74

Alvirah was reveling in her story as she sat at Billy Collins’s desk, and word for word she described her meeting with Tiffany Shields to him and his fellow detective Jennifer Dean. The shoebox with the sandals Tiffany had given her was on the desk. She had taken one of the sandals out. What she didn’t know was that she had placed it on top of Brittany La Monte’s photo, which Collins had hastily turned over, facedown.

“I don’t blame Tiffany,” she said. “She’s had one hard time of it being lambasted by the media and all the do-gooders. When she thought Zan had kidnapped Matthew, you can understand why she’d feel furious and betrayed. But when I explained to her that Zan had never blamed her, and reminded her that she would be under oath in a trial, she soon changed her tune.”

“Let me get this straight,” Billy said. “Ms. Moreland bought two pairs of identical shoes and had a third pair that was very similar, except for the strap.”

“You’ve got it,” Alvirah said heartily. “We talked about it, and Tiffany remembered a little more. Zan told her that she had ordered them online and by mistake got two pairs in the same color. Then when she realized that the sandals looked so close to a pair she already owned, Tiffany said, Zan just gave her one of the new pairs.”

“Tiffany’s memory seems to move around a bit,” Jennifer Dean suggested. “Why is she so positive that Zan Moreland was wearing the sandals with the thinner strap that day?”

“She remembered because Zan happened to be wearing the same ones that Tiffany was, the pair with the thin strap. She said she had noticed it that day, but she wasn’t in the mood for joking and Zan was nervous and in a hurry.”

Alvirah looked at the two detectives. “I came straight here after I talked to Tiffany. I didn’t happen to have with me those pictures showing Zan wearing one pair of sandals when she supposedly kidnapped Matthew and a different pair when she came back to the park after he was gone. But you do. So go look at them. And tell your experts to study them. And then wonder why any woman about to kidnap her child would bother to go home and change her shoes.”

Billy and Jennifer Dean looked at each other, once again knowing what the other was thinking. If what Alvirah Meehan was telling them was true, the case against Zan Moreland was unraveling. They had both been startled by the resemblance of Brittany La Monte to Zan Moreland, once Wally Johnson pointed it out, and by the fact that La Monte was a makeup artist who had disappeared in exactly the time frame when Matthew Carpenter had been kidnapped, and who had worked for Bartley Longe, the rival Zan Moreland insisted was responsible for Matthew’s disappearance.

In this high-profile case it was necessary to move very carefully. Billy did not want to admit that he was shaken — more shaken than he had ever been in any investigation he had ever worked.

We spoke to Longe, Billy thought. We dismissed him as a suspect. But now? With all this going on? Was the ex-cop Neil Hunt on target when he said he saw someone who looked like Zan Moreland getting into a cab near that church? He even remembered the hack number so we could check cab records for Monday night at that time. That was next on Billy’s list.

Was Tiffany Shields a reliable witness? Probably not. The kid had changed her version of the morning she began to babysit Matthew Carpenter to suit her imagination.

But what if she was right about the shoes?

Alvirah was getting up to go. “Mr. Collins, last night after her terrible experience of being arrested and placed in a holding cell, Zan Moreland, Matthew Carpenter’s mother, begged me to start out with the premise that I believed in her innocence. The minute I decided to do that, I sought out Tiffany and reminded her that she’d be under oath in a trial and she told me what I believe is the truth.”

Alvirah took a deep breath. “I think you’re a decent man who wants to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. Why don’t you do what Zan begged you to do, too? Assume that she is innocent. Really investigate the man she believes to be responsible for Matthew’s disappearance, Bartley Longe, and start digging. You see, even though she’s been arrested, she still got the big job instead of Longe — of decorating some fancy new apartments. If Longe did figure out how to kidnap Matthew, and if Matthew is still alive, this might be enough to make him try to get back at Zan again and with the only weapon he may have. Her son.”

Billy Collins stood up and extended his hand to Alvirah. “Mrs. Meehan, you are quite right. Our job is to protect the innocent. That is all that I am free to tell you right now. I’m very grateful that you encouraged Tiffany Shields to tell you what is perhaps a more accurate account of what happened when she met Ms. Moreland at her apartment the day Matthew disappeared.”

As he watched Alvirah make her way to the exit, his instinct was telling him that she was the one on the right track and that time was running out.

As soon as she was out of sight, he yanked open the drawer and pulled out the photos of Zan Moreland that had been in newspapers all over the world these past few days, the original ones of her at the park after the kidnapping and the ones that just surfaced from the British tourist. He laid them on the desk and reached for a magnifying glass. He studied them and handed the glass to Jennifer.

“Billy, Alvirah’s right. She’s not wearing the same shoes,” Jennifer whispered.

Billy turned over the photo montage of Brittany La Monte and aligned it with the other pictures. “What could a good makeup artist do to change a similarity to a look-alike?” he asked Dean.

It was a rhetorical question.