I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [58]
“But with that kind of emotional baggage, you still chose to marry her?” Jennifer Dean asked quietly.
“Zan and I had been dating, somewhat casually, but we were definitely becoming interested in each other. I guess I was half in love with her then. She is a beautiful woman, as I’m sure you’ve observed, and very intelligent. She is a gifted interior designer, thanks, I might add, to the fact that Bartley Longe took her on after she graduated from FIT and gave her the chance to be his right-hand apprentice.”
“Then you don’t feel that Ms. Moreland was fair when she blamed Bartley Longe for making it impossible to visit her parents earlier?”
“No, I don’t. She knew perfectly well that much as he might rant and rave if she took a few weeks off, he never would have fired her. She was far too valuable to him.”
“You say you were dating and half in love with Ms. Moreland during that time. Did you express your feelings about her job with Longe at that time?”
“Of course I did. The fact is, Longe had given her the chance of a lifetime for a young designer. He had taken on a high-profile job to decorate the TriBeCa penthouse of Toki Swan, the rock star, but because he was up to his elbows doing a Palm Beach mansion, he virtually turned the job over to Zan. She was thrilled. You couldn’t have dragged her onto a plane at that point.”
“Did Ms. Moreland show any signs of overwork, or of approaching a breakdown, before she flew to Rome?”
“From what I understand, after she finished that job Longe wanted her to stay a few weeks longer and help him finish the Palm Beach place. That’s when the big quarrel took place and she quit. As I just told you, that so-called firing was a joke.”
“After her parents’ death, couldn’t you have helped her without marrying her?” Jennifer Dean asked.
“That’s like asking a bystander watching someone trapped in a burning car, why didn’t you dial 911 instead of taking immediate action? Zan needed to feel as if she had a home and a family. I gave that to her.”
“But she left you very quickly.”
Ted bristled. “I didn’t come in here to have a consultation about my brief marriage to the woman who abducted my son. Zan felt that she had taken advantage of me, and decided to move out. It was only after she was gone that she realized she was pregnant.”
“What was your reaction?”
“I was pleased. By then I realized there was nothing between us, and I told her I would give her generous support so that she could always live comfortably and raise our child. She told me she intended to open her own interior design business. I understood that, but after my son was born, I did insist on meeting the nanny she planned to hire so I could judge for myself if that person was competent.”
“Did you do that?”
“Yes. And the nanny, Gretchen Voorhees, was a blessing. Frankly, I would say that she was more of a mother to Matthew than Zan. Zan was consumed with her need to beat out Bartley Longe for jobs. I can tell you the amount of time she spent working to get that job with Nina Aldrich was unconscionable.”
“How do you know that?”
“Gretchen told me that on the last day she worked for Zan. I was picking Matthew up for the afternoon. Gretchen was flying back to Holland because she was getting married.”
“Had Ms. Moreland hired a new nanny, and if so, did you meet her?”
“I met her once. Her references were good. She seemed perfectly pleasant. However, she was obviously not reliable. She didn’t show up the first day for work, and Zan grabbed Tiffany Shields to take my son to Central Park so she could fall asleep on the grass, if indeed she did fall asleep.”
Ted Carpenter’s face turned a deep crimson red. He swallowed, unable to go on. Then, his hands clenched into fists, his voice raised, he said, “I’ll tell you what happened that