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“No, I’ve never seen him before.”
“Maybe I should have been more suspicious at the time, but when he said he was with your gallery, I assumed everything was okay.”
“That’s okay. Truly, it’s so helpful to have the sketch. Thank you again, Alejandro.”
“Please, it’s my pleasure. Have a good night. And don’t worry, I’ll let you know if I see him again.”
After I sign off, I study the sketch further. It’s very well done,and my sense is that I’m staring at a close likeness. I can’t tell if I’m projecting, but it strikes me that there’s something definitely sleazy-looking about the guy’s face. Is he an unscrupulous private eye, as Mikoto suggested, or some other kind of henchman?
Though I’m bone-tired and want nothing more than to crawl under the covers, I set the phone down and return my attention to the construction paper. After a minute of staring at my twenty-five-year-old face, I use my computer to pull up the website for the Kensington and click on the tab for “rooms and suites.”
My breath quickens as soon as the main gallery photo comes into view. Surely the rooms have been refurbished or redecorated in the intervening years, but at first glance the overall look seems very much the same. The room’s luxe curtains, armchair, and thick pile rug are all in muted shades of taupe, and though the bed is a four-poster, it’s very modern in design.
And there’s a sleek gas fireplace along one of the walls, something I’d forgotten about. I remember suddenly that C.J. had turned it on while we ate our room service meal, and we’d had sex the second time in the glow from the flames.
There aren’t many rooms in the hotel, and as I click through photos of the various sizes and styles, I realize that the photo I first looked at might be the exact room we stayed in.
I print that out, too, as well as pictures of the bar on the ground floor, then cut off the accompanying type and glue the photos on the paper near my image. I also add a photo I find online of Boston rooftops, because I could see a cluster of them from my own room, and another of the Public Garden and a sign for the Freedom Trail, both of which were only a few minutes from the Kensington by foot.
I briefly consider adding Chris Whaley’s photo from the obit, but he looks too different from what I remember. Instead, I scrawl out the initials C.J. with a magic marker on a piece of note paper,tear it off, and add it to what I’ve done so far. I also add a scrap of paper with the words Two Truths and a Lie.
Is this insane? I wonder. It’s taken me over a decade to leave Boston behind, mentally and emotionally, and yet here I am, trying to time travel back there. And now that I’ve started, I don’t think I can stop.
My phone rings again, making me jump. It’s after nine, not a time when Nicky ever calls. I pick up the phone from the far end of the table, and to my surprise, Bradley Kane’s name is on the screen.
“Ms. Moore, good evening,” he says after I answer. “Am I catching you at a bad time?”
“Definebad.”
“Well, it’s not an hour when people are eager for calls. But I was hoping you had a minute. I wanted to set up a time to meet with you in person again. Tomorrow if possible.”
“You want me to come to Scarsdale again?” I don’t mind if he can hear the exasperation in my voice. I’d been planning never to set foot in that town again for as long as I live.
“No, my club in the city is a lot closer to you. I’m going to be playing squash there tomorrow morning, and we could meet afterward in the lounge.”
“And you think I should trust you enough to speak to you again?”
“Why do you say that?”
“You led me to believe our meeting the other day was confidential, but then Jane Whaley ambushed me in the lobby of your building. How do I know it wasn’t you who told her I’d be there?”
He clears his throat. “I assure you it wasn’t and that we’ve been investigating the situation. As I mentioned to you, I alerted Mrs. Whaley to the fact that the trust was being transferred to someone other than her, but I never revealed your name. That would havebeen unethical. And besides, Mr. Whaley was adamant that she not know who the beneficiary was.”
Hmm. That’s another interesting morsel. Could it also indicate that C.J. wasn’t trying to humiliate her?
“Then how did she find out?”
“We’re not sure yet, but it’s emerged that one of our paralegals has a sister who was at school with the Whaley children. We think she might have alerted them to what was happening. If that turns out to be the case, she’ll be terminated, of course.”
“Am I supposed to believe that the paralegal also got her hands on my address and turned that over to them as well?”
“I’m not following,” he says, and he sounds sincere.
“Jane Whaley knows where I live, and she and her family have been harassing me here in New York, practically since the minute I left your office.”
I hear an intake of breath. “What do you mean?”
“My apartment was broken into and searched the day we met, and I’m almost positive she was behind it. She’s clearly trying to find evidence that I had an ongoing relationship with her husband. She also had someone leave a note in my bag calling me a whore—and then if that wasn’t enough, Mark Whaley showed up outside my building tonight to try to get me to renounce the trust. And he hurled a few expletives at me in the process.”
