Second Chance (33 page)

Read Second Chance Online

Authors: Jonathan Valin

Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Hard-Boiled

The man stared at me blankly. "Why should I?"

"She worked for you in 1975 and '76. In the
Jewish Hospital Doctors' Building."

"For me?" Sacks shook his head decisively.
"I never hired anyone named Chaney in 1975 or any year."

"You're sure of that?"

"Quite sure."

"How about a woman named Chase?"

Sacks looked startled. "Chase? What would she
have to do with it?"

"She and Carla are the same person."

"You're imagining this," he said nervously.
"You must be imagining it."

"Because it's impossible, that's why. The woman
you're talking about is a friend."

"She was a friend of Phil's, too, wasn't she? In
fact I'd be willing to bet that they had a torrid little affair back
in late '75 or early '76. Maybe he kept seeing her after he and
Louise began their ‘platonic' relationship. Because, believe me,
Doc, Carla was not a platonic lover. She was an ice cold bitch who
had killed to get ahead—and who probably put the idea of killing in
Phi1's addled head.

"The woman you know as Jeanne Chase is Carla
Chaney, Doctor. And Carla Chaney is a borderline psychotic—a woman
who arranged to murder her own family and to murder the real Jeanne
Chase and to murder Stelle Pearson."

"I don't believe you!" he shouted. "There
was no murder!"

But he no longer looked or sounded convinced of that.
Jeanne Chase had changed his mind.

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Although I pressed him hard, Sacks refused to answer
any more questions about Jeanne Chase. I had the feeling he was no
longer holding back out of principle, but because he wanted to
confront the woman himself. And that was a bad idea. He was angry and
he was upset—so much so that his voice had begun to shake with
emotion and his brow to pop sweat. He looked, for all the world, like
a man betrayed by a lover. It was that kind of deep, personal hurt.

"Doc," I warned him, "don't try
anything stupid. Carla is very dangerous."

Sacks stared at me for a long moment. "I have
been a very great fool," he said in a voice that was just barely
under control. "And I will handle this."

I started for the door.

"Stoner?" he said.

I looked back at him.

"She worked here when Stelle had her breakdown.
She had access to the files." He took a deep breath and added:
"To Phil's file, too."

The thought had already occurred to me. But I didn't
like the way he put it. It was almost as if he was telling me what to
do, if something should happen to him. I sat in Sacks' parking lot
for a full fifteen minutes before starting the car and driving back
to the Riorley Building. Even then I didn't feel right about leaving
him alone. He'd had a doomed look on his face when I left the office.
And he was a man who believed in fate.

I phoned Al Foster as soon as I got to the office—to
see if he had a lead on Jeanne Chase or the bankbooks. But a desk
sergeant told me that he was out. I couldn't just sit there, waiting
for A1 to get back. And I had no way to find Jeanne Chase, save
through Shelley Sacks. What I did have was the bankbooks. I decided
to do something about them. There was a First National branch office
right across the street from the Riorley. I walked back down to the
lobby, crossed over Vine, and went into the bank. The managers' desks
were at the back in a mahogany-paneled alcove set off from the barred
cages of the tellers by a short mahogany fence. I sat down on a bench
outside the fence until one of the assistant managers came out to
collect me.

The tag on his desk said "Steven Moran."
And it was clear that Steven Moran was relatively new to the bank and
not yet hardened in the ways of commerce. An ordinary, unbusinesslike
grin kept flirting across his face, and he kept lighting it back like
a drunk playing sober. There'd come a time when he wouldn't have to
work so hard at looking like a banker.

Getting Steven Moran was a break for me. He wanted to
help—he thought that was what they'd hired him for. I took out
Ethan's bankbook and told him my story: "A customer left this
damn thing in my manager's office last week. Now my manager's gone on
vacation and the rest of us can't quite figure out who it belongs to.
Nobody remembers an ‘E. Pearson' coming in, and we don't have him
on file. One of the secretaries suggested that I pop over here and
see if you could help with a phone number or an address."

"I can try," Steve Moran said earnestly.
"Let me take a look."

I handed him the book and he examined it. Biting his
lip he turned to a computer on his desk. The screen was facing away
from me so I couldn't see what he was up to. But I heard him punching
the keyboard.

"That's odd," he said to himself.

"
You have something?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't say E. Pearson." For
just a second I could see him wondering whether I was on the level. I
smiled affably, and that grin of his came back on. He should have
been playing softball instead of sitting behind a desk.

"According to the computer the account is owned
by a woman. Jeanne L. Chase."

"No E. Pearson?" I said, trying not to look
too confused—although the fact that Phil Pearson wasn't the owner
of the account did, in fact, throw me.

"The account's in the name E. Pearson," the
kid said, looking a little confused himself. "But Jeanne L.
Chase owns it." His grin came back on, as if he'd had a
brainstorm. "Maybe she's a relative of the kid's—or a friend
of the family. People do that sometimes when a kid is underage."

"Do they?" I said uneasily.

"
I've got an address if you want to get in touch
with her."

"That would be fine," I said.

"Eighty-nine fifty
Kenwood Road. There's no phone listed."

* * *

I went from the bank to the underground garage where
the car was parked. It was past five when I got onto 71 North. The
rush hour traffic was heavy, and it was close to six when I got off
the expressway at the Kenwood exit.

I'd tried not to think about that damn bank account
on the way out—about what it meant. Some of it was obvious. Phil
Pearson hadn't been paying Rita Scarne off—at least not directly.
Jeanne L. Chase had. Which meant that Jeanne L. Chase had access to a
lot of money—her own or someone else's. The fact that the account
had been established in Ethan's name suggested that Phil was still
the likely source.

That's as far as I let myself take it. But I sure as
hell didn't like the direction it was going.

The development that Jeanne L. lived in on Kenwood
Road only made me more nervous. Eighty-nine fifty was a luxe little
complex, a couple miles from the Kenwood shopping district, a couple
more miles from Indian Hill. The condos were single units shingled in
cedar shakes that had weathered to a seaside grey. They had tall
smoked-glass windows and fenced grounds and built-in garages, and
each one was twisted like a different letter of the lphabet—or the
same letter drawn in a slightly different hand. Stylish hideaways for
those who could afford them. Like Phil Pearson.

The sun was down by the time I got to the complex. I
flipped on the lights and coasted down a tar drive, past those big
block letters. The ground floors were fenced off in front, so all you
could see were the second story windows with their dark glass panes
reflecting the twilight.

Eighty-nine fifty was the last lot on the street. I
knew which one it was without having to hunt for the number. Shelley
Sacks' grey Merc was parked in front.

I pulled up behind the Merc and got out. The wind was
blowing hard, and I ducked my head against it as I walked toward
Jeanne L. Chase's condo. As I got closer to the fence I heard a
creaking noise. The fence gate had been left ajar and was swinging in
the wind. I looked around—at the other condos on that part of the
block. The nearest one was a good thirty yards away—across the
drive. There were no lights coming from it. No lights at all on that
part of the street. Looking back at the fence I opened the gate fully
and went in.

There was a stone walkway inside, cutting across a
small yard to the front door of the condo. I walked up to the door
and knocked. When no one answered I tried the doorknob. It wasn't
locked.

The house was completely dark. Without the twilight
to guide me I had to stand in the doorway for several moments while
my eyes dark-adapted. Eventually I found a dimmer switch on the wall
and pressed it. A row of recessed lights came on overhead, lighting a
carpeted hallway with a large lacquered mirror on the right-hand wall
and several framed japanese and Indian prints on the left. The place
looked just as posh as could be, until I glanced at one of the
prints. They were artily framed but what they pictured were perverse
sexual acts—some of them involving children.

I began to notice a stale smell in the hall. A smell
like dirt and old sex mixed together with something else—something
fresh and terrible.

I walked quickly to the end of the hall. It forked to
the right and left-right into a large living room, decorated with
Italian leather furniture, left into a stairwell, leading to the
second floor. The living room was dark, so I couldn't see the framed
pictures on the walls. But I could guess what their subject matter
was. Something on an end table gleamed in the hall light—a water
pipe, I thought.

I looked up the dark stairway to my left. The bad
smell seemed stronger there. There was a switch on the wall. I
flipped it on and immediately flipped it off again.

It was a gut reaction—a twitch. There was blood on
the stairs. A good deal of it.

I turned the light back on and started up, stepping
over the dark, glistening spots of blood. The smell of sex and death
grew much stronger as I neared the landing. Sex and death and
flowers. Her scent.

The top floor looked to be one large room, with a
tall, A-frame ceiling. A ceiling fan dangling from the center beam
had been left on. It slowly revolved above the brass bed on the floor
beneath it. The bed was the only piece of furniture in the room. It
gleamed in the semidarkness—the brass fittings, the stained silk
sheets. A body lay on the bed —Sheldon Sacks' body. He was naked,
bloody from the waist down, and very, very dead.

I didn't examine the body. I didn't want to look at
what she'd done to him. He had come there to confront her—perhaps
he had summoned her there on the phone after I left the office. Who
knows what he had in mind. But he'd been no match for Carla.

Neither had I.

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I drove back to Sacks' office. I didn't even bother
to call the cops. There would be time for the cops later.

I'd found the key to his building in his trousers and
a key to the alarm box. I used one to get in and the other to give me
some time with his files. It took a few hours. I'd guessed most of it
anyway. I was a damn good guesser by then.

I took her employment file
with me when I left.

* * *

It was almost midnight when I got to Indian Hill—to
the unmarked street in the midst of the woods. I pulled up in the
driveway and sat there for a while, wondering if she'd come out
again, wrapped in silk, to play in the moonlight.

But she didn't come out.

I opened the car door and walked across the lawn.

The front door was open. I went in. Down the hall to
the sitting room, where she was waiting by the fire. Behind her the
stale Christmas tree winked red and blue.

I sat down across from her on the leather captain's
chair. For a while she looked at the fire—her hand to her cheek,
her face sleepy-looking in the firelight, her eyes heavy with sleep.
She'd had a long day.

"Shelley told me you'd be coming," she
said.

"I just saw him."

She laughed—her teeth red in the firelight. "Did
you?"

"What do you have planned for me?"

"For you?" she said. "Oh, I see. You
made a joke."

"It's no joke, Louise, Carla, Jeanne. Which do
you prefer?"

"Carla is right," she said, letting her
head loll against the chair. "Carla is first."

"So I've seen."

"Don't be mean, Harry," Carla Chaney said.
"I've seen enough cruelty in my life. Now I want it to stop. I
want it all to stop. I'm through."

She showed me her hands—both sides, as if she'd
cleaned them real good, cleaned them for me. "See."

But I didn't see.

"I guess I understand about Tallwood and
Talmadge. But your own son?"