You belong to me (3 page)

Justin's excessive jealousy had been the cause of the breakup two years ago. Carolyn finally had had enough. "I can't live with someone who is always suspicious if I'm a few minutes late," she had told him. "I have a job-make that a career-and if I'm stuck in the office because of a problem, then that's the way it is."

The day he called her on the ship, he had promised to change. And God knows he's tried, Carolyn thought. He's been in therapy, but if I get involved in this Dr. Susan thing, he'll think there really was something between Owen Adams and me, and we'll be back to square one.

She made a sudden decision. She wouldn't keep the appointment with Susan Chandler. Instead, she would send her the shipboard picture taken at the captain's cocktail party, the picture that showed Owen Adams in the background. She'd crop it so that she wasn't in the picture, and she'd send it, along with the ring and Owen's name, to Chandler. I'll print a note on plain paper, she thought, so they'll never be able to trace it to me. And I'll keep it short and simple.

If there was any tie between Owen Adams and Regina Clausen, it would be up to Chandler to find it. It would only look ridiculous for Carolyn to write that a psychic friend had claimed the ring was a symbol of death! Nobody would take that seriously.

5

"This is Dr. Susan Chandler, thanking our guest, Dr. Donald Richards, and all of you for being with me today."

The red on-air signal went dark. Susan pulled off her headphones. "Well, that's it," she said.

Her producer, Jed Geany, came into the studio. "Do you think that woman was on the level, Susan?"

"Yes, I do. I can only hope she doesn't change her mind about meeting me."

Donald Richards left the studio with Susan and waited while she hailed a cab. As she got in, he said hesitantly, "I think it's less than fifty-fifty that Karen will come to see you. If she does, though, I'd like to talk with you about what she has to say. Maybe I can help."

Susan didn't understand why she felt an immediate flash of resentment.

"Let's see what happens," she said, her tone noncommittal.

"Meaning' don't butt in,' " Richards said quietly. "I hope she shows up. Here's your cab."

6

In her Beekman Place apartment, seventy-four-year-old Jane Clausen turned off the radio, then sat for a long time staring through her window at the swiftly flowing current of the East River. With a characteristic gesture, she smoothed back a wisp of soft, gray hair that had settled on her forehead. In the last three years, ever since her daughter Regina's disappearance, she had felt as if she were frozen inside, always listening for the sound of a key in the latch, or a phone ringing, expecting to hear Regina's thoughtful greeting, "Mother, am I catching you at a busy time?"

She knew Regina was dead. In her heart it was a certainty. It was a knowledge that was primal, instinctive. She had known it from the start, from the moment she received the call from the ship to say that Regina had not reboarded as she had planned.

This morning her lawyer, Douglas Layton, had phoned angrily to warn her that Dr. Susan Chandler was planning to discuss Regina's disappearance on the radio. "I tried to dissuade her, but she insisted that it would be a favor to you if the full truth came out, and then she hung up," he had said, his voice tense.

Well, Dr. Chandler was wrong. Regina-so intelligent, so highly respected in the financial world-had been one of the most private individuals ever born.

Even more private than I am, Jane Clausen thought matter-of-factly. Two years ago that television program about missing persons had wanted to do a segment about her daughter. She had refused to cooperate then for the same reason that just now, listening to Dr. Chandler's program, she had been anguished when that author, Donald Richards, suggested that Regina might have been foolish enough to go off with some man she scarcely knew.

/ know my daughter, Jane Clausen thought. That wasn't her style. But even if she had made that kind of mistake, she deserved better than to be exposed on television or radio for the world to pity or gloat over. Jane could imagine the tabloids blaring the fact that with her background and all her financial success, Regina Clausen had not been wise or sophisticated enough to see through a rogue.

Only Douglas Layton, the lawyer in the investment firm that handled the family assets, knew how desperately she had sought an answer to her daughter's disappearance. Only he knew that the top-flight private investigators had searched thoroughly, trying to solve the disappearance even long after the police had given up.

But I've been wrong, Jane Clausen thought. I've convinced myself that Regina's death was in some way an accident. That's made losing her more bearable. The scenario that she had created in her mind, and that had comforted her, was that Regina, who had a history of heart murmurs, had suffered the kind of sudden heart attack that took her father at such a young age, and that someone-perhaps a cabdriver- had been afraid of getting in trouble and had disposed of her body. In this fantasy, Regina would have neither known what was happening, nor would she have suffered.

But then how to explain the phone call, the one from Karen, who phoned in to report a man who had urged her to leave her cruise? She had talked about a ring-a ring with "You belong to me" inscribed on the inside of the band.

Jane Clausen had instantly recognized the phrase, and hearing the familiar words this morning had chilled her to the bone. Regina had been scheduled to disembark from the Gabrielle in Honolulu. When she did not return to the ship, her clothes and effects that had been left on board were packed and shipped home from that port. At the request of the authorities, Jane had gone through them thoroughly to see if anything was missing. She had noticed the ring because it was so frivolous, so obviously inexpensive-a pretty little turquoise thing, the kind that tourists purchase on a whim. She had been sure that Regina either hadn't noticed the sentiment engraved inside the band, or had ignored it. Turquoise was her birthstone.

But if this woman who called herself Karen had been given a similar ring only two years ago, did it mean that the person responsible for Regina's death might still be preying on other women? Regina had disappeared in Hong Kong. Karen said she was supposed to get off her ship to go to Algiers.

Jane Clausen stood, waited for the pain in her back to ease, then walked slowly from the study to the room that she and her housekeeper carefully referred to as the guest room.

A year after the disappearance, she had given up Regina's apartment, then had sold her own too-big house in Scarsdale. She had bought this five-room apartment on Beekman Place and furnished the second bedroom with Regina's own furniture, filled the drawers and closets with her clothing, put her pictures and knickknacks around.

Sometimes, when she was alone, Jane brought a cup of tea into the room, sat on the brocade love seat Regina had purchased at an auction, and let her mind remember and relive a happier time.

Now she went to the dresser, opened the top drawer, and removed the leather box in which Regina had kept her jewelry.

The turquoise ring was in a velvet-lined compartment. She picked it up and slipped it on her finger.

She went to the telephone and phoned Douglas Layton. "Douglas," she said quietly, "today at quarter of three you and I are going to be in Dr. Susan Chandler's office. I assume you listened to the program?"

"Yes, I did, Mrs. Clausen."

"I have got to talk to the woman who phoned in."

"I'd better call and tell Dr. Chandler we're coming."

"That's exactly what I don't want you to do. I intend to be there and speak to that young woman myself."

Jane Clausen replaced the receiver. Ever since she had heard how little time she had left, she had contented herself with the knowledge that this terrible sense of loss soon would be over. But now she felt a blazing new need - she had to make sure that no other mother experienced the pain she had felt these past three years.

7

In the cab on the way back to her office, Susan Chandler mentally reviewed the appointments she had scheduled for the day. In less than an hour, at one, she was supposed to conduct a psychological evaluation of a seventh grader who was showing signs of moderate depression. She suspected that it went deeper than the typical preadolescent self-image problem. An hour later she was seeing a sixty-five-year-old woman who was about to retire and as a result was spending sleepless nights gripped with anxiety.

And at three o'clock she hoped she would be meeting the woman who called herself Karen. She had sounded so frightened when she phoned, though, that Susan worried she might change her mind. What did she have to be afraid of? she wondered.

Five minutes later, as Susan opened the door to her office, her secretary, Janet, greeted her with an approving smile. "Good program, Doctor. We've gotten a lot of calls about it I can't wait to see what this Karen is like."

"Nor can I," Susan said, a pessimistic tone creeping into her voice. "Any important messages?"

"Yes. Your sister, Dee, phoned from the airport. She said she was sorry she missed you yesterday. She wanted to apologize for exploding at you Saturday. She also wanted to know what you thought of Alexander Wright. She met him at the party after you left. She says he's terribly attractive." Janet handed her a slip of paper. "I wrote it down."

Susan thought of the man who had overheard her father asking her to call him Charles. Fortyish, about six feet, sandy hair, an engaging smile, she remembered. He had come over to her when her father turned away to greet a new arrival. "Don't let it get you down. It was probably Binky's idea," he had said encouragingly. "Let's get some champagne and go outside."

It had been one of those glorious early fall afternoons, and they had stood on the terrace, languidly sipping from fluted glasses. The manicured lawn and formal gardens provided an exquisite setting for the turreted mansion her father had built for Binky.

Susan had asked Alex Wright how he knew her father.

"I didn't until today," he had explained. "But I've known Binky for years." Then he had asked her what she did and raised his eyebrows when she said she was a clinical psychologist.

"I'm really not so completely out of touch," he had explained hurriedly, "it's just that I hear the title 'clinical psychologist' and think of a rather serious older person, not a young and extremely attractive woman, such as you, and the two things don't go together."

She had been dressed in a dark green, wool crepe sheath accented with an apple green scarf, one of the outfits she had purchased recently to wear to her father's must-attend events.

"Most of my Sunday afternoons are spent in a bulky sweater and jeans," she told him. "Is that a more comfortable picture?"

Anxious to be away from the sight of her father gushing over Binky, and not anxious to run into her sister, Susan had left soon afterwards-though not before one of her friends whispered that Alex Wright was the son of the late Alexander Wright, the legendary philanthropist. "Wright Library; Wright Museum of Art; Wright Center for the Performing Arts. Big, big bucks!" she had whispered.

Susan studied the message left by her sister. He is very attractive, she thought. Hmmm.

Corey Marcus, her twelve-year-old patient, tested well. But as they talked, Susan was reminded that psychology involves the emotions more than the intellect. The boy's parents had been divorced when he was two, but they had continued to live near each other, had stayed friendly, and for ten years he had gone comfortably from home to home. But now his mother had been offered a job in San Francisco, and the comfortable arrangement was suddenly threatened.

Corey struggled to blink back tears as he said, "I know she wants to take the job, but if she does, it means I won't see much of my dad."

Intellectually, he appreciated what this job opportunity meant to his mother's career. Emotionally, he hoped she would turn down the job rather than separate him from his father.

"What do you think she should do?" Susan asked.

He thought for a moment. "I guess Mom really should take the job. It's not fair for her to have to pass it up."

What a good kid, Susan thought. Now her job was to help him put a positive spin on the change the move would make in his life.

Esther Foster, the sixty-five-year-old soon-to-be retiree who came in at two o'clock, looked drawn and pale. "Two weeks till the big party, translated as 'clean out your desk, Essy.' " Her face crumbled. "I've given my life to this job, Dr. Chandler," she said. "I recently ran into a man I could have married who now is very successful. He and his wife have a wonderful life together."

"Are you saying you're sorry you didn't marry him?" Susan asked quietly.

"Yes, I am!"

Susan looked steadily into Esther Foster's eyes. After a moment a hint of a smile pulled at the corners of the woman's mouth. "He was dull as dishwater then, and he hasn't improved that much since, Dr. Chandler," she admitted. "But at least I wouldn't be alone."

"Let's define the meaning of alone,'" Susan suggested.

When Esther Foster left at quarter of three, Janet appeared with a container of chicken soup and a package of crackers.

Less than a minute later, Janet informed her that Regina Clausen's mother and her attorney, Douglas Layton, were in the reception area.

"Put them in the conference room," Susan directed. "I'll see them there."

Jane Clausen looked very much the same as she had when Susan had glimpsed her in the office of the Westchester County District Attorney. Impeccably dressed in a black suit that must have cost the moon, gray hair perfectly coiffed, she had about her an air of reserve that, like her slender hands and ankles, suggested breeding.

The lawyer, who had been so sharp on the telephone this morning, seemed almost apologetic. "Dr. Chandler, I hope we're not intruding. Mrs. Clausen has something important to show you, and she'd very much like having the opportunity to meet the woman who called in on your program this morning."