Nighttime Is My Time

72

After Sam left Rich Stevens' office, he went down to the coffee shop in the courthouse and ordered coffee and a ham-and-Swiss on rye to go.

"You mean 'with shoes,' " the new counterman said cheerfully. Noting Sam's bewildered expression, he explained, "You don't say 'to go' anymore. You say 'with shoes.' "

I could have lived the rest of my life without knowing that, Sam thought when he got back to his office and was taking the sandwich out of the bag.

He placed his lunch on his desk and turned on his computer. An hour later, the sandwich eaten, the last sip of coffee forgotten in the container, he was putting together all the information he had gathered on Laura Wilcox.

I have to acknowledge that you can find a lot on the Internet, Sam thought, but you can also waste a lot of time in the process. He was looking for the kind of background that would not be found in Laura's official biography, but so far he hadn't uncovered anything that was helpful.

Because there was a depressingly long list of Laura Wilcox references, he began to open the ones that he thought might prove revealing. Laura's first marriage, when she was twenty-four, had been to

Dominic Rubirosa, a Hollywood plastic surgeon. "Laura is so beautiful that in our home my talent will be wasted," Rubirosa was quoted as saying after the ceremony.

Sam grimaced. Isn't that touching, especially since the marriage lasted exactly eleven months. I wonder what happened to Rubirosa? Maybe he's still in touch with Laura. He decided to look him up and found an article showing a picture of him and his second wife at their wedding. "Monica is so beautiful that she will never have need of my professional services" was the quote attributed to Rubirosa that day.

"A little variation but not enough. What a jerk," Sam said aloud as he clicked back to the spread on Laura's first wedding.

There was a picture of her parents at the ceremony-William and Evelyn Wilcox of Palm Beach. On Monday, when Laura hadn't shown up, Eddie Zarro had left a message on her parents' phone, asking them to contact Sam. When there was no response, he'd had a Palm Beach policeman go to the house. A gossipy neighbor told the cop that they were on a cruise, but she wasn't sure which one. She volunteered that they kept to themselves, "were kind of cranky old people," and that she got the impression they were angry at some of the stuff that came out in Laura's messy second divorce.

Cruise ships get the news, Sam thought. With all the media coverage about Laura these past few days, you'd think they'd make some inquiries. It's odd that we still haven't heard from them. I'll see if the Palm Beach cops can't dig deeper and find out what cruise they're on. Of course, it's just possible that Laura tipped them off not to worry about her.

He glanced up as Joy Lacko came into his office. "The boss just pulled me off the homicides," she said. "He wants me to work with you. He said you'd explain." From her expression it was clear to Sam that Joy was not happy about being reassigned.

Her annoyance faded as Sam filled her in on what he had learned about Jean Sheridan and Lily, her daughter. The fact that Lily's adoptive father was a three-star general aroused her interest, as did the realization that it seemed impossible Laura Wilcox had sent the last fax to Jean Sheridan, the one that claimed that she had been behind all the threats. "And I still cannot believe that five women from the same lunch table at Stonecroft Academy died in the order in which they sat at the table," he concluded. "If it isn't one of those incredible strokes of fate, it would mean that Laura is destined to be the next one to die."

“You mean you have two celebrities missing, which may or may not be a publicity stunt; you have a West Point cadet, the adopted daughter of a general, being threatened, and you have five women dead in the order they sat at the table at school. No wonder Rich thinks you need help," Joy said matter-of-factly.

"I do need help," Sam admitted. "Finding Laura Wilcox is top priority, both because she's obviously in danger if those five deaths can be proven to be homicides, and because she may have known about Lily and told someone else about her."

"What about Laura's family? How about her close friends? Have you talked to her agent?" Lacko had her notebook out. Pen in hand, she waited for Sam's answers.

"You're asking the right questions," Sam said. "On Monday I put in a call to her agency. It turns out Alison Kendall had handled Laura herself. It's been a month since Kendall died, but no one at the agency has been assigned to take her over."

"That's unusual," Joy said. "I'd think that would be one of the first things they'd do."

"Apparently the reason is that she's in debt to them; they'd been giving her advances. Alison had been willing to carry her, but the new chief executive isn't. They promised to get back to us if they hear from her, but don't hold your breath. I get the distinct feeling that the agency is not really very interested in Laura."

"She hasn't appeared in anything significant since Henderson County , and that's been off the air for a couple of years. With all the twenty-year-old pop-tarts in the news, I guess she's considered a senior citizen by Hollywood standards," Joy observed dryly.

"I think you're right," Sam agreed. "We're also trying to locate her parents to see if she's talked to them. I've already spoken to the guy in California who investigated Alison Kendall's death, and he says there's no indication of foul play there. But I'm not satisfied. When I told Rich Stevens about the lunch table girls, he put in an order to get the files on all the deaths from the police who handled the investigations on each of them. The oldest goes back twenty years, so it may take the rest of the week to get everything. Then we'll go through the files with a fine-tooth comb and see if anything jumps out at us."

He waited while Joy jotted some notes in her book. "I want to go to the Website of the local papers where the so-called three accidents occurred and see if there were any questions raised in them at the time about the deaths. The first was in the car that went off the road into the Potomac; the second was the one who disappeared in the avalanche at Snowbird; the third was killed when the plane she was piloting crashed. Alison was the fourth. Finally, I want to see what was written about the supposed suicide of the girl from that lunch table.'

He anticipated Joy's next question. "I have their names, the dates, and where they died listed here." He pointed to a typewritten sheet on his desk. "You can copy it. Then I want to find what the Internet will spit out about Robby Brent that might be helpful. I warn you, Joy. Even with two of us working on this, it will take a lot of time to get it done."

He got up and stretched. "When we're finished with all that, I'm going to call the widow of a certain Dr. Connors and tell her that I need to pay her a visit. He was the doctor who delivered Jean Sheridan's baby. Jean met Mrs. Connors the other day and had the distinct feeling that she was holding back some information, something that made her very nervous. Maybe I can get it out of her."

"Sam, I'm good at getting stuff from the Internet, and I'm probably one hundred times faster than you at it. Let me take over doing the research, and you visit the doctor's wife."

"The doctor's widow," Sam said, and then he wondered why he had found it necessary to correct Joy. Maybe it was because Kate had been on his mind all day. I'm not Kate's husband, he thought. I'm her widower. There's a difference of day and night.

If Joy was annoyed at the correction, she did not show it as she picked up the list on the table. "I'll see what I can find. Talk to you later."

Dorothy Connors had been reluctant to meet with Jean, and when Sam phoned, she adamantly insisted that she had no information that would be helpful to him. Realizing that he had to be tough with her, he finally said, "Mrs. Connors, I have to be the judge of whether or not you can assist our investigation. I want no more than fifteen minutes of your time."

Reluctantly, she agreed to let him come to see her that afternoon at three.

His phone rang as he was straightening the top of his desk. It was Tony Gomez, the police chief of Cornwall. They were old friends. "Sam, do you know this kid Jake Perkins?" Tony asked.

Do I? Sam thought as he rolled his eyes in the general direction of heaven. "I know him, Tony. What about it?"

"He's been going around town taking pictures of homes, and I have a complaint from a couple of people who thought he might be setting them up for a robbery."

"Forget it," Sam said. "He's harmless. He has delusions of being an investigative reporter."

"It's more than a delusion. He says he's working on the Laura Wilcox disappearance as your special assistant. Can you verify that?"

"My special assistant? For God's sake!" Sam began to laugh. "Throw him in jail," he suggested. "And when you do, try to lose the key. I'll talk to you, Tony."