No Place Like Home (46 page)

Jeff wearily rubbed his eyes. “There will be a lot more details coming in the next couple of days, Dru, but you can rely on what I've just told you.”

“I've been around for a long time, Jeff,” Dru said, “but this is almost unimaginable. I'm so glad that that poor girl has a loving husband and a great kid. I guess that's what has helped her survive.”

“Yes,” Jeff replied carefully, “she has a really terrific kid, and he'll help her get through all this.”

“You're telling me something,” Dru said. “You didn't mention her devoted husband.”

“No, I didn't,” Jeff said quietly. “I can't comment further right now, but that might change very soon.”

I
am being carried downstairs. I can't open my eyes. “Jack.” I try to call his name, but can only whisper it. My lips feel rubbery. I have to wake up.
Jack needs me.

“It's all right, Liza. I'm taking you to Jack.”

Alex is talking to me. Alex, my husband. He is home, not in Chicago. I have to tell him tomorrow that I'm really Liza Barton.

But he called me Liza.

There were sleeping pills in that glass.

Maybe I'm dreaming.

Jack. He's crying. He's calling me.
“Mommy. Mommy. Mommy.”

“Jack. Jack.” I try to scream, but can only mouth his name.

There is cold air on my face. Alex is carrying me. Where is he taking me? Where is Jack?

My eyes won't open. I hear a door opening—the garage door. Alex is laying me down. I know where I am. My car, the backseat of my car.

“Jack . . . ”

“You want him? You can have him.” It's a woman's voice, harsh and grating.

“Mommmmmmy!”

Jack's arms are around my neck. His head is buried against my heart. “Mommmmmmmmmy.”

“Get outside, Robin, I'm starting the engine.” Alex's voice.

I hear the garage door close. Jack and I are alone.

I'm so tired. I can't help it. I am falling asleep.

A
t 10:30
P.M
., still in his office, Jeff waited for Detective Mort Shelley. He had already been notified that the search of Ted Cartwright's house had uncovered the blond wig, the movers' uniforms, and the boxes of papers that had been taken from Zach Willet's apartment. More important, a nine millimeter pistol had been found in the safe in his bedroom.

Jeff was virtually certain that the pistol would be matched to the nine millimeter bullet that had lodged in Zach Willet's brain.

We'll have Cartwright cold on this one, he thought, and with a plea agreement we may be able to get him to admit to Will Barton's murder. We may finally be able to also make him admit the truth of what he intended to do when he went to Audrey Barton's home the night she died.

The satisfaction Jeff would normally feel from the possibility of satisfactorily closing a case such as this one was outweighed by his concern for Celia Nolan. Or Liza Barton, he corrected himself.
I'm going to have to be the one to tell her that her husband was setting her up to be accused of murdering Georgette Grove, he thought, and it's all about the money she inherited from his cousin, Laurence Foster.

There was a light tap at the door and Mort Shelley came in. “Jeff, how this guy Nolan has managed to stay out of prison beats me.”

“What have you got, Mort?”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“You choose.” Jeff had been leaning back in his chair. Now he straightened up.

“Alex Nolan is a phony,” Mort said decisively. “He
is
a lawyer and he
is
affiliated with a law firm that used to be prestigious, but it's now just a two-man operation run by the grandson of the founder. He and Nolan basically go their own ways. Nolan claims to specialize in wills and trusts, but has only a handful of clients. He's had several ethics violations filed against him, and has been suspended twice. His defense has always been that he's a sloppy bookkeeper, not a thief, and he has managed to avoid prosecution.”

The contempt in Shelley's voice deepened as he continued to read his notes and consult the thick file he was carrying. “He never made an honest dollar in his life. His money came from a bequest he received four years ago from a seventy-seven-year-old widow he was romancing. The family was outraged, but rather than allow a distinguished and cultured lady to become the butt of jokes, they
didn't challenge the will in court. Nolan got three million dollars out of that scam.”

“That's pretty good,” Jeff said. “Most people would settle for it.”

“Jeff, that kind of money is peanuts for someone like Alex Nolan. He wants real money, the kind that means private planes and yachts and mansions.”

“Celia—I mean Liza—doesn't have that kind of money.”

“She
doesn't, but her
son
does. Don't misunderstand me. She does have plenty. Laurence Foster took good care of her, but the two-thirds of his estate that he left to Jack contain Foster's share of patents for research that he financed. There are three different companies that are about to go public, and that will mean tens of millions of dollars to Jack one day.”

“And Nolan knew this?”

“It was public knowledge that Laurence Foster was an investor in start-up companies. Wills are on file in the county courthouse where they were probated. Nolan didn't need to be a genius.”

Shelley picked another page out of the file. “As you suggested, we tracked down Foster's private nurses from the last time he was in the hospital. One of them admitted that she took big tips from Nolan to let him in to visit his cousin when Laurence Foster was dying and visitors were limited to the immediate family. Nolan was probably hoping to get himself written into the will, but Foster's
mind was beginning to wander, so maybe it was he, himself, who told Nolan about Celia's past. Of course, we can't be sure, but it makes sense.”

Jeff's mouth tightened as he listened.

“Nolan is all smoke and mirrors,” Shelley continued. “He didn't own that apartment in SoHo. He sublet it on a month-to-month lease. The furniture wasn't his. None of it was. He was using the three million bucks his old—and I do mean old—girlfriend left him to convince Liza that he was a prominent and successful attorney.

“I spoke to Celia's investment adviser, Karl Winston. He told me that Celia's accident when she was hit by the limo last winter was Nolan's lucky break. She panicked at the thought that if she had died, Jack would have no close relative to care for him. Winston also told me that the way Laurence Foster set up his will, he left one-third of his estate to Celia and two-thirds to Jack. If Jack dies before he reaches twenty-one, everything he has goes to Celia. After her marriage to Alex Nolan, except for a few charitable donations and a fund to care for her adoptive parents, Celia split her estate between Nolan and Jack. She also made Nolan Jack's guardian, as well as the trustee of his estate until the kid is twenty-one.”

“I knew when Nolan sat in this office yesterday and referred to the picture Liza found taped in the barn as the one of the Barton family on the beach in Spring Lake, that he must be the one who put it there,” Jeff said. “Last week I was in the kitchen when Liza gave it to me. Nolan came in as I was
putting it in a plastic bag. He didn't ask to look at it then, so supposedly he had never seen it. But yesterday, despite all the Barton family pictures that have been in the newspapers, he knew exactly which picture it was.”

“Robin has been his girlfriend for at least three years,” Shelley said. “I took a picture of Nolan I got in the Bar Association Directory to Patsy's. One of the waiters started there three years ago and he remembers seeing them when he was new on the job. He said Nolan always paid cash, which figures.”

“I guess Robin's been willing to stay under wraps because she wants him to hit the big bucks,” Jeff said. “One thing that she may
not
have been lying about is that her dates with Ted Cartwright didn't amount to anything.”

“I wonder if the plan to get Liza back into her old home was hatched after Robin went to work at the Grove Agency and the house came on the market,” Jeff mused. “Buy the house as a gift. Move her into it. Vandalize it to rattle her. Expose her as Little Lizzie. Count on a psychological breakdown so he could get control of the estate. But then something went wrong. That last evening when Georgette stayed in the office, she must have found something that linked Robin to Alex. Henry told us that Georgette had gone through both their desks. Maybe Georgette found a picture of Alex and Robin together, or a note from him to her. Georgette made a call to Robin at ten o'clock
Tuesday night. Unless Robin comes clean, we'll probably never know the reason for it.”

“My guess is that Robin was the one waiting for Georgette in the house on Holland Road,” Mort volunteered. “Between them, if she and Alex knew they had to get rid of Georgette, that may have been when they decided to try to point the finger at Celia by leaving her picture in Georgette's shoulder bag. And don't forget, if Robin put a picture in that bag, she then might have taken something out of the bag that Georgette had found in her desk. Then, when Charley Hatch's jeans and sneakers and carvings were confiscated by Sergeant Earley, he became too much of a danger to them. So their plot to get control of Liza and Jack's money caused them to commit two homicides. And if Celia ends up going to prison for these murders, that's a perfect ending.”

“This may not be the first time Nolan has been involved in a homicide,” Jeff told Shelley. “As you know, we had a number of our guys digging up information about his pre-law school days. He was a suspect in the death of a wealthy young woman he had dated in college. They never proved anything, but she had dropped him for someone else. He apparently went crazy and stalked her for over a year. She had to get a restraining order against him. I only learned that this afternoon.”

Jeff's expression became grave. “First thing tomorrow morning, I'm going to drive to Mendham and tell Liza what we know. After that, I'll order around-the-clock protection for her and Jack. If
Nolan weren't in Chicago, I'd have a 24/7 guard on them now. My guess is that Nolan and his girlfriend have to be getting very, very nervous at this point.”

The phone rang. Anne, who was still at her desk with Dru Perry keeping her company, answered after the first ring, listened to the terse message, and turned on the intercom. “Jeff, there's a Detective Ryan on the phone from Chicago. He says that they've lost Alex Nolan. He slipped out of the dinner meeting he was attending more than three hours ago, and he hasn't shown up at the Ritz-Carlton.”

Jeff and Mort jumped up.
“Three hours!”
Jeff exclaimed. “He could have flown back here by now!”

I
had heard the garage door close. The car's engine was running. The fumes were making me drowsier, but I knew I had to fight it. Now that he was with me, Jack was falling asleep again. I tried to move him. I
had
to get into the front seat. I had to turn off the engine. If we stayed here, we were going to die. I had to move. But my limbs wouldn't function. What was it that Alex had forced me to drink?