The 3rd Victim (24 page)

52

New York, NY

S
ara did not expect to find herself at Wholefoods in Uptown Manhattan's Columbus Circle late on a Thursday evening and yet – here she was. Tomorrow was the beginning of the Easter vacation so the city was in a state of flummox with visitors flocking in and locals getting the hell out and others stocking up for an extra long weekend with friends and family.

Lauren was in the trolley, Sara trying to negotiate the busy aisles of the organic produce haven in the upmarket Time Warner Centre on the south-western corner of Central Park. It was almost seven and Lauren was grumpy. She'd been great all day, during the drive down, throughout the check-in to their overpriced uptown hotel, and even during the two hours they spent sitting in the car across the road from Markus Dudek's Upper West Side apartment building.

The surveillance had gotten Sara nowhere. The building had a doorman and a parking garage that was manned by a security officer wearing a uniform with a matching navy blue hat. The closest Sara came to even glimpsing a Dudek was when the garage gates opened and a chauffeur-driven Mercedes carrying a blonde woman who looked a little like the Keelie Dudek Sara had seen in recent
New York Times
social pages exited and turned right. Sara took a punt and followed the car she believed might be carrying Markus Dudek's young wife, but lost sight of the black sedan the moment it entered another secured parking facility under the Time Warner building. Sara then parked three blocks west and, with her increasingly restless daughter on her hip, made her way back to the shopping complex hoping to sight the woman at one of the Centre's upmarket fashion boutiques. But forty minutes of ‘shopping’ turned up nothing, and left both her and Lauren frustrated, irritable, tired.

‘Its okay, honey,’ said Sara as she rounded the bakery section and looked at her watch. ‘At least we've found ourselves in a building that has a supermarket, right? Which means we can eat, and get stuff for Daddy to have later.’

‘Daddy,’ said Lauren.

‘He should be on his way, sweetie.’

‘Happy Daddy,’ she said.

‘Sure, honey,’ said Sara, now sighing at the checkout queue before her. ‘He'll be happy to see you,’ she said, recalling the last conversation she had had with David sometime earlier in the day, the one in which he'd described his catastrophic conversation with Ted Baker before explaining his flight to New York had been cancelled and that he couldn't get a flight out of DC until 8 pm. The one in which he told her he'd spoken to his Newark-based mom who felt terrible about having the stomach flu but would probably be well enough to mind Lauren tomorrow. The one in which he had suggested Sara find an uptown hotel room big enough to sleep the three of them – a request she knew she had failed at, given that the $500-a-night room she had come up with was little bigger than a closet.

So now all she could do was make sure that she and her family had the necessary food and personal items to see them through to the following morning, when, with a bit of luck, Patty would be well enough to take care of Lauren so that she and David could attempt to get as close to Markus Dudek as possible. How they were going to manage that she had no clue, but there was no point in being negative, she told herself as she moved a little further up the queue. Everything would appear a little brighter tomorrow, after they'd eaten, and slept, and …

‘Dora!’ exclaimed Lauren with a fresh spark of energy.

‘I'm sorry, honey,’ said Sara, hoping this would not become an issue, ‘but we left your Dora doll at home. I brought Diego though – and your picture books so …’

‘Dora here,’ Lauren persisted, and Sara looked behind her to see an attractive woman talking on a cell phone, her blonde-haired daughter, who must have been roughly the same age as Lauren, cradling a Dora the Explorer doll protectively in her arms.

No, she thought, it couldn't be … But the woman certainly looked like the one she'd seen in pictures that accompanied stories about Markus Dudek and his privileged multi-millionaire life. If this was Keelie Dudek, then this was also an opportunity not to be wasted, she thought. Now if I can only strike up a conversation, if I can only …

‘
My
Dora,’ said the child, clutching the doll to her chest. The child was dressed in a leotard and ballet flats, perhaps having just finished a weekly dance class somewhere close by – which might have been where Keelie Dudek, if it indeed
was
Keelie Dudek, was collecting her from.

The woman hung up her phone. ‘Anastasia,’ she said, ‘don't be rude.’ The woman looked up at Sara. ‘I'm sorry, she tends to be territorial.’

‘That's okay,’ smiled Sara. ‘I know how precious a Dora doll can be.’

‘
My
Dora,’ repeated Anastasia.

‘We get it,’ the woman said, rolling her eyes. ‘My husband assures me she needs broad parameters to flourish, I say she needs her ass kicked.’ The woman smiled again – her expression was warm and welcoming, and for a second Sara felt a twinge of guilt at her having to fake her way through.

‘You guys locals?’ asked Sara as the queue progressed a little further. She knew she had a small window to strike up a rapport, so she had to work fast.

‘We live a few blocks from here. Mind you, I was born and bred in Queens, which to me is the real New York.’

Sara smiled. ‘We're from Boston,’ she said. ‘Here for the weekend. It's been a long day and my daughter is starving so I thought we'd stock up before she had a total meltdown.’

The woman smiled. ‘We're gonna sit in the café to eat,’ she said, pointing at the tubs of Wholefood's organic soups in her trolley. ‘My nannies are waiting there with my son and baby daughter if you'd like to join us for a bite. Our girls can share the Dora,’ she added.

‘That would be nice,’ said Sara, taking in the words ‘nannies’ and the fact that the woman had a total of three children. Sara could not recall any detailed stories about Dudek having a large family with young children, but most of the articles she had read were from finance papers not inclined to detail a subject's family details.

‘
My
Dora,’ screamed the child yet again.

‘Geez, it won't kill you to share, Anna,’ said the woman.

Sara extended her hand. ‘I'm Sara by the way, and this is Lauren.’

‘Keelie and Anna,’ the woman replied, taking Sara's hand and shaking it.

And for the first time in weeks, Sara felt like the tide may have finally turned their way.

Boston, Massachusetts

The call had not gone well. Not well at all.

Dick Davenport cupped his wine glass in his hand and swilled the rich red liquid in circles. It was warm in his palm, warm and somewhat mesmerising, like a whirlpool of blood folding back on itself over and over and over again until Davenport held still and the blood … the
wine
… started to settle.

He was beginning to panic. His anxiety was not visible but it was there nonetheless, like an anchor at the bottom of a dark, vast ocean, holding him stationary and preventing him from moving on.

It came down to this, he told himself as he rested back in his living room armchair and brought the pinot noir close to his lips. My wishes are at odds with the plan currently being pushed – and pushed hard – by the man I have been in partnership with for close to a decade. They were supposed to be getting out – or at least, moving to their next destination which they had decided would be Asia, considering the oriental subcontinent was a flourishing market with Hong Kong and Singapore full of wealthy expats not content with the options on their immediate doorstep. But Davenport's intentions had altered somewhat in the past twenty-four hours, which meant he may not see Asia after all. He was still keen on the move, not so much because of the potential of their intended destination but because the physical shift gave him a window to execute his plan and disappear if necessary – at least it had done until today, when he was told there was one more deal to be done.

The timing did not suit him. Sophia was close to giving birth. And worse still, this new deal was like no other deal they had ever put together before. For the first time since they had begun their profitable project, this deal would leave them wide open to detection. It was cavalier, dangerous and, Davenport knew, driven not just by profit but by vindictiveness.

Davenport was beginning to wonder if this whole thing had not gotten seriously out of control – Sienna and her husband, Eliza, Esther Wallace … Sophia. The issues surrounding the decisions made in regards to these individuals had already proven precarious, but this new ‘transaction’ would place them right on the precipice. He was told that Baker was nervous, that the trial was looming and that, as such, it was better to milk this location dry while the opportunities were still available to them. But there was more to this deal than that and Davenport knew it – and the fact that he was the one who had to set it up, well … the sooner he was out of here the better.

His conscience was getting the better of him, he admitted to himself as he closed his eyes and listened to the faint melody of Haydn which he had turned down low on his Bang and Olufsen stereo. I am a physician for Christ's sakes … no – not just a physician but a creator – a man who fashions himself after God.

His friend was showing signs of foregoing logic for spite. He was obsessed with finding the midwife, he was driven to hit Sienna and her attorney with as much firepower as he could manage and, as a consequence, Davenport felt his window of opportunity closing. The first baby was gone and if he did not move quickly he was going to lose the second. Still, he was in a holding pattern until the time came, which meant he had to go ahead with the set-up, do everything he could to try and prevent detection and put the entire deal in motion in order to give himself the best odds at pulling this whole thing off.

It goes against everything I represent, he told himself then. But he held the wine to his mouth and drained the glass and poured another before he got to the truth of it – the fact that he, as a preserver of life, had sat back and watched destruction in the name of progress, or preservation or profit. For years now he had convinced himself that it was all about the science, but in the end that was crap.

Joseph Haydn, 1732 to 1809, he thought to himself as he took another gulp of his wine. He got to his feet, a little wobbly but set on moving to the stereo and turning the dial all the way to the right. Born with the voice of an angel, the gift abandoned Haydn when he hit his teens and so he turned his musical genius to composing. He was the master who not only composed but created – the man who understood that it was not just about the work that you did but the ‘future’ that you fashioned – which is why he taught, why he nurtured the talents of Mozart and Beethoven – his children, his creations, the legacy he left behind.

New York, NY

The elongated café which sat along the back wall of Wholefoods next to the check-out bays and underneath the escalators was full. They were crammed into two semicircular booths, Sara and Lauren with Keelie and Anastasia at one table and Keelie Dudek's other two children and two very hands-on nannies at the other.

‘How old are they?’ asked Sara, referring to Keelie's other two children – a boy who looked slightly older than the still disgruntled Anastasia and a child who was just learning to walk.

‘Christian is almost three and Olivia is eleven months.’ Keelie dipped her bread roll into her bisque and ate with gusto. ‘Anna is two.’

‘
You have three under three
?’ asked Sara. ‘Gosh, I have trouble juggling the one.’

‘I have two nannies and two tutors, a cleaner, a cook. Anna has a private ballet teacher who charges enough to have a studio in this building, Christian has a violin teacher, a fencing coach …’

‘He fences at three?’

‘My husband likes the sport.’

Sara nodded. ‘Wow, your children are all so …’ she looked for the right word ‘… busy. The teachers, the coaches, the tutors … and they're so young still.’

‘It's not about how old they are,’ said Keelie as she took a bite of her wholemeal roll. ‘At least that's what my husband believes. He says it's all about taking advantage of their formative years, about using their raw potential, and my kids, their potential is …’

Sara stole a glance at the little boy named Christian who was currently studying some sort of number grid on his iPad. ‘They're smart,’ she said.

Keelie nodded. ‘Off the chart.’

‘What, all three of them?’

Another nod. ‘It's in their genes.’

‘They take after their mother,’ Sara smiled, trying to make light of what she could see was a very intense subject.

Keelie smiled in return. ‘That's nice of you to say but I'm not their mother,’ she said, as if it was of no consequence.

Sara shook her head in confusion.

‘Sorry, I'm not making sense. My kids are adopted.’

Sara looked at Anastasia and the two children behind her. They were definitely siblings – in fact they looked so much alike it was scary. ‘You adopted three kids from the one family?’

Keelie smiled. ‘Something like that.’ She scraped the bottom of her soup bowl with the remainder of her bread just as Anastasia reached across the table and pulled Dora from Lauren's hands. Lauren's bottom lip extended, her eyes beginning to glisten.

Then there was a scream from the next table. ‘Give it back!’ yelled Christian. His nanny had just taken away the iPad and the boy was not happy about it.

‘No,’ said the nanny. ‘You're out of time, Christian. The puzzle had to be completed in under five minutes.’

‘The puzzle sucks,’ said Christian. But the nanny ignored him.

‘How do you know that Olivia is gifted?’ asked an increasingly incredulous Sara as she turned back toward her own table. She had no idea where this was going – but found herself compelled to play it out.

‘Oh, she's been tested.’

‘How on earth do you test an eleven month old?’

‘There are ways,’ said Keelie, draining her coffee before glancing at the Tiffany watch on her wrist. ‘Gotta go. I have a car waiting. My husband has a work thing tonight and I have to play handbag.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘It was nice to meet you,’ she said as she got to her feet. ‘I'd say we could hook up in the park but the kids have a full weekend.’