We'll Meet Again

by Mary Higgins Clark

  Cal was not ignoring the spill. He jumped up, muttering, “I’ll get a paper towel.” In the kitchen he looked around, found the towel rack. As he started back, his eyes diverted to the single notation on the wall calendar. Carefully he studied it.

  Peter Black’s cheeks were flushed; clearly this wasn’t his first drink of the night. “Molly, you know that we’re in discussion about the acquisition of several other health maintenance organizations. If you persist in allowing, much less encouraging, this program to proceed, could you at least ask Fran Simmons to hold off until after the merger is completed?”

  So that’s what this is all about, Molly thought. They’re afraid that if I open old wounds, the infection could spread to them.

  “Of course, there’s nothing to hide,” he added emphatically. “But talk and gossip and rumors have ruined plenty of important negotiations.”

  He was drinking scotch, and Molly watched as he drained his glass. She remembered that years ago he had been a heavy hitter when it came to booze. Obviously that hadn’t changed.

  “And Molly, please give up the idea of trying to locate Annamarie Scalli,” Jen pleaded. “If she found out about a possible television program, she might sell her story to one of those scandal magazines.”

  Molly still sat unspeaking, staring at the three people, feeling her old fears and doubts bubbling just below the calm surface she had displayed so far tonight.

  “I think the case has been presented,” Philip Matthews said bluntly, breaking the awkward silence. “Why don’t we give it a rest?”

  Peter Black, Jenna, and Cal left a short time later. Philip Matthews waited until the door closed behind them, then he asked, “Molly, would you prefer that we skip dinner and I get out of your way?”

  On the verge of tears, she nodded, then managed to say, “You can have a rain check if you want one.”

  “I do want one.”

  Molly had prepared coq au vin and wild rice. After Philip left, she covered the dishes and put them in the refrigerator, then checked the door locks and went into the study. Tonight, maybe because Cal and Peter Black had been there, she had a strong sense of something lurking at the edges of her conscious mind, trying to break through.

  What was it? she wondered. Old memories, old fears that would drag her deeper into the depression she felt? Or would it provide answers, maybe even help her escape the darkness that threatened to envelop her? She would just have to wait and see.

  She did not turn on a light but curled up on the sofa, her legs tucked under her.

  What would Cal and Peter and Philip Matthews think, she wondered, if they suspected that tomorrow evening at eight o’clock, at a roadside diner in Rowayton, she was actually going to meet Annamarie Scalli?

  33

  There is nothing like Sunday morning in Manhattan, Fran decided as she opened the apartment door at 7:30 to find the Sunday Times, thick and inviting, awaiting her. She fixed juice and coffee and a muffin, settled in her big chair, planted her feet on the ottoman, and picked up the first section of the paper. A few minutes later she put it down, realizing she had absorbed very little of what she had read.

  “I’m worried,” she said aloud, then reminded herself that it was a bad habit to talk to yourself.

  She had not slept well the night before and was sure that her restlessness had something to do with Molly’s cryptic statement that she might have some very interesting news for her. What kind of news could be “very interesting”? she wondered.

  If Molly is conducting some kind of private investigation of her own, she could be getting in over her head, Fran thought. Pushing aside the newspaper, she got up, poured a second cup of coffee, and returned to the chair, this time to read Molly’s trial transcript.

  For the next hour she went through the testimony, line by line. There was testimony from the first police officers to arrive on the scene, as well as from the medical examiner. That was followed by testimony from Peter Black and the Whitehalls, describing their final meeting with Gary Lasch, a few hours before he died.

  Clearly it had been like pulling teeth to get Jenna to say anything negative, Fran thought, as she carefully studied her testimony.

  PROSECUTOR: Did you speak to the defendant in the week before her husband’s death, while she was at her home on Cape Cod?

  JENNA: Yes, I did.

  PROSECUTOR: How would you characterize her emotional side?

  JENNA: Sad. She was very sad.

  PROSECUTOR: Was she angry at her husband, Mrs. Whitehall?

  JENNA: She was upset.

  PROSECUTOR: You didn’t answer my question. Was Molly Carpenter Lasch angry at her husband?

  JENNA: Yes, I guess you would say so.

  PROSECUTOR: Did she express great anger at her husband?

  JENNA: Will you repeat the question?

  PROSECUTOR: Surely, and will Your Honor direct the witness to answer without equivocation?

  JUDGE: The witness is directed to answer the question.

  PROSECUTOR: Mrs. Whitehall, during your telephone conversations with Molly Carpenter Lasch in that week before her husband’s death, did she express great anger at him?

  JENNA: Yes.

  PROSECUTOR: Did you know the reason Molly Carpenter Lasch was angry at her husband?

  JENNA: No, not initially. I asked her, but she wouldn’t tell me at first. That Sunday afternoon she did.

  When she read through Calvin Whitehall’s testimony, Fran decided that, intentionally or otherwise, he had been an extremely damaging witness. The state attorney must have loved him, she thought.

  PROSECUTOR: Mr. Whitehall, you and Dr. Peter Black visited Dr. Gary Lasch on Sunday afternoon, April 8th. Is that correct?

  CALVIN WHITEHALL: Yes, we did.

  PROSECUTOR: What was the purpose of your visit?

  CALVIN WHITEHALL: Dr. Black had told me he was very concerned about Gary. He said it had been obvious to him all week that Gary was deeply worried, so we decided to go see him.

  PROSECUTOR: By “we,” you mean . . . ?

  CALVIN WHITEHALL: Dr. Peter Black and myself.

  PROSECUTOR: What happened when you got there?

  CALVIN WHITEHALL: It was about five o’clock. Gary brought us into the family room. He had put out a plate of cheese and crackers and opened a bottle of wine. He poured a glass for each of us and said, “I’m sorry to say this, but it’s time for true confessions.” Then he admitted to us that he had been having an affair with a nurse at the hospital named Annamarie Scalli and that she was pregnant.

  PROSECUTOR: Was Dr. Lasch concerned over your possible reaction?

  CALVIN WHITEHALL: Of course. That nurse was only in her early twenties. We were afraid of the ramifications—a sexual harassment suit, for example. Gary was the head of the hospital, after all. The Lasch name, thanks to his father’s legacy, is a symbol of integrity that, of course, spilled over to the hospital and then to Remington Health Management. We were deeply distressed at the prospect of that image changing because of a scandal.

  Fran continued to read the trial transcript for another hour. When she put it down, she kneaded her forehead, hoping to prevent the beginning of a headache she could feel coming on.

  Gary Lasch and Annamarie Scalli certainly seem to have managed to keep their affair under wraps, she thought. What jumps out of these pages is absolute shock on the part of Molly, Peter Black, and the Whitehalls, the people closest to him, when they learned about it.

  She remembered the wide-eyed astonishment expressed by Susan Branagan, the volunteer at the hospital coffee shop. She had said that everyone had assumed Annamarie Scalli was falling for that nice Dr. Morrow.

  Dr. Jack Morrow, who was murdered just a short time before Gary Lasch, Fran reminded herself.

  It was ten o’clock. She debated going for a run but then decided she really didn’t feel like doing that today. Maybe I’ll see what’s playing at the cinema, she thought. I’ll take in a movie, as Dad would say.

  The phone rang
just as she had picked up the entertainment section of the newspaper to begin her search for the right film, at the right theater, at the right time.

  It was Tim Mason. “Surprise,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. I called Gus, and he gave me your phone number.”

  “Not at all. If this is a sports survey, even though I lived in California for fourteen years, the Yankees are my team. I also want Ebbets Field to be rebuilt. And I have to say that between the Giants and Jets, it’s close, but given a choice at the altar, I’d choose the Giants.”

  Mason laughed. “That’s what I like—a woman who can make up her mind. Actually I called to see if, by any chance, you might have nothing better to do and would therefore consider meeting me for brunch at Neary’s.”

  Neary’s Restaurant was virtually around the corner from Fran’s apartment, on Fifty-seventh Street.

  Fran realized that she was not only surprised but pleased at the invitation. She had resented the way, when they met, Mason’s eyes had reflected his awareness of who she was and who her father had been, but then she had told herself she had to expect that reaction. It wasn’t his fault that he knew her father was a thief.

  “Thank you. I’d like that,” she said sincerely.

  “Noon?”

  “Great.”

  “Please don’t dress up.”

  “I wasn’t planning to dress up. Day of rest and all that.”

  After Fran hung up she talked aloud to herself for the second time that morning: “Now what is this all about?” she asked. “It sure as blazes isn’t old-fashioned boy-meets-girl.”

  Fran arrived at Neary’s to find Tim Mason deep in conversation with the bartender. He was wearing an open-necked sport shirt, dark green corduroy jacket, and tan slacks. His hair was rumpled, and his jacket felt cold when she touched his arm.

  “I get the feeling you didn’t take a cab,” she said as he turned to look at her.

  “I don’t like all those reminders about buckling your seatbelt,” he said. “So I walked. Good to see you, Fran.” He smiled down at her.

  Fran was wearing ankle boots with low heels and realized that she felt the way she had in the first grade—short.

  A smiling Jimmy Neary gave them one of his four corner tables, which immediately signaled to Fran that Tim Mason must be a favorite regular patron. In the weeks since she had moved to New York, she had come here once before, with a couple from her apartment building. They’d been given a corner table then, too, and they had explained its significance to her.

  Over bloody marys, Tim talked about himself. “My folks left Greenwich when they got divorced,” he told her. “It was the year after college, and I was working for the Greenwich Time. The editor called me a cub reporter, but actually I was mostly a gofer. That was the last time I lived there.”

  “How many years ago was that?” Fran asked.

  “Fourteen.”

  She made a quick mental calculation. “That’s why, when we met, you recognized my name. You knew about my father.”

  He shrugged. “Yes.” His smile was apologetic.

  The waitress handed them menus, but they both ordered eggs Benedict without even looking at the options. When the waitress was gone, Tim took a sip of his bloody mary, then said, “You haven’t asked, but I’m going to give you the story of my life, which I think you’ll find particularly enthralling since you obviously know your sports.”

  We’re actually not too dissimilar, Fran thought as she listened to Tim talking about his early job, broadcasting the high school games in a small town she had never heard of in upstate New York. Then she told him about being an intern at a local cable system in a town located near San Diego, where the most exciting event was the town council meeting.

  “Starting out, you take whatever job you can get,” she said as he nodded in agreement.

  He, too, was an only child, but unlike her, he did not have stepsiblings.

  “After the divorce my mother moved to Bronxville,” he explained. “That’s where both she and my father had been raised. She bought a townhouse. Guess what? My father bought one in the same complex. They never got along when they were married, but now they go out on dates, and on holidays we go to his place for cocktails and hers for dinner. It confused me at first, but it seems to work for them.”

  “Well, I’m pleased to say my mother is very happy, and with good reason,” Fran said. “She’s been remarried for eight years. She figured that I’d be coming back to New York eventually and suggested I take my stepfather’s name. You certainly know how much publicity there was about my father.”

  He nodded. “Yes, there was. Were you tempted to do that?”

  Fran folded and unfolded her cocktail napkin. “No, never.”

  “Are you sure it’s wise for you to be the one to research a program set in Greenwich?”

  “Probably not wise, but why do you ask?”

  “Fran, I was at a wake in Greenwich last night, for a woman I knew growing up. She died of a heart attack at Lasch Hospital. Her son is my friend, and he’s terribly angry. Seems to feel more could have been done for her and thinks that, while you’re at it, you should investigate the treatment they give patients at the hospital.”

  “Could more have been done for his mother?”

  “I don’t know. He may have been just crazy with grief, although I wouldn’t be surprised if you hear from him. His name is Billy Gallo.”

  “Why would he call me?”

  “Because he heard you were seen in the coffee shop at Lasch Hospital on Friday. I bet by now everyone in town has heard you were there.”

  Fran shook her head in disbelief. “I didn’t think I’d been on air long enough for people to recognize me so easily. I’m sorry about that,” she said with a shrug. “I did pick up an interesting piece of information though, just by chatting with a volunteer in the coffee shop. She probably would have clammed up if she had known I was a reporter.”

  “Was this visit connected to the program you’re doing on Molly Lasch?” he asked.

  “Yes, although mostly for background,” she said, not anxious to go into the Molly Lasch investigation. “Tim, do you know Joe Hutnik at the Greenwich Time?”

  “Yes. Joe was there when I was on the staff. A good guy. Why do you ask?”

  “Joe doesn’t think much of HMOs in general, but he seems to think that Remington Health Management is no worse than the rest of them.”

  “Well, Billy Gallo doesn’t think so.” He saw a look of concern on her face. “But don’t worry. He’s really a nice guy—just very upset right now.”

  As the table was cleared and coffee served, Fran looked around. Almost every table was taken now, and there was a cheerful bustle in the cozy pub. Tim Mason is a really nice guy, she thought. Maybe his friend is going to call me, and maybe he isn’t. Tim’s real message is that I’m in the spotlight in Greenwich, and that the old stories—and jokes—about my father’s death are being revived.

  As Fran looked around the room, she did not see Tim Mason’s compassionate glance, nor did she realize that the expression in her eyes brought back to him vividly the image of the teenage girl mourning her father.

  34

  Annamarie Scalli had agreed to meet Molly at eight o’clock at a diner in Rowayton, a town ten miles northeast of Greenwich.

  The location and the hour had been Annamarie’s suggestion. “It’s not fancy, and it’s quiet on Sunday, especially that late,” she had said. “And I’m sure neither one of us wants to bump into anyone we know.”

  At six o’clock—much too early, she knew—Molly was ready to leave. She had changed clothes twice, feeling too dressed up in the black suit she first put on, then too casual in denims. She finally settled on dark blue wool slacks and a white turtleneck sweater. She twisted her hair into a chignon and pinned it up, remembering how Gary had liked her to wear it that way, especially liked the tendrils that escaped and fell loosely on her neck and ears. He said it made her look real.

  “You a
lways look so perfect, Molly,” he would tell her. “Perfect and elegant and well bred. You manage to make a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt look like formal dress.”

  At the time she thought he’d been teasing her. Now she wasn’t sure. It was what she needed to find out. Husbands talk to their girlfriends about their wives, she thought. I need to know what Gary told Annamarie Scalli about me. And while I’m asking questions, there’s something else I want to talk to her about: what she was doing the night Gary died. After all, she had a good reason to be very, very angry with him too. I heard the way she spoke to him on the phone.

  At seven o’clock, Molly decided it finally was reasonable to leave for Rowayton. She took her Burberry from the downstairs closet and was headed toward the door when, as a last-minute thought, she went back up to her bedroom, took a plain blue scarf from the drawer, and searched until she found a pair of oversized Cartier sunglasses, a style that had been fashionable six years ago but probably was dated now. Well, at least they will give me a sense of being disguised, she decided.

  At one time the three-car garage had held her BMW convertible, Gary’s Mercedes sedan, and the black van he had bought two years before he died. Molly remembered how surprised she’d been when Gary showed up with it one day. “You don’t fish, you don’t hunt, you wouldn’t be caught dead on a campground. You’ve got a big trunk in the Mercedes, easily big enough for your golf clubs. So what’s with the van?”

  It had not occurred to her at the time that, for his own purposes, Gary might have wanted a vehicle that looked exactly like dozens of other vans in the area.

  After Gary’s death, his cousin had arranged for his cars to be picked up. When Molly went to prison, she had asked her parents to sell hers. As soon as her parole was granted they had celebrated by buying her a new car, a dark blue sedan she’d selected from the sales brochures they sent.

  She had looked at the car the day she came home, but now she got in it for the first time, enjoying the smell of the new leather. It had been nearly six years since she had driven, and suddenly she found the feel of the ignition key in her hand to be very liberating.