Nighttime Is My Time

guy you loved was lying in a casket?'

'I don't expect either praise or blame for that,' she had told him.

'For God's sake, Jean. I'm neither praising nor blaming you,' he'd said. 'But what an ordeal. I used to go to West Point to jog and had seen you once or twice with Reed Thornton, but I had no idea it was more than a casual friendship. What did you do after the graduation ceremony?'

'My mother and father and I had lunch. It was a really festive lunch. They had done their Christian duty by me and could now separate with a clear conscience. After we left the restaurant, I drove to West Point. Reed's funeral Mass had been that morning. I put the flowers my parents gave me at the graduation ceremony on Reed's grave.'

'And shortly after that you saw Dr. Connors for the first time?'

'The next week.'

'Jeannie,' Mark had said, 'I always felt that, like me, you were a survivor, but I can't imagine what you must have been going through, being alone at a time like that.'

'Not alone. I gather somebody must have known about it or found out about it even then.'

He had nodded and then said, 'I've read up on your professional life, but what about your personal life? Is there someone special, or has there; been someone special you might have confided in?'

Jean thought of the answer she had given him. 'Mark, remember the words of the Robert Frost poem. 'But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep…' In a way I feel like that. Until now, when I've had to talk about her, there's never been a single soul I've ever wanted to tell about Lily. My life is very full. I love my job and love writing. I have plenty of friends, both men and women. But I'll be honest. I've always had a feeling that there is something unresolved in my life that has to be settled, a sense that in a way my life itself has been held in abeyance. Something needs to be finished before I can put this behind me. I think I'm beginning to understand the reason for that. I still wonder if I shouldn't have kept my baby, and now that she may need me I'm so helpless, I want to turn back the clock and have the chance to keep her this time.'

Then she had seen the look on Mark's face. Or are you setting up a manufactured scenario because of your need to find her? He might as well have shouted the question. Instead he had said, 'Jean, of course you must pursue this, and I'm glad Sam Deegan is helping you since you're obviously dealing with an unbalanced individual. However, as a psychiatrist, I warn you that you must be very careful. If because of these implied threats you are able to access confidential records, you may intrude into the life of a young woman who isn't ready or willing to meet you.'

'You think that I have been sending those faxes to myself, don't you?' Jean winced, remembering how angry she had been when she realized that some people jumped to that conclusion.

'Of course I don't,' Mark had said promptly. 'But answer me this: If you received a call right now asking you to meet Lily, would you go?'

'Yes, I would.'

'Jean, listen to what I'm saying. Someone who somehow found out about Lily may be deliberately getting you into a fever pitch so that you'll be vulnerable to rushing off to meet her. Jean, you've got to be careful. Laura is missing. The other girls at your table are dead.'

He had left it at that.

Now Jean stood up. She was due downstairs for dinner in forty minutes. Maybe an aspirin would prevent the oncoming headache she sensed, and a hot bath would revive her, she thought.

The phone rang at seven-ten as she was stepping out of the tub. For a moment she debated about letting it ring, then grabbed a towel and rushed into the bedroom. 'Hello.'

'Hi, Jeannie,' a smiling voice said.

Laural It was Laura.

'Laura, where are you?'

'Where I'm having a lot of fun. Jeannie, tell those cops to pick up their jacks and go home. I'm having the time of my life. I'll call you soon. Bye, dear.'

50

Late Monday afternoon Sam went to interview Joel Nieman at his office in Rye, New York.

After keeping him waiting in the reception area for nearly half an hour, Nieman invited him into his decidedly upscale private suite. His entire manner suggested ill-concealed annoyance at the interruption.

Doesn't look much like Romeo to me, Sam thought as he studied Nieman's pudgy features and dyed reddish brown hair.

Nieman airily dismissed the suggestion that he had made a date with Laura during the reunion. 'I heard that nonsense about the lunch table killer on the radio,' he volunteered. 'That school reporter, Perkins, started it, I gather. They ought to put a net over his head and cart him away until he grows up. Listen, I was in class with those girls. I knew them all. The idea that their deaths are related is nonsense. Just start with Catherine Kane. Her car skidded into the Potomac when we were college freshmen. Cath was always a fast driver. Look up the number of speeding tickets she got in Cornwall during her senior year, and you'll see what I mean.'

'That may be,' Sam said, 'but don't you think it's a remarkable case of lightning striking in the same place, not twice but five times?'

'Sure, it's pretty creepy that five girls from the same table died, but

I could introduce you to the guy who services our computers. His mother and his grandmother dropped dead of heart attacks on the same day thirty years apart. Day after Christmas. Maybe they realized how much they spent for presents, and it got to them. Could be, don't you think?'

Sam looked at Joel Nieman with acute distaste but also with the sense that underneath his show of disdain there was a sense of unease. 'I understand your wife left the reunion on Saturday morning to go on a business trip.'

'That's right.'

'Were you alone at your home on Saturday night after the reunion dinner, Mr. Nieman?'

'As a matter of fact, I was. Those long-winded affairs make me sleepy.'

This guy isn't the kind who goes home alone when his wife is away, Sam thought. He took a shot in the dark. 'Mr. Nieman, you were observed leaving the parking lot with a woman in the car.'

Joel Nieman raised his eyebrows. 'Well, perhaps I did leave with a woman, but she wasn't pushing forty years old. Mr. Deegan, if you're on a fishing expedition with me because Laura took off with some guy and hasn't resurfaced, I suggest you call my lawyer. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a number of phone calls to make.'

Sam got to his feet and ambled toward the door, obviously in no haste. As he passed the bookcase, he paused and looked at the middle shelf. 'You have quite a collection of Shakespeare, Mr. Nieman.'

'I have always enjoyed the Bard.'

'I understand you were Romeo in your senior play at Stonecroft.'

'That's right.'

Sam chose his words carefully. 'Wasn't Alison Kendall critical of your performance?'

'She said I forgot my lines. I didn't forget them. I had a moment or two of stage fright. Period.'

'Alison had an accident in school a few days after the play, didn't she?'

'I remember that. The door of her locker fell on her. All the guys were questioned about it. I always thought that they should have been talking to the girls. A lot of them couldn't stand her. Look, this is going to get you nowhere. As I told you, I would bet my bottom dollar the other four lunch table deaths were accidents. There's absolutely no pattern to them. On the other hand, Alison was a mean kid. She trampled on people. From what I read about her, she never changed. I could see where someone might decide she'd been swimming long enough the day she drowned.'

He walked to the door and pointedly opened it. 'Speed the parting guest,' he said. 'That's Shakespeare, too.'

Sam hoped he was professional enough not to allow his face to show exactly what he thought of Nieman and