Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [106]
“I can understand that. But you won't ever be there again, Gregg. You can count on that.”
Gregg looked tired. “Can I? That's the trouble. I'm back to being the chief suspect in Natalie's death. I'll always be the 'person of in?terest' to the police. What's to keep somebody else from coming up with some wild story? Remember I still can't account for those two hours when I was out jogging the morning Natalie died. I don't have a witness who saw me in the park. Suppose someone in New Jersey comes up with the story that they saw me in Natalie's neighborhood in Closter that morning or in her driveway. What happens then? An?other trial?”
Alarmed, Richard Moore stared across the table. “Gregg, are you suggesting you might have driven to New Jersey that day?”
“No, of course not. My point is that I'm still so vulnerable. I must have seen someone I knew that day when I was jogging, but I was sick with worry about Natalie. I think that's the reason I was so tuned out.”
“Gregg, don't torture yourself thinking that someone is going to appear out of the blue and say they saw you around Natalie's house that morning.” Richard Moore sounded unconvincing even to his own ears. Not likely, but it could happen, he thought.
“Richard, hear me out. On the witness stand I testified that when I looked in the window of the Cape Cod house I could tell that Nat?alie was terribly upset. She was practically in a fetal position on the couch. On the drive home I was desperately worried about her even though I had begun to realize that I was ready to let her go. I was tired of the drama. On that drive from the Cape, I was even remem?bering how much fun I had with Kathleen and thinking I wanted that kind of relationship again.”
“Maybe you should have said that on the stand,” Richard said quietly.
“How would that have sounded? Richard, I had a lot of time to think sitting in that cell yesterday. Suppose Natalie was afraid of someone? No one ever saw the man she had hinted she was seeing and maybe he doesn't exist. Maybe she said that to get me to stop calling her. But suppose she really was seeing someone, and that someone was lying in wait for her when she got home?”
“Gregg, where are we going with this?”
“I'll tell you where. I'm not made of money, and with all due re?spect you didn't come cheap. But you have that private investigator, Ben Smith, who works for you, don't you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I'll pay him, or someone else you hire, to open up this case and start from scratch. I've been the 'person of interest' long enough. I'll never be free until Natalie's killer is found and I'm exonerated.”
Richard Moore took the last sip of his coffee and signaled for the check. “Gregg, everything you said about being vulnerable is absolutely true. When Ben was investigating to try to find whoever Nata?lie may have been seeing, he came up blank. But just the way the Garcia couple was sitting out there on this lifesaving information, so may somebody else. We start searching today.”
Gregg stretched his hand across the table. “Richard, I'm glad you agree with me. If you hadn't, this would be the last coffee we'd share. And now I want to get home, kiss my kid and Alice, and take the longest shower of my life. I feel as if the smell of that jail cell is stick?ing to my skin.”
Just Take My Heart
75
I know I should feel tired but I don't, Emily thought as she drove down the West Side Highway in Manhattan. There's probably no connection between Natalie's death and the fact that her roommate, Jamie Evans, was murdered in Central Park nearly twenty years ago. The police believe that Jamie was the victim of the same mugger who assaulted three other women in the park around that time.
But she was the only one who was murdered.
Alice Mills has never believed there was even the possibility of a connection between the two murders, and there probably wasn't. Natalie never even met the guy Jamie was dating.