I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [57]
As he asked the question, Wally Johnson felt like a phony. I’d be better off telling this poor old guy that his daughter is a hooker who got involved with some guy, and it’s worth her while to stay under the radar, he thought.
Nevertheless, he asked the usual perfunctory questions. Height. Weight. Color of eyes. Color of hair.
“All this is on Glory’s publicity shots,” Toby Grissom said. “Maybe you’d like one.” He reached into the envelope he was carrying and brought out a half dozen eight-by-ten photographs. “You know, they want the girls to look kind of sweet and innocent in one picture, and kind of sexy in another, and if they have short hair like Glory, they try them with different wigs or extensions or whatever you call that stuff.”
Wally Johnson rifled through the photos. “She is very pretty,” he said sincerely.
“Yeah, I know. I mean, I always liked her better with long hair, but she said that it’s easier to have good wigs ‘cause you can be anybody you want.”
“Mr. Grissom, why don’t you leave me the photograph with the montage showing her in her different poses. That will be more useful to us.”
“Of course.” Toby Grissom stood up. “I’m going back to Texas. I need my chemo treatments. They won’t save my life, I guess, but maybe they will keep me alive long enough to see my Glory.” He started to walk away, then came back to Johnson’s desk. “You will talk to that Bartley Longe?”
“Yes, I will. And if anything develops we’ll be in touch with you, I promise.”
Wally Johnson tucked Margaret-Glory-Brittany’s glossy photo montage under the clock on the corner of his desk. His gut instinct was that the young woman was alive and well and probably involved in something dirty, if not illegal.
I’ll give that Longe guy a call, Johnson thought, then I’ll put Glory’s picture where it belongs, in the dead letter file.
38
At nine A.M. Thursday, Ted Carpenter arrived at the Central Park Precinct. Haggard and worn from the events and the emotional seesaw of the past day and a half, his tone was brusque when he said he had an appointment with Detective Billy Collins. “And I believe he said something about his partner would be with him,” Ted added before the desk sergeant could respond.
“Detectives Collins and Dean are expecting you,” the sergeant said, ignoring the hostility in Carpenter’s voice. “I’ll let them know that you’re here.”
Less than five minutes later, Ted was sitting at a conference table in a small office, facing Billy Collins and Jennifer Dean.
Billy thanked him for coming in. “I hope you’re feeling better, Mr. Carpenter. I know that when your secretary phoned yesterday to make an appointment, she said you were ill.”
“I was and I am,” Ted replied. “And it’s not just physical. Knowing what I’ve gone through for almost two years, to see those photos and realize that my ex, Matthew’s mother, has been guilty of abducting my son, just about drove me over the edge.”
An unmistakable note of anger crept into his voice. “I have wasted my time blaming that babysitter who fell asleep when she was supposed to be minding my son. Now I have begun to wonder if she wasn’t in collusion with my ex-wife. I know Zan regularly gave Tiffany clothes she no longer wore.”
Billy Collins and Jennifer Dean were trained not to show surprise at anything that was said to them, but each knew the other’s thoughts. Was this an angle they had not considered? And if there was any truth to it, what made Tiffany Shields turn on Zan to the point of suggesting that both she and Matthew had been deliberately drugged that day?
Billy chose not to follow up on Ted Carpenter’s reasoning that Shields was involved. “Mr. Carpenter, you and Ms. Moreland were married for how long?”
“Six months. What has that got to do with it?”
“Her mental health is what we’re getting at. At the time of Matthew’s disappearance, she told us that after her parents’ death, you flew to Rome and saw her through the funeral, the packing of their personal items, the usual details following a demise. She made it clear that she was very grateful to you.”
“Grateful! That’s