slavery, when slaves were named after their owners. Her female ancestors hadn’t liked the takeover of their identities, and they’d adopted a secret name.

The name was originally an African word that meant Bird; it was a code name, as in “free as a bird.” After the Civil War, their name was no longer secret, and they changed it to the more usual way of spelling a surname. To her family “Byrd” still meant freedom, and paradoxically, tied them closer together in a loving and loyal clan.

He grinned. “Mom and Dad don’t care about that, either, and I’d be proud to be a Byrd. I’ve always wanted to be part of a big family, like the Waltons. I’ve watched a lot of reruns of that show.”

“And you’re rich, and I’m poor,” she said, still tearful.

“My family isn’t big rich like the Hathaways or Heyward Bain. We’re comfortable, and we live well. But being rich isn’t important to us, and the family has given away a lot of money to education and other causes. You and I and our children won’t inherit a great fortune, but you don’t care, do you? We’ll both keep working, won’t we?”

She stared at him. She almost believed that this could happen. “I’d never stop workin’—don’t know how. That part’s fine. But we’d have to go to North Carolina to ask Aunt Mary Louise’s permission. And she’ll want me to get married in our church in Slocumb Corners.”

“I’d expected to ask somebody for your hand, I don’t care where we get married, and I’ve been angling for an invitation to North Carolina to meet your family ever since we first went out in November. Anything else? If you’ll just say yes, I can put this ring on your finger, we can eat the duck that’s waiting in the oven, and then you can show me how you get out of that dress.”

“Oh, yes—dear, dear Zeke.” She held out her hand, and he slipped the ring on her finger.

Later, she told him Dinah had confided that after the financial crisis was over, she planned to reduce the amount of time she spent at the gallery, and Bethany might be running the gallery a lot sooner than she’d anticipated.

Zeke looked surprised. “What’s she going to do?” he asked.

“More research, more writing, look for a Midtown apartment. Jonathan’s movin’ his office to Midtown, and they both want to be able to walk to work,” Bethany said.

“Do you think this mess at DDD&W has put her off corporate work completely?” Zeke asked.

“Absolutely. She says if we’re ever offered another corporate art contract, she wants me to handle it, or we’ll hire somebody. She hates DDD&W, and it got worse today. She’s been thrown out of the place. Loretta and I are takin’ over the print-hanging project.”

Just as she’d expected, she could tell from his expression that he didn’t like it a bit. He thought it was dangerous, but he’d never tell her not to do it. Zeke wasn’t like that—if he’d been domineering and overprotective like Jonathan, she’d never have gone out with him more than once or twice, never mind living with him. She looked at her ring again and thought she was going to burst she was so happy.