16

After speaking to the reporters outside the Four Seasons, Ted Carpenter turned on his iPhone on his way downtown and found the photos of the person who seemed unmistakably to be Zan taking Matthew from the stroller. Shocked, he stopped at his duplex condo in the newly gentrified Meatpacking District of lower Manhattan. There he had agonized briefly about whether or not to meet Melissa at Lola’s Café. What will it look like for me to be there when these photos are showing my ex-wife stealing my child?

He phoned the Central Park Precinct and was put through to a detective who told him that it would be at least twenty-four hours before they could verify that the pictures were not doctored. At least if I’m questioned by the paparazzi, I can tell them that, he thought, as he changed his shirt and rushed back to the car.

The paparazzi on the sidewalk outside the popular café were kept back behind velvet ropes. One of the bouncers had held the door of his car open and he had ducked out toward the entrance. But then he stopped, unable to ignore the shouted question, “Have you seen those photos yet, Ted?”

“Yes, I have and I have been in touch with the police. I believe they are a cruel hoax,” he snapped.

Inside the café he braced himself, knowing he was a half hour late meeting Melissa. He fully expected to find her in a filthy mood, but she was sitting at a large table with five old friends from the band she had once been in as the lead singer. She was clearly enjoying their adulation. Ted knew all of them and was grateful for their presence. If Melissa had been waiting alone, there would have been hell to pay.

Her greeting to him, “Hey, you’re getting more coverage than I am,” was met with hoots of laughter from her tablemates.

Ted leaned over Melissa and kissed her on her lips.

“What’ll you have, Mr. Carpenter?” The waiter was at the table. There were already two bottles of their most expensive Champagne chilling in a bucket beside him. I don’t want that damn Champagne, Ted thought as he sat down next to her. I always get a headache from it. “A gin martini,” he said. Only one, he promised himself. But I need it. What in the hell does it look like for me to be here when there may be a break in the search for my son?

He was careful to drape his arm lovingly around Melissa and keep his eyes fixed on her for the benefit of the stringers who were paid to contribute items to the columnists. He knew that tomorrow Melissa would want to read something like “Top recording artist Melissa Knight has bounced back from her well-publicized breakup with rock singer Leif Ericson and is now madly in love with public relations dynamo Ted Carpenter. They were canoodling at Lola’s last night.”

I remember hearing about the time Eddie Fisher, then married to Elizabeth Taylor, sent a telegram from Italy signed “The Princess and her love slave,” Ted thought. That’s the kind of rot I’m supposed to provide for Melissa. She’s kidding herself into thinking that she’s in love with me.

But I need her. I need her nice fat check every month. If only I hadn’t bought the building when our lease was up. It’s been draining me dry. Melissa will move on from me fast enough, he thought, as he gulped rather than sipped the gin martini. The trick is to make sure that when she decides to drop me, she doesn’t go to another PR firm and take her buddies with her.

“The same, Mr. Carpenter?” the waiter asked when he came by.

“Why not?” Ted snapped.

At midnight Melissa decided to leave for the Club. Another four a.m. morning once they get settled there. Ted knew he had to escape. There was only one way he could do it.

“Melissa, I feel lousy,” he said, speaking under the din of the noisy café. “I think I may be getting a bug or flu or something. I can’t expose you to it any longer. You’ve got a full schedule and you can’t afford to get sick.”

Keeping his fingers crossed, he saw the appraising look she gave him. Odd how her genuinely exquisite features could suddenly become distorted and lose all semblance of beauty when she was upset or angry. Her depth-of-the-ocean dark blue eyes narrowed and she twisted her long blond hair into a single curl that she pulled forward over her shoulder.

She’s twenty-six years old and as totally self-centered as any personality I’ve ever dealt with in this business, Ted thought. I wish I could tell her to go to hell.

“You’re not hooking up with your ex, are you?” she demanded.

“My ex-wife is the last woman I want to see right now. You ought to know by now that I’m crazy about you.” Taking a chance, Ted deliberately let a note of irritation creep into his expression and tone of voice. He could afford to do that only occasionally but he knew, when he did, it sent the message to her that it would be insane to imagine he could look at another woman.

Melissa shrugged and turned to the others at the table. “Teddy’s chickening out,” she laughed. “Everyone who’s going with me to the Club, let’s split.”

They all got up.

“You have your car?” Ted asked.

“No. I walked. For God sake, of course I have my car.” She tapped him on the cheek, a playful slap for the benefit of the onlookers.

Ted signaled to the waiter to put the bill on his house account as usual and the group left the café together. Melissa held his hand and stopped to smile for the paparazzi. Ted walked her to her limo, wrapped her in his arms, and kissed her a long, deep kiss. A little more fodder for the gossip mills, he thought. That should keep her happy.

Her former bandmates piled into the limo with her. As his own car was brought up to the curb, a reporter stepped forward, holding something in his hand. “Mr. Carpenter, have you seen the photos the English tourist took that day your son was kidnapped?”

“Yes, I have.”

The reporter held up an enlarged version of them. “Would you care to comment?”

Ted stared at them, then taking them, he moved closer to the brightly lit window as if to get a better look. Then he said, “As I said before, I believe these pictures will turn out to be a cruel hoax.”

“Isn’t that your ex-wife, Zan Moreland, picking up your child from the stroller?” the reporter demanded.

Ted was aware of the cameras surrounding him now. He shook his head. Larry Post was holding open the door of his car. He rushed to get into it.

When he got home, too shocked to feel anything, he undressed and took a sleeping pill. His night filled with tortured dreams, he awoke aching and nauseous, feeling as though the fictitious flu bug had become a reality. Or was it those damn gin martinis? he asked himself.

At nine o’clock the next morning, Ted called his office and spoke to Rita. Cutting off her shocked reaction to the photos, he told her to call Detective Collins, who had been in charge of the investigation the day Matthew disappeared, and make an appointment for him to see Collins tomorrow. “I’m going to stay home at least until mid afternoon,” he told Rita. “I may have a fever, but I’ve got to get in by then. I need to look at the proofs of that photo shoot that Melissa did for Celeb Magazine before I can okay them. Tell anyone in the media who calls that I will have no statement until the police have investigated the authenticity of those pictures.”

At three o’clock, ghastly pale, he finally arrived at the office. Without asking, Rita made a cup of tea for him. “You should have stayed home, Ted,” she said matter-of-factly. “I promise I’m not going to say another word about it, but there is one fact that you should keep in mind. Zan adored Matthew. She would never hurt him.”

“Notice you use the word ‘adored,’” Ted snapped. “That’s past tense in my book. Now where are the Celeb proofs of Melissa?”

“They’re gorgeous,” Rita said reassuringly, as she took them from an envelope she had laid on his desk.

Ted stared at them. “To you they’re gorgeous. To me they’re gorgeous. But I can tell you right now that Melissa is going to hate them. There are shadows under her eyes, and her mouth looks too thin. And don’t forget I was the one who told her she ought to accept posing for that cover story. Good God, can it get any worse?”

Rita looked at her boss of fifteen years with compassion. Ted Carpenter was thirty-eight years old but he looked years younger than his actual age. With his thick hair, brown eyes, firm mouth, and lean frame, she always believed that he was better looking and had a lot more charisma than many of the clients he represented. But right now he looks as if someone attacked him with a machete.

And to think of all the pity I’ve wasted on Zan these two years, Rita thought. If she’d done something to that darling little boy, I honestly think I could shoot her myself!