Laural It was Laura.

"Laura, where are you?"

"Where I'm having a lot of fun. Jeannie, tell those cops to pick up their jacks and go home. I'm having the time of my life. I'll call you soon. Bye, dear."

Late Monday afternoon Sam went to interview Joel Nieman at his office in Rye, New York.

After keeping him waiting in the reception area for nearly half an hour, Nieman invited him into his decidedly upscale private suite. His entire manner suggested ill-concealed annoyance at the interruption.

Doesn't look much like Romeo to me, Sam thought as he studied Nieman's pudgy features and dyed reddish brown hair.

Nieman airily dismissed the suggestion that he had made a date with Laura during the reunion. "I heard that nonsense about the lunch table killer on the radio," he volunteered. "That school reporter, Perkins, started it, I gather. They ought to put a net over his head and cart him away until he grows up. Listen, I was in class with those girls. I knew them all. The idea that their deaths are related is nonsense. Just start with Catherine Kane. Her car skidded into the Potomac when we were college freshmen. Cath was always a fast driver. Look up the number of speeding tickets she got in Cornwall during her senior year, and you'll see what I mean."

"That may be," Sam said, "but don't you think it's a remarkable case of lightning striking in the same place, not twice but five times?"

"Sure, it's pretty creepy that five girls from the same table died, but

I could introduce you to the guy who services our computers. His mother and his grandmother dropped dead of heart attacks on the same day thirty years apart. Day after Christmas. Maybe they realized how much they spent for presents, and it got to them. Could be, don't you think?"

Sam looked at Joel Nieman with acute distaste but also with the sense that underneath his show of disdain there was a sense of unease. "I understand your wife left the reunion on Saturday morning to go on a business trip."

"That's right."

"Were you alone at your home on Saturday night after the reunion dinner, Mr. Nieman?"

"As a matter of fact, I was. Those long-winded affairs make me sleepy."

This guy isn't the kind who goes home alone when his wife is away, Sam thought. He took a shot in the dark. "Mr. Nieman, you were observed leaving the parking lot with a woman in the car."

Joel Nieman raised his eyebrows. "Well, perhaps I did leave with a woman, but she wasn't pushing forty years old. Mr. Deegan, if you're on a fishing expedition with me because Laura took off with some guy and hasn't resurfaced, I suggest you call my lawyer. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a number of phone calls to make."

Sam got to his feet and ambled toward the door, obviously in no haste. As he passed the bookcase, he paused and looked at the middle shelf. "You have quite a collection of Shakespeare, Mr. Nieman."

"I have always enjoyed the Bard."

"I understand you were Romeo in your senior play at Stonecroft."

"That's right."

Sam chose his words carefully. "Wasn't Alison Kendall critical of your performance?"

"She said I forgot my lines. I didn't forget them. I had a moment or two of stage fright. Period."

"Alison had an accident in school a few days after the play, didn't she?"

"I remember that. The door of her locker fell on her. All the guys were questioned about it. I always thought that they should have been talking to the girls. A lot of them couldn't stand her. Look, this is going to get you nowhere. As I told you, I would bet my bottom dollar the other four lunch table deaths were accidents. There's absolutely no pattern to them. On the other hand, Alison was a mean kid. She trampled on people. From what I read about her, she never changed. I could see where someone might decide she'd been swimming long enough the day she drowned."

He walked to the door and pointedly opened it. "Speed the parting guest," he said. "That's Shakespeare, too."

Sam hoped he was professional enough not to allow his face to show exactly what he thought of Nieman and his cavalier dismissal of Alison Kendall's death. "There's also a Danish proverb that says fish and guests smell after three days," he observed. Especially dead guests, he thought.

"That was more famously paraphrased by Benjamin Franklin," Joel Nieman said quickly.

"Are you familiar with the Shakespeare quote about dead lilies?" Sam asked. "It's somewhat in the same vein."

Nieman's laugh was an unpleasant, mirthless bark. " 'Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.' That's a line from one of his sonnets. Sure, I know it. In fact, it's one I think about a lot. My mother-in-law's name is Lily."

Sam drove from Rye to the Glen-Ridge House faster than he approved, allowing the speedometer to climb. He had asked the honorees and Jack Emerson to meet him for dinner at seven-thirty. His gut instinct had been that one of the five men-Carter Stewart, Robby Brent, Mark Fleischman, Gordon Amory, or Emerson-held the key to Laura's disappearance. Now, after interviewing Joel Nieman, he wasn't as sure.

In effect, Nieman had admitted that he did not go home alone the night of the dinner. At Stonecroft he had been the prime suspect in the locker incident. He'd almost gone to jail for assaulting another man in a bar fight. He made no attempt to conceal his satisfaction that Alison Kendall was dead.

At the very least, Joel Nieman could use a great deal more scrutiny, Sam reasoned.

It was exactly seven-thirty when Sam entered the Glen-Ridge House. On the way into the private room, he passed the omnipresent Jake Perkins, sprawled on a chair in the lobby. Perkins jumped to his feet. "Any new developments, sir?" he asked cheerfully.

If there were, you'd be the last to know, Sam thought, but he managed not to let his annoyance show in his voice. "Nothing to report, Jake. Why don't you go home?"

"Pretty soon I'll be on my way. Oh, here's Dr. Sheridan. I'd like to catch her for a minute."

Jean was coming out of the elevator. Even from a distance Sam could see that there was something about her that suggested distress. It was the way she walked so quickly across the lobby toward the dining room. That sense of urgency made his own step quicken to catch up with her.

They met at the door of the dining room. Jean started to say, "Sam, I heard from-" Then, noticing Jake Perkins, she closed her lips.

Nighttime Is My Time 183

Perkins had overheard. "Who did you hear from, Dr. Sheridan? Was it Laura Wilcox?"

"Go away," Sam said firmly. He took Jean's arm, propelled her through the dining room door, and closed it firmly.

Carter Stewart, Gordon Amory, Mark Fleischman, Jack Emerson, and Robby Brent were already there. A small bar had been set up, and all the men stood around with glasses in hand. At the click of the door they all turned, but when they saw the expression on Jean's face, any greetings they were about to offer were forgotten.

"I just heard from Laura," she told them. "I just heard from

Laura."

Over dinner the initial relief they all felt began to be replaced by uncertainty. "I was shocked to hear Laura's voice," Jean said. "But then she hung up before I could ask her anything."

"She didn't sound nervous or upset?" Jack Emerson asked.

"No. If anything, she sounded upbeat. But she didn't give me a chance to ask her a single question."

"Are you sure you were speaking to Laura?" Gordon Amory asked the question that Sam knew was on everyone's mind.

"I think I was," Jean said slowly. "But if you asked me to swear under oath that it was Laura, I couldn't do it. It sounded like her, out…" She hesitated. "I have friends in Virginia, a couple, who sound exactly alike on the phone. They've been married fifty years, and the timbre of their voices is the same. I say, 'Hello, Jane,' and David laughs and says, 'Guess again.' Then when we've been chat-ting a few moments, of course I can pick up their different nuances. It was something like that with Laura's call. The voice is the same, but maybe not exactly the same. We didn't talk long enough to be certain one way or the other."