CHAPTER 43
A
t nearly the same moment, Amy was facing nearly the same choice. Should she stay frozen in place, following Maury's orders, hoping for Marcus to return? That was her usual way of dealing with danger. Marcus had been texting someone. Was it the police? Should she just wait for things to work out? Or should she force herself to do . . . she didn't know what, but something to help get her mother, wherever she was, back to safety, wherever that was?
Just like Marcus, she knew it wasn't really a choice.
She took her first steps, baby steps, gaining confidence with every extra foot away from the fountain. She didn't dare call out his name, but Marcus had gone in this direction. There must have been a reason. He'd seen something or heard something. Her hearing and eyesight were as good as his, at least with her glasses on. If he could notice a clue, so could she. She took a deep breath now and tried to focus.
The night air was still. The wind that had gusted off the river an hour before was gone. The usual staccato blare of taxis from Hudson Street might have distracted a nonâNew Yorker, but to her ear they were barely audible, like soft city crickets. Amy began to take the meandering path from the Grove Street side around to the Bleecker side. This backyard park was her childhood playground, a safe haven where she'd played cops and robbers with Billy and Juan and Heather from across the way. Now she was tracking down a real killer in the same shadowy darkness, listening for any soft footfall or . . .
She actually saw Maury, at least a glimpse of him, before she heard him.
There were two iron gates that opened into the garden, one on the Barrow side, one on the Grove side, each eight feet tall, with ornamental spikes on top. They'd been designed to give entry to the gardeners and the maintenance crew. Each was at the end of a narrow alley between two of the row houses. Amy was still on the path, just passing the alley on her own street, when her eye caught a movement, a silhouette at the alley's end, flickering in the light of a streetlamp. She stopped in her tracks.
The silhouette was facing the iron bars and the street beyond, bent over at the waist. The wise thing for Amy would have been to stay put, maybe take a secluded position behind one of the boxwoods, and wait it out. No way could anyone get in or out without the four-digit combination. Either Marcus or the police would arrive soon and take control. But the thought of a killer invading the safety of her garden, of Fanny in that room with the gag in her mouth . . . It was enough to lead her to the entrance of the dark alley.
“Where is she?” Amy kept her voice low. No reason to disturb the neighbors. Mrs. Montague, the home owner on the left, was a particularly light sleeper. “I kept my part of the bargain, Maury. Where's my mother?”
The figure straightened and turned. Maury saw her and let out a long, rueful chuckle, which took her by surprise. “I've had the damnedest time. Your house is locked. His front door is lockedâon the inside, no less. I thought this would be easier.”
“Whose front door? Is Fanny with someone? Is she safe?”
Maury ignored the questions. “Be a sweetheart and tell me the combination.” His silhouette adjusted its right shoulder, taking the handgun from a jacket pocket and leveling it in her direction. “Better yet, come here. Unlock it for me.”
Amy stood her ground. “The police are on their way. There's no way out.” When Maury didn't respond, she continued, her voice filling the narrow alley. “Too many people know. They have a copy of the note.”
The silhouette seemed thrown, but for only a second. “A copy? So what? Any good defense attorneyâ”
“Too late, Maury. You kidnapped my mother. That's kidnapping.”
The five-second pause that followed took forever. “So what?” he finally said. “It's my word against yours.”
Amy couldn't believe his gall. “And my mother's word. You didn't shoot her. I would have heard. The whole block would have heard.”
Please let this be true
, she silently begged.
“Maybe I should have,” he replied with a shoulder shrug, and Amy's heart skipped a beat.
Still alive.
“Unlock the gate, and I'll tell you where she is.”
“Why should I trust you? Give up before it gets worse.”
“Worse? I don't see how. Goddamn MacGregor. âConfession is good,'” he chirped in a prim, thin voice. “âNo harm writing it down, Mr. S. For your own peace of mind.' Well, guess what, MacGregor? There was harm.”
“There's a statute of limitations on art fraud,” Amy said, trying to sound sincere. “If you give yourself up . . .”
“Who are you kidding? You know about the murders. Your mother said . . .”
“My mother says a lot of things.”
Maury's groan reverberated off the walls. “You meddling bitch. You knew about the letter from the beginning. And everything else. I don't know how you knew, but . . .”
“I don't mean to meddle,” Amy apologized. Why was she apologizing? “I honestly don't. Things just happen.”
“Luckily, I took out cash. Plus, I have accounts from the old days. All I need is to get out of this damn yard.” He tossed his head back against the bars, banging them in frustration.
“What about Laila? What about your life?”
“I won't have a life unless I get out of this yard.”
“You have to give yourself up.”
The gunshot took her by surprise, loud as a cannon, ricocheting off the bricks in two bright sparks. Amy fell to her knees, her ears ringing, her heart racing. “Nine-two-eight-seven. Nine-two-eight-seven.” She couldn't hear a thing she was sayingâno, shouting. “Nine-two-eight-seven.”
Maury might have said something in reply. Or not. His silhouette turned to the gate and bent again at the waist.
If Amy had been braver or more reckless or hadn't been battling instant deafness and a heart rate of two hundred beats, she might have pounced to her feet and done something, like a superhero. She might have run the alley, the length of a house, and propelled herself onto Maury's back, slamming him into the gate and knocking him unconscious. Instead, she stayed on her knees and watched as the gate opened. Only then did she get up and follow him through the tunnel-like alley.
By the time Amy emerged onto Barrow, Maury was nearly to the corner of Houston, turning left. When Amy turned the corner onto Houston, she saw him in the middle of the block, standing in the bus lane, hand raised to hail a taxi. He looked perfectly normal and relaxed now, not even bothering to look behind him.
Amy didn't know what she was prepared to do. The gun was in his jacket, she supposed. She could tackle him right there. Or she could shout to the trickle of passersby, “Stop that man! He's a killer!” But would anyone pay attention? How about just, “Stop that man!” Or would they pay too much attention? Would Maury panic and pull out the gun? He was irrational enough. Would she be responsible for more people getting killed?
A taxi arrived in the next wave of traffic, its sign lighting up as it slowed and pulled past Maury to the corner of Barrow. He followed it back and stopped for just a second as he noticed Amy, twenty feet away, staring at him. Their eyes locked, and precious seconds ticked away.
The passenger exiting the cab was in an incredible hurry. The youngish man paid the driver, left the door open, and began heading toward the one-way neck of Barrow Street. Maury grabbed the cab door and was just stepping in when Amy finally mustered up the courage.
“Stop him! Before he gets away!” She was shouting at the passenger, no one else. “He's got a gun!”
The youngish man skidded to a halt, looked down Barrow Street, then back at Amy, then back at the cab, just about to pull off. He seemed to understand exactly what Amy had meant. Without even checking to see who had taken his place in the backseat, he raced to the front of the taxi, blocking its path, and lowered his palm down onto the hood with a thud.
The taxi driver slammed on his brakes, honked loud and long, and let out a string of curses in some unknowable language. He only stopped cursing when the passenger reached under his arm and pulled out a no-nonsense revolver. Taking a wide stance, the man established his presence, then stepped slowly over to the passenger side of the cab and eased open the door.
“Thank you.” Amy lifted both hands to her heart and took a deep breath.
A few seconds more and Maury Steinberg would have escaped, vanishing into the throngs of New York and the safety of his hidden bank accounts. But just like that and it was over. She had done it. She'd finally taken a risk, and the risk had paid off. She allowed herself to feel proud, but not too proud.
She couldn't allow herself to feel too proudâsince the gun-toting passenger just happened to be Lieutenant Rory Rawlings.
CHAPTER 44
B
eing kidnapped anywhere in the world is no fun. TrippyGirl should know. So far, in the history of this humble blog, I've been kidnapped in Dubai and Cleveland and shanghaied in Shanghai. Given all that, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when my Mongolian veterinarian heartthrob dropped me off in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, and within hours, I once again found myself being kidnapped.
It all started yesterday, after Arban had dropped me off at my hotel. I had grown quite fond of Arban during our few days togetherâand even fonder of Elvis, the baby yak that I had helped him deliver and give a name to. In my funk of sudden loneliness, I went out to a bar that night and got myself a little tipsyâsick on fermented mare's milk. When I finally stumbled back to my hotel, I was surprised to find a middle-aged, gray-haired burglar with gorgeous eyeglasses ransacking my five-star suite.
The saga devolved from there, until yours truly escaped and was forced to run across the hotel courtyard and take refuge with an Asian businessman named Douglas, whose door just happened to be unlocked and who grew to be quite upset by what unfolded in the next hour or so. It all endedâhappily, I'm glad to sayâwhen my sexy travel companion Mark broke in and cut us free from the four-hundred-count percale sheets that Douglas and I had been forced to cut up and use to tie each other up with. Woo, what a bunch of information and run-on sentences! So let me start at the beginning. Again.
Fanny glanced up from the laptop on her kitchen table and sighed, not at all pleased with the flow of her latest piece of fiction /nonfiction. “I feel like a prisoner of this thing,” she announced. “Two blogs a week and everybody wants more. And I keep getting demands to do videos, which is not going to happen.”
“Videos would be hard,” Amy agreed.
From over the top of her reading glasses, Fanny shot her daughter a bemused grin. Amy returned the grin and held a gaze directly into her mother's eyes for a few seconds longer than seemed comfortable, at least for Fanny. “What? Do I have something in my teeth?”
“No. I'm just glad you're alive. Can't I be glad you're alive?”
“And I'm glad you're glad, dear. But you don't have to make such a fuss. He was never going to kill me.”
“Well, I didn't know that. You had me worried sick.”
Fanny turned from Amy's uncomfortable stare to the garden window just in time to see her neighbor Douglas walking by on the path, puffing on an e-cigarette and scowling in the direction of her kitchen. “I think he blames me, like it's my fault. I already reimbursed him for the sheets. What more does the man want?”
“I believe he wants us to move. To another state.”
“Well, that's not going to happen.”
“It just might,” said Amy. She was at the other end of the kitchen table, combing through a raft of overdue invoices, bank statements, and threatening-looking “final notices” laid out in front of her. She'd barely gotten through a third of her mother's pile of neglected mail. If people were serious about final notices, she wondered, why did they always send out a dozen of them?
“Is it that bad?” asked Fanny, leaning across and looking suitably contrite.
Amy sipped her lukewarm coffee, wondering if it was time to put on another pot. “Not if we sell to Peter. He'll take over our debts and our lease. And with his cash, we can arrange to consolidate our home mortgage and our second mortgage. I'm just sorry you had to go through all of this alone, without telling me.” There was a note of reprimand in her voice.
“Oh, it wasn't hard, dear. I just ignored it. And your little murders helped keep my mind off it.”
Amy knew what she meant. As long as she'd had some life-and-death drama to be involved in, she had also put their financial woes out of sight, out of mind. “It'll all work out,” she said without mustering much enthusiasm.
“But we'll just be part of Peter's company, without even the name Abel. You don't suppose you can find another investor, dear? Someone who can give us money and leave us alone? That would be preferable.”
Amy scrunched her mouth, forming almost a pout. “We're not even going to find anyone to buy our assets, especially not the kind of deal Peter's offering. I don't know why he's doing it.”
“You don't?” Fanny regarded her with a skeptical tilt of the head.
“Okay, maybe I do.”
Amy was grateful when this suddenly uncomfortable conversation was interrupted by the ringing buzz of the new doorbell. “It's the security guy,” Fanny guessed. She pushed herself up to go answer the intercom by the door. “He's been tinkering and testing it all morning.” She pressed a button and spoke into the speaker. “Hello, Paulie. Yes, I can hear you.”
“Good morning, Fanny,” replied a familiar voice.
“Oh, Lieutenant. What a surprise. Paulie, let him in.”
Less than a minute later Rory Rawlings was sitting down in their kitchen, accepting a cup of ancient, warmed-up coffee fresh from the microwave. “New doors,” he said, blowing across the brown liquid. “Paulie says they're top of the line.”
“Insurance is paying for them,” said Fanny. “And as long as we're in the murder business, we thought we might as well add a video system.”
“Mom's kidding.”
Rawlings sipped and grimaced, then smiled. “No need to apologize. In fact, that's why I'm here, to bring you up to date on the murder business.”
Fanny had been waiting for this moment. “Did Maury confess? I knew he would. The man is such a bumbler. Couldn't even do a good kidnapping.”
“After five hours of interrogation, with a lawyer present, yes, he confessed. We may have implied a few things about the crime scene in India, which the lawyer didn't have the resources to check up on. But we got an ironclad admission to both murders.”
“I don't want to tell you your job, but isn't it against the law for cops to lie to a suspect in order to get a confession?” asked Amy.
“Whose side are you on? No, it's not against the law.”
“So it's really over?” Amy couldn't quite believe it.
Rawlings nodded. “The DA is arguing with the attorney general's office in India, but in all likelihood we'll get first crack. It's the international concept of finders keepers.”
Really over.
Amy wasn't sure how she felt. It was what she'd wanted, of course, what everyone had risked their lives for, but . . . “What about his wife, Laila? Have you been in touch with her?”
“We have,” said Rawlings. “We told her Mr. Steinberg had to stay in New York for a few days to help the police with their investigation. I believe that's a well-known euphemism for being a suspect. We haven't yet told her about the confession. I thought you should be the first to know.”
“Thank you,” said Amy. “If you don't mind, I'd like to be with you when you make that call. Laila and Maury have a rocky marriage, but I don't think it would be easy for any woman to hear that kind of news about her husband.”
“No problem.” Rawlings took another sip of the coffee and seemed to be getting used to the taste. “I have to say, I was pretty livid after our little excursion, until Marcus sent me that text. I was just sitting down with a cold beer, complaining to my wife about these goddamn amateurs.
Emergency. Marry kidnapped funny.
Being a police professional with some knowledge of AutoCorrect, it took me just a few seconds to figure it out.”
The lieutenant sat at the kitchen table for ten more minutes, chatting easily about AutoCorrect and families and gardens, and finally exchanging his coffee for a tall glass of ice water.
He wasn't such a bad guy, Amy concluded reluctantly as she stood to shake his hand and as Fanny gave a hearty hug good-bye to the man who had put her in jail. Not that they would ever need to deal with him again, Amy thought. Most people went through an entire lifetime without ever having to deal with a homicide detective.
By 12:15 p.m., Amy and Fanny were walking out the new front door themselves, inspecting Paulie's workmanship along the way. By 12:30, they were sitting down at the Cindilu Dairy, a neighborhood institution with weathered shingles, cats lounging in the window, and the best blueberry muffins in Greenwich Village.
Of the three messages left on Amy's voice mail last night, two had been from Barbara Corns, asking to get together sometime soon. Amy had called her this morning and had arranged for a quick lunch.
Barbara had never heard of the Cindilu. Few people outside the West Village had. But the modest eatery had been Amy's second home since childhood. It was a safe haven, perhaps not the perfect place to sit down with the widow of one of her clients, but better than any alternatives she could think of. Amy had brought along her mother for backup.
Barbara was in a back booth, the same one where Amy and her first real boyfriend had carved their initials in the tabletop fifteen years ago. Fanny slid in beside the waiting woman, just like an old friend.
“I'm so glad you came,” said Barbara, more to the mother than the daughter. Amy had long ago ceased to be amazed at Fanny's gravitational pull.
The Abels had agreed not to bring up their late-night adventures. At some point everyone on the tour would find out about Maury Steinberg's arrest. When that happened, they would pretend to be as clueless and as astonished as the others.
“How is the music box, dear?” asked Fanny, with a squeeze of Barbara's hand. “It must be comforting, having it back.”
“Yes,” said Barbara. “It was a lifesaver. Emotionally, I mean. Evan always regretted that we gave it away.”
“Has there been any news?” asked Amy. “About Evan?” She felt she had to ask.
Barbara waited until Lou Halpern, the establishment's co-owner, the “lu” of Cindilu, delivered the menus and glasses of water and walked away. Lou was an old friend, but he had a sixth sense about when to speak up and when to shut up. And there was something about the Abel women and their solemn-looking guest....
“As a matter of fact,” Barbara whispered as Lou vanished into the kitchen. “Almost all of yesterday I was going back and forth with the National Park Service and the Hawaii Police.” Taking a deep breath, she turned over the smartphone lying facedown on the wooden table, next to her menu. She pressed the screen a few times, used her fingers to enlarge whatever she'd just called up, and passed the phone across to Amy.
It was a photo of a dark brown object, almost completely burned. But judging from the general shape . . . a shoe, perhaps? A man's shoe? It was on a metal table, posing ominously under the glare of operating roomâquality lights. Amy had never paid much attention to Evan Corns's choices in footwear, but . . .
“Where did they find it?” she asked.
“Some student researchers from some organization . . . the Volcano Observatory, I think.” Barbara spoke calmly, enunciating each word, doing her best to keep her feelings in check. “They were collecting samples from inside the lip of the crater. Rappelling on ropes, something like rappelling. I'm fuzzy on the details. My mind at that moment . . . You can imagine.”
“A burned shoe,” said Fanny, with a reassuring shrug. “So what? I lose shoes all the time. That doesn't mean there was a foot in it.”
“There was a foot in it,” said Barbara, enunciating even more. “At least part of a foot. They ran the DNA from that sample they took from Evan's toothbrush.” Her expression finished the rest of the thought.
“Oh, Barbara,” Amy whispered. “I'm so sorry.”
“Oh, no. It's good. It's good to have some confirmation. Better than not.” She let out a little burp of a sad chuckle, then covered her mouth. “You're the first people I've told. When I break it to Evan's family, it'll become all too real. Too final. I think I'm going to miss having the hope.”
Mother and daughter nodded in unison. “At least you know he didn't run away,” said Fanny, which seemed to Amy to be an odd thing to point out, rather insensitive, but hardly atypical for her mother.
“Yes, I have that,” said Barbara, taking no offense whatsoever. “And it wasn't suicide, thank God. That's what the forensic investigators told me. The scuff marks. Their photos of the rock slide. The placement and calculating the distance. I don't know how they would know, but they're calling it accidental.”
“Suicide would have been so much worse,” Fanny said. “Especially since there was no reason for him to commit suicide nowânow that everything is working out. That would have been pointless. Such a waste.”
“Suicide is usually pointless,” said Amy.
“Yes, it is working out,” said Barbara, responding to Fanny and ignoring Amy. “And I'm so grateful to you.”
“Grateful for what?” Amy looked back and forth, from her mother's face to Barbara's, then back to her mother's. “What aren't you telling me?”
“Nothing,” Fanny said, perhaps a little too quickly.
“I mean, you've both been so nice to me,” explained Barbara, “throughout this whole ordeal.”
“That's not what you meant.” The only thing Amy could guess was that Barbara's gratitude had something to do with Paisley MacGregor's apartment and the few minutes when Barbara and her mother had been alone together, before she'd walked in. Just a few minutes, and yet . . .
“Mother?” No response from anyone. “I'm never going to get the whole story, am I?”
“No dear.” Fanny and her newfound conspirator exchanged quick glances. “I don't think you ever will.”