On the Street Where you Live (31 page)

Tommy Duggan dialed the desk at The Breakers Hotel. Mrs. Joyce had been seen going out for a walk on the boardwalk, he was told. The police were already looking for her.

D
R
. D
ERMOT
O'H
ERLIHY
walked to the post office, then decided to return home by way of the boardwalk. He was surprised to see Bernice Joyce still sitting on the bench. Her back was to him, so he could not see her face. She's probably fallen asleep, he decided. But then something about the way her head was leaning forward on her chest made him quicken his step and hurry to check on her.

He walked around to the front of the bench, looked down at her and saw the cord knotted tightly around her neck.

He squatted in front of her, taking in the staring eyes, the open mouth, the flecks of blood on her lips.

He had known Bernice Joyce for over fifty years, all the way back to when she and Charlie Joyce, and he and his wife, Mary, used to come every summer to Spring Lake, bringing their children.

“Ah, Bernice, poor darling, who would do this to you?” he whispered.

The sound of running feet made him look up. Chris Dowling, the newest cop on the town police force, came bounding across the boardwalk extension. In just moments he was at the bench, squatting beside Dermot, staring at the lifeless body.

“You're too late, lad,” Dermot told him as he straightened up. “She's been gone for at least an hour.”

A
LTHOUGH HE DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING TO HER
, Pat Glynn knew that Mr. Stafford was angry at her. She could see it in his eyes and feel it in the way he came into the office on Friday morning and passed her desk with just a brief, unsmiling greeting.

When he had returned to the office yesterday afternoon, she had told him that a Miss Ashby had stopped by.

“Miss Ashby? The gossip columnist from that tabloid? I hope you didn't let her pump you about me, Pat. That woman is
vicious.”

With a sinking heart, Pat had remembered every single word she had said to Ashby. “I just told her what a wonderful person you are, Mr. Stafford,” she said.

“Pat, every word you said to her will be twisted and slanted. You will help me if you tell me absolutely everything you said. I won't be angry, I promise, but I
do
need to be prepared. Do you read
The National Daily?”

She admitted that she sometimes read it.

“Well, if you read it at all this week, you've seen what this Ashby woman has been doing to Dr. Wilcox. That's what she's going to do with me. So what kind of questions did she ask you, and what did you tell her?”

*   *   *

I
T WAS HARD FOR
P
AT
to concentrate on the work on her desk. She had to resist the impulse to go to Mr. Stafford's office and tell him again how terribly sorry she was. But then a phone call from her mother shocked her out of her remorseful state.

“Pat, there's been another murder in town. An older woman, Bernice Joyce, one of the people who was at the party at the Lawrence house the night before Martha's disappearance, has been found strangled on a bench on the boardwalk. She told that columnist from
The National Daily
that she thought she could identify the person who took that scarf that killed Martha, and the columnist printed it, and now Mrs. Joyce is dead. Can you
believe
it?”

“I'll call you back, Mom.” Pat hung up the phone, and, walking like a robot, went down the hall. Without knocking, she opened the door of Will Stafford's office. “Mr. Stafford, Mrs. Joyce is dead. I know you knew her. She told that columnist that she thought she saw someone take the scarf at that party, and the columnist printed it. Mr. Stafford, I'm sure I didn't tell Miss Ashby anything that would cause anyone to die.”

Pat's voice rose, quivered, and broke in a flood of tears. “I just feel so terrible.”

Will got up and came around his desk. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Pat, it's all right. Of
course
you didn't tell Ashby anything that would cause someone's death. Now, what are you talking about? What happened to Mrs. Joyce?”

Pat was aware of the warm, strong hands on her
shoulders. She calmed herself and relayed what her mother had just told her.

“I am so very sorry,” Will said quietly. “Bernice Joyce was a kind and elegant lady.”

We're talking like friends again, Pat thought. Anxious to prolong the intimacy of the moment, she asked, “Mr. Stafford, do you think Dr. Wilcox might have done this to Mrs. Joyce? I mean, according to all the papers, his wife said she gave him the scarf to hold.”

“I imagine they're questioning him very closely,” Will said briskly.

Pat caught the change of tone. The moment of intimacy was over. It was time for her to go back to her desk. “I'll have all those letters ready for you to sign by noon,” she promised. “Will you be going out to lunch?”

“No. You can order in for both of us.”

She had to take the chance. “I'll wait until later to order, just in case you change your mind. Mrs. Frieze might drop by like she did the other day.”

“Mrs. Frieze is moving to New York, permanently.”

Pat Glynn returned to her desk in a state of bliss.

I
N HIS OFFICE
, Will Stafford was on the phone with the employment agency that had sent him Pat Glynn two years ago. “And for God's sake get me someone mature and sensible, who isn't a gossip and isn't looking for a husband,” he implored.

“We have someone who just registered with us this morning. She's winding up her old job. Her name is Joan Hodges and she was with that psychologist who was murdered last week. She's efficient. She's smart.
She's a nice person. I think you'd be very happy with her, Mr. Stafford.”

“Send over her résumé, in a plain envelope. Mark it personal.”

“Of course.”

As Will replaced the receiver, Pat announced another call. This one was from Detective Duggan, requesting an appointment with him at his earliest possible convenience.

O
N
T
HURSDAY AFTERNOON
, not wanting to run into Bernice Joyce again, Reba Ashby had checked out of The Breakers Hotel and moved to the Inn at the Shore in Belmar, a few miles away. She had expected a backlash when the tabloid with her headline about Joyce hit the stands on Friday morning, but was jolted to her soul when she learned from the radio of the woman's death.

Then her natural instinct for self-protection set in. Bernice should have gone to the police, Reba told herself. It was her own fault. God knows how many other people in addition to me she might have told about seeing someone pick up the scarf. Nobody tells just one person anything in confidence. Anyhow, if they can't keep it to themselves, they shouldn't expect others to keep it quiet.

For all I know, Bernice might even have asked the
killer
if he'd picked up the scarf just to look at it, then put it down somewhere else. She was just naïve enough to do that.

Still, Reba immediately called Alvaro Martinez-Fonts, her editor, to agree on how they would handle any flak from the police. Then she told him that she had gone to The Seasoner for dinner Thursday night, but that Bob Frieze hadn't been around at all.

“I laid fifty bucks on the maître d', Alvaro,” she said. “That opened
him
up. According to him, Frieze has been acting weird for a long time now. This guy thinks he's in the process of a nervous breakdown or something. Yesterday, Natalie Frieze came in to the restaurant, but she didn't stay long. She and Bob had words at the table, and the maître d' overheard her tell him she was afraid of him.”

“That fits in with the battered woman angle.”

“There's more. A waiter who was serving the next table heard them talking about breaking up, and he's willing to talk, but he wants big,
big
bucks.”

“Pay him and write it up,” Alvaro ordered.

“I'm going to try to see Natalie Frieze today.”

“Get her to talk. Robert Frieze used to be a hotshot on Wall Street. He's good for some headlines even if he had nothing to do with the murder.”

“Well, he's no hotshot in the restaurant business. Food's only so-so. Decor overdone and uncomfortable. Absolutely zero buzz to the place. Trust me. It'll never be the Elaine's of Monmouth County.”

“Keep up the good work, Reba.”

“You bet. How are you doing on Stafford?”

“So far, nothing. But if there's any dirt to find, we'll dig it up.”

“N
O MORE SITTING IN HIS STUDY
letting him run the show,” Tommy Duggan told Pete Walsh grimly as they left the crime scene. “We've got to flush him out, and make him show his hand—and we've got to do it soon.” The body of Bernice Joyce had been removed. The forensic team had done its work and was wrapping up. As the head investigator had said to Tommy, “With the breeze from the ocean, there isn't the chance of a snowball in hell that we'll get anything we can use. We've dusted for prints, but we all know the killer had to be wearing gloves. He's a pro.”

“He's a pro all right,” Tommy snapped to Pete as they got in the car. The face of Bernice Joyce filled his mind, as she had looked a week ago when he'd interrogated her at Will Stafford's house.

She was forthcoming when he asked her if she had noticed the scarf, he remembered. She knew Rachel Wilcox had been wearing it. But did she remember then that she had seen someone pick it up? Tommy wondered. I don't think so, he decided. It probably came to her later.

She told me she was going back to Palm Beach on
Monday. But even if I'd known she was staying over, it wouldn't have occurred to me to talk to her again.

He felt both disgusted and angry with himself. The killer read that article in the tabloid and got scared, he thought, so scared that he took a chance on killing Mrs. Joyce in broad daylight. And if he still was following a game plan, then there would be someone else tomorrow, Tommy reminded himself. Only this one would be a young woman.

“Where to?” Pete asked.

“You called Stafford?”

“Yes. He said anytime we want to stop in is okay. Said he'll be at his desk all day.”

“Let's start with him. Check the office first.”

That was when they learned that Natalie Frieze was missing.

“Forget Stafford,” Tommy said. “The local guys are talking to Frieze. I want to sit in on it.”

He hunched back in the seat, pondering the terrible possibility that the serial killer had already elected his next victim: Natalie Frieze.

N
ICK
T
ODD
phoned Emily the moment he heard the news report of the death of Bernice Joyce. “Emily, did you know that woman?” he asked.

“No, I didn't.”

“Do you think the article in that rag was the reason she was killed?”

“I have no idea. I haven't seen the article, but I understand it's pretty bad.”

“It was a death sentence for that poor woman. This kind of thing makes me itch to get into the U.S. Attorney's office.”

“How is that going?”

“I put out feelers to some of his top people. I won an important case against them last year, which could either hurt or help me, who knows?”

There was a subtle change in his voice. “I called last night, but I guess you were out.”

“I was out to dinner. You didn't leave a message.”

“No, I didn't. How's the project going?”

“I may be kidding myself, but I'm seeing a pattern to all those deaths, and it's horrific. You remember I told you that Douglas Carter, the young man Madeline was engaged to, killed himself?”

“Yes, you told me about that.”

“Nick, he was found with a shotgun beside him. He'd been terribly depressed over Madeline's disappearance, but he was also young, good-looking, with family money, and a promising future on Wall Street. Everything that's written about him in all the diaries and other materials I have is positive, and nothing points specifically to his being suicidal. Something else. His mother was very sick, and he apparently was very close to her. He must have known that his death would destroy her. Just think—how would your mother feel if something happened to you?”

“She'd never forgive me,” Nick said wryly. “But how would your mother feel if something happened to you?”

“She wouldn't like it, of course.”

“Then until both your stalker and this serial killer you're trying to identify are apprehended, please keep your doors locked and the alarm on, especially when you're there alone. Look, I've got a call coming in I have to take. I'll see you on Sunday, if we don't talk before then.”

Why does Nick feel the need to sound like the voice of my better judgment? Emily wondered as she hung up the phone. It was 11:30. For the past two and a half hours she had been alternating between the old police reports and the Lawrence memorabilia.

She had also called her mother and father in Chicago and her grandmother in Albany and given all of them a cheerful account of how much she was enjoying the house.

All of which is true enough, she told herself as she thought as well of everything she was withholding from them.

Julia Gordon Lawrence had kept yearly diaries. She had not made daily entries, but she did write in the books frequently. I could enjoy reading every word, Emily thought, and I will if the Lawrences let me keep them long enough. But for now I need to find information in them that directly ties in to those disappearances and to Douglas's death. With a start, she realized she no longer thought of his death as a suicide, but considered him a likely victim of the same person who had killed the three young women.