Let Me Whisper in Your Ear Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  The Holiday Season

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  The New Year

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  February Sweeps

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Mary Jane Clark

  Copyright

  For my parents,

  Doris Boland Behrends, who encouraged me to follow my dream of working in television news … and

  Fred “The Fed” Behrends, who, I hope, passed on some of his crime-solving genes.

  Thank you for taking me to Palisades Park.

  Acknowledgments

  THE VERY FIRST story I was ever assigned to do at CBS News was an obituary on Rose Kennedy, assigned more than fifteen years before she actually died. I was so proud to be putting my first “piece” together that I didn’t pay much attention to the friends and family who thought it gruesome that a story about someone’s death was all assembled well before the subject heaved a final breath.

  As the years passed, I updated Mrs. Kennedy’s obit several times and worked on many others as well, playing the odds that old age or severe illness meant that someone would most likely die soon and we had better have a video life story ready to air. But a few times, I had someone’s obit ready when no one really expected the person to die. I had done the stories on hunches … feelings that paid off.

  Out of those experiences comes this book.

  To get from the idea to the book you now hold in your hands required the help of several knowledgeable people whom I would like to thank.

  Accomplished musician Russ DeFilippis grew up down the block from the old Palisades Amusement Park. Russ regaled me with the colorful stories of his childhood and put me in touch with others from “the neighborhood.”

  Sister Anne Donnelly generously shared her knowledge of Parkinson’s disease, providing the details of how the condition manifests itself and what medication is used to treat it. Sister Anne, happily, was also my sixth-grade teacher and self-esteem builder. But let’s blame any errors in sentence structure on her.

  Katharine and Joe Hayden helped me when it came time to figure out the legal repercussions of the actions of one of my characters. It’s not the first time Katharine and Joe have come to my rescue and, I suspect, it won’t be the last.

  Sgt. Ed Welch, newly retired New York City Police officer, helped with precinct information and descriptions of the crime scenes. With twenty-five years of NYPD experience under his belt, Ed can paint a vivid picture. I’d love to read his book, should he decide to write it.

  Vince Gargiolo’s book, Palisades Park: A Century of Fond Memories, along with the clippings file at the Cliffside Park Public Library, provided valuable research information on my favorite amusement park.

  A new, and I hope continuing, source of inspiration came from Elizabeth Clark, my fifteen-year-old daughter. I was stumped over something and, over lunch one day, asked Elizabeth what she thought. She came up with a terrific solution to the problem I was having. Thank you, Monkey.

  Gratitude to Jennifer Weis, my editor at St. Martin’s Press, for the attention she gave this book. Jennifer has a keen sense of what makes a story work and her input helped make this one better. Copyeditor Dave Cole did his job carefully and well, finding, though I hate to admit it, a mistake or two along the way. Thank you so much, Dave. Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, John Murphy, Matthew Baldacci, and Walter Halee are pulling for me as well. I’m
aware of it and greatly appreciate it.

  Once again, Laura Dail, my wonderful agent and valued friend, has encouraged me and done her job well. I wish for every writer an agent as devoted, smart, and hardworking as Laura. The bonus for me is that she has a great sense of fun as well. Francheska Farinacci, Laura’s able and dear assistant, generously lent her distinctively spelled name for a character.

  Finally, I would like to thank Father Paul Holmes. A constant source of encouragement, Paul has been there since the beginning of my dream. Over the years, when things looked pretty bleak, Paul’s reassuring voice of reason pulled me up. His editorial skills are extraordinary and I am the extremely fortunate beneficiary of them. Grazie, Paolo.

  Prologue

  ♪Palisades Amusement Park …

  Swings all day and after dark …♪

  THE TWO YOUNGSTERS sneaked through the hole in the fence as so many others had done before them. That their parents didn’t know where they were only increased their guilty pleasure.

  Twelve years old and sneaking into Palisades at night. How cool! They had done it often enough during the day, when the amusement park was open for business. Just behind the Free Act Stage, there was a hole in the fence that circled the park. Lots of local kids knew about the opening and slipped through it so as to avoid paying the admission fee. Little did they know that the park’s good-hearted owner was well aware of the hole but had instructed security guards to turn a blind eye to the young trespassers. He didn’t want any child turned away from Palisades Park. And, after all, once inside, the interlopers would have to spend their money just like anyone else.

  Sneaking in during the day was one thing. Sneaking in at night, after the park was closed, was another. But with school starting in a few days and the park closing for the winter, they could not wait any longer. If they were going to collect their payment from Emmett, this was the night to do it.

  With only the light of the early-September moon to guide them, the children hurried down the darkened midway, eager to collect their reward. Past the boarded-up Balloon Game and Cat Game, past the closed birch beer and roast beef stands. Past the bingo parlor, where just hours before, men and women in their short-sleeved cotton shirts and summer frocks sat eagerly sliding red plastic discs across cardboard game sheets.

  And then, there it was. The granddaddy of them all, the Cyclone. The world’s largest, fastest, scariest roller coaster loomed before them, darkly sinister against the moonlit sky: their payoff for a season of running errands for Emmett.

  The tip of a burning cigarette glowed in the dark, signaling that Emmett was waiting for them. As they drew closer, they saw that Emmett was not alone. That curvy brunette in her tight Wrangler shorts who had been hanging around him all summer was wrapped around him again tonight.

  “Hey, squirts. You all set?”

  They looked at one another and nodded apprehensively. What had seemed like such a great idea during the day, now, at night, took on a different cast. Their enthusiasm turned to excited fright. What would it feel like to ride the Cyclone, in the dark, all by themselves? Would they really be able to carry out their plan and follow through on the dare they had made to each other?

  Neither one wanted to be the first to chicken out, so they climbed into the first white wooden car of the roller coaster. They took their seats side by side, and their hands gripped the metal guard bar. Their hearts pounded against their chest walls as the car slowly pulled out from its starting place; the metallic clanking of the pulling chain echoed eerily in the late-summer night.

  Excruciatingly slowly, they made their ascent, high above the Palisades. The New York City skyline glimmered beneath them as they crept inexorably to the Cyclone’s summit.

  What exactly happened after that would take decades to discover. But when the ride came to an end, the car pulled into the station carrying only one child.

  The Holiday Season

  1

  Tuesday, December 21

  “WHEN I THINK of you, I think of death.”

  Laura Walsh, carefully balancing a stack of videotapes in her arms, turned to her boss and grinned.

  “Gee, thanks, Mike. I really appreciate that.”

  She’d done it again. Sometimes it bothered her how much satisfaction she took from it. Professional satisfaction. She’d been prepared and had done her work well.

  A human death. Usually, a sad event, leaving complicated repercussions for those left behind. But for Laura Walsh, death was a rush, at least in certain circumstances.

  Today, it was an old movie star, long rumored to be failing. Laura had been ready to roll. Within minutes of the death announcement made by the actress’s press agent, a two-minute video package recapping the screen legend’s life was running on the KEY Television Network for millions of viewers to see.

  If they thought of it at all, the TV audience probably marveled at how quickly the television newspeople got everything assembled and on the air. So much research must go into deciding what to include and what to leave out when boiling a lifetime down to two minutes. Let alone coming up with a script. Didn’t that take some time to write? Just getting the old movie clips had to be a project. How did they do it all at almost a moment’s notice?

  The fact was, they didn’t. Laura Walsh had written and produced the movie star’s obituary months before she actually died.

  “Ghoulish,” “creepy,” “gross,” “morbid” were just some of the comments Laura got from people when she told them what she did for a living. But Laura loved her job. When working on her selected project—or “victim,” as Mike Schultz called it—Laura did not think of herself as the “Angel of Death” her co-workers teasingly dubbed her. Rather, she saw herself in a position of responsibility. She wanted to do her subject justice, knowing that the images she chose would be seen across the United States and, eventually—through the various and complicated syndication deals that KEY News had with foreign broadcasters—her work would be seen around the world.

  The obits were wrap-ups of a noteworthy person’s life and career. A mini-biography. She knew others at KEY News might think her corny, but Laura felt honored to produce the videotaped obituaries.

  She also knew that she was quite young to be in a position of such responsibility. At twenty-eight, she’d only graduated from college six years ago. Thanks to a lucky internship break, Laura had worked the summer before graduation as a clerical assistant in the offices of Hourglass, the network’s top-rated news magazine show. To Laura’s continuing good fortune, the always glamorous and sometimes acerbic Gwyneth Gilpatric, the broadcast’s star correspondent, took Laura under her very impressive wing.

  “Don’t let any of these head cases around here scare you,” Gwyneth had reassured Laura. “Most of these people are really pretty decent. It’s the ego and the pressure that make them seem so driven. Just realize that if they scream, or yell, or act like you don’t exist, it’s because they’re so involved in what they’re doing and because they’re terrified that they aren’t going to make deadline or might make a mistake. It’s no fun getting it wrong when millions of people are watching.”

  Laura tried to remember Gwyneth’s advice whenever one of the Hourglass producers or editors snapped at her that summer. They worried constantly about keeping their jobs. Joel Malcolm, the executive producer of Hourglass, had let it be known in no uncertain terms that he intended to knock 60 Minutes off its first-place perch over at CBS. Anyone who did not do his or her part to further that goal had no place on the Hourglass staff.

  That had been the general feeling throughout Laura’s six years at KEY News as she worked her way up from her extremely low-paying first job after graduation as a desk assistant, then broadcast assistant, followed by assistant producer and, now, associate producer. They were taking names at KEY News. If you fouled up, you were out. There was no place for excuses or second-bests.

  So far, Laura had been more than okay, a golden girl. Her bosses liked her, gradually giving her more and m
ore responsibilities as they grew to trust the judgment and skills they thought remarkable in someone so young. They did not know that she often came to work in the morning with a knot in her stomach, worried about what the day would bring. Or that there were nights she’d wake up at three o’clock, anxiously tossing and turning until dawn, insecure thoughts about how she might mess up running through her head. They did not know about the “feelings” she sometimes got, but everybody seemed happy about the results of those feelings … unquestioning when Laura had her obits ready even when her subject was not expected to die.

  2

  “I’M TELLING YOU, Gwyneth, it will be a fantastic segment—‘Death at the Amusement Park,’” Joel Malcolm raved, pacing his spacious office. “Your pet Laura Walsh came up with the idea. She’s trying to get a job on the broadcast, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know,” said Gwyneth icily.

  Joel pressed on. “And if we don’t do it soon, it will be too late. All the old-timers will be dead and there will be no one left to interview who was around at the time.” Joel lit a cigarette, ignoring the KEY News no-smoking dictum.

  Gwyneth Gilpatric, dressed in a cornflower-colored cashmere blazer designed to make her keen blue eyes bluer still, sat stone-faced on the sofa. She stared out the picture window, one of the few at KEY News, and studied the snow-covered banks of the New Jersey cliffs on the other side of the Hudson River.

  “Palisades Amusement Park isn’t there anymore, Joel.” Gwyneth sighed, her hand going gracefully to her throat, stroking her neck absentmindedly. “They tore it down to build a high-rise condominium complex, remember?”

  Undaunted by the lack of enthusiasm from his star, Malcolm pressed on persistently.

  “Yeah, but we have great old newsreel stuff. We can paint a picture of the legendary old Palisades Park with its simple Funhouse, Tunnel of Love, and the ancient wooden roller coaster, and tie it in with the death of a boy—a death that’s taken thirty years to come to the surface.”

  Gwyneth carefully picked an expensively tinted ash-blond hair off her jacket shoulder.

  Joel continued his pitch. “People were thrilled with simple things then,” he reminisced. “Hell, I can remember as a kid, my parents would take me to Palisades every summer. I looked forward to it all year.”

  “Slumming, Joel?” Gwyneth knew that Malcolm lived in the Fifth Avenue duplex he had grown up in and inherited from his parents. The last time he had the apartment appraised, it was valued at twelve million dollars.