The night before last, Annamarie had caught on the evening news the clip of Molly Lasch making her statement to the media. The sight of Niantic Prison in the background had made her almost physically ill. Since then she had been haunted by the memory of the day three years ago when a desperate need made her drive past the prison. She’d tried to visualize herself in there as well.
It’s where I belong, she whispered fiercely to herself as she made her way up the cracked concrete steps to Mr. Olsen’s home. But driving past the prison that day, her courage had failed her, and she’d gone directly home to her little apartment in Yonkers. It was the only time she had come close to calling that fatherly lawyer who’d been her patient at Lasch Hospital to ask him to help her turn herself in to the state’s attorney.
As she rang Mr. Olsen’s bell, then let herself in with her key and called a cheery “Good morning,” Annamarie had the ominous feeling that the renewed interest in the Lasch murder would inevitably bring renewed interest in finding her. And she didn’t want that to happen.
She was afraid to have that happen.
16
Calvin Whitehall ignored Peter Black’s secretary as he walked past her desk and opened the door to Peter’s lavishly appointed corner office.
Black looked up from the reports he was reading. “You’re early.”
“No I’m not,” Whitehall snapped. “Jenna saw Molly last night.”
“Molly had the nerve to phone and warn me I’d better be available to Fran Simmons, that reporter on NAF. Did Jenna tell you about the True Crime show the Simmons woman is doing on Gary?”
Calvin Whitehall nodded. The two men stared across the desk at each other. “There’s worse,” Whitehall said flatly. “Molly seems to be determined to locate Annamarie Scalli.”
Black paled. “Then I suggest you find a way to send her on a wild goose chase,” he said quietly. “The ball is in your court on this one. And you’d better handle it carefully. I don’t need to remind you of what this can mean to both of us.”
Angrily he tossed the reports he had been studying across the desk. “All these are new potential malpractice suits.”
“Squash them.”
“I intend to.”
Cal Whitehall studied his partner, observing the slight tremor in Peter Black’s hand, the broken capillaries on his cheeks and chin. Cold distaste evident in his tone, he said, “We’ve got to stop that reporter and keep Molly away from Annamarie. In the meantime you’d better have a drink.”
17
Fran knew the instant she met Tim Mason that he was aware of her background. I might as well get used to it, she thought. I’ll see that reaction again and again from people in Greenwich. All they have to do is put two and two together. Fran Simmons? Wait a minute. Simmons. The speculative look. Why does that name sound familiar? Oh, of course. Her father was the one who . . .
She did not sleep well that night and was feeling less than chipper when she reached the office the next morning. An immediate reminder of her troubled dreams was waiting on her desk—a message from Molly Lasch, giving the name of the psychiatrist who had treated her pending the trial: “I called Dr. Daniels. He’s semiretired now but would be happy to see you. His office is on Greenwich Avenue,” her message said.
Dr. Daniels; Molly’s lawyer, Philip Matthews; Dr. Peter Black; Calvin and Jenna Whitehall; Edna Barry, the housekeeper Molly had rehired—these were the people Molly suggested she see as a starting point in her investigation, but Fran had other people in mind too. Annamarie Scalli, for one.
She picked up Molly’s message and studied it. I’ll start with Dr. Daniels, she decided.
* * *
John Daniels had been contacted by Molly Lasch and was expecting Fran’s call. He readily suggested that if she wanted to come up that afternoon, he would be able to see her. Although seventy-five on his last birthday, and semiretired, he had not been able to completely give up his practice, despite the coaxing of his wife. There were too many people who still depended on him and whom he could help.
One of the few he felt he had failed was Molly Carpenter Lasch. He had known her since she was a child and would sometimes come to dinner at the club with her parents. She had been a beautiful little girl, unfailingly polite, and composed beyond her years. Nothing in either her makeup or in the battery of tests he conducted after her arrest suggested she might be capable of the violent outburst that had resulted in Gary Lasch’s death.
His receptionist, Ruthie Roitenberg, had been with him twenty-five years and, with the privilege of longevity in a job, was not above stating her frank opinions and passing along gossip. It was she who, after being told Fran Simmons was expected at two o’clock, said, “Doctor, you do know whose daughter she is?”
“Am I supposed to know?” Daniels asked mildly.
“Remember that man who stole all the money from the library fund, then shot himself? Fran Simmons is his daughter. She went to Cranden Academy with Molly Carpenter.”
John Daniels did not allow her to see how startled he was at her news. He remembered Frank Simmons all too well. He himself had donated ten thousand dollars to the library fund drive. Money down the drain, as it turned out, thanks to Simmons. “Molly didn’t go into that. I guess she felt it wasn’t important.”
His mild reproof went unnoticed. “If I were in her boots I’d have changed my name,” Ruthie said. “As a matter of fact, I think Molly would be smart to change her name, move away from here and make a fresh start. You know, Doctor, everybody thinks it would be a lot better if, instead of stirring everyone up again, she’d just come out and say how much she regrets having killed that poor man.”
“Suppose there is another explanation for his death?”
“Doctor, anyone who believes that still looks under the pillow for a dime from the tooth fairy.”
* * *
Fran was not scheduled to appear on the news broadcast until that evening, so she was able to spend the morning in her office, lining up interviews. Once she was done, she bought a sandwich and soda to eat in the car and set off for Greenwich at 12:15. She left early so that she would have time before her appointment with Dr. Daniels to drive around the town and reacquaint herself with the places she had known when she lived there.
In less than an hour she arrived at the outskirts of Greenwich. During the night, a light dusting of snow had fallen, and the trees and bushes and lawns were shimmering under the late winter sun.
It is a lovely place, Fran thought. I can’t blame Dad for wanting to be part of it. Bridgeport, where her father had been raised, was only half an hour farther north, but there was a world of difference in the lifestyles of the two places.
Cranden Academy was located on Round Hill Road. She drove past the campus slowly, admiring its mellow stone buildings, remembering the years she had spent there, thinking about the girls she had known best, and those she’d known only at a distance. One was Jenna Graham, who was now Jenna Whitehall. She and Molly were always close, Fran thought, even though they were very different. Jenna was much more take-charge and affirmative, while Molly was really quite reserved.
With sudden warmth she thought of Bobbitt Williams, who had been on the basketball team with her. Is it possible that she still lives around here? Fran wondered. She was a good musician too, she recalled—she tried to make me take piano lessons with her, but I told her I was hopeless. The Lord left musical talent out of my genes.
As she turned the car toward Greenwich Avenue, Fran realized with a pang that she genuinely wanted to look up some of her old school friends, at least the ones she remembered fondly, like Bobbitt. Mother and I never talked about those four years we lived here, but they did exist, and maybe it’s time I acknowledged them, she thought. There were a lot of people here I honestly cared about; maybe seeing some of them will be therapeutic for me.
Who knows? she thought as she glanced at her notebook to check Dr. Daniels’s address, someday I might actually come into this town and not relive th
e terrible anger and embarrassment I’ve felt ever since I realized my father was a crook.
* * *
Dr. John Daniels escorted Fran past Ruthie’s observant eyes and into his private office. He immediately liked what he saw in Fran Simmons—a poised, soft-spoken young woman, well dressed in a casual way.
Underneath her all-weather coat she was wearing a brown tweed jacket and camel slacks. Her light brown hair, with its natural wave, skimmed her jacket collar. Dr. Daniels watched her closely as she settled into the chair facing him. She really was very attractive. It was her eyes, though, that really intrigued him—they were such an unusual shade of blue gray. They get bluer when she’s happy, then turn gray when she’s retreating, he thought. Realizing suddenly that he was getting a little too fanciful, he shook his head. He could not help admitting to himself that he was scrutinizing Fran Simmons so thoroughly because of what Ruthie had revealed about Fran’s father. He hoped she hadn’t noticed.
“Doctor, you know I’m planning to do a program about Molly Lasch and her husband’s death,” Fran said almost immediately, getting directly to the point. “I understand Molly has given you permission to speak openly to me.”
“That’s right.”
“Was she your patient before her husband’s death?”
“No, she was not. I knew her parents, principally through the country club. I saw Molly there from the time she was a child.”
“Did you at any point observe any aggressive behavior from her?”
“Never.”
“Do you believe her when she says that she is unable to remember the details of her husband’s death? Let me rephrase that, please. Do you believe that she cannot remember the details of her husband’s death or of finding him when he was dying or dead?”
“I believe that Molly is telling the truth as she knows it.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that whatever happened that night is so painful that she has pushed it deep into her subconscious. Will she ever retrieve it? I don’t know.”
“If she does recover some memory of that night—for example, about her sensation that there may have been someone else in the house when she returned home—will that be an accurate memory?”
John Daniels took off his glasses and wiped them. He put them back on, realizing as he did so that, ludicrous as it was, he had become so dependent on them that to speak without them made him feel vulnerable.
“Molly Lasch is suffering from dissociative amnesia. This involves gaps in memory that are related to extremely stressful and traumatic events. Obviously, the death of her husband, however that may have occurred, fits into that category.
“Some people who suffer from this condition respond well to hypnosis and are able to regain significant and often trustworthy memory of the event. Molly agreed willingly to submit to hypnosis before the trial, but it just didn’t work. Think about it. She was emotionally devastated by her husband’s death and terrified of her upcoming trial, much too distraught and fragile to be successfully hypnotized.”
“Does she have a chance of gradually recovering accurate memory, Doctor?”
“I wish I could say that Molly has a good chance of recovering her memory and of clearing her name. To be honest, I feel that whatever she may eventually believe she remembers will not necessarily be trustworthy. If Molly seems to regain some sense of what happened that night, it’s very possible she will be filling in with what she wishes had happened. She may honestly believe that she is really remembering what happened, but that won’t necessarily mean that it actually did happen that way. It’s called ‘retrospective memory falsification.’ ”
* * *
Back in her car outside Dr. Daniels’s office, Fran sat for several minutes, trying to decide her next move. It was quarter of three. The offices of the Greenwich Time were only a few blocks away. She thought suddenly of Joe Hutnik. He worked there; he had covered Molly’s release from prison. He’d been adamant in stating he believed her guilty. Had he covered her trial too? she wondered.
He seemed like a stand-up guy, Fran thought, and clearly he’s been around for a while.
Maybe too long? a voice whispered. Maybe he covered your father’s story as well. Do you really want to deal with that?
Outside, the late winter sun was fading as thick, gray clouds moved in. March, the unpredictable month, Fran thought as she continued to debate what to do next. Why not take a chance, she decided finally, reaching for her cell phone.
Fifteen minutes later she was shaking Joe Hutnik’s hand. He was in his cubbyhole off the computer-filled Greenwich Time’s newsroom. About fifty years old, with broad, dark eyebrows and alert, intelligent eyes, he waved her to the mini-sized love seat, half of which was piled with books.
“What brings you to ‘The Gateway to New England,’ as our fair town is known, Fran?” He did not wait for an answer. “No, let me guess. Molly Lasch. The word is that you’re doing a program on her for True Crime.”
“The word moves too fast for my taste,” Fran told him. “Joe, can we level with each other?”
“Of course. Provided it doesn’t cost me a headline.” Fran raised her eyebrows. “You’re my kind of guy. Question: Did you cover Molly’s trial?”
“Who didn’t? It was a slow news time, and she filled it for us.”
“Joe, I can pull all the information I need from the Internet, but no matter how much testimony you read, it’s a lot easier to judge truth when you get to see the demeanor of the witnesses, especially under cross-examination. You obviously think Molly Lasch killed her husband.”
“Absolutely.”
“Next question. What did you think of Dr. Gary Lasch?”
Joe Hutnik leaned back in his desk chair, swiveling from side to side as he considered his answer. Then he said slowly, “Fran, I’ve lived around Greenwich all my life. My mother is seventy-six years old. She tells the story of when my sister had pneumonia forty years ago. She was three months old. In those days doctors came to the house. It was known as a house call. You weren’t told to bundle up sick kids and take them to an emergency room, right?”
Hutnik stopped swiveling the chair and folded his hands on the desk. “We lived at the top of a pretty steep hill. Dr. Lasch, Jonathan Lasch, I mean, Gary’s father, couldn’t get his car up the hill. The wheels kept spinning. He left it and climbed through snow up to his knees to our house. That was at eleven o’clock at night. I can remember seeing him standing over my sister. He had her under a strong light, lying on blankets on the kitchen table. He stayed with her for three hours. He gave her a double penicillin shot and made sure she was breathing comfortably and her temperature was down before he’d go home. In the morning he was back again to check on her.”
“Was Gary Lasch that kind of doctor?” Fran asked.
Hutnik thought for a moment before responding. “There are still plenty of dedicated physicians in Greenwich, and everywhere else, I assume. Was Gary Lasch one of them? I honestly don’t know the answer to that, Fran, but from what I hear, he and his partner, Dr. Peter Black, were more into the business end of medicine and perhaps a little less into the actual care giving.”
“It looks like they’ve been successful. Lasch Hospital has doubled in size since I saw it last,” Fran commented. She hoped her voice sounded steady.
“Since your father died there,” Hutnik said quickly. “Look, Fran, I’ve been around a long time. I knew your father. He was a nice man. Needless to say, like a lot of other residents, I wasn’t thrilled to see all the donations disappear the way they did. That money was going to build a library in one of our less classy sections of town, so that kids could walk to it easily.”
Fran winced and looked away.
“Sorry,” Hutnik said. “I shouldn’t bring that up. Let’s stick to Gary Lasch. After his father died, he brought in his medical school buddy, Dr. Peter Black, from Chicago. They turned the Jonathan Lasch Clinic into Lasch Hospital. They began the Remington Health Management Organiza
tion, which has been one of the really successful HMOs.”
“What do you think of health maintenance organizations in general?” Fran asked.
“What most people do. They stink. Even the best of them—and I think Remington may be in that category—are putting doctors between a rock and a hard place. Most doctors have to belong to one or maybe even a number of health maintenance plans, which means, of course, that their diagnoses are subject to review, and that if they feel a patient needs to see a specialist, their judgment may be overridden. In addition, doctors are forced to wait for their money—I mean to a point where many of them are placed in a tight financial position. Patients are being sent to out-of-the-way facilities just to discourage them from having too many visits. And at the very time when drugs and treatments are available to make people’s lives easier, the guys who decide whether you get a treatment are the ones who make the money if you don’t. Great progress, wouldn’t you say?”
Joe shook his head indignantly. “Right now Remington Health Management, meaning CEO Dr. Peter Black and Chairman Cal Whitehall, our resident tycoon, are negotiating with the state for permission to take over four smaller HMOs. If that happens, the company stock will fly like a birdie. Is there a problem with that? Not really. Except that American National Insurance would also like to take over the smaller HMOs, and there’s talk they may attempt a hostile takeover of Remington as well.”
“Is that likely to happen?”
“Who knows? Probably not. Remington Health Management and Lasch Hospital have a good reputation. They’ve rebounded from the scandal revolving around the murder of Dr. Gary Lasch and the revelation that he was fooling around with a young nurse, but I’m sure Peter Black and Cal Whitehall would have liked to have had the new deal completed before Molly Lasch arrived back in town with her suggestion there was more to the story of the doctor’s murder than came out initially.”
“What kind of ‘more to the story’ could possibly affect a merger?” Fran asked.
Joe shrugged. “Honey, quaint as it may seem, sleaze is on the way out, at least temporarily. American National is headed by a former surgeon general who vows he’s going to reform health maintenance organizations. Remington still has the inside track on the acquisition, but in this crazy world, any cold wind can freeze the harvest. And any hint of scandal could squelch the deal.”
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