Deception (23 page)

“You’re busy. I can come back later.”

“Nonsense.” He waved her in. “We were just discussing the new leasing contract for our offices.”

Paul, who took care of the company’s money as if it were his own, gave her a smug grin. “We’ve managed to hold them to the old prices for another four years.”

“Great.”

Cyrus’s gaze shifted back to Jill. “Are you all set for your big adventure tomorrow?”

“What big adventure?” Paul asked.

“Oh, that’s right, you don’t know yet.” Jill made a face. “I’m taking Dan’s young nephew snowmobiling.”

“That’s mighty brave of you, Jill.” Paul chuckled. “Considering your track record with children.”

She groaned. “Please don’t remind me.”

“She thought Dan was going to be helping her,” Cyrus said, watching her with a mixture of fondness and amusement. “But as it turns out, Dan can’t go, and our intrepid Jill here will have to face this challenge all on her own.”

“You think I can’t do it, don’t you?” she replied. “You think I’m going to let this little kid get to me, or that some disaster will strike.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Good, because I’m going to be just fine. I do, however, need a favor.”

Cyrus, clearly not ready to give up yet, feigned alarm. “You’re not going to ask me to go with you, are you?”

“Are you offering?”

“Hell, no. I’m no better with little kids than you are. Why don’t you ask Paul here? He’s got five grandchildren. And he’s still alive.”

Paul raised both hands in protest. “Oh, no you don’t. I still bear the scars from the last time I took Evan hiking.”

Jill shook her head in mock disgust. “You’re both pathetic, you know that? I wouldn’t ask either one of you for help if you were the last two souls on earth.”

Cyrus laughed. “All right. We’ve teased you enough. What do you need?”

“The Suburban. I’d feel better with a four-wheel drive.”

“Good idea.” Cyrus was already reaching into his desk drawer for a spare set of keys. When he found them, he tossed them to Jill. “When will you be back?”

“Tomorrow afternoon some time. I promised Frankie’s mother I’d have him home for dinner. Are you sure you won’t need the truck?”

“Positive. I’ll catch a ride to the AIA dinner with Paul.”

Jill dropped the keys into her purse. “In that case, if you two gentlemen will excuse me, I have to go home and check my snow gear, make sure I have everything I need.”

Paul smiled at her. “Good luck with the boy.”

*

The early blizzard that had blanketed the East Coast from Maine to North Carolina had finally ended, leaving five inches of snow over the state of Virginia and a razor-blue sky.

Sitting in the car he had rented at Washington National Airport, Dan looked at the small yellow Cape Cod home at the end of the cul-de-sac. With its jolly Santa in the front yard and the Christmas-scene cutouts in the windows, it was obvious that a small child lived there.

He waited until a UPS truck had driven away before getting out of the car. The young woman who opened the door was trim and neat and had a friendly look about her.

“Mrs. Parson?”

She tilted her head, a smile on her lips. “Yes. May I help you?”

“My name is Dan Santini, Mrs. Parson. I’m a friend of Jill Bennett’s.”

The smile disappeared. “if you’re here to inquire about her father, I’m afraid you’ve come a long way for nothing. I can’t help you, Mr. Santini, any more than I was able to help Miss Bennett. Believe me, I sympathize with her, but the fact is, I don’t know any Simon Bennett. I never even heard of the name until she mentioned it the other day.”

“That’s not what I was told.”

The woman’s grip on the door tightened just enough for Dan to catch it “I’m not sure what you’re insinuating but-”

Remembering the nosy neighbor Al had mentioned, Dan said, “May I come in, Mrs. Parson? I’d rather not discuss the matter on your doorstep.”

She glanced uneasily at the quiet street, then back at Dan as if trying to decide whether he was friend or foe. In spite of her efforts to remain calm, it was obvious she was badly shaken.

After a few more seconds of indecision, she opened the door wider and let him in. “Who are you?”

“I’m a former homicide detective. A persistent one.” This time he caught the quick flash of fear in her eyes.

“I don’t know what you want with me.”

“The truth, Mrs. Parson. Nothing more.” She hugged her arms as if to ward off a sudden chill. “I told you, I don’t know anything.”

“Then may I tell you what I know? You can correct me if I’m wrong.”

Cynthia Parson licked her lips and said nothing. “You lost your husband a year ago last Thanksgiving,” Dan began. “You work hard, support yourself and your daughter adequately, but sometimes you find it difficult to make ends meet, especially with your daughter’s illness. Then three weeks ago, your situation changed. You paid off a few debts and started taking your daughter to an expensive therapist. How am I doing so far?”

Nurse Parson, whose face had turned a sick shade of gray, remained silent.

“You want to tell me where the money came from, Mrs. Parson?”

Cynthia’s hands pressed against her stomach and for a moment, Dan thought she was going to faint. Whatever secret she was hiding was taking its toll on her.

“I know this isn’t easy for you, Mrs. Parson.” Dan spoke in a gentle, unthreatening tone. “You are scared and you feel trapped. But the truth is already coming out, and denying it will only get you in deeper trouble.”

Dan saw the young woman’s shoulders sag as if they could no longer support their own weight. He felt sorry for her. She was a good woman who had allowed herself to get caught in a maze of lies and deceit for the sake of her child and was now beginning to pay the price for it.

Her face ashen, the woman all but collapsed in one of the oversize chairs. “What do you want to know?”

Dan sat down and leaned forward, his hands hanging between his knees. “Were you acquainted with Simon Bennett?”

She nodded.

“He came to the clinic?”

“Yes. He met a young woman there on October 3 and introduced her as Julia Banks, but I don’t think that was her real name.”

“You don’t require real names?”

“No. We cater to a rather upscale clientele and many of our patients prefer to remain anonymous.”

Dan watched her hands, which were tightly clasped on her lap.

“Was Julia Banks pregnant?”

“Yes. She was in her first trimester.”

“A local woman?”

“She gave us a Georgetown address, but that, too, could be false.”

“Can you tell me what she looked like?”

“Slender, long blond hair, very pretty.”

“Age?”

“She might have been in her late twenties, certainly no more than thirty.”

He thought of Vivian Mulligan. What would she look like, he wondered, with longer hair falling down her shoulders? Could she pass for a woman in her late twenties? “What else can you tell me about this young woman?” he asked.

Cynthia was silent for a moment, then said, “I had the impression that she didn’t want to terminate the pregnancy, so I explained to her that she had other options-such as keeping the baby and raising it, or giving it up for adoption later. She said she had thought it over and was ready to go through with the procedure. She never once said the word abortion. She kept calling it ‘the procedure.”

“Did everything go all right?”

“Oh, yes. Julia Banks was discharged the following day. We normally don’t keep patients overnight, but Mr. Bennett insisted. He was afraid there might be complications.”

“Was Simon Bennett the baby’s father?”

Calmer now, Nurse Parson ran a steady hand through her hair. “That subject never came up, but because of his interest and the secrecy that surrounded his visit, I assumed he was.”

Dan watched the woman for a moment, knowing that the most difficult part of their conversation was yet to come. “What happened after that?”

Cynthia took a deep breath, then, “Three weeks ago a man came to see me. He said his name was Jack Smith and that he was checking up on his wife whom he suspected of having had an abortion on October 3.

I told him I couldn’t give him the information he wanted, even if he was her husband.”

She met Dan’s gaze. “But he, too, was persistent. He knew all about my little girl’s illness and said he could make it possible for me to help her get well.”

“You mean he was willing to pay for the information.”

“Yes,” she said in a whisper.

“Can you tell me what he looked like?”

“Medium height, stooped shoulders, gray hair, gray beard. He wore baggy clothes and a hat that covered the upper part of his face.”

Dan leaned back in his chair. “He wore a disguise.”

“I’m sure he did, though I didn’t realize that until later.” Bowing her head, she stared at her hands, which were tightly clasped. “He offered me fifty thousand dollars in cash.”

Dan took a deep breath. Whoever the killer was, he had done an excellent job of finding the right person to bribe. Poor Cynthia. There she was, a widow, with a sick daughter and debts up to her ears. What mother wouldn’t have done exactly what she did? Rather than press her to continue, Dan sat back and waited.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Cynthia continued. “I knew it was wrong, just as I knew that if Dr. Laken ever found out, he’d fire me on the spot.” Her eyes took on a fervid intensity. “I didn’t do it for me, Mr. Santini. I don’t care about money. I did it for Molly. I wanted my little girl to be well again.”

Even with all the training and practice he’d had distancing himself from the people he interrogated, Dan was finding it hard to keep a dry eye. “The woman

Jack Smith was interested in,” he asked gently, “was that Julia Banks?”

“Yes. He showed me a picture of her and Simon Bennett. He seemed to know Mr. Bennett because he called him by his name.”

“So you identified them both?”

She wrapped her arms around her. “Yes. A few days later, Dr. la ken told me that his friend, Simon Bennett, had died in a car crash, but I didn’t start adding it all together until Jack called me to say that an informal investigation was being conducted and it was important that I kept quiet.

“That’s when I started to get suspicious—and scared. I remembered the way Jack had looked that first night, with his face in shadows and his shoulders stooped—too stooped, perhaps, as if he was trying to appear shorter than he was.”

“What did you do when you realized he may have killed Simon Bennett?”

“What could I do? By that time, I was an accomplice, or an accessory, or whatever you want to call it. I was afraid to go to prison, afraid there’d be no one to take care of my little girl.”

“What about Dr. Laken?” Dan asked. “Did he suspect foul play when he heard about his friend?”

“No, he had no reason to. Jack didn’t go to him with that half-cocked story. He came to me.”

“And you never saw this Jack Smith again?”

“No, but he called me again the night before Jill Bennett came to the clinic.”

Those words had the effect of a kick in the gut. “He knew Jill was coming to see you?”

“Yes, and he was afraid I’d give myself away, so he called to give me a pep talk, to remind me of all I had to lose if I screwed up. As if I could forget.”

Her gaze drifted toward the window and Dan followed it. On the lawn next door, a mother and her toddler were building a snowman.

“You don’t know what a nightmare this has been for me.” Cynthia’s eyes remained fixed on the peaceful scene outside. “If it weren’t for Molly, I would have turned myself in long ago.” She took a minute to collect herself before returning her attention to Dan. “What’s going to happen to me now?”

“At the moment, nothing,” Dan said truthfully. “Without a positive identification of this Jack Smith, your story has little value except that it confirms what I already suspected-that Simon Bennett was murdered.”

“Does that mean…” Her eyes filled with hope. “You won’t say anything? To Dr. Laken or the police?”

“There’s no need for that.” And even if there had been, Dan would have found a way to spare the young woman. She had gone through enough. “However, I’d like to find Julia Banks, provided her address checks out. Could you give it to me?”

“I’ll have to get it from the clinic’s records.” She glanced at her watch. “I suppose I could make some sort of excuse to stop by.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

She stood up, smoothing down her uniform. “I’ll need to call my baby-sitter. Do you want to meet me at the Golden Dawn Diner on Hazelton Avenue? You passed it on your way here. I shouldn’t be more than half an hour.”

“That’ll be fine, Cynthia. Thank you.”

Twenty-Three

“I can’t believe you talked me into doing this.”

Scowling, Ashley watched as Jill and Frankie pulled the dusty canvas cover off the two snowmobiles. “It’s been years since I’ve driven one of those things,” Ashley said. “I’m probably going to break my neck and be in traction until Easter.”

Frankie, who had taken a liking to Ashley immediately, grinned at her over his shoulder. “No you won’t, Ash. It’s like riding a bicycle. You never forget.”

“How do you know?”

““Cause Jill told me.”

Still looking skeptical, Ashley slowly walked around the shiny red sleds. “Those are not your old Arctic Cats, are they? They look bigger than I remember.”

Jill stacked the folded covers in a corner of the garage. “They’re Ski-Doos. Daddy bought them a couple of years ago. They’re much more stable than the old ones.” She gave Frankie a conspiratorial wink. “They go up to ninety miles an hour. And they can jump moguls this high.” She stretched her hand high above her head.

“You can forget the moguls,” Ashley said. “In fact, I’m not sure I want to ride at all. A cup of hot chocolate and a warm fire is excitement enough for me.”

“Chicken,” Jill said.

Frankie was already sitting on one of the sleds, holding on to the handlebars and making revving sounds. “Can I have this one, Jill?”

“Nice try, squirt, but you’re riding with me.” Jill smiled as he made a big deal of appearing disappointed. Now that they were here, she could feel herself relax. Frankie had behaved perfectly during the two-hour drive, gazing out the window, asking dozens of questions, joking with Ashley. Maybe taking care of children wasn’t as big a deal as she made it out to be.