The photographer for the clinic had been snapping pictures. A moment later he yelled, “Okay kids, thanks.” The children scattered, and Jonathan ran to his mother. Dina Anderson scooped up her son in her arms. “I can’t imagine life without him,” she said. “And in about ten days we’ll have Ryan.”
What a human interest segment that would make, Meghan thought. “Mrs. Anderson,” she said persuasively, “if you’re willing, I’d like to talk to my boss about doing a feature story on your twins.”
11
On the way back to Newtown, Meghan used the car phone to call her mother. Her alarm at getting the answering machine turned to relief when she dialed the inn and was told Mrs. Collins was in the dining room. “Tell her I’m on my way,” she instructed the receptionist, “and that I’ll meet her there.”
For the next fifteen minutes Meghan drove as though on automatic pilot. She was excited about the possibility of the feature story she would pitch to Weicker. And she could get some guidance on it from Mac. He was a specialist in genetics. He’d be able to give her expert advice and reading material she could study to know more about the whole spectrum of assisted reproduction, including the statistics on success and failure rates. When the traffic slowed to a halt, she picked up her car phone and dialed his number.
Kyle answered. Meghan raised her eyebrow at the way his tone changed when he realized she was the caller. What’s eating him? she wondered, as he pointedly ignored her greeting and passed the phone to his father.
“Hi, Meghan. What can I do for you?” As always the sound of Mac’s voice gave Meghan a stab of familiar pain. She’d called him her best friend when she was ten, had a crush on him when she was twelve, and had fallen in love with him by the time she was sixteen. Three years later he married Ginger. She’d been at the wedding, and it was one of the hardest days of her life. Mac had been crazy about Ginger, and Meg suspected that even after seven years, if Ginger had walked in the door and dropped her suitcase, he’d still want her. Meg would never let herself admit that no matter how hard she tried, she’d never been able to stop loving Mac.
“I could use some professional help, Mac.” As the car passed the blocked lane and picked up speed, she explained the visit to the clinic and the story she was putting together. “And I sort of need the information in a hurry so I can pitch the whole thing to my boss.”
“I can give it to you right away. Kyle and I are just heading for the inn. I’ll bring it along. Want to join us for dinner?”
“That works out fine. See you.” She broke the connection.
It was nearly seven when she reached the outskirts of town. The temperature was dropping, and the afternoon breeze had turned to gusts of wind. The headlights caught the trees, still heavy with leaves that were now restlessly moving, sending shadows over the road. At this moment, they made her think of the dark, choppy water of the Hudson.
Concentrate on how you’ll pitch the idea of doing a special on the Manning Clinic to Weicker, she told herself fiercely.
Phillip Carter was in Drumdoe, at a window table set for three. He waved Meghan over. “Catherine’s in the kitchen giving the chef a hard time,” he told her. “The people over there”—he nodded to a nearby table—“wanted the beef rare. Your mother said what they got could have passed for a hockey puck. In fact, it was medium rare.”
Meghan sank into a chair and smiled. “The best thing that could happen to her would be if the chef quit. Then she’d have to get back in the kitchen. It would keep her mind off things.” She reached across the table and touched Carter’s hand. “Thanks for coming over.”
“I hope you haven’t eaten. I’ve managed to make Catherine promise to join me.”
“That’s great, but how about if I have coffee with you? Mac and Kyle should be here any minute, and I said I’d join them. The truth is, I need to pick Mac’s brain.”
At dinner, Kyle continued to be aloof to Meghan. Finally she raised her eyebrows in a questioning look at Mac, who shrugged and murmured, “Don’t ask me.” Mac cautioned her about the feature story she was planning. “You’re right. There are a lot of failures, and it’s a very expensive procedure.”
Meg looked across the table at Mac and his son. They were so alike. She remembered the way her father had pressed her hand at Mac’s wedding. He’d understood. He’d always understood her.
When they were ready to leave, she said, “I’ll sit with Mother and Phillip for a few minutes.” She put an arm around Kyle. “See you, buddy.”
He pulled away.
“Hey, come on,” Meghan said. “What’s all this about?”
To her surprise she saw tears well in his eyes. “I thought you were my friend.” He turned swiftly and ran to the door.
“I’ll get it out of him,” Mac promised as he rushed to catch up with his son.
At seven o’clock, in nearby Bridgewater, Dina Anderson was holding Jonathan on her lap and sharing ice cream with him as she told her husband about the party at the Manning Clinic. “We may be famous,” she said. “Meghan Collins, that reporter from Channel 3, wants to get the go-ahead from her boss to be in the hospital when the baby is born and get early pictures of Jonathan with his brand-new brother. If her boss agrees, she might want to do updates from time to time on how they interact.”
Donald Anderson looked doubtful. “Honey, I’m not sure we need that kind of publicity.”
“Oh, come on. It could be fun. And I agree with Meghan that if more people who want babies understood the different kinds of assisted birth, they’d realize IVF really is a viable option. This guy was certainly worth all the expense and effort.”
“This guy’s head is going in your coffee.” Anderson got up, walked around the table and took his son from his wife’s arms. “Bedtime for Bonzo,” he announced, then added, “If you want to do it, it’s okay with me. I guess it would be fun to have some professional tapes of the kids.”
Dina watched affectionately as her blue-eyed, blond husband carried her equally fair child to the staircase. She had all Jonathan’s baby pictures in readiness. It would be such fun to compare them with Ryan’s pictures. She still had one cryopreserved embryo at the clinic. In two years we’ll try for another baby, and maybe that one will look like me, she thought, glancing across the room to the mirror over the serving table. She studied her reflection, her olive skin, hazel eyes, coal black hair. “That wouldn’t be too bad a deal either,” she murmured to herself.
At the inn, lingering over a second cup of coffee with her mother and Phillip, Meghan listened as he soberly discussed her father’s disappearance.
“Edwin’s borrowing so heavily on his insurance without telling you plays right into the insurers’ hands. As they told you, they’re taking it as a signal that for his own reasons he was accumulating cash. Just as they won’t pay his personal insurance, I’ve been notified they won’t settle the partnership insurance either, which would be paid to you as satisfaction for his senior partnership in Executive Search.”
“Which means,” Catherine Collins said quietly, “that because I cannot prove my husband is dead I stand to lose everything. Phillip, is Edwin owed any more money for past work?”
His answer was simple. “No.”
“How is the headhunter business this year?”
“Not good.”
“You’ve advanced us $45,000 while we’ve been waiting for Edwin’s body to be found.”
He suddenly looked stern. “Catherine, I’m glad to do it. I only wish I could increase it. When we have proof of Ed’s death, you can repay me out of the business insurance.”
She put a hand over his. “I can’t let you do that, Phillip. Old Pat would spin in his grave if he thought I was living on borrowed money. The fact is, unless we can find some proof that Edwin did die in that accident, I will lose the place my father spent his life creating, and I’ll have to sell my home.” She looked at Meghan. “Thank God I have you, Meggie.” That was when Meghan decided not to drive back to New York City as
she had planned, but to stay the night.
When she and her mother got back to the house, by unspoken consent they did not talk any more about the man who had been husband and father. Instead they watched the ten o’clock news, then prepared for bed. Meghan knocked on the door of her mother’s bedroom to say good night. She realized that she no longer thought of it as her parents’ room. When she opened the door, she saw with a thrust of pain that her mother had moved her pillows to the center of the bed.
Meghan knew that was a clear message that if Edwin Collins was alive, there was no room for him anymore in this house.
12
Bernie Heffernan spent Sunday evening with his mother, watching television in the shabby sitting room of their bungalow-type home in Jackson Heights. He vastly preferred watching from the communications center he had created in the crudely finished basement room, but always stayed upstairs until his mother went to bed at ten. Since her fall ten years earlier, she never went near the rickety basement stairs.
Meghan’s segment about the Manning Clinic was aired on the six o’clock news. Bernie stared at the screen, perspiration beading his brow. If he were downstairs now, he could be taping Meghan on his VCR.
“Bernard!” Mama’s sharp voice broke into his reverie.
He plastered on a smile. “Sorry, Mama.”
Her eyes were enlarged behind the rimless bifocals. “I asked you if they ever found that woman’s father.”
He’d mentioned Meghan’s father to Mama once and always regretted it. He patted his mother’s hand. “I told her that we’re praying for her, Mama.”
He didn’t like the way Mama looked at him. “You’re not thinking on that woman, are you, Bernard?”
“No, Mama. Of course not, Mama.”
After his mother went to bed, Bernie went down to the basement. He felt tired and dispirited. There was only one way to get some relief.
He began his calls immediately. First the religious station in Atlanta. Using the voice-altering device, he shouted insults at the preacher until he was cut off. Then he dialed a talk show in Massachusetts and told the host he’d overheard a murder plot against him.
At eleven he began calling women whose names he had checked off in the phone book. One by one he warned them that he was about to break in. From the sound of their voices he could picture how they looked. Young and pretty. Old. Plain. Slim. Heavy. Mentally he’d create the face, filling in the details of their features with each additional word they said.
Except tonight. Tonight they all had the same face.
Tonight they all looked like Meghan Collins.
13
When Meghan went downstairs Monday morning at six-thirty she found her mother already in the kitchen. The aroma of coffee filled the room, juice had been poured and bread was in the toaster. Meghan’s protest that her mother should not have gotten up so early died on her lips. From the deep shadows around Catherine Collins’ eyes, it was clear that she had slept little if at all.
Like me, Meghan thought, as she reached for the coffeepot. “Mother, I’ve done a lot of thinking,” she said. Carefully choosing her words, she continued, “I can’t understand a single reason why Dad would choose to disappear. Let’s say there was another woman. That certainly could happen, but if it did, Dad could have asked you for a divorce. You’d have been devastated, of course, and I’d have been angry for you, but in the end we’re both realists, and Dad knew that. The insurance companies are hanging everything on the fact that they haven’t found either his body or the car, and that he borrowed against his own policies. But they were his policies, and as you said, he may have wanted to make some kind of investment he knew you wouldn’t approve of. It is possible.”
“Anything’s possible,” Catherine Collins said quietly, “including the fact that I don’t know what to do.”
“I do. We’re going to file suit demanding payment of those policies, including double indemnity for accidental death. We’re not going to sit back and let those people tell us that Dad pulled this on you.”
At seven o’clock Mac and Kyle sat across from each other at their kitchen table. Kyle had gone to bed still refusing to discuss his coolness toward Meg, but this morning his mood had changed. “I was thinking,” he began.
Mac smiled. “That’s a good start.”
“I mean it. Remember last night Meg was talking about the case she was covering in court all day Wednesday?”
“Yes.”
“Then she couldn’t have been up here Wednesday afternoon.”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Then I didn’t see her drive by the house.”
Mac looked into his son’s serious eyes. “No, you wouldn’t have seen her Wednesday afternoon. I’m sure of that.”
“I guess it was just somebody who looked a lot like her.” Kyle’s relieved smile revealed two missing teeth. He glanced down at Jake, who was stretched out under the table. “Now, by the time Meg gets a chance to see Jake when she comes home next weekend, he’ll be perfect at begging.”
At the sound of his name, Jake jumped up and lifted his front paws.
“I’d say he’s perfect at begging now,” Mac said dryly.
Meghan drove directly to the West Fifty-sixth Street garage entrance of the PCD building. Bernie had the driver’s door open at the exact moment she shifted into Park. “Hi, Miss Collins.” His beaming smile and warm voice brought a responsive smile to her lips. “My mother and I saw you at that clinic, I mean we saw the news last night with you on. Must have been fun to be with all those kids.” His hand came out to assist her from the car.
“They were awfully cute, Bernie,” Meghan agreed.
“My mother said it seems kind of weird—you know what I mean—having babies the way those people do. I’m not much for all these crazy scientific fads.”
Breakthroughs, not fads, Meghan thought. “I know what you mean,” she said. “It does seem a little like something out of Brave New World.”
Bernie stared blankly at her.
“See you.” She headed for the elevator, her leather folder tucked under her arm.
Bernie watched her go, then got in her car and drove it down to the lower level of the garage. Deliberately he put it in a dark corner at the far wall. During lunch break all the guys chose a car to relax in, where they’d eat and read the paper or doze. The only management rule was to make sure you didn’t smear ketchup on the upholstery. Ever since some dope burned the leather armrest of a Mercedes, no one was allowed to smoke, even in cars where the ashtray was filled with butts. The point was, nobody saw anything funny about always taking a break in the same car or the same couple of cars. Bernie felt happy sitting in Meghan’s Mustang. It had a hint of the perfume she always wore.
Meghan’s desk was in the bull pen on the 30th floor. Swiftly she read the assignment sheet. At eleven o’clock she was to be at the arraignment of an indicted inside stock trader.
Her phone rang. It was Tom Weicker. “Meg, can you come in right away?”
There were two men in Weicker’s private office. Meghan recognized one of them, Jamal Nader, a softspoken black detective whom she’d run into a number of times in court. They greeted each other warmly. Weicker introduced the other man as Lt. Story.
“Lt. Story is in charge of the homicide you covered the other night. I gave him the fax you received.”
Nader shook his head. “That dead girl really is a look-alike for you, Meghan.”
“Has she been identified?” Meghan asked.
“No.” Nader hesitated. “But she seems to have known you.”
“Known me?” Meghan stared at him. “How do you figure that?”
“When they brought her into the morgue Thursday night they went through her clothing and found nothing. They sent everything to the district attorney’s office to be stored as evidence. One of our guys went over it again. The lining of the jacket pocket had a deep fold. He found a sheet of paper torn from a Drumdoe Inn notepad. It had your name and direct ph
one number at WPCD written on it.”
“My name!”
Lt. Story reached into his pocket. The piece of paper was encased in plastic. He held it up. “Your first name and the number.”
Meghan and the two detectives were standing at Tom Weicker’s desk. Meghan gripped the desktop as she stared at the bold letters, the slanted printing of the numbers. She felt her lips go dry.
“Miss Collins, do you recognize that handwriting?” Story asked sharply.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Who . . . ?”
She turned her head, not wanting to see that familiar writing anymore. “My father wrote that,” she whispered.
14
On Monday morning, Phillip Carter reached the office at eight o’clock. As usual he was the first to arrive. The staff was small, consisting of Jackie, his fifty-year-old secretary, the mother of teenagers; Milly, the grandmotherly part-time bookkeeper; and Victor Orsini.
Carter had his own computer adjacent to his desk. In it he kept files that only he could access, files that listed his personal data. His friends joked about his love for going to land auctions, but they would have been astonished at the amount of rural property he had quietly amassed over the years. Unfortunately for him, much of the land he had acquired cheaply had been lost in his divorce settlement. The property he bought at sky-high prices he acquired after the divorce.
As he inserted the key in the computer he reflected that when Jackie and Milly learned that Edwin Collins’ presumed death was being challenged, they would not lack for noon-hour gossip.
His essential sense of privacy recoiled at the notion that he would ever be the subject of one of the avid discussions Jackie and Milly shared as they lunched on salads that seemed to him to consist mostly of alfalfa sprouts.
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