When Hank got the skinny on the plates, he’d felt a familiar rush of adrenaline—that feeling he experienced whenever he was in the hunt. The BMW’s registration came back to Margaret Till of Clifton, New Jersey. Maybe the guy’s new mark. Maybe Hank could warn her before she fell too deep.
When he finally gave up on the apartment yesterday, he’d buzzed by the woman’s address in Clifton instead, eager to learn Margaret Till’s connection to the man in Newark. He’d spotted her in the front yard, tending to begonias off the brick walkway with a tiny shovel and lime green canvas gloves, accepting a peck on the top of her head from the man of the house, still pulling on his suit jacket, late for work. A freckled girl with two missing teeth played jacks on the sidewalk. And beyond the girl was a gray BMW sedan, parked in the driveway next to the Lexus coupe that the happy husband was crawling into.
With one look at the car, Hank knew Margaret Till was not the man’s latest mark. It wouldn’t have been the first time a Mrs. Wholesome June Cleaver type stepped out on her family, but the problem was the BMW’s license plate: he recognized it, but it wasn’t the one that belonged on Margaret Till’s BMW. Last time he’d seen that combination of numbers and letters was two months ago, on the bumper of that scumbag’s blue Honda.
When Hank returned to the man’s apartment complex today, his BMW was still parked in the lot, adorned with Till’s stolen license plates. The switched plates probably meant the car was hot. Hank was tempted to drop the dime on the guy with an anonymous call to the locals, but car theft was chump change. Hank wasn’t about to risk exposure of his unauthorized stakeout missions for some chippy Class C felony that would get bumped down to probation on the county criminal docket.
Now he’d wasted twenty minutes parked on the street in a white Crown Vic in full view. This wasn’t exactly the hood, but someone might still make a federal agent on the lookout. He was about to call it a day, maybe even for good this time, when he noticed the redhead again. Big shades. Blue coat. Looking great. Making her way up the steps with that same confident stroll she’d owned on the sidewalk. Right to his guy’s apartment door.
He ducked even lower in his seat.
Knock, knock, knock. The door opened. A quick kiss on the lips, and then the redhead walked inside.
Figuring a woman like that would hold a man’s attention for the near future, he stepped from his car, walked through the apartment complex parking lot to the BMW, and searched for the vehicle identification number through the front window. A folded copy of New York magazine blocked his view of the dash.
He thought about trying the door, but knew in his gut it would be locked. It was all about the risk-reward ratio. Low odds of reward. Medium to high risk of setting off a car alarm. Basic math told him to let it go for now.
He made his way back to the Crown Vic. Felt his pulse beat quicker than expected as he imagined a nosy neighbor calling 911 about the stranger near the BMW. Kept the key in the ignition just in case he needed to roll.
Nothing happened for the next forty minutes.
Nice car. Pretty girl. He’d spent so much time thinking about this man over the last seven months that he fancied himself something of an expert about his fundamental nature. And his expertise was telling him that his time watching Travis Larson had not been wasted. There was something here after all.
CHAPTER TEN
Alice remembered a time when the sultry baritone of her mother’s determined voice could cut through a crowded room like a diamond through glass. She didn’t know whether a woman’s voice simply faded with age, or if changes in a woman’s life somehow worked their way into vocal cords, but now she found herself leaning in to hear her mom over the din of the busy restaurant.
“You should have seen our girl, Frank. She was just wonderful. The way she talked about the artwork, she had those people in the palm of her hand.”
Alice had no problem making out her father’s booming words from across the table. “Alice has always been good at anything she tries her hand at. I’ve told her that from the time she was born.”
“Still, you should have been there to see it firsthand.”
Alice caught her mother’s eye and gave her a quick shake of the head, but it was too late.
“Obviously I would have liked to have been there, Rose, but our baby girl’s all grown up. She doesn’t need her father looking over her shoulder all the time. Wouldn’t want to make it all about the old man now, would we?”
Tonight had been the official opening of the new Highline Gallery, and Alice was celebrating at Gramercy Tavern with Jeff and her parents. To anyone overhearing the conversation at their table, they would have sounded like any normal family, two proud parents fawning over their daughter, the mother taking a shot at the father’s absence from the main event.
“Of course you could have gone, Papa.”
Frank Humphrey had never wanted to be called Daddy or Dad. In fact, Alice suspected he had never even wanted children or a marriage. His habit of casting, and then bedding, his leading ladies probably could have kept him content for life. But he’d managed to knock up the acclaimed up-and-comer Rose Sampson during the production of their second film together, In the Heavens.
These days, unwed pregnancies were a Hollywood norm, but in 1969, even the film crowd still followed the traditions of the old nursery rhyme—maybe not about first-comes-love necessarily, but certainly about marriage coming before the baby carriage. When Frank Humphrey and Rose Sampson wed, Life magazine pronounced America’s most sought-after young director and the actress he’d twice directed to best actress nominations “The King and Queen of New Hollywood.” Five and a half months later, Alice’s older brother, Ben, was born.
Where was Ben? Alice now wondered. He’d been a no-show at the gallery, texting her that he’d meet them at the restaurant. Fifteen minutes into cocktails, his seat at the table remained empty. She tried to write off the pit in her stomach as a byproduct of his past.
“We’re so proud of you, dear.” Her mother patted her gently on the shoulder as she spoke, but with her gaze still directed at her husband. The silence that followed was awkward.
Luckily, Jeff was there to fill it.
“Great turnout tonight. Did you sell much?”
“Not everything’s about money, Jeff.”
Had she been seated next to her father, she would have nudged him under the table. Poor Jeff. She was certain he would have preferred to be anywhere other than the “celebratory family dinner” her mother had been determined to organize, but he had insisted on accompanying her after Lily had come down with a stomach flu.
Alice had been careful to engineer the seating arrangements at the round table: her father next to her mother, then her, then Jeff, and then Ben was to be the buffer between Jeff and her father. But thanks to that empty fifth seat, her dad had a clear shot at Jeff. And, as always, he’d taken it. And, as usual, Jeff deflected the bullet.
“Of course not, Mr. Humphrey.”
Alice jumped in before the discussion could escalate. “It’s actually a good thing my friends turned out, or the place wouldn’t have looked so full. We had pretty good publicity leading up to the opening—mentions in Time Out and New York magazine—but about half of the crowd were people I know.”
“Gee, I wonder how all your friends heard about it,” Jeff said with a smile.
She filled her parents in on the joke. “I sort of buried every person I’ve ever met with Evites, Facebook alerts, and every other form of spam so they’d at least show their faces.”
“That’s what it’s all about,” her mom said. “You’ve got to create that opening buzz. It’s