she were terribly tired.
“Darcy, do you have one of your dates tonight?”
She nodded.
“Drinks, dinner?”
“I try to keep them to a glass of wine. By then, I think I can get a handle on whether or not they either met Erin or sound funny if they deny knowing her.” “You don’t drive off with them or go to their homes?”
“Lord, no.”
“That’s good. You look as though you wouldn’t have much strength to fight back if someone made a pass at you.” Chris hesitated. “Believe it or not, I’m not here to ask questions about something that isn’t my business. I just wanted you to know that my mother came across a letter from Nan, written six months before she died. In it she refers to a Charley who thought girls ought to wear spike heels.”
Darcy looked up at him. “Have you told Vince D’Ambrosio?” “Not yet. I will, of course. But I’m wondering if it would be a good idea for you to talk to my mother. It was digging out all these pictures that made her go through Nan ’s letters. No one had asked her to do that. I just think that if there is anything my mother knows, it might come to the surface faster if she talks to another woman who understands the kind of pain she’s been living with all these years.”
Nan was six minutes older than I. She never let me forget it. She was outgoing. I was shy.
Chris Sheridan and his mother had probably come to terms with Nan Sheridan’s death, Darcy thought. The True Crimes program, Erin ’s murder, the returned shoes, and now me. They’ve been forced to rip open whatever scars had healed. For them as well as me, there’ll be no peace until this is over. The distress in Chris Sheridan’s face for the moment robbed it of the aura of sophistication and executive confidence that had been so noticeable a few days ago.
“I’d like to meet your mother,” Darcy said. “She lives in Darien, doesn’t she?”
“Yes. I’ll drive you.”
“I’m going up to Wellesley early Sunday morning to visit Erin Kelley’s father.
If it’s all right, I’ll stop late Sunday afternoon on my way home.”
“Sounds like a long day for you. Tomorrow wouldn’t be better?” Darcy thought it was ridiculous at her age to blush. “I have plans for tomorrow.”
She got up to go. Robert Kruse was meeting her at Mickey Mantle’s at five-thirty. As of now, no one else had called. She had run out of personal ad dates.
Next week she’d start writing to the ads Erin had circled.
Len Parker had been angry at work. A maintenance man at NYU, there was nothing he couldn’t fix. Not that he’d studied much. It was just the feel of wires in his hands, the feel of a lock and key, doorjambs, switches. He was supposed to do only routine maintenance, but often when he saw something wrong, he’d fix it without talking about it. It was the one thing that gave him peace. But today, his thoughts had been confused. He’d yelled at his trustee for hinting that he might have a house somewhere. Whose business? Whose? His family? What about them? His brothers and sisters. Never even invited him to visit. Glad to wash their hands of him.
That girl, Darcy. Maybe he’d been mean to her, but she didn’t realize how cold it had been standing waiting outside that fancy restaurant to apologize to her. He’d told Mr. Doran, the trustee, about that. Mr. Doran said, “Lenny, if you’d only understand that you have enough money to eat in Le Cirque or anywhere else every night of your life.”
Mr. Doran just didn’t understand.
Lenny could remember his mother yelling at his father all the time. “You’ll put your children in the streets with your crazy investments.” Lenny used to cower in bed. He hated to think of being out in the cold.
Was that when he started going outside in his pajamas so he’d be used to it when it really happened? No one knew he did that. By the time his father made all that money, he was used to being in the cold.
It was hard to remember. He got so confused. Sometimes he imagined things that didn’t happen.
Like Erin Kelley. He’d looked up her address. She’d told him she lived in Greenwich Village and there she was: Erin Kelley, 101 Christopher Street. One night he’d followed her, hadn’t he?
Was he wrong?
Was it just a dream that she went to that bar and he stood outside? She sat and had something. He didn’t know what it was. Wine? Club soda? What difference? He’d tried to decide whether or not to go in and join her. Then she’d come out. He’d been about to go up and talk to her when the station wagon pulled up.
He couldn’t remember if he’d gotten a look at the driver. Sometimes he dreamed about a face.
Erin got in.
That was the night they say she disappeared.
The thing was that Lenny wasn’t sure if he’d just dreamed that. And if he told that to the cops, would they try to say he was crazy and make him go back to the place where they locked him up?
XVIII SATURDAY March 9
At noon on Saturday, FBI agents Vince D’Ambrosio and Ernie Cizek sat in a dark-gray Chrysler across the street from the entrance to 101 Christopher Street.
“There he goes,” Vince said. “All dressed up for his day off.” Gus Boxer was exiting from the building. He was wearing a red and black check lumber jacket over loose-fitting dark brown polyester pants, heavy laced boots, a black cap with a rim that half-covered his face.
“You call that dressed up?” Ernie exclaimed. “In that getup I thought he was paying off a bet.”
“You just never saw him in his underwear and suspenders. Let’s go.” Vince opened the driver’s door.
They had checked with the building managers. Boxer was off from noon every other Saturday till Monday morning. In his absence, a substitute super, Jose Rodriguez, handled complaints and did minor repairs. Rodriguez answered their ring. A sturdy man in his mid-thirties with a direct manner, Vince wondered why the management didn’t keep him full-time. He and Ernie showed their Bureau credentials. “We’re going from apartment to apartment questioning the tenants about Erin Kelley. A number of them were not in the last time we went through.”
Vince did not add that today he was going to get very specific about what the tenants thought of Gus Boxer.
On the fourth floor, he hit gold. An eighty-year-old woman answered the door, taking care not to remove the security chain. Vince showed his badge. Rodriguez explained, “It’s all right, Miss Durkin. They just want to ask a few questions. I’ll stay right here where you can see me.”
“Can’t hear,” the old woman yelled.
“I just want to…”
Rodriguez touched D’Ambrosio’s arm. “She can hear better than you or me,” he whispered. “Come on, Miss Durkin, you liked Erin Kelley. Remember how she always asked you if you needed anything from the store and how she’d take you to church sometimes? You want the cops to get the guy who did that to her, don’t you?” The door opened the length of the chain. “Ask your questions.” Miss Durkin looked severely at Vince. “And don’t shout. It gives me a headache.”
For the next fifteen minutes, the two agents got an earful of what a native New York octogenarian thought of how the city was being run. “I’ve lived here all my life,” Miss Durkin informed them crisply, her wavy gray hair bobbing as she spoke. “We never used to lock our doors. Why would you? Who’d bother you? But now, all this crime and no one doing a thing about it. Disgusting. I tell you, they should ship all those drug dealers to the ends of the earth and let them sail off.”
“I agree with you, Miss Durkin,” Vince said wearily. “Now about Erin Kelley.” The old woman’s face saddened. “A sweeter girl you’d never find. I’d like to get my hands on whoever did that to her. Now a few years ago, I happened to be sitting at the window looking at that apartment building across the street. A woman was
