I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [62]
“Zan, trust me. We must thoroughly discuss this before we decide if and when we tell the detectives.” Charley Shore looked at his watch. “Zan, we’d better get going. I have a car waiting downstairs.”
“The delivery entrance is my usual mode of entrance and exit,”
Zan told him. “There’s always someone from the media hanging out around the front door.”
Charley Shore studied his new client. There was something different about her. When he delivered her to Alvirah last night, she’d been fragile in every way, pale, shivering, and broken in spirit.
Today, there was a resolute firmness in her. She was wearing light makeup that enhanced her beautiful hazel eyes and long lashes. The auburn hair that she had worn in a tight bun yesterday was flowing on her shoulders. Yesterday she had been wearing jeans and a fake-fur jacket. Today, her slender, fine-boned body was fashionably dressed in a dark gray pantsuit with a multicolored scarf draped around her neck.
Charley’s wife, Lynn, dressed well. If he ever needed confirmation of that fact, he received it from the American Express bill he got every month. He considered her mild extravagance a small price to pay for the many times he missed a dinner party or was late for an event at Lincoln Center because he was preparing for an important trial. But if he had to choose, he much preferred the image of Zan Moreland as a victim than the one the media would see if they took pictures of her today.
There was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He reached for his cell phone and directed his driver to meet them at the back of the building.
The day was still unseasonably cold, but the sun was shining and the drifting white clouds held no hint of rain. Charley glanced up, hoping that the brightness of the day might be a good omen, but he had serious doubts that would be the case.
When they were in the car, choosing his words carefully, he said, “Zan, this is terribly important. You have got to follow my lead on anything I tell you to do. If Collins or Dean asks you a question and I tell you not to answer, that’s the way it has to be. I understand that there will be times when you’re burning to try to put them straight, but you must not do that.”
Digging her nails into her palms, Zan tried not to show how frightened she was. She liked Charley Shore. He had been so kind, so fatherly at her bedside in the hospital yesterday, then in the cab when he escorted her to Alvirah’s apartment. She also knew that he didn’t doubt for one minute that she was the woman in the Central Park photos. And even though he tried not to show it, it was obvious he believed the letter to Wallington Fabrics with her signature was on the level as well.
One of her favorite books as a child had been Alice in Wonderland. Now the words “Off with her head, off with her head,” ran through her mind. But Charley does want to help me, and the least I can do is trust his advice. I don’t have any choice.
“Mommy … Mommy …” I heard Matthew’s voice this morning, she reminded herself. I must keep holding on to the certainty that he is alive and that I will find him. It’s the only way I can possibly keep going.
The cab was pulling up to the Central Park Precinct. There were people with television cameras and microphones at the entrance.
“Oh, hell,” Charley Shore muttered. “Somebody tipped them off that you’re expected here.”
Zan bit her lip. “I’ll be all right.”
“Zan, remember, do not answer their questions. If they shove a mike in your face, ignore it.”
The cab stopped and Zan followed Shore out of it. The reporters rushed to intercept them. Zan tried to close her eyes to the shouted questions, “Will you be making a statement, Ms. Moreland?” “Where is Matthew, Ms. Moreland?” “What did you do with him, Zan?” “Do you think he is still alive?”
As Charley Shore, his arm around her back, tried to propel her forward, she broke away from him and turned around to the cameras.