Midnight Voices

CHAPTER 2

“Let’s walk down a few blocks,” Caroline said. They were at the corner of 77th and Central Park West, and even though the light had changed and the north-south traffic had come to a halt, Caroline stayed on the curb, clutching her children as if they were toddlers instead of near-adolescents. As she stared across the street to the spot where Brad had entered the park on the night he’d been killed, she told herself she was being stupid, that there was nothing threatening about the spot at all. Everyone who’d ever been mugged in the park had entered it somewhere; what was she going to do, avoid the park completely for the rest of her life? Keep herself and Laurie and Ryan penned inside the apartment because she was afraid to go outside?

“You don’t have to go with me, Mom,” Ryan said, trying to tug loose from her grip. “I know where I’m going. Why don’t you and Laurie just go to the zoo?”

Because I don’t want the same thing to happen to you that happened to your father, Caroline thought, but managed to let her voice betray not even a hint of the thought. Instead she smiled brightly. Too brightly? “Embarrassed to be seen with your old mother?” she asked, and saw by the flush of Ryan’s face that she’d hit the nail squarely on the head.

“All the other guys’ll be with their dads,” Ryan blurted out, and his flush immediately deepened. Then he swiped at his eyes with his sleeve, in a not-quite-successful attempt to conceal their dampness.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Caroline squatted down so her eyes were level with her son’s. Suddenly he looked far younger than his ten years, and the pain in his eyes tore at her heart. “I know it’s not easy,” she said, resisting an urge to wrap her arms around him. “But we’ll get through this. I promise we will.”

Ryan’s jaw trembled, but then he bit his lip and drew slightly away from her. “I’m okay,” he muttered.

But it was so obvious that he wasn’t okay that for a moment — just a moment — Caroline considered letting him go on to the playground by himself. After all, it was one of the ball fields down at the south end of the park that they were going to, not the ones farther up.

The exact opposite direction from the way Brad had gone that night.

But then she scanned the park, already filling up with people brought out by the perfect spring morning. Was it possible the man who’d killed Brad was here? They’d never caught him, never even had a clue. And the detective in charge of the case — a big, bluff, sad-eyed Sergeant named Frank Oberholzer up at the 20th Precinct on West 82nd — had explained that they probably wouldn’t catch the killer. “The thing is, it doesn’t look like your husband was a specific target. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. So we don’t have much to go on unless we get a bunch more just like it. Same M.O., same area, same time of day. Then we got a pattern, and we got something to look for. But if it was just some junkie looking for quick cash, there won’t be a pattern — he’ll hit someone else, but it won’t necessarily be a jogger, or even in the park. Hell, he might already be sitting out on Rikers for something else, but unless he talks, there’s no way we’re going to find out what he did.”

“And he could just as easily still be in the park, looking for someone else,” Caroline had countered. Oberholzer at least had had the decency to tell her the truth.

“He could be. But if he is, and if he does the same thing again, then we’ve got a shot at him. With your husband, there were no witnesses. Next time he might not be so lucky, or his victim might not die.”

Which meant that he might be right here, right now.

Watching her?

Could he know who she was?

Of course not! She was being ridiculous. The man hadn’t even known Brad — hadn’t known his name, or anything about him. But that wasn’t true — he’d taken Brad’s wallet, so he’d known a lot about him if he’d taken the time to go through the wallet instead of just grabbing the money and credit cards. Brad’s driver’s license had been in the wallet, so he’d had their address. And pictures. There’d been pictures of her, and of the kids. At least the pictures of the kids were old ones: Ryan hadn’t been more than four, and Laurie six or seven. But Laurie, at least, would still be recognizable, and so would Caroline herself.

Once again she scanned the people moving through the park, and felt an almost irresistible urge to grab the kids’ hands and take them back to the safety of the apartment.

Paranoid!

She was getting paranoid like Brad, and it had to stop before she turned into one of those terrified women who never let their children out of their sight for fear that something would happen to them. Caroline knew the fear was irrational; she’d read the statistics herself and knew that children were just as safe on the streets now as they’d ever been. Despite the hysteria of the media, there weren’t monsters lurking everywhere, waiting to victimize every child that came down the sidewalk. Those things happened, certainly, but they weren’t nearly as commonplace as Caroline had once believed. But on the other hand, she wasn’t ready to let Ryan go off by himself in the park. Not yet. In fact, she wasn’t ready to go into the park herself quite yet. At least not here. “Let’s just go down a few blocks, okay?” she said.

She saw Laurie and Ryan lean forward just enough to glance at each other, and was almost certain they were rolling their eyes, disgusted that she was treating them like four-year-olds. Forcing herself to relax her grip on their hands, she crossed 77th and started south.

Then, at the corner of 70th, it was Ryan who suddenly stopped, his hand tightening on hers. Caroline looked down at him questioningly.

“Can we cross the street?” he asked.

She glanced ahead, searching for whatever had made him stop. Had he seen something? Or someone?

Or had someone been looking at him?

Her heart skipped a beat, but as she scanned the smattering of people on the sidewalk ahead — there weren’t more than half a dozen of them — nothing looked amiss at all. Just a few people going about their business. Then she heard Laurie giggle. “Is there something going on that I don’t know about?”

Laurie’s eyes twinkled. “He thinks witches and vampires live in the building across the street,” she said.

“I do not!” Ryan flared, but his face turned beet red, belying his words.

Caroline glanced up at the building across the street, and suddenly understood.

The Rockwell.

It was a big old pile of a building, combining enough different styles of architecture that most people referred to it as “The Grand Old Bastard of Central Park West.” One of the oldest buildings in the area, it was also showing its age, for the stone blocks from which it had been constructed had never been cleaned — at least not in Caroline’s memory — and the entire façade of the building was blackened with the accumulated grime of decades, if not centuries. As she gazed up at it, she was suddenly reminded of a house two blocks down the street in the town in New Hampshire where she’d grown up. It had been big — though nowhere near as big as the Rockwell, given that it had been designed for a single family — but it had been constructed out of the same kind of stone that covered the Rockwell, and that had been just as badly stained. The family that had built it had dwindled down to one old lady who lived alone in the huge stone mansion, and the grounds had gone the way of the house itself, so the whole property was an overgrown tangle of weeds dominated by the forbidding-looking house. It had been an article of faith among Caroline and her friends that the old woman was a witch, and that any child who wandered too close to the house would never be seen again.

Apparently the legend of the witch in the old house on the corner had transplanted itself to the city, and as she gazed at the old apartment house, she could certainly see how the legend could have gotten attached to the building. She could almost hear herself and her friends whispering the tales to the younger kids in the neighborhood. “Now I wonder who could have told Ryan that?” she asked, her eyes fixing on Laurie.

Now it was Laurie who blushed. “They’re only stories,” Laurie said, looking at her brother with undisguised contempt. “It’s not like anyone believes them.”

“They are not!” Ryan flared. “Jeff Wheeler says—”

“Jeff Wheeler’s a jerk,” Laurie offered.

“He is not! He’s—”

“How about we just go to the park?” Caroline interrupted before the spat could escalate any further. Mercifully, there was enough of a break in traffic to let them dart across to the park side of the street, and she headed toward the foot-path a block further down that led to the Tavern on the Green. “As soon as we get in, you can go on ahead, okay? Just don’t get too far ahead — your old mother still worries about you.”

“I’m not a baby,” Ryan replied, but even as he spoke, Caroline saw his eyes flick nervously toward the building across the street.

“I know you’re not,” Caroline replied as they came to the mouth of the path. “I know you’re growing up, and I know you can take care of yourself. But I still worry about you, and I want to be able to keep an eye on you. So just don’t get too far ahead of us. And when we get to the field, Laurie and I’ll sit on a bench by ourselves, and try to pretend we don’t even know you. How’s that?” Ryan seemed to think it over, and apparently decided it was the best deal he was going to get. Nodding, he started away, but Caroline called after him. “Hey! If you hit a home run, is it okay if we cheer?”

Ryan turned and waved, finally grinning, then moved ahead, scurrying along the path toward the baseball diamonds. For a moment Caroline was afraid she was going to lose sight of him, but then he glanced back once again, apparently decided he’d put enough distance between himself and his mother, and slowed his pace enough so she’d be able to keep up without having to look like she was chasing him.

But even as Ryan slowed his pace, Caroline speeded up her own, unwilling to lose sight of her son even for a few seconds.

The view from Irene Delamond’s window had never failed to please her; indeed, to her mind, the expanse of Central Park spread out beneath her made her feel as if she were living in the far reaches of some charmingly bucolic county rather than in the throbbing heart of one of the busiest cities in the world. That, of course, was what made the apartment she shared with her sister Lavinia so perfect. It was high enough up so she could easily see into the park; indeed, during the winter months she could actually glimpse the buildings lining Fifth Avenue on the far side through the skeletal branches of the trees. But its location on the third floor was still low enough that for three seasons only the new skyscrapers over on Second and Third were visible, and if she ignored those (and Irene was quite capable of ignoring anything she chose) she could imagine that the city wasn’t surrounding her at all, but lay far beyond the forest outside her window. Of course, to perfect the illusion, Irene had to refrain from looking down into the street directly beneath her, but that was simple — the rooms were large, and it was merely a matter of staying back from the glass a sufficient distance to allow nothing to intrude upon her vista of nearly unbroken parkland.

And at night, one simply closed one’s drapes.

This morning, though, was so perfect that the sunlight had drawn Irene to the glass like a moth to a bare light bulb, and even though the window hadn’t been opened in years, she was almost tempted to try to lift the heavy casement and let the morning air in.

Almost, but not quite.

As far as Irene was concerned, fresh air was fine in its place, but its place was definitely outside the confines of the Rockwell. Still, this morning it might actually be pleasant to undo the latch and raise the window, except she knew perfectly well that the latch wouldn’t undo, nor would the window raise; not without removing the layers of paint from the last three redecorations the apartment had been through. Three, at any rate, that Irene and Lavinia admitted to remembering. There had been a couple of more remodels, but they had been done in fashions that had proved to be nothing more than fads, and Irene had as easily shut them out of her mind as she shut the city out of her vision. But this morning she found herself not only gazing out at the park, but at the street below.

A few minutes ago she had seen a little family going into the park: a woman, with her son and daughter. The moment Irene had first spotted them she had begun playing her little game of trying to figure out where they might be going and what they might be doing. She had watched them as they’d made their way down the sidewalk across the street, watched as the little boy kept glancing over at the building. She’d kept watching as they turned onto the path leading into the park and started down toward the Tavern on the Green. But surely they weren’t going to the restaurant this early? Was it even open? But they hadn’t been dressed for a restaurant. The boy was wearing jeans and a baseball jersey.

A baseball jersey! Of course! They were going to the baseball diamonds down near the playground.

And now here came Anthony Fleming.

He was dressed almost perfectly, as always: gray flannel trousers, a pale blue shirt, and a navy-blue blazer with just the slightest hint of a bright red handkerchief peeping out of its pocket. It was the fact that he was wearing no necktie that forced Irene to qualify the perfection of his dress. Of course, Anthony was very stylish, which Irene appreciated, but there were certain styles that she really wished would pass.

One of them was open-throated shirts on men. On a few men, she supposed they could actually be attractive. But all too many males of the species accomplished little more than displaying a thick patch of decidedly unattractive chest hair tangled around vulgar gold chains. That was something Irene could definitely do without. Not that she had any objection to flesh itself — it was the hair she disliked. There had been times in her life — and she hoped there would still be times yet to come — when she had certainly indulged in the physical pleasures of life. But aesthetics were important, which was one of the reasons Irene admired Anthony Fleming. Even from where she stood, she could tell that there was no unsightly hair protruding from his shirt. Anthony, even in his grief, knew how to dress.

But while his grief may not have been evident in his clothes, certainly Irene could see a heaviness in his step, a seeming tiredness in his whole being. But it had been months now since the loss of Lenore, and even though she knew some of the neighbors might not approve, to Irene the proper thing was obvious. Anthony Fleming was a man, and if there was one thing Irene had come to understand over the long decades of her life, it was that men could not do without women. The reverse, of course, was not true at all; most women — and Irene certainly counted herself among them — could do very well without a man. Not that she had anything against them, per se. It was simply that it had been her experience that for the most part, men simply weren’t worth the effort. They expected a great deal of support, both physical and emotional, and seemed to think that a few moments a week of sexual gratification should suffice to keep a woman happy. Irene knew that not to be true, and had long ago decided that affairs were one thing; as long as a man performed to her standards, and pleased her more than he did not, then a relationship could be perfectly comfortable. But marriage was another story entirely. From her observations — and she had had ample opportunity to observe — women nearly always got the short end of the marital stick. They made a home, did the cooking (or at least hired the chef, then tried to keep him from stealing more than his fair share), organized the social life, and did their best to remain attractive long after the man’s hair had fallen out while his stomach had grown. But men seemed utterly unable to do without the attentions of a good woman, and Anthony Fleming seemed to be no exception. So, since Irene had neither the interest nor the intention of filling the void in her neighbor’s life herself, the least she could do was set about finding someone who could.

As if sensing her eyes on him, Anthony looked up, spotted her, and waved.

Then, as he stepped through the front door of the Rockwell, she left the window, went to the phone, and dialed the number of the doorman’s booth. “Tell Mr. Fleming not to go up,” she instructed. “I shall be down in a few moments.”

She looked in on her sister, who was still asleep, then put on a light poplin coat in her favorite shade of purple. Picking a walking stick from the umbrella stand by the front door, she left her apartment, not bothering even to lock the door, let alone bolt it. In all the considerable number of years she’d lived in the Rockwell, she’d never had reason to lock her door, and saw no reason to begin now. The elevator, sent up from the lobby by Rodney, clanked to a stop just as she arrived at its gate, and she slid the accordion gate open, stepped inside, re-closed the gate, and reached for the button that would send her to the lobby. But then she suddenly changed her mind, and went up four floors instead. She left the door of the cage open, and walked down the hall to Max and Alicia Albion’s door. Alicia answered almost instantly, and the worry in her eyes was enough to tell Irene what she’d come to find out. “Rebecca’s no better?” she asked. Rebecca Mayhew was the foster child Max and Alicia had taken in four years ago, a tiny waif of a child who had looked far less than her eight years. “It’s just that she’s never been fed properly,” Alicia had assured Irene when the older woman had asked if there was something wrong with the child. Irene hadn’t quite believed her, since Alicia’s response to any problem invariably involved food. But in Rebecca’s case, it appeared Alicia was right, for as time went by, the girl had managed to grow and fill out, without ballooning the way Alicia and Max had. But over the last few weeks the child had begun looking tired, and not only Irene, but some of the other neighbors started to worry about her. “I was hoping maybe she’d be feeling good enough to go to the park with me.”

Alicia shook her head. “Dr. Humphries is coming — that’s who I thought you were. Maybe another day?”

“Of course,” Irene assured her. “Give Rebecca my love, and tell her I might just bake up something special for her tomorrow.” Returning to the elevator, she pressed the button for the lobby. As the elevator rattled toward the ground floor through the shaft created by the staircase that wound all the way to the top of the eight-story building, Irene balefully eyed the panel of buttons that had several years ago displaced Willie from his job operating the elevator. Since her neighbors had voted to make the elevator self-service, she’d never quite felt safe. In the pre-button days, she’d always known that if anything went wrong, Willie would take care of it. But what would she do now? Call down to Rodney, who would come up the stairs, chat with her, but have no idea what to do? Well, perhaps it wouldn’t happen.

More likely, she decided darkly, it would. Then, as the elevator rattled safely to a stop and released her from its cage, she put the thought out of her mind. “You’re taking me for a walk,” she announced to Anthony Fleming, who was looking at her with a bemused expression that told her he probably wouldn’t argue with her. “It’s a beautiful day, and it would be a shame to waste it.”

“And suppose I had other plans?” Fleming asked, putting on a severe expression that Irene saw through in an instant.

“Then you would cancel them,” she announced. “How much older than you do you think I am?”

Fleming shrugged noncommittally. “A few years.”

“A few decades, you mean,” Irene shot back tartly. “At least that’s how I feel today. And since that’s how I feel, I’m going to demand the privilege of age, and let you take me for a stroll through the park. We shall observe nature in its full bloom, and the vigor of youth. Perhaps it will make me feel better.”

Anthony Fleming shrugged helplessly at Rodney, who was grinning from his kiosk, and held the front door open for Irene. “Where are we going? Or are we just wandering?”

“Children,” Irene said, turning south. “Whenever I start feeling this old, I always like to watch children.”

“Maybe you should have had some of your own,” Fleming observed.

“Wanting to watch children is one thing. Wanting to have them is entirely another.” She sighed heavily. “And if my child got sick, I don’t know how I’d handle it.”

“You’d handle it like everyone else does,” Anthony assured her. “You’d get through it.”

“But it must be so hard.”

There was a long silence, but then Anthony Fleming nodded in assent. “It is,” he agreed. “It’s very hard indeed.”

Caroline and Laurie were still a couple of hundred yards from the playground when a voice called out from behind them. “Laurie? Laurie! Wait up!”

Turning, Caroline saw Amber Blaisdell hurrying toward them. A blonde girl whose even-featured face was framed in the same pageboy haircut her mother wore, Amber was clad in Bermuda shorts and a white blouse with a sweater tied over her shoulders — exactly the same preppy uniform that half the girls at Laurie’s former school habitually wore when they weren’t wearing the school uniform itself.

“Hey, Amber,” Laurie said as the other girl caught up with them.

“A bunch of us are going to the Russian Tea Room for lunch! Want to go?”

Caroline saw a flash of anticipation cross Laurie’s face, but it faded almost as quickly as it came. “I–I don’t think so,” she said. “I think I’m gonna hang with my mom.”

“Oh, come on!” Amber urged. “It’ll be fun.” Her voice took on a slight edge. “Since you changed schools, we hardly ever see you anymore.”

A look of uncertainty passed over Laurie’s features. “It’s not that.”

“What is it?” Amber pressed. “You never want to do anything anymore.” She glanced at the small group of girls who were watching the interaction between herself and Laurie. “Some of the kids are starting to talk.”

Laurie’s eyes flicked toward the group of her former classmates. “Talk about what?”

Amber hesitated, as if not sure she should repeat what her friends were saying, but then decided to face it head on. “It just seems like you don’t want to be our friend anymore, that’s all.”

“I want to be,” Laurie began. “I just—”

But before she could finish, someone called out to Amber. “Are you coming? We’re going to be late.”

Amber looked at Laurie one last time. “Come on,” she urged. “Come with us.”

But still Laurie shook her head, and a second later Amber had disappeared into the gaggle of her friends. Caroline was almost certain she saw Laurie’s chin tremble slightly as she watched the girls who had been her best friends only a few short months ago now go off without her, and she slipped a comforting arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said as they set off once more toward the baseball diamond, where Ryan had already plunged into the milling group of boys who were just starting to choose up sides for their softball game. “Maybe we can find a way for you to go back to the Academy next year.”

“No,” Laurie replied a little too quickly, with a note in her voice that warned Caroline not to push it. But a moment later as they found an empty bench close enough to the baseball diamond to offer a good view but far enough away not to embarrass Ryan, she suddenly spoke again. “It’s just — I don’t know — even if we could afford for us to go back to the Academy, I couldn’t do the things we used to do.”

Caroline looked squarely at her daughter, and, in contrast to Ryan a few minutes earlier, Laurie seemed suddenly to have matured beyond her years. “You really don’t mind not going to the Academy?”

Laurie shrugged. “I don’t know. I liked it okay when I was there. But it cost a lot, and since Dad…” Her voice trailed off, but she didn’t need to finish the thought. Private school was the first thing that had gone after Brad had died, and it had been one of the hardest things for Caroline to accept. Indeed, right up until the spring semester fees were due, she’d kept struggling to find the money to keep Laurie and Ryan in the school that she and Brad had worked so hard first to get them in to, then to pay for. But they’d both agreed it was worth it, since at the Elliott Academy they were not only getting a good education, but were safe as well.

But the money simply hadn’t been there, and both she and the kids had had to face it. But now, after the interchange she’d just witnessed between Laurie and Amber Blaisdell, and the longing she’d seen in Laurie’s eyes as she watched her old friends go off without her, she wondered just how much the change in schools might really be damaging her children. Certainly the academic standards at the Elliott Academy were higher than in the public school, and it seemed like every week she read more and more reports of beatings and thievery and drug dealings by kids in public schools who were only a year or two older than Laurie.

Should she have tried harder to find the money to pay their tuition at the Academy? But even as the question formed in her mind, she knew the answer: If there wasn’t enough money to pay the rent, there sure wasn’t enough to cover the costs of private school.

I can’t do it, she thought. I just can’t cope with it all! But even as the words formed in her mind, she heard Brad’s voice whispering inside her head. “You can do it. You’ll find a way. You have to.”

“And I will,” she said, not realizing she’d spoken out loud until her daughter looked at her curiously.

“You’ll what?” Laurie asked.

Once again, Caroline slipped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I’ll figure it out,” she said.

“Figure what out?”

Caroline gave Laurie a quick squeeze. “Life,” she said. “That’s all. Just life.” Then she settled back to watch Ryan play softball, and for at least a little while her problems faded away into the warmth and brilliance of the perfect spring morning.

Irene Delamond and Anthony Fleming walked four blocks down to 66th Street, crossed Central Park West, and started into the park. The walking stick held lightly in her right hand, Irene tucked her left through Fleming’s arm, and glanced up at him. “You’re missing Lenore terribly, aren’t you?” She felt him stiffen, and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “We all miss her, Anthony. But because she’s gone doesn’t mean your life is over.”

There was a long silence as Anthony seemed to turn the statement over in his mind, but at last he nodded, and when he spoke, Irene could hear the uncertainty in his voice. “I suppose you’re right. But it’s only been six months.”

“Time is always relative, Anthony,” Irene observed as she turned down a path leading to the playground. “For the terminally ill, six months are a lifetime, and not a very long one. To a three-year-old waiting for Christmas, it’s an eternity so distant it’s not even worth thinking about.” She sighed. “To me it seems like a blink of an eye.”

“And for me?” Anthony asked, looking down at Irene.

Finally she saw a hint of a smile — the smile that was one of his best features — and just the faintest glimmer of a twinkle in his eyes, which managed to be the exact blue of turquoise while showing nothing of the stone’s hardness. “Well, I suppose that’s for you to decide, isn’t it?”

Now his smile broadened. “Unless you or some of your busybody friends decide otherwise.”

She swatted him playfully. “Is that any way to talk about your neighbors?”

“I thought the big city was supposed to be anonymous,” he observed darkly.

“It is. Except in The Rockwell, and I suppose in The Dakota, too.” She uttered the name of the building just up the street from their own with ill-concealed contempt.

“What’s wrong with The Dakota? Except for us, it’s the only interesting building on the West Side.”

“Actors,” Irene spat. “It’s filled with them. Loud parties, and all those perverted people. Can you imagine?”

“As I recall we have an actress in The Rockwell, too.”

“That’s different,” his companion sniffed.

“Really?” Anthony countered. “How so?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Virginia Estherbrook is one of us!” Her fingers tightened on Anthony Fleming’s arm once more, but this time there was nothing reassuring in the gesture. “And don’t think you can simply change the subject on me.” She guided him toward one of the baseball diamonds, where a group of shouting children were gathered around a man wearing the striped shirt of an umpire. “Let’s watch for a while,” she said as the group broke up into two teams. While one of the teams fanned out into the field and the other huddled together to establish a batting order, Anthony Fleming watched in amusement as Irene surveyed the benches behind the backstop, silently trying to anticipate which one she would choose. Men, a lot of whom seemed to know each other, occupied most of the benches and Anthony assumed that for the most part they were divorced, spending the weekend with the children they never saw during the week. Irene, just as he suspected she would, ignored the benches occupied by men, and headed instead toward one that was occupied by a woman who appeared to be a few years younger than he, and a girl who looked as if she was just shy of her teens.

“Is this end of the bench taken?” Irene asked.

The woman glanced up, shook her head, then returned her attention to the game that was just beginning on the baseball diamond. Irene settled herself onto the bench and patted the empty space next to her. When Anthony made no move to occupy it, she fixed him with a look. “Just for a few minutes,” she said. “It’s not going to kill you.”

Anthony Fleming lowered himself reluctantly onto the bench, and waited to see what Irene Delamond’s opening gambit would be. It didn’t take long.

“Is your son playing?” Irene asked, smiling at the woman.

The woman nodded. “He’s in left field.”

“He must be very good. They always put the bad players in right field.”

The woman glanced at Irene. “I think he’d play every day, if he could. But since his father—” Suddenly her face colored, and she seemed to withdraw slightly. “He just doesn’t play as much as he’d like.”

“What a shame,” Irene sighed, scanning the field.

Anthony Fleming watched as her eyes came to rest on the boy in left field — who darted out to snag a fly ball faster than Fleming would have thought possible — and he was almost certain he saw a tiny nod of Irene Delamond’s head, as if the boy had just passed some sort of test to which the woman had silently subjected him.

The boy suddenly looked directly at them, as if he was somehow aware of Irene’s scrutiny, but her attention was back on the woman at the other end of the bench.

“There’s just not enough time anymore, is there?” she asked. “The children all seem to have so much to do nowadays.” She leaned forward slightly and spoke to the girl sitting on the other side of the woman. “What about you, young lady? Do you like baseball?”

The girl shook her head, but said nothing, and finally the woman answered for her. “I promised her I’d take her to the Bronx Zoo this afternoon, but now I have to work. I—”

“Mo-om!” The girl rolled her eyes in exasperated embarrassment. “Do you have to tell everyone everything?”

“Oh, dear,” Irene fretted. “I’m afraid I’ve stuck my nose in where it doesn’t belong, haven’t I?”

“No, of course not,” the woman assured her quickly. “It just hasn’t been the best morning for us, that’s all.” She turned to the girl. “And I don’t think I told her anything that’s a big secret, Laurie. I did promise to take you to the zoo.”

The girl’s face burned with humiliation. “Will you stop treating me like a child?”

“Actually, no she won’t,” Irene said before the girl’s mother could reply. “My mother treated me like a child until the day she died, and I was nearly sixty when that happened. If you think it’s bad now, just wait a few years. She’ll drive you stark raving mad.” Laurie, taken utterly by surprise by the elderly woman’s words, was now gaping at Irene, who winked at her. “It’s what mothers do,” Irene finished in an exaggerated whisper. “I think they don’t feel like they’re doing their job right if their children aren’t regularly made to feel like idiots.” Now the woman was staring at her too. “I’m Irene Delamond,” she said.

“Caroline Evans,” the woman replied. “This is my daughter, Laurie.”

“And this is my neighbor, Anthony Fleming,” Irene said.

“Who must be getting along,” Anthony said promptly, rising to his feet.

Irene glared at him. “Don’t be silly, Anthony. We just got here. Surely you can sit a few minutes?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Fleming replied. He offered Caroline Evans a neutral smile. “Nice to have met you. And be careful of Irene — she’ll run your life for you if you give her half a chance. The best thing to do is get up and walk away, before she really gets started. Just like I’m doing right now,” he added pointedly as Irene started to say something. “Behave yourself, Irene.”

Irene watched him go, then shifted her attention back to Caroline Evans, and sighed in frustration. “I swear, I don’t know what I’m going to do with that man.”

“He seems very nice,” Caroline said.

“He is,” Irene agreed. “But ever since his wife died…” Her voice trailed off, and then she appeared to shift an internal gear. “Well, you don’t need to hear about that, do you? Do tell me all about yourself, Caroline.”

As she left the park an hour later, Irene Delamond’s mind was starting to work, and by the time she was back home, an idea was already taking shape. She made a few phone calls, but none of them were to Anthony Fleming. For the moment, at least, there was no reason for him to know what she was up to.

No reason at all.