While My Pretty One Sleeps (2 page)

The exhilaration of slashing that throat, of watching her stumble backward through the archway to the kitchen and collapse onto the ceramic-tile floor.

He still was amazed at how calm he'd been. He'd bolted the door so that by some crazy trick of fate the superintendent or a friend with a key couldn't walk in. Everyone knew how eccentric Ethel could be. If someone with a key found that the door was bolted, they'd assume she didn't want to be bothered answering.

Then he had stripped his clothes off down to his underwear and put on his gloves. Ethel had been planning to go away to write a book. If he could get her out of here, people would think she'd left on her own. She wouldn't be missed for weeks, even months.

Now, gulping a mouthful of bourbon, he thought about how he had selected clothes from her closet, changing her from the blood-soaked caftan, pulling her pantyhose on, slipping her arms into the blouse and the jacket, buttoning the skirt, taking off her jewelry, forcing her feet into pumps. He winced as he remembered the way he'd held her up so that blood spurted over the blouse and the suit. But it was necessary. When she was found, if she
was
found, they had to think she'd died in that outfit.

He had remembered to cut out the labels that would have meant immediate identification. He had found the long plastic bag in the closet, probably returned by a cleaner on an evening gown. He had forced her into it, then cleaned the bloodstains
that had spattered on the Oriental throw rug, washed the kitchen tile with Clorox, packed the suitcases with clothes and accessories, all the while working frantically against time. . . .

He refilled the glass to the brim with bourbon, remembering when the phone had rung. The answering machine had come on and the sound of Ethel's rapid speech pattern. “Leave a message. I'll get back when and if I feel like it.” It had made his nerves scream. The caller broke the connection and he'd turned off the machine. He didn't want a record of people calling, and perhaps remembering broken appointments later.

Ethel had the ground-floor apartment of a four-story brownstone. Her private entrance was to the left of the stoop that led to the main entry. In effect her door was shielded from the view of anyone walking along the street. The only period of vulnerability was the dozen steps from her door to the curb.

In the apartment, he'd felt relatively safe. The hardest part had come when, after he hid Ethel's tightly wrapped body and luggage under her bed, he opened the front door. The air had been raw and damp, the snow obviously about to begin falling. The wind had cut a sharp path into the apartment. He'd closed the door immediately. It was only a few minutes past six. The streets were busy with people coming home from work. He'd waited nearly two hours more, then slipped out, double-locked the door and gone to the cheap car rental. He'd driven back to Ethel's apartment. Luck was with him. He was able to park almost directly in front of the brownstone. It was dark and the street was deserted.

In two trips he had the luggage in the trunk. The third trip was the worst. He'd pulled his coat collar up, put on an old cap he'd found on the floor of the rented car and carried the plastic bag with Ethel's body out of the apartment. The moment when he slammed the trunk down had brought the first sense that he'd surely make it to safety.

It had been hell to go back into the apartment, to make certain that there was no trace of blood, no sign that he'd been there. Every nerve shrieked at him to get to the state park, to dump the body, but he knew that was crazy. The police might notice someone trying to get into the park at night. Instead he left the car on the street six blocks away, followed his normal routine and at 5 A.M. set out with the very early commuters. . . .

It was all right now, he told himself. He was
safe!

It was just as he was draining the last warming sip of bourbon that he realized the one ghastly mistake he had made, and knew exactly who would almost inevitably detect it.

Neeve Kearny.

2|

The radio went on at six-thirty. Neeve reached out her right hand, groping for the button to tune out the insistently cheery voice of the newscaster, then stopped as the import of what he was saying sifted into her consciousness. Eight inches of snow had fallen on the city during the night. Do not drive unless absolutely necessary. Alternate-side-of-the-street
parking suspended. School closings to be announced. Forecast was for the snow to continue until late afternoon.

Terrific, Neeve thought as she leaned back and pulled the comforter around her face. She hated missing her usual morning jog. Then she winced, thinking of the alterations that had to be completed today. Two of the seamstresses lived in New Jersey and might not get in. Which meant she'd better get to the shop early and see how she could juggle the schedule of Betty, the only other fitter. Betty lived at Eighty-second and Second and would walk the six blocks to the shop no matter how bad the weather.

Hating the moment she abandoned the cozy warmth of the bed, she threw back the covers, hurried across the room and reached into her closet for the ancient terrycloth robe that her father, Myles, insisted was a relic of the Crusades. “If any of the women who spent those fancy prices buying your dresses could see you in that rag, they'd go back to shopping in Klein's.”

“Klein's closed twenty years ago, and anyhow if they saw me in this rag they'd think I'm eccentric,” she'd told him. “That would add to the mystique.”

She tied the belt around her waist, experiencing the usual fleeting wish that she had inherited her mother's pencil-thin frame instead of the square-shouldered, rangy body of her Celtic forebears, then brushed back the curly coal-black hair that was a trademark of the Rossetti family. She also had the Rossetti eyes, sherry-colored irises, darker at the edges so they blazed against the whites, wide and questioning under sooty lashes.
But her skin tone was the milk white of the Celts, with a dotting of freckles against the straight nose. The generous mouth and strong teeth were those of Myles Kearny.

Six years ago when she graduated from college and persuaded Myles that she had no intention of moving out, he'd insisted she redo her bedroom. By haunting Sotheby's and Christie's, she'd assembled an eclectic assortment of a brass bed, an antique armoire and a Bombay chest, a Victorian chaise and an old Persian rug that glowed like Joseph's coat. Now the quilt and the pillows and the dust ruffle were stark white; the reupholstered chaise was covered in turquoise velvet, the same turquoise tone that ribboned through the rug; the stark-white walls were a background for the fine paintings and prints that had come from her mother's family.
Women's Wear Daily
had photographed her in the room, calling it cheerfully elegant, with the peerless Neeve Kearny touch.

Neeve wiggled her feet into the padded slippers Myles called her booties and yanked up the shade. She decided that the weatherman didn't have to be a genius to say this was an important snowstorm. The view from her room in Schwab House at Seventy-fourth Street and Riverside Drive was directly over the Hudson, but now she could barely make out the buildings across the river in New Jersey. The Henry Hudson Parkway was snow-covered and already filled with cautiously moving traffic. The long-suffering commuters had undoubtedly started into town early.

•   •   •

Myles was already in the kitchen and had the coffeepot on. Neeve
kissed him on the cheek, willing herself not to remark on how tired he looked. That meant he hadn't slept well again. If only he'd break down and take an occasional sleeping pill, she thought. “How's the Legend?” she asked him. Since his retirement last year, the newspapers constantly referred to him as “New York's legendary Police Commissioner.” He hated it.

He ignored the question, glanced at her and assumed an expression of amazement. “Don't tell me you're not all set to run around Central Park?” he exclaimed. “What's a foot of snow to dauntless Neeve?”

For years they had jogged together. Now that he could no longer run, he worried about her early-morning sprints. But then, she suspected, he never
wasn't
worrying about her.

She reached into the refrigerator for the pitcher of orange juice. Without asking she poured out a tall glass for him, a short one for herself, and began to make toast. Myles used to enjoy a hearty breakfast, but now bacon and eggs were off his diet. So were cheese and beef and, as he put it, “half the food that makes you look forward to a meal.” His massive heart attack had restricted his diet as well as ending his career.

They sat in companionable silence, by unspoken consent splitting the morning
Times
. But when she glanced up, Neeve realized that Myles wasn't reading. He was staring at the paper without seeing it. The toast and the juice were untouched in front of him. Only the coffee showed any sign of having been tasted. Neeve put section two of the paper down.

“All right,” she said. “Let me have it. Is it that you feel rotten? For heaven's sake, I hope you know enough by now not to
play the silent sufferer.”

“No, I'm all right,” Myles said. “Or at least if you mean have I been having chest pains, the answer is no.” He tossed the paper onto the floor and reached for his coffee. “Nicky Sepetti gets out of jail today.”

Neeve gasped. “But I thought they refused him parole last year?”

“Last year was the fourth time he came up. He's served every day of his sentence, less time for good behavior. He'll be back in New York tonight.” Cold hatred hardened Myles's face.

“Dad, take a look at yourself in the mirror. Keep it up and you'll bring on another heart attack.” Neeve realized her hands were trembling. She gripped the table, hoping Myles would not notice and think she was afraid. “I don't care whether or not Sepetti made that threat when he was sentenced. You spent years trying to connect him to . . .” Her voice trailed off, then continued, “And not one shred of evidence has ever come up to tie him to it. And for God's sake don't you dare start worrying about me because he's back on the street.”

Her father had been the U.S. Attorney who put the head of the Sepetti Mafia family, Nicky Sepetti, behind bars. At the sentencing, Nicky had been asked if he had anything to say. He'd pointed at Myles. “I hear they think you done such a good job on me, they made you Police Commissioner. Congratulations. That was a nice article in the
Post
about you and your family. Take good care of your wife and kid. They might need a little protection.”

Two weeks later, Myles was sworn in as Police Commissioner.
A month later, the body of his young wife, Neeve's mother, thirty-four-year-old Renata Rossetti Kearny, was found in Central Park with her throat cut. The crime was never solved.

•   •   •

Neeve did not argue when Myles insisted that he call for a cab to take her to work. “You can't walk in that snow,” he told her.

“It isn't the snow, and we both know it,” she retorted. As she kissed him goodbye, she put her arms around his neck and hugged him. “Myles, the only thing that we both have to worry about is your health. Nicky Sepetti isn't going to want to go back to prison. I bet if he knows how to pray he's hoping that nothing happens to me for a long, long time. There isn't another person in New York besides you who doesn't think some petty crook attacked Mother and killed her when she wouldn't give up her purse. She probably started screaming at him in Italian and he panicked. So please forget Nicky Sepetti and leave to heaven whoever took Mother from us. Okay? Promise?”

She was only slightly reassured by his nod. “Now get out of here,” he said. “The cab meter's ticking and my game shows will be starting any minute.”

•   •   •

The snowplows had made what Myles would call a lick-and-a-promise attempt to partially clear the accumulated snow from West End Avenue. As the car crawled and slid along the slippery streets and turned onto the west-to-east transverse road through the park at Eighty-first Street, Neeve found herself wishing
the fruitless “if only.” If only her mother's murderer had been found. Perhaps in time the loss would have healed for Myles as it had for her. Instead for him it was an open wound, always festering. He was always blaming himself for somehow failing Renata. All these years he had agonized that he should have taken the threat seriously. He could not bear the knowledge that with the immense resources of the New York City Police Department at his command, he had been unable to learn the identity of the thug who had carried out what he was convinced had been Sepetti's order. It was the one unfulfilled need in his life—to find that killer, to make him and Sepetti pay for Renata's death.

Neeve shivered. The cab was cold. The driver must have been glancing in the rearview mirror, because he said, “Sorry, lady, the heater don't work so good.”

“It's all right.” She turned her head to avoid getting into a conversation. The “if onlys” would not stop running through her mind. If only the killer had been found and convicted years ago, Myles might have been able to get on with his life. At sixty-eight he was still an attractive man, and over the years there had been plenty of women who had a special smile for the lean, broad-shouldered Commissioner with his thick head of prematurely white hair, his intense blue eyes and his unexpectedly warm smile.

She was so deep in thought she did not even notice when the cab stopped in front of the shop. “Neeve's Place” was written in scroll on the ivory-and-blue awning. The display windows that faced both Madison Avenue and Eighty-fourth Street were wet
with snowdrops, giving a shimmering look to the flawlessly cut silk spring dresses on the languidly posed mannequins. It had been her idea to order umbrellas that looked like parasols. Sheer raincoats that picked up one color in the print were draped over the mannequins shoulders. Neeve joked that it was her “don't-be-plain-in-the-rain” look, but it had proved wildly successful.