The Lost Years by Mary Higgins Clark Read Free Book Online

thought.
    She made a decision not to nibble on anything. She’d skipped the breakfast snack on the plane, but she figured that when Lloyd got back they could have an early lunch. He’d be hungry too. Without looking, she knew the refrigerator had been stocked by their trusted housekeeper of twenty-five years. Again pushing back the urge to treat herself to something like a cracker and cheese, she retraced her steps to the foyer, picked up the carry-on bag that contained the jewelry she had traveled with, and went upstairs to the master bedroom.
    She laid the bag on the bed, opened it, and removed the leather pouches containing the jewelry. At least this time I listened to Lloyd and didn’t bring as much as usual, she thought. But I sure wish I’d had the emeralds with me for the captain’s dinner on the ship.
    Oh well.
    She removed the rings and bracelets and earrings and necklaces from the pouches, spread them on the coverlet of the bed, and looked over them carefully, checking once again to be sure that everything she had taken with her had come back in the carry-on bag.
    Then she transferred them to the tray on her vanity table, carried it into her dressing room, and opened the door of the closet. The steel safe, dark and formidable, was there. She tapped in the combination to unlock it and tugged at the door.
    There were ten rows of drawers with various-shaped velvet-lined compartments. Lisa pulled out the top one, gasped, then frantically yanked out drawer after drawer. Instead of her beautiful and valuable jewelry sparkling up at her, she was staring at a sea of black velvet.
    The safe was empty.

11
     

     
    A lvirah decided she would wait until the next morning to phone Mariah. “Willy, you know how it is after a funeral. There’s such a letdown. I’ll bet anything that when Mariah got home, all she wanted to do was be quiet. And God only knows what’s running through poor Kathleen’s mind.”
    Six of Willy’s sisters had entered the convent. The seventh, the oldest and the only one who had married, had died fifteen years earlier. Willy still remembered how glad he had been to get back home to their apartment in Jackson Heights after the funeral in Nebraska and the long flight home. Alvirah had fixed him a sandwich and a cold beer and let him sit and think about Madeline, who had been his favorite sister. Madeline had been quiet and unassuming, so unlike the wonderful but bossy Sister Cordelia, his next-oldest sibling.
    “When was the last time we were out to Jonathan’s house in Mahwah for dinner?” he asked Alvirah. “Am I right that it was about two months ago, in late June?”
    Alvirah had finished unpacking and sorting clothes for the laundry and cleaners. Now happily comfortable in her favorite stretch slacks and a cotton T-shirt, she settled into a chair opposite Willy in their Central Park South apartment.
    “Yes,” she agreed. “Jonathan invited us over, and Mariah and Richard and Greg were there. And so were those other two who alwaysgo on the trips. You know who. What were their names?” Alvirah frowned in concentration as she went through the tricks for memory retention that she had learned at the Dale Carnegie course she had taken after they won the money in the lottery. “One of them is a direction. North… no. South, no. West. That’s it. Albert West. He’s a little guy with a deep voice. The other one was Michaelson. He’s easy to remember. Michael is one of my favorite names. Just add the ‘-son’ and you have it.”
    “His first name is Charles,” Willy volunteered. “And you can bet nobody ever called that guy ‘Charlie.’ Do you remember how he cut down West when West misidentified one of the ruins they had on the pictures they showed us?”
    Alvirah nodded. “But I remember Kathleen was pretty good that night. She seemed to enjoy seeing the pictures, and she didn’t say a word about Lily.”
    “I suppose Lily was on that trip too, even though they didn’t show