“Jane Sebring was genuinely upset by all this,” Leigh commented after a moment.
“I’m not surprised. She probably thinks she’s the widow.”
Leigh looked sharply at her. Although Sheila’s chocolate wool suit was without a crease and her blond hair was swept up into a chignon without a hair out of place, there were dark blue smudges beneath her eyes, and her voice was taut with exhaustion and annoyance. “Why did you say that?”
“Because it’s perfectly obvious to me that Jane Sebring wants to be you. She can’t stand being second-best in anything. When she couldn’t make it on Broadway, she went to Hollywood, took off her clothes for the camera, and won an Academy Award. But that wasn’t enough. Now she’s come back to Broadway to claim what she regards as her birthright, and you’re in her way. In her mind, you’ve ‘stolen’ what is rightfully hers. She feels entitled to your, enormous talent, your success in the legitimate theater and everything else you have.”
“Unfortunately, that attitude is not all that unusual in my business, Sheila.”
Sheila crossed her feet at the ankles, and sighed. “I know. She’s just so damned greedy and competitive. I’ll never understand what possessed Jason to put her in his play in the first place. She has a reputation for causing trouble with everyone she’s ever worked with.”
“Money was the reason,” Leigh said wearily. “Jason’s backers wanted her because she’s a fantastic box-office draw.”
“Not like you are.”
“She draws movie fans into the theater, which is something I don’t. She was a bonus—an insurance policy the backers wanted.”
Sheila said nothing after that, and Leigh closed her eyes, trying not to wonder, to think, to place any particular significance on what Sheila had said. But she couldn’t do it. She drew in a long, unsteady breath and kept her eyes closed, but her voice was determined. “Sheila?”
“Yes.”
“Are you trying to tell me something you think I should know—”
“Like what?”
“Was Logan having an affair with Jane Sebring?”
Sheila was instantly apologetic. “I should have realized that we’re both too exhausted to put coherent thoughts together. I wasn’t trying to tell you anything of the kind. In fact, I watched her when she stopped by your party for a few minutes. She was hanging on Logan, but he did everything to cool her down, short of dousing her with the ice in his glass.”
Leigh swallowed and forced words past the knot of emotion in her throat. “Let me put the question a different way: Do you think it’s possible Logan was having an affair with her?”
“Anything is ‘possible.’ It’s possible Logan might have taken up hang-gliding next week or joined the circus. Why are you pursuing this, Leigh?”
Leigh opened her eyes and looked directly at Sheila. “Because the last time you developed a severe personal dislike for a woman that we all knew socially, it turned out Logan was having an affair with her and you knew it.”
Sheila returned her gaze unflinchingly. “That was a meaningless fling, and you understood why it happened. The two of you worked through that together.”
Leigh pushed that painful memory to the back of her mind. Logan’s fling had not been “meaningless” to her. “I’ve tried to convince myself that Logan’s murder was a random act committed by some homeless, local madman who thought Logan was trespassing or something,” Leigh said. “There’s just one thing about that theory that doesn’t work.”
“What’s that?”
“The gun they found in Logan’s car was registered to him. He bought it in March. Why would Logan buy a gun and carry it? Is it possible he was in some sort of trouble?”
Instead of giving her an answer, Sheila studied her intently and asked a question of her own. “What sort of trouble could he have been in?”
Leigh lifted her hands, palms up. “I don’t know. He was involved in dozens of business ventures, but he didn’t seem to be particularly worried about any one of them. Even so, there were times lately when he seemed distinctly worried about something.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“Of course. He said he wasn’t worried. Maybe ‘worried’ was the wrong word for me to use just now. He seemed very preoccupied.”
Sheila smiled knowingly. “Would you call it ‘unusual’ for Logan to be preoccupied about business or money?”
She meant that to be a reassurance, Leigh knew, but in her present, conflicted state of mind, Leigh couldn’t find much solace in anything. “No, of course not. You and I both know there isn’t enough money in the world to make Logan feel absolutely secure.”
“Because of his childhood,” Sheila reminded her.
“I know. But has Logan ever said or done anything that might have made you think—”
“I’m a psychiatrist, not a psychic. Let the police solve this. You and I aren’t equipped to do it.”
“You’re right,” Leigh said, but long after Sheila left, Leigh sat alone in the dark, asking herself questions she couldn’t answer, tortured by the fear that she might never have the answers.
For some reason, Logan had bought and carried a gun.
For some reason, someone had murdered him in cold blood.
Leigh wanted reasons. She wanted answers. She wanted justice!
But most of all—most of all—she wanted the same thing Jane Sebring wanted. She wanted to wake up and discover that this was all a nightmare.
Chapter 35
* * *
McCord slid a videotape of Logan Manning’s funeral service into a VCR on the credenza behind his desk, pressed the fast-forward button, and turned on the monitor. “As we already know, Valente wasn’t there yesterday, but it turns out he sent in an emissary who slipped right past us, unnoticed.” As he spoke he handed out three copies of a composite photograph to Sam, Shrader, and Womack. “This is his cousin, Dominick Angelini,” he said.
The composite contained several photographs of a male in his mid to late thirties, all of them shot from different angles and at different times. In one of the photographs, he was carrying a briefcase and walking up the steps of the federal court building. Sam didn’t recognize him, and she’d not only attended all the funeral activities, she’d also watched the videotape before she went home for the night.
“The photograph of him in front of the federal court building was taken in August, and it’s the latest one,” McCord provided. “A federal grand jury had subpoenaed him to testify about Valente’s accounting and business practices.”
“I don’t remember seeing this guy yesterday,” Womack said. At fifty, Steve Womack was five feet ten with thinning gray hair, a wiry, slender build, and a face that was completely forgettable except for a pair of pale blue, keenly intelligent eyes that looked even more so behind the powerful lenses of his silver-rimmed glasses. Despite his insistence that he was ready to return to work after his recent surgery, Sam noticed that he rubbed his left shoulder frequently, as if it were hurting him. He was unassuming but sharp, and she was inclined to like him.
“I didn’t see him either,” she said.
“He wasn’t there,” Shrader stated emphatically.
“You’re right, he wasn’t,” McCord said as he passed out three sets of pages containing nothing but signatures. “With the Widow Manning’s kind permission,” he explained, “I took the guest book yesterday and made copies of it last night. I thought it would make a handy list of Manning’s friends and associates for us, but if you’ll take a look at page fourteen, I think you’ll spot what will now be an interesting name to you.”
Sam spotted the signature at the same time Shrader did. “Mario Angelini?” he said.