The Finishing School

59

LEAVING THE JAIL after talking to Juan Carlos Peralta, Melanie was convinced of two things: First, Carmen Reyes was still alive. Second, she wouldn’t be staying that way for long.

Melanie’s suspicions of something sinister afoot at Holbrooke had been right on the money. Literally. Carmen had stumbled across a major embezzlement scheme, one that couldn’t be completed without her fingerprints transferring the final ten million. Once the money moved-presumably shortly after seven-thirty tonight-Carmen became not only unnecessary but a huge liability, which meant Melanie had to find her ASAP. And while she’d love to march right into the Holbrooke benefit and haul Patricia Andover off for a haute couture perp walk, she didn’t have enough hard evidence. She needed to let the scheme unfold and pounce at the right moment.

But there was something major that Melanie just didn’t get. What did any of this Holbrooke stuff have to do with the heroin case she’d been assigned to investigate? Melanie couldn’t ignore the significance of the drug angle. Just look at all the people who’d died because of it. Whitney Seward and Brianna Meyers. Fabulous Deon and-though she could barely stand to think of it-possibly Trevor Leonard as well, for informing on Esposito. And Esposito himself, killed overnight, his murder made to look like a suicide. She’d originally been convinced that the drug case held the key to finding Carmen, but now she wasn’t so sure. Were the two schemes linked at all? The only point of intersection Melanie could even think of was the fact that Carmen Reyes had last been seen at the Sewards’ apartment the night Whitney and Brianna died.

The hair stood up on the back of her neck.

For a while now, Melanie had a strange sense that somebody was out there, pulling the strings, doctoring the evidence, trying to throw her off. She hadn’t listened to this instinct before, but now she felt certain of it. Call him the unseen hand. She didn’t know who he was, or where to find him. But she knew where he’d been-at the Sewards’ the night Whitney and Brianna died and Carmen disappeared. And if he’d been there, she could think of one person who just might have seen him.

FOR MELANIE the most difficult thing about paying a visit to Charlotte Seward was that it brought her closer to her own apartment than she’d been in two whole days. The temptation to rush home and cuddle with her little girl was overwhelming. But she reminded herself that Maya was safe, snug, and well cared for, whereas Carmen and Trevor were still out there somewhere, lost in the cold night.

And night it had become. The sun had set while Melanie was on the subway heading uptown. The wind blew furiously down Park Avenue, whipping a fine spray of crystallized snow into her face. She put her head down and rushed into the Sewards’ lobby, where she stood stamping her feet while the doorman called upstairs. Melanie was almost surprised when he gave her the okay to proceed to the penthouse.

At the Sewards’ a uniformed maid escorted her to an opulent sitting room. The maid took Melanie’s coat and disappeared without a word, only to return a few minutes later with a harassed air.

“So sorry, ma’am. The missus change her mind. She’s not feeling well enough to receive you after all.” Her facial expression suggested that such whims were a regular occurrence.

“Look, tell Mrs. Seward this isn’t a matter of choice. I’m investigating a crime. Either she talks to me or she talks to the grand jury.”

“She won’t care, ma’am. She don’t listen.”

“Where’s Mr. Seward?” Melanie asked-not because she thought he’d be of assistance, quite the opposite. Melanie was half convinced James Seward was the unseen hand. Certainly he’d been in this apartment on the night in question, and his whereabouts during critical hours were still unaccounted for.

“He went to Whitney’s school for a party.”

He’d be at Holbrooke during the transfer of the ten million, then. It was more evidence pointing to Seward’s involvement. But at least the fact that he was gone now meant he couldn’t stop Melanie from wringing information out of his wife.

Melanie stood up. “Take me to Mrs. Seward,” she demanded.

“If you insist, ma’am.”

The maid turned, leading Melanie down a darkened hallway to a set of ornately carved double doors. Following her into the gloom of the bedroom, Melanie nearly gagged on the heat and the smell. It must’ve been ninety degrees in there, with a close odor consisting of equal parts unwashed flesh, musty sheets, and stale cigarette smoke. Charlotte Seward languished on a heap of pillows in the halo of a single lamp, wearing a satin bed jacket with a large wet stain down the front. The table next to her bed was littered with dozens of tiny prescription bottles-some open, some closed, some empty and lying on their sides.

“Excuse me, ma’am, this lady from the police, and she say she need to see you,” the maid announced.

“What the hell!” Charlotte said, her eyes darting toward Melanie with alarm. She was rail thin, with a frozen face that spoke of too much Botox and plastic surgery.

“I tell her no, but she insist, ma’am,” the maid said.

“Magdalena, you’re on thin ice already, and you pull a stunt like this?” Charlotte fished around on the bedside table for a cigarette, which she lit with shaking hands.

“Melanie Vargas from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I’m investigating your daughter’s death.”

“Whoop-de-do. That doesn’t give you the right to barge into my bedroom!” Charlotte said, dissolving into a fit of phlegmy coughing.

“I apologize for the intrusion, but we’re at a critical point in the investigation, and I really need your help. I want the people responsible for your daughter’s death caught and punished.”

“Hooray for you. Now, get the hell out of here, or I’m calling the authorities.”

“You miss the point, Mrs. Seward. I am the authorities. I need to ask you some questions. You can answer them here in the comfort of your home, and I’ll go away and leave you alone. Or I can drag you before the grand jury.”

Charlotte contemplated Melanie with eyes that were simultaneously sunken and much too bright. Judging from the massive pharmacy on her bedside table, it wasn’t difficult to see why. After a moment she sighed, her shoulders drooping in resignation.

“Magdalena, leave us please. Close the door on your way out, and no listening at the keyhole. I know your sneaky ways.”

The maid cast her employer a long-suffering glance and strode out of the room.

Charlotte waited until the door snapped shut, then turned to Melanie. “Honestly, you’re wasting your time. Whitney got careless with drugs and OD’d. Locking up some dealer isn’t going to bring her back. Besides, I don’t know where she got her stash. She didn’t get it from me, I assure you. Heroin was not my poison. I didn’t think it was hers either.”

“I’m not interested in your drug use, Mrs. Seward. I’m not even concerned with your daughter’s. I’m here because I have new evidence suggesting Whitney was murdered.”

Charlotte had been dragging on her cigarette, but Melanie’s words sent her into another violent coughing fit. “Jesus, you’re kidding,” she said after a moment, her eyes watering.

“No. Unfortunately, I’m not.”

“Sit down,” Charlotte said, nodding toward a chair in the corner. Melanie pulled the chair over to the bed.

“You know, I loved my daughter,” Charlotte continued. “Things between us were never easy. But I loved her a great deal.”

“Of course. I’m a mother, too. I understand.”

“To hell with that motherhood crap. This was different. Whitney was the only good thing I ever did, the one thing I accomplished in my life. So if somebody killed her, that would really piss me off.”

“Well, I would hope so.”

“I’d do anything in my power to hunt that person down.”

“Of course.”

Charlotte shook her head. “But, you know, I find what you’re saying hard to believe. Whitney OD’ing makes so much more sense to me than somebody purposely killing her. You see, Whitney was like me. A thrill seeker. When you’re born with everything, what else is there? Whatever you achieve, people think it was handed to you. What’s left but to flame out spectacularly? When she died, I assumed that was what she was doing. Asserting her personality. You could almost say I applauded her choice.”

No wonder the girl went so wrong, Melanie thought. Her mother set the perfect example of a wasted life.

“Our evidence is solid,” Melanie said.

“But who would want Whitney dead?”

“What about your husband?”

“You’re not here to investigate him, are you?”

“It depends. Carmen Reyes is missing. She was working on the Holbrooke endowment campaign, and somebody’s trying to embezzle a lot of money from it. Your husband may be involved.”

“Carmen,” Charlotte said, startled, and looked away.

“Do you know something about Carmen?”

“I just-No, I’m not sure.” She kneaded her forehead with her fingers.

“What about the Holbrooke endowment money?”

“Well…” Charlotte fell silent, looking absently at her cigarette, which was dripping ash onto the comforter.

“Mrs. Seward, you can’t pick and choose what to talk to me about. Things may fit together in ways you can’t understand.”

“I don’t want James arrested. I’ve spent too much time and money keeping him out of trouble to let that happen.”

“I’m going to follow this trail wherever it leads. If it leads to him, I’ll find out anyway. So you might as well tell me whatever you know about the endowment money now.”

Charlotte looked gaunt and ill, and there was misery in her eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know. He’s sleeping with that headmistress, and she’s an evil, scheming little bitch. James would do a lot for money. He’s stayed with me all these years, hasn’t he? All right? Satisfied, now that you’ve humiliated me?”

“I’m not trying to upset you, Mrs. Seward, but I have to ask these questions. Carmen Reyes disappeared from this apartment the same night your daughter and Brianna Meyers died. I know you were here then. Is it possible your husband-”

“Wait a minute! You say Carmen was here, in my house?”

“Yes. She came upstairs around seven-thirty. I know your husband brought you home around nine o’clock.”

“Let me ask you something,” Charlotte said, her mind behind her tortured eyes working furiously. “What exactly is the evidence you have that Whitney was murdered?”

“The toxicology screen found a suspicious mix of substances in her blood.”

Charlotte clutched at her throat as if she couldn’t breathe. “What substances?”

“Highly lethal doses of heroin and OxyContin-”

“Aaagh!” Her eyes popping, Charlotte hauled herself to the edge of the bed and began digging furiously among the bottles on the bedside table. Tears began to stream down her hollow cheeks.

“What is it? Are you okay?” Melanie asked, alarmed.

“Bud! I trusted him! I thought he was helping her. Yes, here it is!” she cried, holding up an empty bottle. “OxyContin. It was full, and now it’s empty! He was here that night. I’m remembering.”

“You know Bud?” Melanie asked, startled.

“Of course.”

“The Bud who worked for Jay Esposito?”

“For who?”

“Jay Esposito, the nightclub owner.”

“Bud worked for a nightclub owner?”

“Yes, the same one your daughter was dating. Esposito was murdered last night.”

“Whitney was dating a nightclub owner who was murdered? I never heard any of this! Are you making it up?”

“No. Of course not! Listen, Mrs. Seward, please, this is extremely important. You say Bud was here that night. What can you tell me about him? Do you know his last name or where he lives? A telephone number, a physical description? Anything, anything at all that might help us locate him.”

“Are we talking about the same man? Bud Hogan! He was Whitney’s guidance counselor at Holbrooke! I remember now. I came home in bad shape. Whitney took me to my bed. I heard a voice calling, and it sounded like Carmen. I’ve known the child for years, you see. Then it just…stopped, like she’d been silenced. I asked Whitney about it, and she told me I was hallucinating. Which was entirely possible, given everything I’d ingested that night, so I believed her. I passed out. And then, sometime later, I woke up to find Bud standing over my bed, going through my pill bottles. He told me I was dreaming and to go back to sleep. So I did.”

“Harrison Hogan is Bud?” Melanie said.

“Yes, that’s what Whitney called him. And he killed my daughter!”