The Shadow of Your Smile

by Mary Higgins Clark

  When Scott arrived, his concern for her had been so obviously genuine that for the present it took away the hurtful realization that Ryan Jenner had a close relationship with another woman. Scott had taken her hand and insisted she lie down on the couch. “Monica, you’re pale as a ghost and your hands are freezing,” he told her. He piled pillows behind her head, covered her with an afghan, and fixed a hot toddy for her. Then, realizing she had not had any dinner, he looked into the refrigerator, selected tomato and cheese, and grilled a delicious sandwich for her. “My specialty,” he said cheerfully.

  It was good to see him, Monica acknowledged now, as she decided to give herself another ten minutes before getting up. She hadn’t intended to tell him about Olivia Morrow, but found herself explaining to him the events of the past few days and her disappointment that Morrow had died before Monica could talk with her about her grandmother.

  Scott, however, had been quick to say, “Monica, I will bet you the ranch that Olivia Morrow has a connection to the Gannons. Trust me. I’m going to find out. Your father believed that Alexander Gannon might have been his father. There were plenty of articles about Alexander Gannon, and a number of them had biographical information in them. Seeing the pictures your dad had collected, and comparing photos of him and Gannon at the same age throughout their lives was startling.” He spoke quickly, obviously excited that Monica might allow him to help her.

  Before he left, Scott had said, “Monica, I’m going to say this once and then never refer to it again. I am desperately sorry I was stupid enough to ask you out while I was still married to Joy. If you’ll allow me to see you now, it will be as a friend. On my word of honor, I will not in any way make you uncomfortable. Let’s do it this way. I’m going to follow up on Olivia Morrow, and in two weeks I’ll call you for dinner. And I’m going to ask Joy to phone you. Would that be okay?”

  I told him it would be fine, Monica thought. And it will be, if he’s sincere about simply wanting to resume our friendship and nothing more. Scott was a good friend to Dad when he was so sick, and I’ll never forget how helpful he was when Dad passed away.

  Having settled that in her mind, Monica sat up. Wincing at the pain that shot through her arm and leg, she got out of bed slowly, went into the bathroom, and turned on the taps in the Jacuzzi.

  The very warm swirling water did help the stiffness and by the time she was dressed, she was feeling better. She put on a small pot of coffee and as it perked, she went into the bedroom. I look like a ghost, she thought, as she dabbed on some blush, then twisted her hair and fastened it up with a clip.

  Leave it like that. It looks good.

  The memory of Ryan saying that to her less than two weeks ago, when little Carlos pulled that same clip out, caused a sudden lump in her throat, and she felt her eyes stinging with tears she had no intention of shedding. I’ll phone Nan and ask her to bring the O’Keefe file over to Ryan’s office, she decided. I don’t want to run into him, and from now on there’s no real reason I should. It’s a big hospital.

  Her final decision, as she sipped the coffee, was to downgrade the possibility that she had been deliberately pushed. As I told Scott, if that man was just trying to shove me aside so he could make the light, he was probably horrified that I might have been run over. No wonder he ran away. Most people would in that situation.

  In a cab on the way to the hospital, Monica made the call to Nan, then phoned ahead to inquire about Sally Carter. She was relieved to learn that Sally had had a good night, but outraged that there had still been no visit from her mother. I’ll notify Family Services this morning, she vowed.

  Her first stop at the hospital was to visit Sally. She was sleeping quietly, and Monica decided not to risk waking her up. The nurse on duty reported that Sally’s temperature had gone down to only a degree above normal, and that the asthma attack had passed. “Doctor, last night, after you left, when she woke up, I thought she was crying for Mommy, but actually she was saying, ‘Monny.’ I think it’s possible that when she was here last week she heard other kids calling you Dr. Monica.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” a familiar voice said. “I’ve heard that’s the effect you have on your patients.”

  Monica turned swiftly. It was Ryan Jenner. “I doubt Sally knows my name,” she said, then catching the look the nurse was giving her and Ryan, she added, “Dr. Jenner, may I speak with you in private?”

  “Of course,” he said, his tone immediately as formal as hers. She walked with him to the corridor. “I’ve sent the file on Michael O’Keefe to your office,” she told him.

  “It just came. Your secretary told me you’d probably be here checking on Sally. Monica, I just heard about what happened last night. Is it possible that you were pushed? My God, I can’t imagine how frightening it must have been.”

  “I’m all right. Ryan, I have to ask you not to visit me on this floor, unless of course it involves a patient. I get a feeling that there’s some gossip about us.”

  He looked at her. “And you don’t like that?”

  “No, I don’t. And I should think that you certainly wouldn’t, either.”

  Without waiting for him to reply, she went back inside the Pediatrics Ward and began to make her rounds of the other small patients in her care.

  41

  After his initial panic attack at the realization that he had murdered Olivia Morrow, Dr. Clayton Hadley composed himself by reviewing over and over again every detail of his final visit to Olivia.

  Tuesday evening he had told the clerk at the desk that Ms. Morrow was feeling very ill, and he had asked Olivia to be sure to leave the bolt of her front door unlocked so that she would not have to get out of bed to let him in. If the bolt had been on, the risk would have been much greater—she would have had to physically let him in herself. But the bolt was not on, so he had been able to slip into the apartment noiselessly.

  She had been asleep when he tiptoed into her bedroom, but woke instantly when he stood over her. Olivia had a night-light near the bathroom door and he could see that as soon as she recognized him, her expression of surprise turned into one of fear.

  She slept on two pillows on her queen-sized bed, and two other pillows were next to her. Long ago when he had visited her at home, after she had suffered a mild heart attack, she explained that she sometimes brought a cup of tea and the newspaper back to bed in the morning and piled those extra pillows behind her back.

  As he reached for one of those spare pillows, the thought that ran through his head was, She knows I’m going to kill her. He remembered saying, “I’m sorry, Olivia,” as he held the pillow over her face.

  Frail as she was, he was shocked at how fiercely she tried to push it away. It couldn’t have been more than a minute, but to him it seemed an eternity before her emaciated hands finally relaxed and fell limp on the coverlet.

  When he removed the pillow, he saw that while she was struggling Olivia had bitten her lip. A single drop of blood was on the pillow he had used to suffocate her. Nervously he had considered switching it with the one under her head, but he realized that the sight of the blood there might raise questions. Instead he went to the linen closet. Neatly stacked on the middle shelf he found two other complete sets of sheets and pillowcases. Each set consisted of two sheets and four pillowcases. One set was cream-colored, the other pale pink. The set on the bed was a shade of peach.

  Hadley decided he had to take the chance to replace the soiled pillowcase with one of the pink ones. It’s not much different, he had consoled himself, and if anyone notices, they’ll probably think the other peach pillowcase was lost at the laundry. He knew Olivia sent her sheets out to the laundry weekly because she had joked to him that one of her luxuries was fine cotton sheets, which she had professionally washed and ironed. When he changed the pillowcase, he was horrified to realize that the blood had also gone through to the pillow itself. Panicked, he knew it would be noticed if he tried to take it with him. He decided that the best he could do was to
have the new pillowcase on it and hope it would never be noticed.

  He had folded the stained pillowcase and tucked it in the pocket of his topcoat, then had begun to search the apartment for the Catherine file. Olivia had made him executor of her estate and given him the combination to her safe, so that when the time came the will would be probated without delay. It was a very simple document. There were a few small bequests to longtime service people in the building and her cleaning woman. The contents of her apartment, her car, and her jewelry were to be sold. The money from them together with her small portfolio of stocks and bonds were to be left to various Catholic charities. In the will she noted that she had already made and paid for arrangements with The Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel. She didn’t wish to have a viewing, but after a funeral Mass at St. Vincent Ferrer, to be cremated. Her ashes were to be buried in her mother’s grave in Calvary Cemetery.

  The will was in the safe, as well as her few pieces of jewelry—pearls and a small diamond ring and earrings—certainly not worth more than a few thousand dollars.

  But to his dismay, the Catherine file was not there. Acutely aware that the concierge might be noticing how long he was staying, Clay Hadley had searched every inch of Olivia’s apartment without success. The Catherine file was missing.

  What had she done with it? Clay had asked himself, desperately. Was there any chance she had destroyed it then changed her mind about revealing the truth when she heard from Monica Farrell? It was the only reasonable explanation he could imagine. On the way out of the building, the clerk at the desk had stopped him. “How is Ms. Morrow, Doctor?” he asked solicitously.

  Weighing his words carefully, Clay had said, “Ms. Morrow is a very, very sick woman.” Then in a husky voice added, “She’s not going to be with us for more than a few days or a week.”

  The next evening, after he received the call that Olivia had been found dead, he had sat with Monica Farrell in Olivia’s living room. When the Emergency Medical Services group arrived Monica had not stayed long. She had nothing to tell them except that she had come because she had an appointment with Olivia Morrow. In retrospect, Clay prided himself on how well he had handled the medics, explaining that he was Olivia’s longtime doctor, that she was terminally ill, that only last night he had begged her to go to a hospice . . . Then, when the mortician from Campbell’s arrived, the medics toe-tagged her body, and he signed the death certificate.

  After a sleepless night and frantic phone call to Doug, Clay had kept himself busy blotting out any trace of suspicion of his connection to Olivia’s death for the rest of Thursday. He called in the obituary notice to the Times, called the small list of people in her address book, arranged for the funeral Mass, and called a liquidator he had met socially and arranged to meet him at the apartment and inventory the contents. Then, having felt he had done everything he could to present the picture of a solicitous friend and executor, he took a sleeping pill and went to bed.

  At nine o’clock on Friday morning, the first phone call he received when he reached his office was from a man he did not know, Scott Alterman. “He’s inquiring about Olivia Morrow,” his secretary informed him.

  Who is this guy? Hadley wondered, his stomach in knots. “Put him on,” he said.

  Scott introduced himself. “I am a friend of Dr. Monica Farrell. I believe you met her in Olivia Morrow’s apartment Wednesday evening.”

  “Yes, I did.” Where is this going? Hadley wondered.

  “Only the night before her death, Ms. Morrow had told Dr. Farrell that she knew her grandmother. By that it was clear that she meant her birth grandmother. From what you told Dr. Farrell at that time, you have been a longtime friend of Ms. Morrow’s, as well as her physician and the executor of her estate. As such, you must have some knowledge of Ms. Morrow’s family history?”

  Hadley tried to keep his voice steady. “That’s entirely true. I became her mother’s cardiologist, then Olivia’s. Olivia was an only child. Her mother died many years ago. I never met anyone else at all who was a relation.”

  “And Ms. Morrow never spoke about her background to you?”

  Be close to the truth, but no specifics, Hadley warned himself. “I know that Olivia told me her father died before she was born and her mother remarried. By the time I met them, her mother had been widowed a second time.”

  Then came the question that made Hadley’s mouth go dry. Scott Alterman asked, “Dr. Hadley, haven’t you been on the board of the Gannon Foundation for many years?”

  “Yes, that’s true. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Alterman said. “But I’m sure there’s an answer to be found and I warn you, I will find it. Good-bye, Dr. Hadley.”

  42

  Peter Gannon woke up on Friday morning with a hangover that put any previous hangover he had ever experienced to shame. His head was bursting, he was nauseous, and he had the crashing feeling that his world was about to disappear from under him.

  He knew he would have to declare bankruptcy. There was no way he could pay off the backers of his play. Why was I so sure that this one was going to be a hit? he asked himself. Guaranteeing them half of what they invested was stupid, but it was the only way they’d put up any money. I’ll be a pariah to them now.

  For long minutes he stood in a hot shower, then, wincing, turned on the cold water. As he shivered under the needlelike impact of the freezing spray against his skin, he forced himself to deal with the fact that he would have to admit to Greg that he had once told Renée Carter he was sure Greg was involved in an insider trading fraud. Not only that, but I told her that except for the charities we support because of Clay in cardiology research and Doug in psychiatric research, a lot of our donations from the foundation are small and strictly for show. If she hadn’t decided to blackmail me about the baby, no doubt she would’ve threatened to expose the fraud. God, if they were ever investigated! Peter did not finish the thought.

  Greg will simply have to give me a million dollars to pay off Renée, and he’ll have to do it now. I saw her Tuesday night. For all I know she’s already thought about how much she’d collect for being a snitch. I gave her two million dollars when she left town almost two and a half years ago to keep her mouth shut, and that was supposed to be it. She said she would give up the baby for adoption.

  Renée. Unsteadily, Peter got out of the shower and reached for a bath towel. I was drinking all Tuesday afternoon, he thought. I was afraid to tell her that all I could scrape up was one hundred thousand dollars, not a million. Then, when I was waiting for her in the bar, I had those two scotches. I should have told her that the hundred thousand was all I could give her for now. I should have strung her along . . .

  What happened then? he asked himself. She got mad when I gave her the bag with the hundred thousand, and that was all she’d ever get. Final payment. No more money. I’d have her charged with extortion. Then, when she ran out and started down the street, I ran after her and grabbed her hand. She dropped the bag, slapped me, and her fingernail nicked my face.

  What happened then?

  I don’t remember, Peter thought miserably. I just don’t remember. Oh, God, he thought, as he slipped into a bathrobe, where did I go? What did I do? I don’t know. I just don’t know. I woke up on the couch in the office on Wednesday afternoon. That was fifteen hours later. Then I started thinking that Sue might lend me the money and I met her at Il Tinello. After Sue turned me down, I got drunk again. Renée hasn’t called me back yet, or has she? I’ve been having blackouts. Maybe I didn’t hear the phone . . .

  Peter looked into the mirror over the bathroom sink. Some mess, he observed. Eyes bloodshot. I never did shave yesterday. Wonder what Sue thought when I met her?

  Sue. Renée was the straw that broke the camel’s back in our marriage. I had sworn to Sue I’d quit womanizing, then she read in the gossip column that I’d been seen with Renée. The mistake of my life, four years ago. Sue wouldn’t believe I was sick of Renée and breaking up with her
. Crazy, the way the ball bounces. Sue had three miscarriages in the twenty years we were married and Renée managed to get pregnant just when she knew I was about to break off with her. Of course she did it on purpose, he thought angrily, but at least Sue never knew about the baby. That would have been hell for her . . . And now, divorced or not, he hoped Sue never finds out.

  Why didn’t Renée give up the baby for adoption? When I paid her off, she said she would. She sure wasn’t into kids. She did it because she wanted to have a hold over me. A hold called Sally, whom I’ve never met, nor ever want to meet. Why did Renée come back to New York? Guess she’d not gotten her claws into another rich boyfriend in Vegas and needs me to feather her nest again.

  If only I could prove the kid isn’t mine, but Renée was smart enough to have saved DNA from me and had it matched with the baby’s. She’s mine, like it or not.

  Peter Gannon reached for his shaving soap and razor. As he started to shave, he winced when the blade hit the spot where Renée’s nail had caught him. What happened after she slapped me? he asked himself again.

  A half hour later, dressed in a casual shirt, sweater, and khakis, a cup of coffee in his hand, Peter forced himself to pick up the phone to dial his brother, Greg.

  Before he could complete the connection, the concierge called on the intercom. “Mr. Gannon, Detective Tucker and Detective Flynn are here to see you. May I send them up?”

  43

  On Friday morning, after she spoke to Ryan Jenner in the hospital, Monica tried to phone Renée Carter and when there was again no answer went down to see Sandra Weiss, the director of Family Services in the hospital. “I have to talk about my patient Sally Carter,” she began.

  “I was about to call you,” Weiss told her somberly. “We have just heard from the police. The body of a woman found on the pedestrian walkway near the East River yesterday has been identified as Renée Carter, Sally’s mother.”