New Year's Eve Murder (3 page)

“She's beautiful,” I said.

Ada nodded, her eyes filling.

I looked at her face. “She looks just like you. People must notice the resemblance all the time.”

“They do,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Come upstairs with me.”

I followed her up gleaming hardwood stairs and saw immediately what she meant about Susan's room. It was truly around a corner.

“In the summer I come in here and open a window to get cross-ventilation. But in the winter I don't come in so much. The cleaning woman goes in to dust, but yesterday wasn't her day. Chris, something's happened to Susan. She was never here. Look around. Does this room look as though someone used it?”

I had to admit it didn't. It was neat, the bed made, no shoes on the floor, no pencils on the schoolgirl's desk. It looked like a guest room waiting for a guest.

I walked to the closet. “May I?”

“Go ahead.”

There were spring and summer clothes hanging on the rod. Susan used this closet to store her out-of-season clothes. On the floor was a pair of worn sneakers. I picked them up.

“She left those here for something to change into,” Ada said. “And there are jeans in the drawer.” She went and opened a dresser drawer.

There were jeans, shirts, and sweaters, all looking rather worn but comfortable. In another drawer were socks and underclothes. I walked over to the desk and opened drawers. They were filled not with the usual stationery items, but with mementoes of Susan's childhood: a blue ribbon from a camp contest, a high school award for an essay, stacks of old report cards from grade school.

“Those things go back to kindergarten,” her mother said.

“Does she look at them often?”

“I doubt it. She just wanted a safe place to keep them.
She has a strong sense of who she is and where she comes from.”

“That's very nice.”

“It is, yes. Are you looking for anything special?”

“I'm never sure what I'm looking for,” I admitted. “When I see something important, it usually leaps out at me. I don't think I'll find anything here if these are all old keepsakes.”

Ada opened the top center drawer. “She keeps some pens and pencils here and there should be a pad somewhere.” She closed the drawer and opened one on the left side that I hadn't looked in. “This is it.” She pulled out a pad of white paper with “Notes from Susan Stark” printed in black across the top. “She uses this for informal notes. She has a lot more in Kevin's apartment.”

It didn't tell me much. I looked quickly through the remainder of the drawers, but I was starting to worry about Jack alone in the car with Eddie. What I was worried about, I couldn't say. Jack had become a wonderful father overnight, so full of patience that I was astounded.

“May I take a page from the pad?” I asked.

“Of course.”

I ripped off the top page and held it with the photograph. Then I took a quick look around the room. On the night table was an electric clock. I picked it up. The alarm was set for seven. “Did Susan get up at seven when she went to work?”

“About that time.”

“I don't suppose you heard the alarm yesterday morning?”

Ada shook her head. “I know it sounds strange, but this is a very solidly built house and I've never heard Susan's alarm, not when she was a schoolgirl and not in recent years.”

“When did you get up yesterday?”

“Maybe eight. Ernie wanted to go in for a short day, and I made breakfast for us.”

“Any dishes in the sink?” I asked with faint hope.

She shook her head. “I wish I could say something that would be helpful.”

“Don't worry about it. I'll be in touch, Ada.”

“Thank you.” She started out of the room and I followed her.

“Will you give me the names and phone numbers of Susan's friends? And where she works?”

“I'll give you what I have. Kevin can probably give you much more. He's more up to date on who Susan knows.”

I was pretty sure Jack had asked Kevin but I said, “I'll give him a call.”

Downstairs, I waited while Ada wrote. I walked to the windows in the living room and looked out on the street. I could see Jack in our double-parked car. He was sitting at the wheel without moving, which meant that Eddie wasn't crying. A car came from the left and I watched as it swerved to pass Jack's car. It wasn't as tight a squeeze as all that.

“Here's the best I can do.” Ada gave me a sheet of paper. “Her best friend since public school, her phone number at work, and the name of the person she works with most closely. She's with a new magazine called
Single Up.
This last name is a teacher she had in fifth grade whom she's stayed close to, Mrs. Halliday. I guess they just clicked when Susan was ten. She may be retired now, I'm not sure. Susan has lots of other friends, but their names wouldn't be in my address book.”

“I understand. Thank you, Ada. We'll do the best we can.”

She nodded and smiled tightly. On impulse, I hugged her. Then I went outside to the car where half my family slept and the other half kept watch.

“Kevin said something was bothering Susan.”

We were driving home and Jack had begun to tell me what he had learned this morning.

“Is that what they were talking about in the car when he drove her to the Starks'?”

“It may be. He wasn't all that forthcoming.”

“I'm glad you got a chance to talk to him alone. He was resentful that I was asking him questions. I don't blame him. I just thought he might open up one-on-one away from the crowd.”

“He did with me on the way to the station house. But there's a lot he didn't say.”

“Like what was bothering Susan?”

“Right. It's possible he doesn't know, Chris, and it's possible he's ticked that she didn't tell him. You get anything from Ada?”

“A picture and three phone numbers, one of a fifth-grade teacher.”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“Ada says they clicked when Susan was ten and they stayed close. If nothing else pans out, I'll give her a call. I want to try Susan's best friend and her coworker.”

“Sounds like a good place to start. I'm not sure NYPD's going to be much of a help. The detective who
took the complaint was half asleep. I looked around the squad room and dorm and found a guy I'd known in the Six Five a couple of years back and asked him to help, but who knows?”

“I was looking out the Starks' front window while Ada was writing down those names. Did you see how easily that car passed you?”

“I did and it bothered me. Kevin said he dropped Susan off and kept driving because someone was behind him and couldn't get by.”

“And when he got to the stop sign at the corner, the car wasn't behind him. Maybe it was one of those four-wheel-drive monsters that came up behind him. Maybe he thought the guy couldn't pass, and he was a courteous driver and kept going.”

“Maybe he isn't telling the truth.”

I was quiet for a moment. If Jack wasn't born suspicious, his work has certainly trained him to be. It pains me to think that a young woman's lover could do something terrible to her. Whether it pains Jack or not, he thinks about these things. “Maybe,” I said grudgingly.

“It still doesn't tell us where she is. And even if he did something that we don't want to think about, he announced her disappearance to the world yesterday afternoon when he called the Starks and asked for her.”

“Which gave him twenty-four hours.”

“More than enough to do a lot of those things we don't want to think about.”

“Let's not think about those things we don't want to think about. If he's—done something to her, it's too late to help. Let's try to figure out where she might have gone if something was bothering her.”

“Home's a good place to start.”

“And she didn't go there.” I described the bedroom I had looked at, with its peculiar place in the house, its
almost soundproof location. “At least, not that her mother heard or saw.”

“No one's talked to the father yet.”

“I know. But if he heard anything, wouldn't he have said something to his wife when he knew his daughter was missing?”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“The room looked as though no one had been there, Jack. There wasn't a thing out of line, no dirty socks on the floor, no open book on the night table.”

“They said Susan was very particular, remember? Maybe she gathered up her dirty clothes and took them with her.”

Eddie sighed in his sleep and I twisted around to look at him. He looked at peace with the world. I turned back. “I'm going to make some phone calls, Jack. I don't know how far I can push this, and maybe Susan will turn up by herself and save everyone a lot of agony, but I'm worried.”

“That makes two of us.”

“I'll start when we get home. I can call the best friend and see what she has to say.”

We drove for a while without talking. It was New Year's Day, and there were football games that had no interest for me but held my husband in thrall. He turned one on and I let the drone send me off. I was very fearful about what had happened to Susan Stark. There were a lot of questions I hadn't asked about her, but from what I had heard, she sounded like a sober human being, employed at an interesting job, living with an attractive man, on good terms with her parents. If she drank too much or used drugs, they hadn't kept her from living what appeared to be a normal, productive life. The last time I had looked for a missing woman, she had turned up dead, and I didn't want the same outcome for Susan
Stark. Almost more than that, I didn't want to be the one who found her.

“I know what you're thinking,” Jack said.

“I'm not hiding it very well, am I?”

“Chris, her disappearance doesn't necessarily mean she's dead.”

“But it's not a good sign.”

“You'd be surprised how many young women get cold feet before making a commitment to a man, and their solution is to get away for a while and sit and think by themselves. Of course,” he added in a lighter vein, “you never had qualms about me because I was such a catch.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “It was that curly hair.”

“And the great smile. I worked a spell over you.”

I patted his thigh through his coat. “Kevin seems like such a nice guy.”

“We all do, honey. When we're courting a gal, we're all angels.”

I wanted to disagree with him, point out that Susan was living with Kevin and therefore knew him well, but it was an empty argument. I would get busy when we got home.

Eddie had had whatever sleep he needed for the day, and he was fairly content to be in his little seat and look around. I had no cooking to do today because Harriet had wrapped up enough goodies to keep us fed for a couple of days, so I talked to my little son for a while and then Jack took him upstairs. Jack's law school semester was over, but he liked to keep ahead in his reading in case time was at a premium next term. There were days when he was called out on a case and couldn't get away in time for his evening classes, causing him to miss one altogether or walk in late, not a pleasant experience. I heard
him telling Eddie that now they would go upstairs and Daddy would hit the books. I decided to hit the telephone.

I dialed the number for Rachel Stone, Susan's best friend, and, it appeared, her oldest. It rang several times before she picked up.

“Hello?” It was a drowsy voice and I had pangs of guilt. People who stayed up very late on New Year's Eve slept very late on New Year's Day. But this late?

“Is this Rachel Stone?”

“Uh-huh.”

“My name is Chris Bennett. I'm a friend of Susan Stark's mother.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Susan hasn't been seen for a couple of days and her parents are worried.”

“That's impossible.” The voice was now fully awake. “I just talked to her.”

“When was that?”

“Uh, day before yesterday.”

“That's the last time she was seen.”

“Have you talked to Kevin?”

“Kevin's the last person who saw Susan.”

“I don't believe this. They were going to a party on New Year's Eve. She was staying in Brooklyn with her folks the night before. She told me on Wednesday when she called me.”

“She told you she was staying in Brooklyn Wednesday night?”

“Yes. She even said—hold on a minute. Would you give me your name and phone number? I want to call Mrs. Stark and make sure this is on the up-and-up.”

I spelled it out for her and we hung up. It was more
than fifteen minutes before she called back, and I assumed she must have had a conversation with Ada Stark.

“She said it's OK,” Rachel said. “You'll have to excuse me. I didn't get that much sleep, and I really didn't know who I was talking to.”

“That's OK. I'm glad you checked. Do you have some time to talk now?”

“Yes. I just made myself some coffee so I'll be human in a couple of minutes. Mrs. Stark said Susan never came home on Wednesday.”

“That's the way it looks. Her mother didn't see or hear her, and the bedroom looks as if no one's been there recently.”

“That's the way her room always looks. In an age of disorder, Susan's an anomaly.”

“If she went somewhere by herself, can you think of where she would go?”

“I can't imagine Susan going anywhere by herself. If I decided to see a movie, I'd go to the theater and buy a ticket. If she wanted to see one, she'd call someone up for company. Susan doesn't do things alone.”

“Maybe she was meeting someone at her mother's house.”

There was a moment of silence. “I don't know who,” Rachel said. “Not many people live in the old neighborhood anymore. You know, they grew up and went away, moved on. Even the parents of a lot of our old friends are gone now. I don't mean they've died, they've just left Brooklyn.”

“What about her old fifth-grade teacher?”

“Mrs. Halliday? I think she still lives in Brooklyn but not where the Starks live.”

“Rachel, tell me how you got to know Susan.”

“That goes way back. It was one of the first days of
kindergarten, if you can believe it, and the teacher arranged us alphabetically, so Stone was next to Stark. We'd never laid eyes on each other before and we just became friends that day. We lived in each other's houses—well, my family lived in an apartment—and it's never flagged. We went to different colleges but we spent our vacations together. We're friends, what can I tell you?”

“It sounds as though you know each other very well.”

“Better than anyone else does. I know Susan better than Kevin, better than her mother, but mothers never really know us, do they?”

It wasn't a question I could answer easily. My own mother had died when I was fourteen. “How was she getting on with Kevin?”

“She loved him. He's a great person. He's perfect for her. They complement each other in a lot of ways and they're similar in a lot of other ways. Susan's a little on the quiet side—you can probably tell I'm not—and he lets her be herself. But he also draws her out.”

“You said Susan was a person who wouldn't see a movie by herself, that she'd look for company. The person you've just described sounds like someone who'd like to be alone.”

“Maybe I didn't make myself clear. She likes to know someone's there but she doesn't want to talk all the time. She just likes to feel that she's not alone.”

I could empathize with Susan. Even when Jack is upstairs with his books, where I can't see him or hear him, there's a kind of comfort in knowing he's there. “Is she fearful of anything?” I asked.

“Not that she ever told me.”

“Do you think there was a problem with Kevin that could have popped up recently or just come to a head?”

She was silent again. “I didn't see anything,” she said carefully, “and she didn't tell me anything.”

“Did you sense it? Did you feel it? Rachel, your friend has been missing for forty-eight hours and no one has the slightest idea what's become of her.”

“She was concerned about something,” Rachel said, “but it wasn't Kevin.”

“Did she tell you what it was?”

“No. I sensed it.”

“Could you sense what it was?”

“It wasn't work, it wasn't Kevin. I think it was Susan's own personal demon.”

It was an exasperating comment. “You're not making this easy for me,” I said more lightly than I felt.

“I don't really know how to say this, and what I'm going to tell you may have nothing to do with Susan's disappearance, but she had a childhood fear that grew to be a grown-up fear, maybe more of a concern. When Susan was a little kid, she got it into her head that she was adopted.”

“She's the image of her mother,” I said, arguing with someone who I was sure didn't believe it any more than I did. “I have a picture of her.”

“Well, sure, and she knows that. You don't have to be a geneticist to figure out that she's Ada Stark's daughter. But we're not talking facts here, we're talking about a kid's fear.”

“Rachel, do you remember when she first told you about this fear? Do you remember anything that happened around that time that could have scared her?”

“It was so long ago. We were just kids.”

“Could her mother have gotten angry with her and said something she shouldn't have?” I didn't really believe this was a possibility but I had to ask.

“Mrs. Stark? She's the most sensible woman I've ever met. I don't think so.”

“Well, what about Susan's father?”

“He's pretty cool too. I don't think so.”

“Do you know him well?”

“I told you, I lived at their house when Susan wasn't living at mine. I saw them in pajamas, I saw them mad, I saw them every way you can imagine.”

“I just asked because Mr. Stark seems to have secreted himself in his office. His wife said he does that when he's worried.”

“Yeah,” Rachel agreed. “Probably true. He's kind of a quiet person—Susan may look like her mother but she's her father's girl. When he has something to say, he'll come out of his cocoon.”

“Let's get back to Susan's fear,” I said. Something in the back of my brain had begun nagging at me. What if my new baby someday decided I had not given birth to him but had adopted him? Would a birth certificate allay his fears? And what would bring on such fears in the first place? Was there a bit of craziness in every child that dissipated with the years, leaving, one hoped, a neurosis-free individual at maturity? “Try to remember, Rachel, even if it takes you a day or so. What could have made Susan doubt her parentage?”

“A day isn't going to do it. I think we were just playing once and she said, ‘Did you ever think you might have been adopted?' and the truth is, I never did. But something made her think it was possible. And she came back to it. It worried her.”