Darcy thought about the bruises on Erin ’s throat. Undoubtedly, there’d be media at the funeral parlor. “Closed casket. I’ll bring up clothing for her.” Visitation on Monday. Funeral mass on Tuesday at St. Paul ’s. St. Paul ’s. When she’d stayed with Erin and Billy, she had gone to St. Paul ’s with them.
She went back to Erin ’s apartment. Vince D’Ambrosio was still there. He accompanied her into the bedroom and watched as she opened the closet door. “ Erin had so much style,” Darcy said unsteadily as she searched for the dress she had in mind. “She used to tell me that she felt so out of it when I walked in the room with my folks that first day at college. I was wearing a designer suit and Italian boots my mother had forced on me. I thought she looked smashing in chinos and a sweater and marvelous jewelry. Even then she was designing her own pieces.”
Vince was a good listener. Abstractly, Darcy was aware that she was glad he was letting her talk. “No one’s going to see her,” she said, “except maybe I will, just for a minute. But I want to feel that she’d be pleased with what I chose for her… Erin urged me to be more daring about clothes. I taught her to trust her own instincts. She had impeccable taste.”
She pulled out a two-piece cocktail dress: pale pink fitted jacket, delicate silver buttons, flowing pink and silver chiffon skirt. “ Erin just bought this to wear to a benefit, a dinner dance. She was a wonderful ballroom dancer. That was something else we shared. Nona too. We met Nona in a ballroom dancing class at our health club.”
Vince remembered Nona had told him that. “From what you tell me, this dress sounds like something Erin would want to wear now.” He didn’t like the fact that Darcy’s pupils were so enlarged. He wished he could call Nona Roberts. She had told him she absolutely had to be on a shoot in Nanuet today. Darcy Scott ought not to be alone too much. Darcy realized she could read D’Ambrosio’s thoughts. She also realized there was no use reassuring him. The best service she could perform was to get out of here and let the fingerprint experts and God knows who else do their thing. She tried to make her voice and manner matter-of-fact as she asked, “What are you doing to find the man Erin was meeting Tuesday night?”
“We’ve found Charles North. What Erin told you checks out. It was a lucky break you happened to ask her about him. He moved last month from a law firm in Philadelphia to one on Park Avenue. He left yesterday for a trip to Germany. We’ll be waiting for him when he gets back Monday. Detectives from this precinct are going around pubs and bars in the Washington Square area with Erin ’s picture. We want to see if some bartender or waiter can remember seeing her on Tuesday evening and possibly can identify North when we get him.” Darcy nodded. “I’m going to Wellesley. I’ll stay there till after the funeral.”
“Nona Roberts is going to join you there?”
“On Tuesday morning. She can’t get up before then.” Darcy tried to smile. “Please don’t worry. Erin had loads of friends. I’ve heard from so many of the Mount Holyoke grads. They’ll be there. So will a lot of our buddies from New York. And she lived in Wellesley all her life. I’m staying with the people who used to be her next-door neighbors.”
She went home to pack. A call came from Australia. Her mother and father. “Darling, if only we could be with you. You know we thought of Erin as our second daughter.”
“I know.” If only we could be with you. How many times had she heard that over the years? Birthdays. Graduations. But there had been lots of times when they were with her. Any other kid would have been so happy to have the golden couple as parents. Why had she been a throwback to the cottage-with-a-picket-fence mentality? “It’s so good to talk with you. How’s the play going?”
Now they were on safe ground.
The funeral was a media event. Photographers and cameras. Neighbors and friends. Curiosity seekers. Vince had told her that hidden cameras would be recording everyone who came to the funeral parlor, the church, and the interment, in case Erin ’s killer was there.
The white-haired Monsignor who had known Erin all her life. “Who can forget the sight of that little girl pushing her father’s wheelchair into this church?” The soloist. “… All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you..
.”
The interment. “When every tear shall be wiped away…” The hours she spent with Billy. I’m glad you don’t know, she thought. Holding his hand. If he understands anything, I hope he thinks it’s Erin with him.
Tuesday afternoon the Pan Am shuttle back to New York, Nona beside her. “Can you take a couple of days off, Darce?” Nona asked. “This has been a pretty awful time for you.”
“As soon as I know they have Charles North in custody, I will go away for a week. A couple of my friends have a condo in St. Thomas. They want me to visit.” Nona hesitated. “That’s not the way it’s going to work, Darcy. Vince called me last night. They picked up Charles North. Last Tuesday evening he was in a board meeting at his law firm with twenty partners. Whoever met Erin was using his name.”
After he saw the broadcast and spoke to Chief Moore, Chris decided to go to Darien for the weekend. He wanted to be around when the FBI talked to his mother.
He knew Greta was planning to attend a black-tie dinner at the club. He stopped to eat at Nicola’s, arrived at the house around ten and decided to watch a film. A classic movie buff, he put on Bridge of San Luis Rey and then wondered at his choice. The idea of lives drawn together to one particular moment in time always intrigued him. How much was fate? How much was happenstance? Was there some kind of inevitable, inexorable plan to it all?
He heard the whirring of the garage door shortly before midnight and walked to the head of the basement stairs to wait for Greta, wishing once again that she had live-in help. He did not like the idea of her coming into this big house alone late at night.
Greta adamantly refused that suggestion. Dorothy, the daily housekeeper of three decades, suited her fine. That and the weekly cleaning service. If she had a dinner party, her caterer was excellent. And that was that. As she approached the stairs, he called down, “Hi, Mother.” Her gasp was audible. “What! Oh dear God, Chris. You startled me. I’m a bundle of nerves.” She looked up, trying to smile. “I was so glad to see your car.” In the dim light her fine-boned face reminded him of Nan ’s delicate features. Her hair, shimmering silver, was pulled back in a French knot. A sable jacket fell loosely from her shoulders. She was wearing a long black velvet sheath. Greta would be sixty on her next birthday. An elegant, beautiful woman whose smile never fully removed the sadness from her eyes.
It suddenly struck Chris that his mother always appeared to be poised waiting or listening for something, some sort of signal. When he was a kid, his grandfather had told him a World War I story about a soldier who had lost the message warning of an imminent enemy attack. Afterward the soldier always blamed himself for the terrible casualties and went through life looking in gutters and under stones for the lost message.
Over a nightcap, he told Greta about Erin Kelley and understood why the simile had occurred to him. Greta always felt that there was something Nan had told her before she died that had set off an instinctive alarm. Last week, once again, she had received a warning and been powerless to prevent a tragedy. “The girl they found had a high-heeled evening shoe on?” Greta asked. “Like Nan?
The sort of shoe you would dance in? That note said a dancing girl would die.” Chris chose his words carefully. “Erin Kelley was a jewelry designer. From what I understand, the feeling is that this is a copycat murder. Somebody got the idea from watching that True Crimes program. An FBI agent wants to talk to us about it.”
Chief Moore phoned on Saturday. An FBI agent, Vincent D’Ambrosio, would like to drop in on the Sheridans on Sunday.
Chris was glad that D’Ambrosio emphasized that no one could have acted on the letter Greta had received. “Mrs. Sheridan,” he told her, “we get tips much more specific than that one and still can’t prevent a tragedy from happening.” Vince asked Chris to walk outside with him. “The Darien police have the files on your sister’s death,” he explained. “They’re going to copy them for me. Would you mind taking me to the exact place where she was found?” They walked down the road that led from the Sheridan property to the wooded area with the jogging path. The trees had grown higher, their branches thicker in the fifteen years, but otherwise, Chris commented, the place
