Kiss of Death Page 25

  “She cut her hair,” Arnold said softly. As though talking to himself, he added, “She couldn’t have been kidnapped. I was in the apartment, in my den. The housekeeper was in the kitchen. It’s a secure building. We didn’t have any visitors … She’s gone. She left me.”

  Matt persuaded Arnold to come with him to the station house, to report Didi as a runaway. The Arnold Rose who left with Matt looked twenty years older than the man who’d rudely brushed past me at the front door a short time earlier.

  After they left, I called Nancy. I didn’t think Didi would go there, but I’d hoped Nancy might have an idea. She didn’t.

  “Didi doesn’t go to school—she has tutors—so she doesn’t have classmates,” Nancy said. “According to Arnold, she doesn’t like her teachers very much, so I can’t see her running off to one of them. Her entire world revolves around her riding competitions.”

  Suddenly I remembered the tough-as-rawhide little woman who used yellow headbands to hold back her iron gray hair. “Mrs. Woodburn, the woman who owns the stable where Didi works out. Do you have any idea where she lives?”

  “She has an apartment on the top floor of the Woodburn Academy,” Nancy said. “Arnold mentioned that a few months ago—he couldn’t fathom how she could stand the smell of horses twenty-four hours a day. Didi might go there. That stable was practically her second home. Are you going to call Arnold?”

  “No. I’m going to make a surprise visit to Mrs. Woodburn.”

  “Good luck,” Nancy said. “If she’s there, I hope Didi will talk to you.”

  Before I left the Dakota, I changed into slacks, a tank top, and a cotton jacket. My last act was to slip the small digital recorder I used to dictate story notes into the side pocket of the jacket.

  Chapter 48

  IT WAS NEARLY eleven o’clock when I got out of the cab at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and Eighty-fifth Street, half a block south of the Woodburn Academy. I would have called Matt to tell him where I thought Didi might be, but Arnold was with him, and I wanted to talk to Didi before Arnold could stop me.

  The street was pretty quiet. Some vehicle traffic, but the majority of the cars I saw were snug in their precious parking spaces. The few businesses on the block were closed for the night. I passed a trio of teenage girls, giggling, their arms linked. They were talking about a boy named Jerry and didn’t seem to notice me.

  Most of the wide, three-story building that housed the Woodburn Academy was dark, but light shone through the slats of two shuttered windows on the top floor. Cautiously, I made my way across the front of the building, looking for an entrance that would lead to the residence above the stables. I found it on the north side: a small alcove with an unmarked door. Easy to miss unless someone was looking for it.

  I tried the door, but it was locked. There was enough illumination from the street lamp at the corner of Amsterdam and Eighty-sixth to see a button just below a wall speaker. I pressed it, heard a faint buzz from deep inside, and waited. No response. I pushed the buzzer again, holding my finger against it longer this time. Another moment, and a woman’s raspy voice came through the speaker.

  “Who the hell is it?” Her tone was not welcoming.

  “Morgan Tyler, a friend of Didi’s. I need to see you, Mrs. Woodburn.”

  “We’re not open. Come back tomorrow.”

  “This is urgent. I’m not going away until I speak to you. Please let me come up, just for a few minutes.”

  “No. Go away.”

  I made a calculated bluff. “Didi Rose is missing. I think she’s with you. If you don’t let me talk to her, I’ll tell the police you kidnapped Didi.”

  She muttered a word the nuns told me not to say. Ever. Two seconds of silence, then the door buzzed open.

  Narrow wooden stairs led up to the living quarters. I took them two at a time.

  Mrs. Woodburn stood in the doorway, waiting for me. She was in a long terry cloth zip-up robe and fuzzy slippers instead of jeans and riding boots, but her hair was still held back from her face by a yellow headband.

  “I did not kidnap Didi.” She was keeping her voice low, but there was an angry snap in her tone. “No matter how much Mr. Rose pays me to let her ride, I didn’t sign on for this.”

  She stepped back to let me into her living room. It was decorated like a tack room, with bridles and harnesses on the walls, along with dozens of photographs from horse shows. At the far end of the room, next to a closed door, stood a display case that held an assortment of award plaques, first-place ribbons, and a few engraved silver prize cups that could use a polish. A painting of a handsome black horse hung above a gas fireplace.

  To me, the most interesting thing in the room was the big leather couch beneath the window. Interesting, because it was made up like a bed, with sheets, a blanket, and a pillow. I guessed Mrs. Woodburn was sleeping here.

  Copies of Young Rider magazine covered the coffee table in front of the couch. On top of one issue was a short glass half full of amber liquid. I was close enough to Mrs. Woodburn to catch a faint whiff of liquor on her breath.

  “Where’s Didi?” I asked.

  Mrs. Woodburn nodded toward the closed door. “I gave her the bedroom. She got here about four hours ago, just after I closed up. Crying so hard she could barely see. I said I wanted to call her father, but that just made her more hysterical. I gave her a glass of milk—she wouldn’t eat anything—and then I tried to persuade her to go to sleep. She said she would, and she was quiet for a while, but a few minutes ago I heard her turn the bedroom TV on. I was trying to figure out what to do, when you came, accusing me of kidnapping.”

  “I apologize for that, Mrs. Woodburn. May I see her?”

  My reluctant hostess waved one hand in a go-ahead gesture.

  I knocked lightly on the door, waited a few seconds. Knocked a little harder, to be heard over the sound of a television show. No response. I opened the door.

  Carrying on the horse-world theme, Mrs. Woodburn’s bedroom was decorated like a bunkhouse—or what I imagined a bunkhouse looked like from the old western movies I’d seen. A simple wooden bed with a bright blanket folded at the bottom of it. Walls covered with photos of horses and people standing beside or riding horses. A bedside lamp made from a carved statue of a horse. A bureau. Only two objects didn’t belong in this decor: a big-screen TV set, and the slender figure lying on the bed, with the sheet pulled up to her neck. Didi’s face was buried in a pillow.

  I closed the door and moved within a few feet of the bed.

  “Didi. It’s Morgan. I’m here to help you.”

  “Nobody can help me.” Her voice was partially muffled by the pillow, but her words were clear enough to understand.

  “I think I can, if you’ll let me.” She didn’t reply, but at least she didn’t scream and order me away. I sat down on the edge of the bed, careful to keep at least a foot of space between us, so as not to crowd her. “Didi, your dad came to see me tonight. He’s very worried about you.”

  She sat up and turned toward me. Her eyes were red and swollen from hours of crying. “I want to go far away, but I don’t have enough money to buy a ticket. You could get a ticket for me—I’ll pay you back. I can’t go home—Daddy’s going to hate me!”

  “Oh, Didi, he couldn’t possibly hate you. He adores you.”

  “He won’t love me when he finds out what I did.” The tears started again, filling her eyes and rolling down her pale cheeks.

  There was something else in Didi’s eyes: guilt. When I reached out to comfort her, she threw herself into my arms, sobbing against my chest. I stroked her hair, murmuring words meant to soothe. Slowly, the gasping sobs that made her thin shoulders tremble began to subside.

  “Tell me, Didi. You’ll feel so much better when you share it with me. And I promise I will help you.”

  She drew her head away from my chest and rubbed her running nose with the back of one hand. Keeping an arm still around her, I reached over and plucked several tissues from the bo
x on the bedside table. I gave them to her and she blew her nose.

  While Didi was wiping and blowing her nose, a picture began to form in my mind. It was an ugly picture, but the fragments of it that I’d seen up to this moment at last fit together into a coherent whole. If my guess was right, it would save Nancy’s life, but it would devastate Didi’s.

  I took some more tissues and dabbed gently at Didi’s wet cheeks. “You told a lie, didn’t you, sweetie?”

  Staring down at her fingers twisting the sheet, she nodded.

  “About Jay Garwood, wasn’t it?”

  Still unwilling to look at me, she nodded again.

  “Is he dead?” Her voice was so low I could barely hear it, and she sounded closer to age five than to twelve.

  “No,” I said. “He’s in the hospital, but he’s going to be all right.” I made my voice strong, to sound sure, even though this answer was more my hope than the truth.

  She responded to my words by lifting her head to look at me. “He wasn’t killed? He was just injured. That’s not so bad … When somebody injures somebody, they just have to pay money for it, right?”

  “That’s true a lot of the time,” I said, to encourage her to go on. Now I was sure I knew what had happened, but she had to tell me the details. Turning slightly away from her, pretending to reach for another tissue, I slipped my right hand into the pocket of my jacket and turned on the little tape recorder.

  “When one person injures another, often the problem can be solved by settling some money on the one who’s hurt.”

  “Then the person wouldn’t have to go to jail?” Her voice was full of hope.

  “Your father is a brilliant attorney,” I said. “He knows how to make deals that are fair to everyone.”

  She sighed, as though a terrible burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

  “Did you lie to your dad? Did you tell him something about Jay that wasn’t true?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, but I wanted Daddy to live with Mummy and me again.” She swallowed, but went on. “I told Daddy that Jay … tried to … you know … kiss me.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  She shook her head. “No. But Daddy got soo mad! He went running out. I think he was going to see Jay, to tell him not to come near us again. A little while later, Millie—that’s our housekeeper—asked me to go downstairs and ask Mummy what time she wanted her to serve dinner.” Her eyes began to fill with tears again. “But when I got there, Nancy had killed Mummy. I never got to tell her …” She couldn’t finish. Her breath started to come in little gasps.

  I cradled her in my arms until her breathing normalized. When she was calm again, I said softly, “So your daddy hurt Jay, because of what you told him.”

  “Yes. I woke up really early this morning. Daddy was coming home. He didn’t see me, but I saw him putting his gun back in the safe. Then later it was on TV that Jay had been shot and I just knew that’s where Daddy had been. But it’s going to be all right, because Jay didn’t die, and Daddy will pay him.”

  “When Jay is better, I think things can be worked out. What you need to do right now is get some rest. Do you think you can sleep?”

  She nodded. “Will you tell Daddy, about what I did? Tell him I did it so he could be happy with us. We’d be a family again …” Her eyes were starting to close. “Morgan, can you turn off the light, but leave the TV on?”

  “Sure. I’ll come back in the morning. We’ll have breakfast together, and make some plans.”

  I’m not sure she heard me; she might already have fallen asleep. I turned the recorder off.

  Leaving the academy building, I turned south. The Twentieth Precinct was less than four blocks away, on West Eighty-second. Matt and Arnold were probably still there.

  I hadn’t gone more than a few feet when I was grabbed from behind and a hand was clapped over my mouth.

  Chapter 49

  HE DRAGGED ME into the dark alley between buildings on the south side of the riding academy. Shoving me hard against the wall, my brow mashed into the rough brick, he hissed in my ear. “I’m going to take my hand away, but if you scream, I’ll kill you. Understand?”

  I stopped struggling, stood still, and gave him what little bit of a nod I could manage. He had me pinned so forcefully I could barely move my head.

  Still keeping my face and body pressed against the alley wall, his hand came away from my mouth. Before I could take a deep breath, I heard a click, and felt the cold steel muzzle of a pistol against my cheek.

  I didn’t have to turn around to see who was holding a weapon on me. “Why are you doing this, Arnold?”

  “You phoned Didi, and lured her away. You put her up there, with that horse woman.”

  “No, Arnold, I didn’t call her.” I turned around but kept my back to the brick wall. If I had to launch myself at him, to keep him from shooting me, it would be better to have something to push off from. “Didi ran away by herself. After you and Matt left the Dakota, I got the idea she might come here.”

  It was pretty dark, but there was just enough light from the three-quarter moon and from the streetlight just past the mouth of the alley for me to see Arnold’s face. His features were a portrait of anguish. Beads of sweat dotted his high forehead, but his hand holding the pistol on me was steady. I had no doubt that if I made a wrong move, or said the wrong thing, he would kill me.

  I leaned against the wall, my hands at my sides, and kept my tone gentle. Nonthreatening. “Didi’s in a terrible state,” I said. “She knows that you tried to kill Jay Garwood, and she’s hysterical because she feels guilty about it.”

  “Guilty? That’s ridiculous! She didn’t do anything wrong. It was that bastard—”

  “No, Arnold. She feels guilty because she lied to you about Jay.”

  “What are you saying?” His voice was tense. Arnold was so smart, I think he suspected what I was about to say, but was fighting comprehension.

  “Didi told you Jay tried to do something to her, but he didn’t. She said that because she wanted you to stop him from seeing Veronica. She thought you’d just scare him away.”

  “No! That’s not true—she wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “Arnold, she’s done it before. Remember back a few months ago, when she had her riding accident? You thought it was because Nancy was careless in tightening the girth, but that wasn’t true. Didi held her arm inside the strap so that it couldn’t be tightened properly and so would slip while she was riding. She fell off that horse on purpose, so that you’d blame Nancy and break up with her.”

  Arnold shook his head furiously. “Ridiculous! If that were true, Nancy would have told me. We had a terrible fight. I said awful things—accused her of deliberately trying to hurt my daughter. She wouldn’t have taken that if what you’re saying—”

  “Nancy refused to tell you the truth, and wouldn’t let me, because she said it would break your heart to think Didi would do something like that. Nancy took the blame because she loved you.” That turned out to be a big mistake, I thought, but I kept those words to myself.

  I could see that Arnold was shaken by what I’d told him. The pistol’s barrel was still pointed at my heart, but his mind had turned inward, processing what he’d heard. I took a chance on his divided attention, eased my right hand into my pocket, and turned on the little tape recorder.

  “Didi saw you come home early this morning,” I said. “She saw you put the pistol back in your safe. This afternoon, when she heard that someone shot Jay Garwood, she realized you were the one, and she knew it was her fault. When I told her that Jay was alive, not dead, she broke down and told me what made her run away.”

  “No! No …”

  “I knew Nancy didn’t murder Veronica, so I’ve been trying to figure out who did. I didn’t seriously consider you, because you didn’t have a motive. But now I know my mistake was in using the wrong verb. Of course you wouldn’t have murdered Veronica—but you killed her, probably
by accident. You thought she’d exposed Didi to a child molester, so you hit her in a fit of rage, with the nearest object handy. I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill her—you lost your head for that one terrible instant. Then, realizing she was dead, you panicked and left the building to keep the appointment with your client. You didn’t know Nancy was coming to see Veronica, or that Nancy would be discovered with the body and charged with murder. You wouldn’t have deliberately framed Nancy, would you?”

  “No.” Arnold’s voice was a croak of pain. He took a deep breath and swallowed before he went on. “That lawyer I wanted her to hire—Cynthia, the one I trained—I was really going to mastermind Nancy’s defense, behind the scenes. I would have done anything to save her from prison.”

  “Anything except confess,” I said, angry that he’d made Nancy suffer.

  “I had to think of Didi. Her mother was … gone. I couldn’t let her lose her father, too.” Arnold began to look a little unsteady on his feet. “It’s so hot.” He lowered the pistol, but just a couple of inches; the barrel was still aimed at my kill zone.

  “Arnold, you look sick,” I said.

  “I’ve got to sit down. Have to think …” He brought the gun back up and gestured with it. “We’ll go to my car.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was get into a car with a distraught killer holding a 9-mm automatic, but I was sure that if I tried to run, he’d shoot me. Even in his current confused state, he was bigger and stronger than I, and armed. And desperate. I couldn’t hope to overpower him. All things considered, I decided to do what he wanted. At the very least, cooperating would buy me some time. Silently, I swore at myself for leaving the apartment in such a hurry I forgot to take the little canister of Mace I usually carried when I went out alone at night.

  With Arnold holding the pistol against my side in such a way that no one passing us on the sidewalk could see what he was doing, he directed me forward and around the corner to his big silver Lincoln. He pressed the button on the car key, which turned off the burglar alarm and unlocked the doors. Bizarrely, even now he played the courtly gentleman and opened the passenger door for me.