On the Street Where you Live by Mary Higgins Clark Read Free Book Online Page B

trial.”
    They smiled together. Nick is like me inside, Anne thought, but in looks he’s all Walter, even to wrinkling his forehead when he’s concentrating.
    â€œDon’t frown,” she told him as he opened the door.
    â€œI know. It makes wrinkles.”
    â€œAnd don’t worry about the trial. You know you’ll win in court.”
    On the way down in the elevator from the 36th floor, Nick thought, That’s just it, Mom. We will win, on a technicality, and that scum will get off scot-free. Their client was a sleazy lawyer who had invaded the trust accounts of estate heirs, many of them people who desperately needed their inheritance.
    He decided to walk downtown and then take a subway to his co-op in SoHo. But even the crisp night air did not relieve the depression that was increasingly becoming part of his psyche. He passed through Times Square barely aware of its glittering marquees.
    You don’t have to be Lady Macbeth and kill someone to feel as if you have blood on your hands, he thought grimly.

Thursday, March 22

ten ________________
    E VER SINCE THEY BEGAN digging for the pool, he had known they might come across Martha’s remains. He could only hope that the finger bone was still intact within the plastic shroud. But even if it wasn’t, they were bound to find the ring. All the reports said that every inch of the excavation area was being sifted by hand.
    Of course it was too much to expect the medical examiner to realize that Martha and Madeline had died exactly the same way. Martha with the scarf tightened around her neck, Madeline with the starched white linen sash torn from around her waist as she tried to flee.
    He could recite that passage from the diary from memory.
    It is curious to realize that without a single gesture on my part, Madeline knew she had made a mistake in coming into the house. There was a nervous plucking at her skirt with those long, slender fingers, even though her facial expression did not change.
    She watched as I locked the door.
    â€œWhy are you doing that?” she asked.
    She must have seen something in my eyes, because her hand flew to her mouth. I watched the muscles in her neck move as she vainly tried to scream. She was too frightened to do anything but whisper, “Please.”
    She tried to run past me to the window, but I grabbed her sash and pulled it from her, then grasped it in two hands and wrapped it around her neck. At that, with remarkable strength, she tried to punch and kick me. No longer a trembling lamb, she became a tigress fighting for her life.
    Later, I bathed and changed and called on her parents, who by then were deeply concerned as to her whereabouts.
    Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
    There was a front page picture of Martha in all the papers, even the Times. Why not? It was newsworthy when the body of a beautiful young woman was found, especially when she was from a privileged family in an upscale and picturesque community. How much more newsworthy it would be if they announced they had found a finger bone with a ring inside the plastic. If they had found it, he hoped they would realize that he had closed Martha’s hand over it.
    Her hand had been still warm and pliable.
    Sisters in death, one hundred and ten years apart.
    It had been announced that the prosecutor was holding a news conference at eleven. It was five of eleven now.
    He reached over and turned on the television set, then leaned back and chuckled in anticipation.

eleven ________________
    F IFTEEN MINUTES before his scheduled news conference, Elliot Osborne briefed his top aides on what he would and would not tell the press.
    He would report the findings of the autopsy, and that the cause of death was strangulation. He would not, repeat not, tell them a scarf had been the murder weapon or about the metallic beading that had edged it. He would say that the victim’s body had been wrapped in thick layers of plastic that, though separating and