Hide Yourself Away (15 page)

  CHAPTER  
39

Tommy hung up the receiver and stared glumly at the phone as Detective Manzorella came into the squad room. Noticing the expression on the rookie’s face, Manzorella was pretty sure he could predict what the matter was. Tommy James’s obsession with Joss Vickers was no secret.

“Don’t tell me,” the detective said. “The Vickers girl shot you down again.”

“I don’t understand it,” Tommy sputtered, slamming his fist on the desk. “I do everything I can to please her, but she’s always making excuses about being too busy to see me.”

Manzorella put his hand on Tommy’s shoulder, feeling sorry for him. The kid just didn’t get it. Joss Vickers was never going to end up with a Newport cop. It didn’t work that way. With rare exceptions, the rich married their own.

“Stop wasting your time, Tommy,” Manzorella said. “There are lots of other fish in the sea. There are plenty of local girls who would be thrilled to go out with you, man.”

“But I don’t want them. I want Joss. I can’t forget the summer
we had.” The patrolman’s eyes welled up, and Manzorella looked away.

“Most of us have had beautiful summers with girls we’ll never forget, Tommy. But that doesn’t mean we end up going off into the sunset with them and living happily ever after. Guys like us don’t get the debutantes. They’ll have flings with us, but they don’t marry us.”

Tommy looked with interest at the detective. “You had someone in your life like Joss?”

“Yeah. A long time ago. I was a lifeguard at Bailey’s Beach, where her family had a membership. That time was magic. Lots of music and moonlight.”

“So you understand,” said Tommy.

“Yeah, I understand, kid. But when the summer was over, so was the relationship. That’s just the way things go. Take my advice, Tommy. You’ve got to get over Joss Vickers. You’re going nowhere with a girl like her.”

  CHAPTER  
40

Grace was certain that Joss shot her dagger eyes when she entered the ballroom work space with B.J. and Constance Young. Sam, though, was in no condition to be jealous of Grace’s proximity to power. He looked hungover, his eyes red-rimmed, as he guzzled a large bottled water. Zoe was nowhere to be seen.

B.J. sat down with the editor Dominick had scheduled for him, so Grace went over to join her peers. “Hi, you guys.”

The lack of enthusiasm in their responses was deafening.

“Nice catch this morning, calling in with the word on Madeleine Sloane,” Grace offered, trying to be upbeat and cordial. “How did you two know about it?”

“I have a friend on the Newport Police Department. He told me about it,” said Joss, her expression sullen. “But what good did it do me? B.J. has the hots for you, and you’re his fair-haired girl. You’re getting to do more than any of us, and I’m sick of it.” She turned her back on Grace and stalked away.

After a stunned pause, Grace looked at Sam.

“I was out there early this morning, and I saw her.” Sam groaned. “What a mess.”

“Oh,” said Grace, surprised at the happenstance and trying hard to act as if Joss’s cutting remarks hadn’t bothered her. “Were you jogging or something? Is that why you were on the Cliff Walk, Sam?”

“No. I wasn’t jogging. I was just out there.”

Sam would have almost felt sorry for Grace if she hadn’t been such competition. Joss was really dissing her, even though Grace hadn’t actually done anything wrong. It wasn’t Grace’s fault that B.J. liked her.

Watching Grace cross the newsroom and pull a chair up next to the producer at the portable editing bay, Sam wished there was a female producer who would take a liking to him. He wouldn’t be averse to playing up to her if it would help reach his goal. But Sam hadn’t observed anyone who seemed open to that possibility. He was going to have to do something else to set himself apart from the other interns.

Once he had made the call to the assignment desk, he’d taken off from the scene of Madeleine’s fall, before the police had time to spot him and ask him any questions. But Sam had
seen what he had seen the night before. That knowledge made him an eyewitness to murder.

He cracked open another bottle of water, knowing he could parlay his knowledge into an advantage. That knowledge would get him the assistant producer job he craved. Sam could distinguish himself from all the other interns.

  CHAPTER  
41

Like mother, like daughter. First, Charlotte; now, Madeleine.

One murder had followed another, the second predicated on the first.

Everyone would be looking for the link. It was just as crucial now as it had been fourteen years ago that the photo didn’t show up.

Another letter was in order. It was time to write it now and get it into Monday morning’s mail. The pen, held in the left hand to disguise the handwriting, glided over the plain white paper, adding two lines at the end to make the threat real.

I still have the wallet left behind in the playhouse the night Charlotte Sloane died. If you go to the police with the photo, I’ll produce the wallet. Who do you think the police will believe? You or me?

  CHAPTER  
42

Was that Lucy standing in the doorway?

Grace squinted, her heart beating faster. Yes. It
was
Lucy, and there were Frank and Jan standing behind her, searching the ballroom.

Grace wanted to slide beneath the table and hide, but she knew that wouldn’t work. She had to be a grown-up and face this head on.

“Excuse me, B.J. I’ll be right back.”

Lucy spotted her mother and called out. Heads around the ballroom turned in the direction of the young voice and watched as the child hugged her mother. Grace felt her face reddening.

“Hello, Frank. Hello, Jan,” she said over Lucy’s head, suddenly conscious of her unmade-up face and the tired T-shirt she
was wearing. Frank looked better than ever, lean and fit, his muscular forearms tanned beneath the sleeves of his golf shirt. Even though he repelled her at this point, Grace had to admit that Frank was a remarkable physical specimen. Though Lucy hadn’t inherited his piercing blue eyes, Grace was glad her daughter had her father’s straight nose and dazzling smile.

“How’s my Lucy?” she whispered as she hugged her daughter’s thin shoulders again.

Frank’s wife looked like she had just stepped out of a Talbots window, in her perfectly pressed khakis and kelly green cotton sweater tied just so over her shoulders. Jan’s smooth, bleached-blond hair was tied back with a black grosgrain ribbon, chosen to coordinate with the black band of her Movado watch and her soft Italian-leather sandals. Grace spotted the French pedicure on the new wife’s toes. It matched the manicured fingers that sported that honey of a diamond solitaire. Very prosperous, very put together, very pampered, very different from Grace.

“We checked in a little while ago and wanted to see if we could take you out to dinner,” Frank said. Lucy beamed.

Good going, Frank,
thought Grace.
Make it look like you’re Mr. Nice Guy in front of Lucy. You’re aiming to rip my heart out, but you’ll play the gracious dinner host.

“Gee, thanks very much, but I don’t know when I’ll be finished here. I don’t want to hold you up.”

“We can wait.” Grace felt the smugness in Frank’s voice.

“Yeah, Mom. We can wait.”

She was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. Though
Grace wanted to spend time with Lucy and hated to disappoint her daughter, the last thing she wanted was to spend the evening in a restaurant sitting across the table from Frank and his wife making polite small talk. She wanted to strangle Frank, not break bread with him. Yet if she used work as her excuse, it could just give Frank fuel for his argument that her career was going to make her inaccessible to Lucy.

“All right. I think I should be finished here around seven.”

“Great. The concierge told me there’s a good Italian restaurant not too far away from here. Let’s say seven-thirty at Sardella’s?”

“We’ll probably need a reservation,” Grace said, hoping that he wouldn’t be able to get one.

“I’ll talk to the concierge and make it happen.” Frank winked as he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. Obnoxious to the last.

  CHAPTER  
43

B.J. was pleased as he fed the edited package on Madeleine Sloane’s death on the satellite to New York with a half hour to spare before the
Evening Headlines
began. He was thinking about how good he would look to the higher-ups when Sam approached him.

“I need to talk with you,” the intern said.

“All right. Give me two minutes. I’m almost done here.”

B.J. held on to the telephone line until he got an all clear from the record room at the Broadcast Center in New York. Disconnecting, he turned to Sam. “What’s up?”

“I think I have something that could help the show tomorrow morning.”

The producer looked at Sam inquisitively.

“I was out there on the Cliff Walk last night. I saw what happened to Madeleine Sloane.”

“Jesus, man.” B.J. took hold of Sam’s arm. “What did you see?”

Sam looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think I should say yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I was thinking I could go on air tomorrow morning and tell what I saw then.”

The suggestion immediately raised B.J.’s suspicions. What was this kid pulling? Yet it would be a helluva coup to have an eyewitness as an exclusive interview on their first day in Newport.

“You know what, Sam? I think we need to talk to Nazareth about this.”

As they went to find
KTA’s
executive producer, the intern had to keep himself from smiling in satisfaction. This was exactly what he had wanted.

“Did you tell the police anything?” Linus asked.

“No.”

The executive producer was not perturbed. In fact, he was pleased.

“Well tell me, then. What did you see?”

“With all due respect, sir, I’d insist on saying it for the first time on the air tomorrow.”

Linus had to give this kid credit. He was manipulating the situation to his absolute best advantage. Just by this act of bravado and cunning, when the internship was completed, Sam had gotten Linus’s vote for the a.p. job. And his vote was the only vote that mattered.

The executive producer wished that he knew in advance what the kid was going to say, but not knowing wasn’t a deal breaker. After all, how did one ever know for certain what a person was going to say on live TV? In more than three decades in the business, Linus could remember more than one occasion where he’d been surprised with what a subject had said on air. Pre-interviews, done in advance of the on-air segments, usually gave an idea of what was going to be discussed. But there was absolutely no guarantee that an interviewee wouldn’t just have off and talk about something entirely different. That was what made live TV exciting.

If Sam had seen what happened to Madeleine Sloane, Linus wanted him to talk about it exclusively on
KTA.
Sam wanted the assistant producer job. Linus couldn’t imagine that the kid would screw them on the broadcast.

His decision made, Linus picked up the phone and called New York.

“Change the promo after the
Evening Headlines
tonight, pronto,” he commanded. “It should read, ‘Live and exclusive on tomorrow morning’s
KEY to America….
The eyewitness to the death of a

daughter of Newport society tells what he saw.’”

“What video should we cover with?” the promotion producer frantically yelled back from New York.

“Take some of the video from Constance’s package of the body bag being carried up the steps and we’ll feed you video of the eyewitness right away,” Linus barked as he turned to B.J. “Grab your camera, get a shot of Sam, and feed the video to New York.
Now.”

  CHAPTER  
44

After watching the reports of Madeleine’s death on the local news, it was time to turn to KEY. Constance Young’s report covered the bases. It was tough watching video of Madeleine’s body bag. It was even worse watching scenes from all those years ago—seeing just a glimpse of a younger version of the face of Charlotte’s killer. The same face, not terribly changed by time, that stared back from the mirror each morning. The old file tape showed the country club, the men in their tuxedos and the women in their summer gowns. Flowing blue, red, white, yellow, and green designer frocks were worn by the society ladies, but Charlotte, in her strapless gold lamé, stood out. There were pictures of the police canvassing the wealthy neighborhoods surrounding Oliver’s home and Shepherd’s Point, and flyers with Charlotte’s smiling face being tacked to telephone poles and taped in store windows around Newport.