The First Wife Read online

  THE

  First Wife

  ALSO BY

  Diana Diamond

  The Daughter-in-Law

  The Good Sister

  The Babysitter

  The Trophy Wife

  THE

  First Wife

  DIANA DIAMOND

  St. Martin’s Press Press New York

  THE FIRST WIFE. Copyright © 2004 by Diana Diamond. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Diamond, Diana.

  The first wife / Diana Diamond.— 1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-32147-3

  EAN 978-0312-32147-5

  1. Murder victims’ families—Fiction. 2. Remarried people—Fiction. 3. Divorced

  women—Fiction. 4. Rich people—Fiction. 5. Widowers—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3554.I233F57 2004

  813′.6—dc22

  2004040553

  First Edition: June 2004

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Thanks for the wonderful

  folks at Rosedale

  PROLOGUE

  Eight Years Ago

  The snow had been falling on and off all night, dusting the tops of trees and coating the roads that snaked through the mountains. With the moon and stars hidden, there was no light. The only sounds were an occasional stir of wind and the soft thump of snow dropping from a branch.

  There was no sunrise, just a gradual glow in the eastern sky that made it possible to see the edges of the tall Adirondack peaks and gave the snow a bluish cast. What breeze there had been faded and vanished. Everything was perfectly still, a winter landscape frozen in time by an artist’s brush.

  Suddenly, a gunshot. It came as a roar rather than a crisp crack. A shotgun rather than a rifle. As the first sound faded, new blasts came back from the mountains, echoes bouncing off a dozen different mountain faces until they were soaked up by the trees. Then, as quickly as it had been shattered, the silence returned.

  High up in one of the craggy peaks lights flashed on to reveal a house, a soft structure of wood and stone designed to blend into the mountains. Then came a scream. A woman shrieked hysterically.

  Before long, the pastoral scene came to life. At the base of the mountain, other lights came on. One showed the outline of a rustic inn. Others, some distance away, brought out the silhouette of a small town. A car moved carefully up the mountain slope, invisible except for the headlight beams that traced a road and poked out over bottomless ravines. When it came closer to the house, its engine noise began to vibrate through the silence.

  Sometime later the snow stopped and the sun appeared through the overcast as a blotch of light. Then another car started up the mountain. Its headlights were on even though they were probably unnecessary. The blinking red and blue lights on the roof weren’t needed, because there were no other cars to warn. But they served to announce an emergency somewhere up ahead.

  Sergeant Pete Davis was the only one responding because he was the only law-enforcement officer in the area. The town of Mountain Ridge in the Adirondack Park didn’t have much crime other than hunting out of season or fishing without a license. Occasionally a fistfight would break out in one of the area taverns, but all that demanded was that he push the drunken brawlers apart and sit between them for a few minutes. Nothing that he would call a crime.

  This was different. The caller had told him that a woman had been killed, blown apart by a shotgun in the hands of an intruder. Her husband had been wounded. Killed! That meant murder, and as far as Pete Davis could recall, no one had ever been murdered around Mountain Ridge. And an intruder? Pete knew almost everyone who lived within fifty miles, most on a first-name basis. All of them felt free to walk on other people’s property, but there was no one who would break into a home, much less shoot anyone. He didn’t know the people who owned the big chalets on the moun-taintops. But they were all big wheels from Boston, Albany, and New York, not the kind of people you would catch breaking and entering. He had called a nearby doctor, who shared his own amazement at the report. “Murdered? You sure it isn’t some sort of hunting accident?” But he would get up there as quickly as he could to take a look at the wounded victim. He had treated gunshot wounds before. Hunters were usually more apt to shoot themselves than the deer they were tracking.

  The police officer turned into the driveway, noted the tire tracks even though they were nearly buried, and saw the German sedan parked close to the front door. When Sergeant Davis climbed out of the Jeep, a man who seemed perfectly composed opened the front door and stepped out to meet him. They exchanged nods of greeting. Then Pete stepped inside the house and turned into the living room. He stopped abruptly, gagged on the taste of the coffee he had downed before leaving, and turned his head away from the scene. But he had to look back. He was a policeman, and this certainly seemed to be a murder.

  At the end of the room, behind the open steps that led to the second floor, the wall was spattered with blood—hundreds of tiny droplets, as if there had been some sort of religious sprinkling. The middle steps were splintered, one even cut in half. At the foot of the stairs was a woman in jeans and a blouse, her arms and legs splayed, her bare feet pointing upward. There was a puddle of blood big enough for her to have drowned in. But what made the policeman sick was that her neck ended in shreds of skin and bone. There was no face, no hair, no head at all. It was her head that was splashed on the steps and on the wall in tiny gobbets of blood and gore.

  More blinking lights came, now accompanied by sirens that wailed through the valleys. They were followed by helicopters: two with television news logos circled over the house, pointing cameras into the windows; three in state police colors landed officers and then flew out to search the countryside. Uniformed troopers rushed in and out the front and back doors. First the house and then the surrounding grounds were marked off with yellow tape. A cordon was formed to block all unauthorized entrance.

  An ambulance was waved through, and after a few minutes a man was brought out on a gurney. The ambulance pulled away with its siren screaming and lights flashing. Later, a panel truck made its way up the mountain to claim a body bag. It was in no hurry when it left.

  At the base of the mountain, outside an inn, men and women wearing press passes were demanding access to the site. If television stations could fly over the crime scene, then all journalists had to be given access, they argued. They howled when the troopers blocking the base of the road ignored them. All they could do was swarm like bees around each official vehicle that came down the mountain. But even then their shouted questions weren’t answered.

  One reporter jumped up onto the running board of the ambulance and looked through the window. “It’s him—Andrews,” he shouted back to the others.

  “What about Kay Parker?” someone demanded.

  Then the panel truck reached the inn. Reporters knocked on the windows, and the driver nodded his response to the question they were all shouting. “It’s her!” one of them screamed, and they all rushed back to the inn to file their stories.

  Socialite Kay Parker, the darling of New York charities and art foundations, had been brutally murdered. Her husband, communications czar William Andrews, was wounded. Police were searching for an intruder who had broken into their posh mountain getaway.

  For days thereafter, the mountain wasn’t allowed a moment of peace.

  PART ONE
r />   The Romance

  1

  She could hear the gate alarm sounding, but she thought she could make it across. The ringing and the flashing came first, warning that a train was coming. Then it usually took several seconds before the striped wooden bar swung down. But this time it dropped instantly, the moment she bumped her SUV onto the tracks. Damn! She shifted into reverse just in time to see the other gate drop down behind her. She was trapped on the tracks with a freight train charging toward her.

  The clanging bells seemed to get louder, more incessant in their warning. And then there was the light, shining on her from the distance and getting brighter by the second, so bright that she couldn’t see the locomotive behind it. She grabbed the handle and threw the door open. Then with all her strength she hurled herself out of the car, tumbled through the air, and landed with a crash. The night table rocked, and the glass of water that she kept by her bedside poured down on her face.

  “Damn!” Jane Warren was lying on the floor, looking up at the overturned water tumbler. Her alarm clock was clanging furiously. Bright sunlight was streaking through the blinds, hot on the bed she had just hurled herself from. She sat up abruptly and stared at the clock until she understood that it had been ringing for half an hour. “Damn!” she repeated. Her day had just started and she was already running late.

  Coffee! She padded into the kitchen and took a mug down from the shelf. Then she saw another disaster. The pot wasn’t squared under the spout of her coffeemaker. Soggy grounds had oozed over the edge and down into the space between the counter and the refrigerator. The coffee that might save her life was spilled down the front of her kitchen drawers and onto the floor. For a few seconds she thought that she was going to cry.

  Jane threw bath towels at the puddle of coffee and across the wet carpet in her bedroom, then processed herself through the shower and into her underwear, jeans, and a sweater. She was in her car, turning out of the garage, just fifteen minutes after she had escaped certain death under the wheels of a freight train.

  She pulled down the visor, with its vanity mirror, and set to work with her cosmetics. Lipstick went just on her upper lip and was transferred to the lower lip by a grimace, a smile, and then a pout. Blush went on with a dab to each cheek and was blended in with the heel of her hand. She rubbed a finger into the eye shadow, wiped the excess on the bottom of the driver’s seat, and then spread it over her eyes, closing them one at a time so that she could see what she was doing and get an occasional glimpse of the road. Then, using her right hand to steer, she aimed a razor-sharp eyebrow pencil into her face with her unsteady left hand. She had one eye finished when she turned onto the parkway, a narrow, twisting two-lane road that had been built in the 1930s. The other eye would have to wait until she reached her office.

  But even with one brow off color, so she seemed to be perpetually winking, Jane had achieved a minor miracle. Her fair skin, usually a bland alabaster, had subtle highlights across the cheekbones. A mysterious blue tint over her eyes complemented their deep tone and changed their shape from round to almond. Her lips, usually noticed only when she showed her generous smile, were now dark and suggestive. Her deep brunette hair, worn in a cascade of curls, seemed stylishly casual. In less than half an hour she had gone from plain to foxy, and from downtrodden to down-to-business. She liked what she saw in the mirror even if it was only a disguise for the wet towels and unmade bed that she had left behind.

  She tapped the steering wheel impatiently in the stop-and-go traffic while the dashboard clock kept reminding her that she was late. Not that there was a fixed starting time. In the newspaper business the flow of news events set your schedule more than arbitrary work hours. Entertainment editors filed their stories after midnight and slept in. Sports editors worked hardest on the weekends. At her financial desk, the afternoons when the markets were posting their closing prices were generally much busier than the mornings. But still, she had her local business column to write under her J. J. Warren byline. That meant calling brokers, bankers, and business executives, who were generally much harder to reach after lunch. She hated to waste the morning in gridlock. Her day was off to a terrible start.

  Suddenly it got worse. When she pulled into the garage beneath her office building, her recently divorced husband was standing in her parking space. Arthur Keene slouched against the wall in a wrinkled black suit coat and baggy trousers, pretending not to notice the Honda CRV that turned into the space and rolled toward him. He didn’t even look up until the car had lurched to a stop, with its front bumper touching his knee. Only then did he make eye contact with the woman behind the wheel and favor her with his confident smile.

  “Art, I’m late for a meeting,” Jane lied as she stepped down from the car. “I haven’t got a minute….” She beeped the car locks and started for the elevator.

  “I’ll ride up with you,” he offered, falling in next to her.

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “Then talk to me here. I need you to find a couple of my disks.”

  Jane stopped just short of pushing the elevator button. “You took all your disks.”

  “No, I’m missing two of them. One has my notes for the Martha’s Vineyard play. The other is my latest draft of Hudson Falls.”

  “You took all your disks the day after you moved out. Remember, you came over in the morning and spent the whole day collecting your stuff from the computer.”

  “Jane, I know what I had then and what I don’t have now. There are two of my disks in with all your crap.”

  She pushed the button. “I’ll look. I’ll call you if I find something.”

  “You don’t know what you’re looking for. Let me look.”

  “No! You’re out of the apartment. Read the agreement.”

  “You don’t even have to be there. All I want to do is let myself in and look for my disks.”

  The elevator door opened and Jane stepped inside.

  “No! I don’t want you going through my things.”

  “Jane,” he pleaded. “They’re major works. I have to find them.”

  The door closed across Art’s anguished expression.

  Major works, she thought, shaking her head in despair. Art had never completed a single play, much less had one produced. They had wasted their six-year marriage waiting by the telephone for his genius to be appreciated. Her career as a journalist had been dismissed as a “temporary accommodation with middle-class values,” while his was a “statement on behalf of humanity.” The problem had been that her “accommodation” had to pay the bills that his “statement” ran up.

  Art had been a dreamer even when she met him. But at that time, fresh out of college, dreams were easily mistaken for ambition. Art was at the head of the class, cocksure that he was destined to have an impact on the world of letters, certain that he would hit social mores like a meteor striking the earth. It had taken her three years to realize that he was waiting for an adoring audience to assemble, and another three years to decide that his work was, at best, mediocre. Art was sure that he was important. Over time, Jane realized that he really wasn’t.

  And yet the divorce had been his idea. He had sensed that Jane was impatient, tired of putting her life on hold in deference to his fantastic potential. Then she had suggested that he consider a job in the Arts section of her paper. Not permanently, of course. Just something to ease the financial pressure while keeping him in his chosen world of theater. He had found the suggestion insulting, proof that Jane had no idea of the stretch of his ambition. “What do you want?” he had demanded while smashing dinner dishes against the edge of the sink. “Am I supposed to give up everything? Join you in headline hunting and rumormongering?” He had demanded his freedom and rushed through the proceedings as if every second spent with her sucked the creative juices from his flesh. It was only when the court granted his wish that he realized Jane would no longer be obligated to fetch his supper and pay his bills.

  For her part, she had been c
rushed by his demand for a divorce. It seemed an announcement of her failure at the first serious enterprise she had undertaken. If she couldn’t make a simple thing like marriage work, how could she hope to survive in the more complex affairs of modern life? But in the sea of legal filings and court deliberations, Jane had seen her boat plow ahead while his foundered and sank. Two decisive promotions had carried her up to a senior editor’s position and given her an honest endorsement of her worth. Art had tried to capture his emotions from their split in a new play and had sunk deeper into obscurity, if that was possible for an unproduced playwright. Minutes before the divorce was granted, he had cornered her outside the courtroom and allowed that he was considering the wisdom of giving her one more chance. Jane had answered with her middle finger.

  The elevator door opened into the reception foyer of the South-port Post, a middling member of a suburban newspaper chain that covered the bedroom communities of southern Connecticut. The lobby was impressive with fabric-covered walls decorated with comments by Pulitzer and Mencken, set in three-dimensional pewter letters. The receptionist was a young woman imported from England, with a public school accent that suggested a higher standard of learning. Even New Englanders felt humbled after cooling their heels in the waiting room.

  “Good morning, Grace. Please tell me that there is still some coffee….”

  “Perhaps a tad,” Grace answered. “Shall I bring it to your office, or will you send somebody?”

  “If you could just pour it for me, I’ll carry it myself.”

  Grace responded with an expression of curiosity, her head tipping to get a more focused look at Jane’s face. “Just black, right?”