Connie led Mitch into a study where they could be alone. Mitch noticed two first-edition Steinbecks in the bookcase, and what looked like an early Kandinsky on the walnut-paneled wall. The Grays’ money troubles were evidently behind them.
Connie saw him admiring the painting. “It was a present.”
“A very generous one.”
“Yes.” Connie smiled sweetly but didn’t elaborate. “How can I help you, Detective?”
Mitch decided to go for the direct approach. “How long were you and Lenny Brookstein lovers?”
Blood rushed to Connie’s face, then drained from it. She contemplated denying the affair but thought better of it. He obviously knows. Lying now will only anger him.
“Not long. A few months. It was over before Nantucket. Before he died.”
“Who ended it?”
Connie picked up a silk cushion and dug her nails into the fabric. “He did.”
“That upset you?”
A vein in Connie’s temple throbbed visibly. “A little. At the time. As you can imagine, Detective, this is not a chapter of my life story of which I’m particularly proud. Michael has no idea. Nor does Grace.”
She does now.
“You lied to the police about your relationship.”
“I didn’t lie. I concealed. I didn’t see the point in dredging it all up. I still don’t.”
Mitch thought of Lenny’s body, or what was left of it, dredged up from the bottom of the ocean. Did Connie have a hand in his death? The woman scorned? She had a cast-iron alibi for the day of the storm. Scores of people had seen the three Knowles sisters lunching together at the Cliffside Beach Club. But she could have orchestrated things behind the scenes.
“What is it that you weren’t proud of, exactly? The affair? Or the fact that Lenny dumped you and went running back to Grace?” Mitch was trying to hit a nerve. If he succeeded in shaking Connie out of her queenly self-control, she might let something slip. “It must have been humiliating, being rejected for your little sister.”
“I’ll tell you what was humiliating, Detective. Lenny’s ridiculous obsession with Grace. That was humiliating. For an intelligent, dynamic man like that to saddle himself with a half-witted child of a wife? It was laughable. It was pathetic.” The spleen dripped off Connie’s tongue like venom. “Everybody thought so, not just me. Oh, we all paid homage, of course, fawned over the loving couple. But that marriage was a running joke.”
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“You loved him, but he loved your sister.”
“He was obsessed with my sister. There’s a difference.”
“Bullshit. Grace was the love of his life. You couldn’t forgive either of them for that, could you, Connie?”
Reaching into her purse, Connie took out and lit a cigarette. She inhaled deeply and said, “Let me tell you something, Detective. The only love of Lenny Brookstein’s life was Lenny Brookstein. If you don’t know that, you don’t know the man at all.”
“But you knew him. You abased yourself, prostituted yourself for his pleasure, then got tossed aside like a used rag.”
“That’s not true.”
“Admit it. You threw yourself at the guy’s feet!”
The muscles in Connie’s jaw visibly tightened. For a moment Mitch thought she was finally going to lose it. But she reined in her temper. Stubbing out her cigarette, she said calmly, “You’re quite wrong. If you must know, I hated Lenny Brookstein. Hated him.”
“Is that why you had him killed?”
Connie burst out laughing. “Oh, dear! Is that what all this has been about, Detective?” She wiped away tears of mirth. “You found out about my affair with Lenny, and all of a sudden I’m the jilted lover, off on some murderous rampage? It’s a little simplistic, don’t you think?”
Mitch was angry. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you were there that weekend because you wanted revenge.”
“Yes indeed. And I got revenge.” Standing up, Connie walked over to the painting Mitch had admired earlier, lifted it off the wall and handed it to him. “A gift from my dear departed brother-in-law. A fake, as it happens. Like him. But a pretty addition to the room, I’m sure you’ll agree. I wanted it, so I made Lenny give it to me. I made Lenny give me a lot of things.”
“You were blackmailing him? Threatening to tell Grace about the two of you?”
“Blackmailing him? Not at all.” The suggestion seemed to surprise her. “I simply collected what I was owed.” Walking around the room, admiring its array of rare books and objets d’art, Connie smiled contentedly to herself. “Michael, bless his heart, thinks I bought this house with inheritance money. He actually believes that a rich old aunt left me fifteen million dollars.”
“Lenny gave you the money?”
“Who else? He wrote the check in Nantucket, two days before he died. Thank God I cashed it promptly. A couple more weeks and that money would have been seized by Quorum’s administrators. As it was…” She smiled smugly, leaving the sentence hanging. “I can say with my hand on my heart, Detective, that Lenny Brookstein’s death was a grievous blow to me. But not because I adored him. I am nobody’s victim. I leave that to my sister. She’s so good at it, you see.”
LATER THAT NIGHT, MITCH LAY AWAKE thinking about Connie and Grace, and about the man both women had loved. Lenny Brookstein was an enigma. He was not the caricature of evil that the press had made him out to be, of that much Mitch was sure. But neither was he the saint of his wife’s imagination. What he appeared to be was a mess of contradictions. Generous and mean. Loyal and vengeful. Devoted and unfaithful. Brilliant at business, but unable to tell a friend from a foe.
Had Lenny Brookstein really stolen all that money?
He was capable of it. But had he done it?
If so, the poor bastard never got to enjoy it. Someone had seen to that with a meat cleaver. Someone Lenny Brookstein knew and trusted.
Buccola had provided some tantalizing leads, but all of them had wound up as dead ends: Andrew Preston, Jack Warner, Connie Gray. It was time to take another look at John Merrivale.
Mitch fell asleep dreaming of stormy seas, Kandinsky paintings and Grace Brookstein’s haunting face.
TWENTY-SIX
THE NAUSEA CAME IN WAVES.
At first Grace tried to ignore it. She was under stress. She wasn’t eating properly. After Jasmine Delevigne had told her about Connie and Lenny, she ran back to her miserable room, crawled into bed and stayed there for two days. This was worse than Davey Buccola’s betrayal, worse than being sent to Bedford, worse even than being raped. She only got out of bed to use the toilet and to vomit. The vomiting was getting worse, both more frequent and more violent. She was getting sick.
It’s probably a virus. I’m depressed. My immune system’s low.
After forty-eight hours of unbearable nausea, Grace finally dragged herself to the Duane Reade on the corner. With a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes and a muffler covering the bottom half of her face, she mumbled her symptoms to the pharmacist.
“Uh-huh. When was your last period?”
The question caught Grace by surprise. “My period?”
“Is there a chance you could be pregnant, sugar?”
Grace tried to block out the sounds and images, but they kept coming: The van driver’s face, his cruel, flat black eyes, his voice taunting her. Don’t worry, Lizzie, we’ve got all night.
“No.”
“You’re quite sure?”
“I’m positive. There’s no chance.”
Grace bought a pregnancy test.
Ten minutes later, sitting on the broken toilet she shared with three other tenants, Grace peed on the stick for the requisite five seconds, mentally chiding herself for wasting fifteen bucks.
This is ridiculous. I’m late because I’m exhausted.
Two pink lines appeared in the results window. Grace’s palms began to sweat. It must be a faulty test. She ran back to the pharmacy and wasted another fifteen bucks. Then another. Each time the white plastic stick taunted her, its pink lines dancing in front of her eyes like the elephants in Dumbo.
Positive. Positive. Positive.
Congratulations! You are pregnant.
Grace felt dizzy. She slumped back on the bed and closed her eyes. Somehow, over these past three weeks, she’d managed to block out the rape. As if she knew instinctively that to let it in, to think about it, would destroy her. But now there could be no more hiding. It was here, inside her, growing and alive like some unwanted alien, a parasite consuming her from the inside out.
I have to get rid of it. Now.
A doctor was out of the question. Grace was already using the third of the fake driver’s licenses Karen had made for her at Bedford. This week Grace was Linda Reynolds, a waitress from Illinois. The cards were good enough to fool sales assistants and hotel desk clerks, who only glanced at them for a second. But Grace couldn’t risk showing them to some doctor’s officious assistant who might take a good, long look.