The Second Time Around (35 page)

Tomorrow I was scheduled to see Lynn at three o'clock, and I didn't want to change that. “Today is perfect,” I told Ken.

“I'm sure you've been watching the news about that Cooper guy. Five people dead because the Gen-stone stock tanked.”

“Six,” I corrected. “His wife was a victim, too”

“Yes, you're right, she was. Okay, I'll call Holden, tell him we're on for later, get directions, and get right back to you.”

Ken called back a few minutes later. I took down Dennis Holden's address and phone number, finished drying my hair, put on a quick touch of makeup, chose a steel blue pantsuit—another of my end-of-the-season sales purchases from last summer—and took off.

Given all that I had learned about Ned Cooper, I looked around very carefully as I opened the outer door. These old brownstones have high, fairly narrow stoops, which means that if anyone wanted to take aim, I'd make a pretty easy target. But the traffic was moving fast. There were a fair number of people walking on the sidewalk outside my building, and I couldn't see anyone sitting in the parked cars near the house. It looked safe enough.

Even so, I ran down the stairs and walked quickly to my garage, three blocks away. As I walked, I wove in and out of the people who were just sauntering along, and all the time I had a feeling of guilt about it. If Ned Cooper
did
have me in his sights, I was exposing these others to danger.

*   *   *

Westchester County Airport is situated at the border of Greenwich, the town I'd visited less than twenty-four hours ago, and where I would be returning tomorrow with Casey, for dinner with his friends. I knew the airport
had started out as a sleepy airfield created primarily for the convenience of the wealthy residents in the surrounding area. Now, however, it was a major terminal and the preferred choice of thousands of travelers, including those not necessarily counted among the well-heeled.

Dominick Salvio met me in the terminal lobby at 2:04. He was a large-framed man with confident brown eyes and an easy smile. He had about him the comfortable air of a guy who knew exactly who he was and where he was going. I gave him my card and explained that I went by the name of Carley, and he said, “Marcia DeCarlo and Dominick Salvio turn into Carley and Sal. You figure.”

Since I knew the timer was clicking away, I didn't waste a minute getting to the point. I was absolutely frank with him. I told him that I was doing the story and that I had met Nick Spencer. Then I briefly explained my relationship to Lynn. I said that I did not and would not believe that Nick Spencer had survived the crash and was now hiding away in Switzerland, thumbing his nose at the world.

At that moment Carley and Sal bonded. “Nick Spencer was a prince,” Sal said emphatically. “They don't come any better than that guy. I'd like to get my hands on all those liars who are making him out to be a crook. I'd wrap their tongues around their feet.”

“We're agreed,” I said, “but what I need to know from you, Sal, is how Nick seemed when he got on the plane that day. You know he was only forty-two years
old, but everything I uncover about him, especially the things that happened in those last months, seems to suggest that he was under a tremendous amount of stress. Even men as young as he get heart attacks, the kind that kill you before you have a chance to react in any way.”

“I hear you,” he said, “and it's possible that's what happened. What gets me mad is that they act as if Nick Spencer was an amateur-night-in-Bridgeport kind of pilot. He was good, damn good, and he was smart. He'd flown in plenty of storms and knew how to handle them—unless he did get slammed with lightning, and that's tough for anyone to handle.”

“Did you see or speak to him before he took off that day?”

“I always service his plane myself. I saw him.”

“I know Lynn dropped him off. Did you see her?”

“I saw her. They were sitting at a table in that coffee shop nearest to where the private planes are kept. Then she walked him to the plane.”

“Did they seem affectionate with each other?” I hesitated, then said bluntly, “Sal, it's important to know Nick Spencer's state of mind. If he was distressed or distracted because of something that had happened between them, it could have had a bearing on his physical condition or his concentration.”

Sal looked past me. I sensed he was weighing his words, not so much to be cautious as to be honest. He looked at his watch. My allotted time with him was going by too quickly.

Finally he said, “Carley, those two people were never happy together, I can tell you that.”

“Was there anything special about their behavior that day?” I persisted.

“Why don't you talk to Marge? She's the waitress in the coffee shop who waited on them.”

“Is she here today?”

“She works long weekends, Friday through Monday. She's there now.”

Taking my arm, Sal walked with me through the terminal to that coffee shop. “That's Marge,” he said, pointing to a matronly looking woman in her sixties. He caught her eye, and she came over to us, smiling.

The smile vanished when Sal told her why we were there.

“Mr. Spencer was the nicest man,” she said, “and his first wife was a lovely person. But that other one was one cold fish. She must have really upset him that day. I will say for her that she was apologizing, but I could tell that he was mad clean through. I couldn't hear all of what they were saying, but it was something about how she had changed her mind about going to Puerto Rico with him, and he said if he'd known sooner, he would have taken Jack. Jack is Mr. Spencer's son.”

“Did they eat or drink anything?” I asked.

“They both had ice tea. Listen, it's a good thing that neither she nor Jack was on that plane. It's just a damn shame that Mr. Spencer wasn't that lucky.”

I thanked Marge and walked back through the terminal with Sal. “She gave him a big kiss in front of
everybody when she left him,” he said. “I had figured that at least the poor guy might have been feeling good about his marriage, but then Marge tells me what she just told you. So maybe he was upset, and maybe that did affect his judgment. That can happen to the best of pilots. I guess we'll never know.”

I
got to Armonk early and sat in the car outside Dennis Holden's house, waiting for Ken Page to arrive. Then, almost like an automaton, I called Lynn at the Bedford number. I wanted to ask her point-blank why she had talked Nick Spencer out of taking his son with him to Puerto Rico, then backed off from going herself. Had someone hinted to her that it wasn't smart to get on that plane?

She was either out or chose not to pick up the phone. Thinking about it, I decided it was just as well. It would be better to see for myself how she reacted when I did ask her that question. She had traded on my mother's marriage to her father to make me her unpaid public relations spokesperson. She was the sad widow, the abandoned stepmother, the bewildered wife of a man who turned out to be a crook. The truth was that she didn't give a damn about Nick Spencer, and she didn't give a
damn about his son, Jack, and she had probably been carrying on with Charles Wallingford all along.

Ken pulled up and parked behind me, and we walked together to the house. It was a handsome Tudor-style stucco and brick home, enhanced by the setting. Expensive shrubbery, flowering trees, and a velvety green lawn testified that Dennis Holden was either a successful engineer or had family money.

Ken rang the bell, and the door was opened by a thin boyish-faced man with very short brown hair and warm hazel eyes. “I'm Dennis Holden,” he said. “Come in.”

The house was as attractive on the inside as it had appeared from the street. He took us into the living room where two creamy white couches faced each other on either side of the fireplace. The antique rug was a wonderful amalgam of colors, shades of red and blue, gold and crimson. As I sat down next to Ken on one of the couches, the thought ran through my head that a few months ago Dennis Holden had left this house for what he expected to be the last time to check into a hospice. What did it feel like for him to come home? I could only imagine the emotions that were churning inside him.

Ken was handing his card to Holden. I fished in my bag for mine, found it, and handed it to him as well. He examined them carefully. “Dr. Page,” he said to Ken, “do you have a practice?”

“No. I write about medical research full-time.”

Holden turned to me. “Marcia DeCarlo. Don't you also write a financial advice column?”

“Yes, I do.”

“My wife reads it and enjoys it very much.”

“I'm glad.”

He looked at Ken. “Doctor, on the phone you said that you and Miss DeCarlo are writing a cover story on Nicholas Spencer. In your opinion is he still alive, or is the man in Switzerland who claims to have seen him mistaken?”

Ken looked at me, then back at Holden. “Carley has been interviewing Spencer's family. Why don't I let her answer that?”

I told Holden about visiting the Barlowes and about meeting Jack, and I finished by saying, “From everything I've heard about Nick Spencer, he would never abandon his son. He was a good man and absolutely dedicated to finding a cure for cancer.”

“Yes, he was.” Holden leaned forward and linked his fingers together. “Nick was not a man who would fake his own disappearance. Having said that, I feel his death releases me from a promise I made to him. I had hoped his body would be found before I broke the promise, but it has been nearly a month since the plane crash, and it may never surface.”

“What was that promise, Mr. Holden?” Ken asked quietly.

“That I would not reveal to anyone that he had injected me with his cancer vaccine while I was in the hospice.”

Ken and I were both hoping that Dennis Holden had received the vaccine and would admit it to us. To actually hear it from his lips felt like going down the last
deep drop on a roller coaster. We both stared at him. This man was thin, but he did not appear at all frail. His skin was pink and healthy. I realized now why his hair was so short—it was growing back in.

Holden got up, walked across the room, and picked up a framed picture that had been lying facedown on the mantel. He brought it over and handed it to Ken, who held it between us. “This is the picture my wife took at what was supposed to be my last dinner at home.”

Gaunt. Emaciated. Bald. In the picture Dennis Holden was sitting at the table, a weak smile on his face. The open-necked shirt he was wearing hung on his body. His cheeks were sunken, his hands looked skeletal. “I was down to eighty pounds,” he said. I'm one hundred and forty now. I had colon cancer that was operated on successfully, but the cancer had spread. It was all through my body. My doctors call it a miracle that I'm still alive. It is a miracle, but it came from God through his messenger Nick Spencer.”

Ken could not take his eyes off the picture. “Do your doctors know you received the vaccine?”

“No. They had no reason to suspect it, of course. They're just astonished that I'm not dead. My first reaction to the vaccine was not to die. Then I started feeling a little hungry and began to eat again. Nick visited me here every few days and kept a chart on my progress. I have a copy, and he had a copy. But he swore me to secrecy. He said that I was never to call him at his office or leave a message for him there. Dr. Clintworth at the hospice suspected that Nick had
given me the vaccine, but I denied it. I don't think she believed me.”

“Have your doctors been doing X rays or MRIs, Mr. Holden?” Ken asked.

“Yes. They call it a one-in-a-trillion spontaneous remission. A couple of them are writing medical briefs on me. When you called today, my first inclination was to refuse to see you. But I read every issue of
Wall Street Weekly.
I'm so sick of seeing Nick's name dragged through the mud that I thought it was time to speak out. The vaccine may not work for
everybody,
but it gave me back my life.”

“Will you let me see the notes Nick made on your progress?”

“I already made a copy in case I decided to give them to you. They show that the vaccine attacked the cancer cells by coating them and then smothering them. Healthy cells immediately started to grow in those areas. I went into the hospice on February 10. Nick was a volunteer there. I'd done all the research available on the treatment and potential treatment of cancer. I knew who Nick was and I'd read about his research. I begged him to try the vaccine on me. He injected me on February 12, and I came home on the twentieth. Two and a half months later, I'm cancer free.”

As we were about to leave an hour later, the front door opened. A very pretty woman and two girls in their early teens came in. All three had beautiful red hair. They obviously were Holden's wife and daughters, and they all went straight to his side.