The Second Time Around by Mary Higgins Clark

me.”
    â€œI saw him at the stockholders’ meeting. I was practically shoulder to shoulder with him when he had that outburst.”
    â€œWhich lasted how long?” Don raised one eyebrow, a trick I’ve always envied.
    â€œFor about two minutes, if that,” I admitted. “But whether or not he set that fire, he’s certainly an example of what’s happening to the real victims as Gen-stone goes bankrupt.”
    â€œTalk to some of them. See what you come up with,” Ken agreed. “Okay, let’s all get busy.”
    I went back to my cubicle and went through the file Ihad on Spencer. After the crash, quotes had been given to newspapers by people close to him at Gen-stone. The one from Vivian Powers, his secretary of six years, had praised him to the skies. I put in a call to her at the Pleasantville office and kept my fingers crossed that she was at work.
    She took my call. She sounded young, but told me firmly that she would not be able to agree to an interview either by phone or in person. I jumped in before she could hang up. “I’m part of a team at Wall Street Weekly writing a cover story on Nicholas Spencer,” I said. “I’ll be honest. I’d like to put in something positive about him, but people are so angry about losing their money that it’s going to be a very negative portrait. At the time of his death you spoke very kindly of him. I guess you’ve changed your mind, too.”
    â€œI will never believe Nicholas Spencer took a dime for himself,” she said heatedly. Then her voice broke. “He was a wonderful person,” she finished, almost in a whisper, “and that is my quote.”
    I had the sense that Vivian Powers was afraid of being overheard. “Tomorrow is Saturday,” I said hastily. “I could come to your home or meet you anywhere you want.”
    â€œNo, not tomorrow. I’ll have to think about it.” There was a click in my ear and the line went dead. What did she mean that Spencer wouldn’t take any money for himself? I wondered.
    Maybe not tomorrow, but we’re going to talk, Ms. Powers, I vowed. We are going to talk.

S IXTEEN

    W hen Annie was alive, she wouldn’t let him have a drink because she said it interfered with his medicine. But on the way home from Greenwood Lake yesterday, Ned had stopped at a liquor store and bought bottles of bourbon, scotch, and rye. He hadn’t taken his medicine since Annie died, so maybe she wouldn’t be mad at him for drinking now. “I need to sleep, Annie,” he explained when he opened the first bottle. “It will help me to sleep.”
    It did help. He had fallen asleep sitting in the chair, but then something happened. Ned couldn’t tell whether he was dreaming or remembering about the night of the fire. He was standing in that clump of trees with the can of gas when a shadow came from the side of the house and rushed down the driveway.
    It was so windy, and the branches of the trees kept moving and swaying. He had thought at first that waswhat caused the shadow. . . . But now the shadow had become the figure of a man, and in his dream he sometimes thought he could even see a face.
    Was it like his dreams about Annie, the ones that were so real he could even smell the peach body lotion she wore?
    It had to be that, he decided. Because it was just a dream, wasn’t it?
    At five o’clock, just as the first light of dawn was pushing past the shade, Ned got up. His body ached from having fallen asleep in the chair, but even worse was the ache in his heart. He wanted Annie. He needed her—but she was gone. He went across the room and got his rifle. All these years he’d kept it hidden behind a pile of junk in their half of the garage. He sat down again, his hands wrapped tightly around the barrel.
    The rifle would bring him to Annie. When he was finished with those people, the ones who had caused her to die,