My Gal Sunday by Mary Higgins Clark Read Free Book Online Page A

course, he said to himself when he reached that point in his recollection, it was Sunday’s observation about the difficulty in trying to prove that some unknown person had walked into Tommy’s house, loaded the pistol, and pulled the trigger.
    That was it! It didn’t have to be an outsider. There was one person who
could
have done that, who knew that Tommy felt both sick and overwhelmingly tired, who knew that Arabella was there, who in fact had let her
in. The housekeeper!
    She was relatively new. Chances are that Tommy hadn’t really had her checked out, probably didn’t know much of anything about her.
    Quickly, Henry phoned Countess Condazzi. Let her still be home, he prayed silently. When her now-familiar voice answered, he wasted no time in getting to the point of his call: “Betsy, did Tommy ever say anything to you about his new housekeeper?”
    She hesitated before answering. “Well, yes, but only jokingly.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Oh, you know how it is,” she responded. “There are so many women in their fifties and sixties who are unattached, but there are so few men. When I spoke to Tommy last — it was the morning of the day that poor girl was killed — I said I had a dozen friends who are widowed or divorced who would be jealous because of his interest in me, and that if he showed up clown here, he would be the center of attention. I remember that he said that except for me, he intended to steer clear of unattached women, and that, in fact, he had just had a most unpleasant experience in this regard.” She paused before continuing. “It seems that only that morning he had told his new housekeeper that he was putting his house on the market and would be moving to Palm Beach. He confided to her that he was finished with Arabella because someone else had become important to him. Later, when he was thinking back over the conversation and her reaction to it, he realized that the housekeeper may have gotten the crazy idea that he had meant
her.
So he made a special point of informing her that, of course, he would not need her services once the house was sold and, naturally, would not be taking her with him to Florida. He recounted that she at first had seemed shocked and then had become cool and distant.” Again the countess paused, then gasped, “Goodness, you don’t think she could have had anything to do with this mess Tommy’s in, do you?”
    “I’m afraid I’m beginning to, Betsy,” Henry replied. “Look, I’ll get back to you. I’ve got to get my man on this right away.” He broke the connection and swiftly dialed Marvin Klein. “Marvin,” he said. “I’ve got a hunch about Secretary Shipman’s housekeeper, Lillian West. Do a complete cheek on her. Immediately.”
    Marvin Klein did not like to break the law as he would be doing by penetrating private computer records, but he knew that when his boss said “Immediately,” the matter had to be urgent.
    It was only a matter of minutes before he had assembled a dossier on fifty-six-year-old Lillian West, including her rather extensive record of traffic violations and, more to the point, her employment history. Marvin frowned as he began to read. West was a college graduate, had an M.A., and had taught home economics at a number of colleges, the last one being Wren College in New Hampshire. Then, six years ago, she had left there and taken a job as a housekeeper.
    Since then she had held four different positions. Her references — citing her punctuality, her high standard of work, and her cooking ability — were good but not enthusiastic. Marvin decided to check on them himself.
    Less than a half hour after Henry’s call, Marvin was on the phone to the former president, who was still winging his way back from Florida. “Sir, the records indicate that Lillian West, while employed in various college-level teaching positions, had a history of troubled relationships with her superiors. Six years ago she left her last teaching