Read The Cradle Will Fall Online
Authors: Mary Higgins Clark
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Thrillers, #Suspense
BILL Kennedy rang the bell of the Lewis house. Tall, prematurely
white, and scholarly, Bill was an orthopedic surgeon at Lenox
Hill Hospital. He had not heard about Vangie Lewis' death until
he returned home.
Briefly Molly had told him about it. "I called and asked Chris
to come to dinner. He doesn't want to, but you go drag him here."
As he walked between the houses, Bill considered what a shock
it would be to come home and find he had lost Molly. But no one
in his right mind could think that the Lewises' marriage had been
anything like his and Molly's. Bill had never told Molly that one
morning when he was having coffee at a drugstore in Manhattan
he'd seen Chris with a very pretty girl in her early twenties.
Chris Lewis opened the door, and Bill saw the sadness in his
eyes. He gripped the younger man's arm. "I'm terribly sorry."
Chris nodded woodenly. The meaning of the day was sinking
in on him. Vangie was dead. Had their quarrel driven her to kill
herself? He felt lonely, frightened and guilty. He allowed Bill to
persuade him to come to dinner. Numbly reaching for a jacket, he
followed Bill down the street.
Bill poured him a double Scotch. Chris gulped it. Calm down,
he thought, calm down. Be careful.
The Kennedy kids came into the den to say good night. Nice
kids, all of them. Well behaved too. Chris had always wanted
children. But not Vangie's. Now his unborn child had died. Another
guilt. His child, and he hadn't wanted it. And Vangie had
known it. What had, who had driven her to kill herself? Who? That
was the question. Because Vangie hadn't been alone last night.
He hadn't told the police. They would start an investigation.
And where would that lead? To Joan. To him.
The motel clerk in New York had seen him leave last night. He'd
gone home to have it out with Vangie. Let me go, please. I can't
spend any more of my life with you. It's destroying both of us.
He'd arrived at the house sometime after midnight. He'd driven
in, and the minute he opened the garage door he knew something
was up. Because she'd parked the Lincoln in his space. No, someone
else had parked her car in his space. Vangie always used the
wider side of the garage. And she needed every inch. She was a
lousy driver. But last night the Lincoln had been expertly parked
in his spot on the narrower side.
He'd gone in and found the house empty. Vangie's handbag was
on the chaise in their room. He'd been puzzled but not alarmed.
Obviously she'd gone off with a girl friend to stay overnight, taking
a suitcase and leaving her heavy purse behind.
The house had depressed Chris. He'd decided to go back to
the motel. And then this morning he'd found Vangie dead. Somebody
had parked the car for her before midnight. Somebody had
driven her home after midnight. And those shoes. The one day
she'd worn them she'd complained endlessly about how the right
shoe dug into her ankle.
For weeks now she'd worn nothing but those dirty moccasins.
Where were they? Chris had searched the house thoroughly. Whoever
had driven her home might know.
He hadn't told the police any of this. He hadn't wanted to involve
Joan. Besides, maybe the shoes really weren't that important.
Vangie might have wanted to be fully dressed when she was found.
That swollen leg embarrassed her.
But he should have told the cops about his having been here,
about the way the car was parked.
"Chris, come into the dining room. You'll feel better if you eat
something." Molly's voice was gentle.
Wearily Chris brushed a hand over burning eyes. "I'll have
something, Molly," he said. "But I'll have to leave pretty quickly.
The funeral director is coming to the house for Vangie's clothes."
"When is the funeral?" Bill asked.
"The coffin will be flown to Minneapolis tomorrow afternoon,
and the service will be the next day." The words hammered in his
ears. Coffin. Funeral. Oh, Vangie, he thought, I wanted to be free
of you, but I didn't want you to die.
At eight he went back to his house. At eight thirty, when the
funeral director came, he had a suitcase ready with underwear
and the flowing caftan Vangie's parents had sent her for Christmas.
The funeral director was quietly sympathetic. He requested
the necessary information quickly. Born April 15. He jotted down
the year. Died February 15—just two months short of her thirty-
first birthday, he commented.
Chris rubbed the ache between his eyes. Something was wrong.
"No," he said. "Today's the sixteenth, not the fifteenth."
"The death certificate clearly states that Mrs. Lewis died be
tween eight and ten last night, February fifteenth," the man said.
"You're thinking the sixteenth because you found her this morn
ing. But the medical examiner pinpointed the time of death."
Chris stared at him. Waves of shock swept over him. He had
been home at midnight and the car and Vangie's purse had been
here. He'd assumed that Vangie had come in and killed herself
sometime after he drove back to New York.
But at midnight she'd been dead two to four hours. That meant
that after he'd left, someone had brought her body here, put it
on the bed and laid the empty glass beside it. Someone had wanted
to make it seem that Vangie had committed suicide.
"Oh, Lord," Chris whispered. At the last moment Vangie must
have known. Someone had forced that poison into her, viciously
killed her and the baby she was carrying.
He had to tell the police. And there was one person they would
inevitably accuse. As the funeral director stared at him, Chris
said aloud, "They're going to blame it on me."
DR. HIGHLEY hung up the phone slowly. Katie DeMaio suspected
nothing. Her office apparently wanted nothing more of
him than to discuss Vangie Lewis' emotional state. Unless, of
course, someone had questioned Vangie's apparent suicide, perhaps
raised the possibility that her body had been moved. The
danger was still great.
He was in the library of the Westlake home—his home now.
The house was a manorlike Tudor with archways, marble fireplaces
and Tiffany stained-glass windows. The Westlake house. The
Westlake Hospital. The Westlake Maternity Concept. The name
had given him immediate entree, socially and professionally.
Marrying Winifred Westlake and coming to America to carry on
her father's work had been a perfect excuse for leaving England.
No one, including Winifred, knew about the years before Liverpool,
the years at Christ Hospital in Devon.
Toward the end she had started to ask questions.
It was nearly eleven o'clock and he hadn't had dinner yet.
Knowing what he was going to do to Edna had robbed him of the
desire to eat. But now that it was over, he craved food. He went
into the kitchen. Hilda had left dinner for him in the microwave
oven—a Cornish hen with wild rice. He just needed to heat it up.
Because he needed the freedom of the house, the privacy of
his library, he'd gotten rid of Winifred's live-in housekeeper. She
had looked at him with sour, sullen eyes, swollen with weeping.
"Miss Winifred was almost never sick until. . ." She was going to
say "until she married you," but she didn't finish.
Winifred's cousin resented him too. He had tried to make
trouble after Winifred's death, but couldn't prove anything. They'd
dismissed the cousin as a disgruntled ex-heir.
Selecting a chilled bottle of wine from the refrigerator, Highley
sat down to eat in the breakfast room. As he ate, his mind ran
over the exact dosage he would give Katie DeMaio. Traces of
the heparin and the Coumadin might show in her bloodstream if
there were a thorough autopsy. But he could circumvent that.
Before going to bed, he went out to the foyer closet. He'd get
those moccasins safely into his bag now. Reaching into one pocket
of the Burberry, he pulled out a misshapen moccasin. Expectantly
he put his free hand in the other pocket—first matter-offactly,
then rummaging frantically. Finally he pawed through
the overshoes stacked on the closet floor.
At last he stood up, staring at the battered moccasin he was
holding. The right one. The one he had tugged off Vangie's right
foot. Hysterically he began to laugh.
Somehow in the dark the moccasin had fallen out of his pocket.
The one he'd found after crawling around in the parking lot like
a dog was the one he'd already had. Somewhere the left moccasin
that Vangie Lewis had been wearing was waiting to trace her
footsteps back to him.
KATIE had set the clock radio for six a.m., but she was wide
awake long before. Her sleep had been troubled; several times
she'd almost started to jump up, frightened by a vague, worrisome
dream. Shivering, she adjusted the thermostat, then ran to the
kitchen, quickly made coffee and took a cup back upstairs to bed.
Propped against the pillows, the comforter wrapped around her,
she eagerly sipped as the heat of the cup warmed her fingers.
"That's better," she murmured. "Now, what's the matter with me?"
She glanced into the mirror of the antique mahogany dresser
opposite the bed. Her hair was tousled. The bruise under her eye
was now purple tinged with yellow. Her eyes were swollen with
sleep. I look like something the cat dragged in, she reflected.
But it was more than the way she looked. It was a heavy feeling
of apprehension. Had she dreamed that queer, frightening nightmare
again? She couldn't be sure.
Vangie Lewis. It seemed impossible that anyone would choose
to kill her by forcing cyanide down her throat. She simply didn't
believe Chris Lewis was capable of that kind of violence.
She thought of Dr. Highley's call. That damn operation. Well,
at least she was getting it over with. Check in Friday night. Operation
Saturday, home Sunday. At work Monday. No big deal.
As she sipped her coffee, she glanced instinctively at John's picture.
A handsome, grave-looking man with gentle, penetrating
eyes. Maybe Richard was right. Maybe she was keeping a deathwatch.
John would be the first one to blast her for that.
A hot shower picked up her spirits. She had a plea-bargaining
session scheduled for nine, a sentencing at ten and Friday's trial
to prepare for. I'd better get a move on, she thought.
She dressed quickly, selecting a soft brown wool skirt and a
turquoise silk shirt with long sleeves that covered the bandage on
her arm. The car from the service station arrived as she finished a
second coffee. She took the driver back and drove to the office.
It had been a busy night in the county. There had been a
drunken-driving accident resulting in four deaths, and two armed
robberies.
Scott Myerson was just coming out of his office. "Lovely night,"
Katie observed.
He nodded. "Look, I'm interested in the psychiatrist Vangie
Lewis was going to. I'd like his opinion of her mental state. I can
send Phil, but a woman would be less noticeable over there."
Katie hesitated. "Maybe I can help out. Dr. Highley is my
gynecologist. I actually have an appointment with him today. Perhaps
I could see Dr. Fukhito before or after."
Scott's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "What do you think of
Highley? Richard made some crack yesterday about Vangie's condition;
seemed to think that he was taking chances with her."
Katie shook her head, "I don't agree. Highley's specialty is difficult
pregnancies. That's the point. He tries to save the babies other
doctors lose." She thought of his phone call to her. "I can vouch
for the fact that he's a very concerned doctor."
Scott frowned. "How long have you known him?"
"Not long. My sister, Molly, has a friend who raves about Dr.
Highley, so I went to see him last month." She remembered his
words. "You're quite right to have come," he'd said. "I think of the
womb as a cradle that must always be kept in good repair." The
one thing that had surprised her was that he did not have a nurse
in attendance during the examination, unlike other gynecologists.
"All right," Scott said. "Talk to Highley. And the shrink too.
Find out whether or not they think she was capable of suicide.
See if she talked about her husband. Charley and Phil are checking
on Chris Lewis now. Talk to the nurses too."
"Not the nurses." Katie smiled. "The receptionist, Edna. She
knows everybody's business. I wasn't in the waiting room two
minutes before I found myself giving her my life history."
Katie went into her office for her files, then rushed to her appointment
with a defense attorney about an indicted defendant.
From there she hurried to a second-floor courtroom to hear the
sentencing of a youth she had prosecuted for armed robbery.
When she returned, she had two messages to call Dr. Carroll.
She tried to reach him, but he was out on a case.
She phoned Dr. Highley's office fully expecting to hear the
nasal warmth of Edna's voice. But whoever answered was a
stranger. "Doctors' offices."
Katie decided to ask for Edna. "Is Miss Burns there?"
"She called in sick today. I'm Mrs. Fitzgerald."
Katie realized then how much she had counted on talking to
Edna. Briefly she explained that Dr. Highley expected her to
call for an appointment and that she'd also like to see Dr. Fukhito.
Mrs. Fitzgerald put her on hold a few minutes, and then said, "Dr.
Fukhito is free at a quarter to four. Dr. Highley would prefer three
o'clock if it is convenient."
Katie confirmed the appointments, then turned to the work on
her desk. At lunchtime Maureen Crowley, one of the office secre
taries, popped her head in and offered to bring Katie a sandwich.
Deep in preparation for Friday's trial, Katie nodded.
"Ham on rye with mustard and lettuce," Maureen said.
Katie looked up, surprised. "Am I that predictable?"
The girl was about nineteen, with a mane of red-gold hair,
emerald-green eyes and a lovely pale complexion. "Katie, about
food you're in a rut." The door closed behind her.
You're on a deathwatch. You're in a rut. Katie was astonished
to realize she was close to tears. I must be sick if I'm getting this
thin-skinned, she thought.
When the lunch arrived she ate it, only vaguely aware of what
she was having. Vangie Lewis' face was constantly before her.
But why had she seen it in a nightmare?