House of Secrets - v4 (43 page)

Carl would not turn out to be one of them.

After dinner, they went to the top of the Empire State Building, where Lillian screamed like a child at all the lights on display so far below her. In her flamboyance she accidentally knocked a quarter out of the hand of a man who was about to feed the coin into one of the viewing telescopes, and the man and Carl nearly got into a fight about it.

Carl took her to Roseland, where he turned out to be not a half-bad dancer. Lillian had to admit to herself that her date was not exactly the most loquacious log in the pile. But so what if he was a little moody? Plus, he was only a few degrees shy of handsome, and she knew from their slow dancing that he was as strong as a cannon. How nice, she thought, that a chance cigarette had opened the door to a fun little evening.

Then it all went awry.

Carl had been keeping Lillian’s glass filled. Eventually the dance floor began to spin. The sailor took her outside for some air, and the next thing Lillian knew she was sitting at a table in a brick-walled club listening to a trumpet player and a hulking black man who was practically draped over his weathered stand-up bass. She and Carl had switched to wine, thick and red and too sweet for Lillian’s taste. The music was disorienting. By the time Lillian told the sailor she wanted to leave, the walls of the small club seemed to be listing sideways.

They left, and for some reason Lillian allowed the sailor to accompany her to her room, which was a weekly rental near the river. While he was off in the bathroom, Lillian tried to raise the stubborn window so that she could maybe get some air into the place. Carl emerged from the bathroom, and that’s when he attacked her. At first she thought he was just playing some not-so-funny joke, but he wasn’t. Not the way those mean hands were working. He had way too many muscles for Lillian to combat him, and her sputtering
Please don’t do this
had only seemed to urge him on.

“Say it in Southern,” he grunted at her. “Come on. Let’s hear it.”

He was rough. And when he finally finished, he hitched up his pants and said to her, “Listen up, girl. For the record. It ain’t Carl, and it ain’t Moscow.” Then he left.

T
he experience didn’t throw Lillian Burkett off for long. She was not about to distrust all of humanity on the basis of one lout. Soon enough, she found her interesting people. Writers. Painters. She found a nice-looking lawyer who worked in the district attorney’s office downtown and who had family money and no problem figuring out ways to spend it. He appreciated Lillian’s vivacity, and she found him refreshingly clever and outspoken.

After their first night together, Lillian was thrilled. It would be a month and nearly a dozen more sleepovers before Lillian would discover that her lover was engaged to be married. Lillian was more furious than she was heartbroken.

To the surprise of no one who was close to the situation, the lawyer’s engagement fell apart, and after a period of resistance, Lillian accepted the rascal back into her bed. But she had wised up.

“You and I are strictly recreational,” she informed him. “Fun’s fun, but I am looking for Mr. Right and now I know you’re not him.”

For months the arrangement worked well enough for the both of them. Lillian truly enjoyed the man’s company but never entertained any second thoughts concerning his ultimate viability. He was not for her. The two tore up the sheets with gusto every now and again and then happily pillow-talked away into the wee hours. But that was the extent of it. Both were in agreement.

During this same period, Lillian had enjoyed several chaste dates with a new prospect, a lithe and handsome colleague of her lover’s. This one seemed much more grounded than her randy lawyer, and more of what Lillian considered an “authentic” gentleman. Not to mention insanely well-off. Within months of their meeting she accepted his offer of marriage. Her fiancé promised Lillian that if she stuck with him she would one day find herself in the White House.

“As sure as you are the most beautiful woman I have ever come across,” Whitney Hoyt said to the ravishing twenty-year-old, “I’m going to be president one day. It’s my destiny, and there’s not a single person who is going to stop it from happening.”

Whitney promised her that the wedding would be huge. The guest list would include the mayor and the current governor, as well as a number of noted national politicians. Hoyt saw to it that there was a smattering of celebrities included, as well as some of the usual suspects from Manhattan’s A-list. “Diamonds and dragons,” in Lillian’s vernacular.

Lillian and Whitney had not yet slept together. Hoyt had surprisingly old-fashioned notions in that regard. It was just under a month before the wedding when Whitney Hoyt began chastising his fiancée behind closed doors for the “overexuberance” of her behavior at the most recent set of social outings. A social columnist for the
Times
had recently written that Miss Burkett “could charm the paint off a wall,” while in another publication she had been referred to as “Dixie dynamite.” The specific occasion of Whitney Hoyt’s complaint to his fiancée was a reception held for the Italian ambassador to the United Nations in the Rainbow Room, atop Rockefeller Center. Too many martinis had loosened Lillian’s tongue, and she had embarrassed her fiancé by launching into battle with the ambassador’s attaché, a man with whom Lillian had been gregariously flirting earlier in the evening. The finer points of Lillian’s disagreement with the Italian had been lost in the sheer physicality of her explosion, which had concluded with her removing her shoes and aiming them at the astonished attaché.

Whitney had read her the riot act in the taxi afterward.

“We’re not in some movie here! I’m telling you right now, it’s not going to work, you running around spouting every fool thing that pops into your head! You threw your
shoes
at that man! We’re not going to have that, is that clear? I’m not saying you can’t be the life of the party, but what you cannot be is its jester! I won’t allow it.”

Lillian was furious, and she ordered the driver to reroute the cab to her apartment, where she leaped out and slammed the door shut with all the melodrama she could muster. Her roommate was away for the weekend, so Lillian unloaded her fury to the silent walls. “We’re not going to
have
that? You’re not going to
allow
it?” Her fiancé had treated her like a child, and she was livid.

Lillian opened a bottle of wine and drank it down well past its label. She was not able to recall later if it had been during one of the spells of self-pity or fire-spitting anger that she had picked up the phone and called her lawyer friend. She knew only that she called him and that he showed up and that for the next thirty-six hours the two of them slipped coolly into an alternate reality. Or not so coolly. Her demands on her friend were outsize — even by the standards of their history together — but he endeavored to meet them. He knew her mind well enough. She was not going to call off the wedding. That wasn’t what this was about. Lillian Burkett was going to marry Whitney Hoyt, and she would be at his side when he began making his moves in earnest. But first she had to rage. She had to generate this secret and then slip it into her pocket. Over the course of their marathon weekend the lawyer warned Lillian that Whitney Hoyt was going to come to control her, that he was going to dull her edges. If he were to achieve his goals, he counseled, this was inevitable. He told her further that if she wanted to share in those goals, she would have to accept the costs. An honest look at how things had been going since her engagement to Hoyt would have revealed to the young beauty that she had already begun to pay some of that price. But Lillian was not particularly interested in taking honest looks.

Six weeks later Lillian Burkett married Whitney Hoyt. The reception was held at the Pierre Hotel. After the toasts and the speeches and the endless series of first dances, the newly minted Lillian Hoyt sought out her lawyer friend, who was seated at one of the large tables holding forth to an audience of beautiful people.

Lillian called him away from the table, as she had something she wanted to tell him.

“State secret,” Lillian crooned, bringing him close so she could whisper hotly in the man’s ear. “Guess what? It looks like we’re going to have ourselves a baby.”

The lawyer pulled back. “That’s great, kiddo. You and Whit might as well get that dynasty under way.”

Lillian was already shaking her head. Her violet eyes lit with mirth.

“You and me.” She put her finger to her lips. “State secret.”

Chris Wyeth was speechless. A rare moment in the young lawyer’s life.

O
n her way to Katonah, Megan put a call into headquarters to get the sniffing under way for any trace of Robert Smallwood’s high school friend Jonathan Cole. Technically, Megan knew that she should be passing the name along to Armstrong. Nonfamily were the FBI’s charge. Of course, there was the possibility that Armstrong had picked up the name already on his own. If Cole was still living anywhere in the area, the FBI would want to talk with him. It wouldn’t be too pretty if Armstrong were to make his way to Jonathan Cole only to find Megan already sipping tea with the man.

Megan terminated her call and squeezed down on the accelerator.

Screw pretty.

P
hilip and Judy Resnick lived in a quiet tree-filled neighborhood just under half a mile from the Katonah train station. The house had been built in the thirties, a two-story colonial with a two-car garage, an oversize bay window, and an ancient elm dominating the front yard.

The Resnicks were expecting Detective Lamb, and they led her through the house to the stone patio off the kitchen, where a perspiring pitcher of lemonade sat on the outdoor table. As the three settled in, a newly clipped poodle made the rounds, anointing knees and ankles with her runny nose.

“Maggie!” Philip Resnick snapped. The dog cowered, and then accepted Judy Resnick’s silent invitation to come over for a vigorous head rub.

Philip Resnick poured the lemonades. A crow passed low just as Megan began to speak, preempting her with its resounding
caw-caw
. Megan waited until the bird had plunged into the trees.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your daughter. I’m sure the last thing you want right now is to talk with the police. I appreciate your cooperation.”

Judy Resnick spoke first. She was somewhat birdlike herself, though hardly of the hearty crow variety.

“This is just so perplexing. Are they really positive it was Robbie?”

“There’s very little question at this point,” Megan said. “Everything seems to be pointing to your nephew.”

“And he has… they’re saying he has
kidnapped
Senator Foster’s daughter? It’s just so hard to believe.”

Philip Resnick spoke up. “We had one of Foster’s signs in the front yard last fall. He’s been a good senator as best I can tell.”

Judy Resnick was still grasping for some clarity. “What could Robbie possibly want?”

“That’s the problem, we don’t know that yet. He hasn’t contacted anyone.” Megan took a beat. “I need to ask. When was the last time you had contact with your nephew?”

Judy Resnick answered. “We were asking ourselves that same thing. It was several days after Joy’s funeral. Robbie called us to see how we were doing. It was… well, at the time it seemed like a sweet gesture.”

“What do you need from us, Detective?” Philip Resnick asked. “We don’t want to see Robbie hurt, but if he’s responsible for what you’re saying, we want him in custody. Clearly he needs help.”

Megan assured the couple that no one was planning to harm their nephew. “Trust me, there are a lot of eyes watching this case. All caution will be taken, but first we have to locate him. I’d like to pick your brains a little, if that’s all right.”

Judy Resnick was practically buffing the poodle’s head by now. “Of course.”

Megan pulled out her notebook.

“As you can imagine, time is of the essence here. If your nephew has abducted Senator Foster’s daughter, we need to determine what he has in mind. Obviously, we need to know where he might be holding her. Any patterns of Robert’s that you can identify for me would be helpful. I’ve just come from speaking with your son. His picture of Robert sounds pretty close to the classic loner. Does that sound accurate to the two of you?”

Judy Resnick glanced at her husband before responding. “I don’t think I would describe Robbie as completely antisocial.”

Philip Resnick cocked an eyebrow. “Jude?”

“Well, I wouldn’t.” She turned to Megan. “Maybe you could say square peg, round hole. It’s difficult to fit in when… when you don’t fit in.”

She paused and again looked over at her husband.

Megan prompted. “In what ways would you say your nephew didn’t fit in?”

“Well, his size was certainly a factor,” Judy Resnick said. “When he was little… when he was young, Robbie was always being mistaken for being older than he really was. When a person is expecting a three- or four-year-old to behave like a six-year-old and he doesn’t, sometimes the child absorbs some unfortunate messages. Like a sense of ineptness. Or disapproval. This is all very amateur psychology, I realize, but it makes sense to me. Personally, I thought maybe he’d end up being an artist of some sort. He used to keep a sketchbook with him all the time.”