I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [53]
“There are no other family members?”
“She was an only child. So was her mother, and her father had one brother who died when he was still a teenager.”
“How about a close friend?”
“I’m sure she has friends, but I don’t care how good a friend you are, who would be party to a kidnapping? But, Father, suppose she just abandoned Matthew somewhere and doesn’t know where? The one thing I would swear is that in her mind, her child is missing.”
In her mind, her child is missing. Fr. Aiden was still pondering that thought when, a few minutes later, the doorman hailed a cab for him downstairs.
I am an accessory to an ongoing crime and to a murder that is about to be committed.
Does that young woman indeed have a split mind — or what is the new term for it, a dissociative identity disorder? And if so, was it Alvirah’s friend, the real personality, trying to break through when she rushed into the Reconciliation Room?
The cab the doorman hailed was waiting. Grunting from the pain in his arthritic knees as he climbed into the backseat, Fr. Aiden thought, I am bound by the seal of the confessional. There is no way I can hint as to what I know. She asked me to pray for her child. But oh, dear Lord, if a murder is in the offing, I beg you to intercede and stop it.
What the elderly friar could not even begin to imagine was that there were now three murders being planned. And that he was first on the list.
36
Josh was already in the office when Zan arrived at eight A.M. Thursday morning. From the expression on his face, she knew immediately that something else had happened. By now too numb to feel anything except cold acceptance, she merely asked, “What is it?”
“Zan, you told me that Kevin Wilson agreed to hold off on deciding between you and Bartley over those model apartments.”
“Yes. But I know with those pictures in this morning’s papers of me being carried out to the ambulance yesterday, it’s all over for that job. I’ll be surprised if everything I left with him isn’t back here before noon.”
“Zan,” Josh said passionately, “that’s probably true, but it’s not what I’m talking about. Zan, how could you have ordered all the fabrics and furniture and wall hangings for those apartments before you got the okay on the job?”
“You’ve got to be joking,” Zan said flatly.
“Zan, I wish I were. You put the order in for the fabrics and the wall hangings and the custom furniture and the fixtures. My God, you’ve ordered everything. We’ve got delivery notices on the fabrics. Forget the money! Where are we going to put all that stuff?”
“They never would have begun delivering without being paid,” she said. This, at least, I can prove is a mistake, Zan thought frantically.
“Zan, I called Wallington Fabrics. They have a letter from you requesting deferment of the usual ten percent down because time is of the essence, and saying you’ll be able to pay in full as soon as the contract with Kevin Wilson comes in. You claim he’s already signed it, and the check will be arriving very soon.”
Josh grabbed a paper from his desk. “I asked them to fax me a copy of the letter. Here it is. On our stationery and that’s your signature.”
“I didn’t sign that letter,” Zan said. “I swear on my life that I didn’t sign that letter, and I didn’t order anything for those model apartments. Absolutely all I ever took from any of our suppliers were the upholstery fabric, drapery and wall hanging samples, and pictures of the furniture and Persian carpets and window treatments that I would use if we got the job.”
“Zan,” Josh began, then shook his head. “Look, I love you like you’re my own sister. We’ve got to call Charley Shore right now. When I phoned Wallington Fabrics, I thought someone had made a mistake. Now they’re going to start worrying about getting paid. And you did send minimal deposits to hold the