Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [49]
Like a shot out of a cannon, Zach leaped from his chair. Frantic, he raced outside, grabbed a shovel, and began digging up the plants. Realizing that the porch light substantially illuminated the walkway area, he hurried to turn it off. Working in near darkness, his breath coming in short gasps, he clawed at the plants, tossing them into heavy plastic bags. He realized that Emily could be turning into her driveway at any moment and he didn't want her to see him doing this.
He also realized that she must have noticed the plantings this af?ternoon and would wonder why they were gone. The first thing to?morrow morning he would buy different beds of flowers to replace them.
What would be going through Emily's head? Would she hear anybody in her office talking about this program? Would they talk about the mums? Would anybody at his job, or on this block, notice that one lousy picture and think about the fact that he had lived and worked here for two years — exactly the right time frame for leaving Des Moines?
Zach had just finished pulling up the last of the flowers when Emily's car came up her driveway. He crouched down in the dark shadow of the house and watched as she got out of the car, hurried to her front door, and went inside. Is there any chance, wherever she had been, that she had seen this program? Even if she had only glanced at it, at some point her professional instincts would be bound to kick in. If not right away, then soon.
Zach knew that he had to step up his preparations and be ready to leave much sooner than he had planned.
Just Take My Heart
32
Michael Gordon ended up spending most of his waking hours during the weekend with Gregg and Katie. At dinner at Neary's on Friday night, the usually reticent Gregg had been surprisingly open. Waving away Michael's repeated apologies for doubting his inno?cence, Gregg said: “Mike, I've been thinking a lot about something that happened to me when I was sixteen. I was in a horrible car crash and was in intensive care for six weeks. I don't remember a single moment of it. Afterwards, my mother told me that for the last three weeks, I was talking a blue streak, and begging them to take the tubes out of me. She told me that I thought the nurse was my grandmother, who died when I was six.”
“You never talked about that,” Mike said.
“Who wants to talk about being in a near-death experience?” Gregg had smiled —a wry smile—as he added, “For that matter, who wants to hear about it? There's enough doom and gloom in the world to go around without someone filling your ear with his hard-luck tale from twenty-six years ago. Anyway, let's change the sub?ject.”
“As long as you keep eating,” Mike replied. “Gregg, how much weight have you lost?”
“Just enough to make my clothes fit better.”
Early Saturday morning, Mike had picked up Gregg and Katie and they had driven to his ski lodge in Vermont. It was almost two months too early for skiing but in the afternoon, Gregg and Katie had gone for a long walk together, while Mike worked on his book about major crimes of the twentieth century.
For dinner, they drove into Manchester. As usual, Vermont was significantly cooler than New York and the fire blazing in the dining room of the cozy inn was warming, both emotionally and physically, for each of them.
Late that evening, after Katie, with a book under her arm, had gone to bed, Gregg went into Mike's study where he had resumed working after dinner. “I think I remember you telling me that you're doing a chapter on Harry Thaw, the millionaire who shot Stanford White, the architect, at Madison Square Garden in New York?”
“That's right.”
“He shot him in front of a crowd of people and then got off on an insanity plea, didn't he?”
Michael wondered what Gregg was driving at. “Yes, but Thaw did have to spend some time in an asylum,” he said.
“Then, when he got out of the asylum not very long afterward, he moved into a nice big house on Lake George, as I remember?