Jack continued. “Shortly after she got those photos, Miss Stendall began her blackmailing of Mr. Nolan. She also arranged for me to walk in on her and Joey together. She lured Joey to her hotel room in an apparent ploy to make up with him, but once I walked in, she began to pretend he was assaulting her. ‘Let me go. Help, Jack. He’s got a gun!’ and words to that effect.
“But I was wise to the situation. Told her maybe I should use my gun—on her. While she’d been seducing Lubrano, he’d gotten her to admit out loud to everything: the original scheme against Sarah Nolan, and the one against her husband. We’d hidden a microphone in the room, see? The police were next door, listening, with a tape recorder going.”
“Okay, first question: How did you know for sure those photos weren’t really Sarah Nolan? How could you be sure Emily was telling you lies?”
“I’d been sleeping with Emily. I knew she had an hourglass shaped birthmark on her . . .” Jack’s voice trailed off. He glanced around the elegant lobby. “Uh, derriere.”
“Okay, I see. You recognized that same birthmark in the photos?”
“Bingo, sister.”
“Sister,” I murmured, shaking my head. “I never would have suspected Emily, Jack. I never would have thought a woman was capable of perpetuating such a nasty fraud on her own flesh and blood.”
“Then you never would have discovered that Sarah Nolan wasn’t Emily’s flesh and blood.”
“What?”
“She was her sister all right, but only her sorority sister. That’s what clued me in early on. When I saw Mrs. Nolan’s birth date was barely eight months after Emily’s, I got suspicious, started looking into their backgrounds, discovered they’d gone to school together. So what lesson do you deduce from that, sweetheart?”
I blinked. “Uh . . . I don’t know.”
Jack sighed. “When you realize that a person is lying to you—or consciously misrepresenting something—you want to suspect they have more to hide.”
“Oh, sure. Right.” I gulped down my champagne in its entirety. Jack poured more.
“I kept digging and I also discovered that Sarah Nolan’s husband had been Emily’s beau for a time back during their college years.”
“So Emily was jealous?”
“She must have been—and angry, too, very angry. Emily’s own family had disowned her by then and her money was running out. Meanwhile, Sarah had a huge trust fund and a husband with even more loot. Emily obviously came downtown to hire me because she thought she’d find a low-rent dick who’d wouldn’t question the story of a woman like her—with her pedigree and pretty little pout. Especially not after she started sleeping with me, which was, frankly, the first thing that got me thinking I was being played.”
“That’s really why you slept with her? As part of your own investigation technique?”
Jack’s eyebrow arched. “What does your gut tell you, Penelope?”
“That you’re full of it.”
“I’ll tell you what, doll. Emily Stendall made the mistake of thinking that because my office was shabby that my sense of justice was, too. But she thought wrong.”
“You didn’t fall for her, Jack, not even a little bit?”
“Most men stop thinking when a dame’s perfume goes to their head. And I wasn’t completely immune. After we became intimate, I wanted to believe her pitch was innocent . . . I didn’t want to believe she was rotten to the core. But when I was presented with evidence, I let go of what I wanted and faced the music. I did what I had to do. You hearing me, Penelope?”
I swallowed hard, looked down at the dissipating bubbles in the remainder of my champagne. “You’re telling me that Johnny might be innocent like Joey . . . or that he might be as guilty as Emily. And if he is, I have to accept that. Just like you accepted Emily’s guilt.”
“Yeah, you got it.”
I drained my glass. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
“You’re stronger than you think, Penelope.”
“I don’t see how you can say that. I was such a coward out there . . . in the woods . . .”
Jack reached out, and his fingers began to tuck strands of my auburn hair behind my ear. “The woods are where the wolves live, sweetheart . . . a little fear is a smart thing . . . as long as you don’t let it keep you from doing what you need to do . . .”
My eyes met his, and I felt his hand move from my ear to the back of my neck. The light pressure was all it took for me to give in to his kiss, deep and warm and relaxing. I felt the buzz of the champagne and wrapped my hands around his neck. He pulled me hard against him.
“Baby,” he growled. “What you do to me . . .”
“Oh, Jack . . .”
“Listen . . .” He smiled. “This joint looks classy enough. Let me get us a room . . .”
“I can’t, Jack . . . I have a son . . . and I think . . . I think I’m still married—”
Jack’s kiss stopped my words. Then my alarm clock stopped Jack’s kiss. With its penetrating warmth still lingering, I opened my eyes to find the morning sun blasting through my open window and Jack’s tempting offer faded with the stars.
CHAPTER 22
Casing the Joint
My head was still booming away and I tried to fix it up with a hot shower. That helped, but a mess of bacon and eggs helped even more.
—Detective Mike Hammer in The Big Kill by Mickey Spillane, 1951
I SAT BLEARY-EYED in church that morning—so tired I hardly noticed my son’s impatient restlessness, so tired my aunt had to poke me now and again to keep me awake during the pastor’s seemingly interminable sermon.
The nightmare discovery in the woods, followed by a night of Jack’s dreams, had me crawling out of bed that morning with a feeling of impending doom. After the service I said good-bye to Sadie, reminding her to pass Johnny’s letter to Mina when the girl arrived for work.
Stuffed with hot homemade doughnuts and strong coffee—and milk for Spencer—we left Cooper’s Bakery and climbed into our mud-spattered, weed-encrusted blue Saturn for the trip to Newport. The food helped immensely, and I felt the fortifying sugar rush as I got behind the wheel.
It was a radiant morning, a cloudless azure sky, fresh cool breezes off the ocean, sunlight gold and dazzling. I snatched my seldom-worn sunglasses from the underside of the driver’s-side visor to shield my bloodshot eyes from the glare.
“You wore those last year, too,” my son remarked, tapping the dash in time to one of those boy band groups on Radio Disney.
“Wore what?”
“Your Hollywood sunglasses.”
I smiled. “Maybe I was wearing my contact lenses last year, too.”
“Maybe you just want to look like all the other mommies there. They all act like movie stars.”
Out of the mouths of babes. “Maybe that, too.”
Besides the shades, I was also wearing new clothes specifically purchased for this annual event—white capri pants, a pastel sweater set, and Italian sandals with a matching bag. All were expensive designer quality, which would help me blend into the McClure ranks, but bought at outlet prices, which is all I could now afford. And, frankly, I was grateful to have the long sleeves of the summer-weight sweater. It was warm, but I had some pretty nasty scratches on my arms from running topless through the woods.
Traffic was light and we were making good time as we neared the ramp to the highway. But as we came around a bend, Spencer cried out. “Look, Mom! Cops. Lots of them.”
I braked, rolling up behind several other vehicles. Squad cars were parked along both shoulders of the road, bubble lights flashing. Several belonged to the Quindicott police force but the majority were sleek silver Ford Crown Victorias with Rhode Island State Police markings.