Nighttime Is My Time

38

Jake Perkins knew that the clerk who had booted him out of the Glen-Ridge went off duty at 8:00 p.m. That meant he could go back to the hotel anytime after eight and hang around the desk with the other clerk, Amy Sachs, to see if anything had developed.

After dinner with his parents, who were enthralled with his account of what was going on at the hotel, he went over the notes he would be giving to the Post. He had decided to wait until the morning to call the newspaper. By then Laura Wilcox would have been missing a full day.

At ten o'clock he was back at the Glen-Ridge, entering the deserted hotel lobby. You could fly a plane through this place and not hit anyone, he thought as he walked to the front desk. Amy Sachs was there.

Amy liked him. He knew that. Last spring when he had been covering a luncheon for Stonecroft she had said he reminded her of her kid brother. "The only difference is Danny is forty-six and you're sixteen," she'd said, then she'd laughed. "He always wanted to be in publishing, too, and in a way I guess he is. He owns a trucking company that delivers newspapers."

Jake wondered how many people realized that under her timid, anxious-to-please exterior, Amy had a good sense of humor and was pretty sharp.

She welcomed him with a timid smile. "Hi, Jake."

"Hi, Amy. Just thought I'd stop by and see if you'd heard from Laura Wilcox."

"Not a word." Just then the phone at her elbow rang, and she picked up the receiver. "Front desk, Amy speaking," she whispered.

Then as Jake watched, Amy's face changed and she gasped, "Oh, Ms. Wilcox…"

Jake leaned over the desk and motioned to Amy to hold the receiver away from her ear so that he could listen, too. He caught Laura saying that she was with friends, her plans were indefinite, and to please hold her room for her.

She doesn't sound like herself, he thought. She's upset. Her voice is trembling.

The conversation lasted only twenty seconds. When Amy replaced the receiver, she and Jake looked at each other. "Wherever she is, she's not having a good time," he said flatly.

"Or maybe she's just hung over," Amy suggested. "I read an article about her in People magazine last year, and it said she'd been in rehab for a drinking problem."

"That would explain it, I guess," Jake agreed. He shrugged. So much for my big story, he thought. "Where do you think she went, Amy?" he asked. "You were on duty all weekend. Did you notice her hanging around with anyone specially?"

Amy Sachs' oversized glasses wiggled when she frowned. "I saw her arm in arm with Dr. Fleischman a couple of times," she said. "And he was the first to check out Sunday morning, even before that brunch at Stonecroft. Maybe he'd left her sobering up somewhere and was anxious to get back to her."

She opened a drawer and took out a card. "I promised that detective, Mr. Deegan, that I'd phone him if we heard from Ms. Wilcox."

"I'm on my way," Jake said. "I'll see you, Amy." With a wave of his hand he started for the front door as she dialed. He went outside, stood indecisively on the pavement, walked halfway to his car, and then returned to the desk.

"Did you reach Mr. Deegan?" he asked.

"Yes. I told him that I'd heard from her. He said that was good news and to let him know when she actually comes back for her bags."

"That's what I was afraid of. Amy, give me Sam Deegan's number."

She looked alarmed. "Why?"

"Because I think Laura Wilcox sounded scared rather than hung-over, and I think Mr. Deegan should know that."

"If anyone finds out I let you listen in on her call, I'll lose my job."

"No, you won't. I'll say I grabbed the receiver when you mentioned her name and turned it so I could hear, too. Amy, five of Laura's friends are dead. If she's being held against her will, she may not have much time, either."

Sam Deegan had barely hung up after speaking to Jean when he received the telephone call from the Glen-Ridge clerk. His immediate reaction was that Laura Wilcox was a remarkably selfish woman to have missed her friend's memorial service, worried her other friends, and cost the limousine driver another fare by not canceling. But even that reaction had been tempered by the unsettling fact that there was something suspicious about the vague story she had told the clerk and the clerk's assessment that she had sounded either nervous or hungover.

Jake Perkins' follow-up phone call cemented that impression, especially since Jake was emphatic that he thought Wilcox sounded frightened. "Do you agree with Ms. Sachs that it was exactly ten-thirty when Laura Wilcox called the hotel?" Sam asked him.

"At exactly ten-thirty," Jake confirmed. "Are you thinking of tracing it, Mr. Deegan? I mean, if she used her cell phone, you'd be able to trace the area where the call was made, isn't that right?"

"Yes, that's right," Sam said irritably. This kid was a know-it-all. But he was only trying to be helpful, so Sam was inclined to cut him some slack.

"I'll be happy to continue to keep my ear to the ground for you," Jake said, his voice now cheerful. The thought that Laura Wilcox might be in danger and that he was assisting the investigation to locate her filled him with a feeling of importance.

"Do that," Sam said, then reluctantly added, "and thanks, Jake."

Sam pushed the end button on his phone, sat up, and swung his legs out of the bed. He knew that at least for the next few hours there was no question of sleep. He had to let Jean know that Laura had been in contact with the hotel, and he had to get an order from a judge to look at the hotel's telephone records. He knew that the Glen-Ridge had caller ID. When he got the phone number, he would subpoena the phone company to find out the name of the subscriber and the locale of the antenna that had carried the call.

Judge Hagen in Goshen was probably the nearest judge in Orange County authorized to issue the order. As he dialed the district attorney's office to get Hagen 's phone number, Sam realized it was some measure of the level of his own unease about Laura that he was now planning to disturb the sleep of a notoriously cantankerous judge rather than wait until morning to start trying to trace the missing woman.