“Anything wrong, Catherine?” he asked quickly. “The police haven’t been bothering you, have they?”
“No, not really. I’m going through Edwin’s files, the copies of his expense accounts, that sort of thing. You know what Meg pointed out?” She did not wait for an answer. “There are times when even though Edwin was billed for four or five days in a hotel, after the first day or two there were absolutely no additional charges on his bill. Not even for a drink or a bottle of wine at the end of the day. Did you ever notice that?”
“No. I wouldn’t be the one to look at Edwin’s expense accounts, Catherine.”
“All the files I have seem to go back seven years. Is there a reason for that?”
“That would be right. That’s as long as you’re supposed to retain records for possible audit. Of course the IRS will go back much further if they suspect deliberate fraud.”
“What I’m seeing is that whenever Edwin was in California that pattern of noncharges showed up in the hotel bills. He seemed to go to California a great deal.”
“California was where it was at, Catherine. We used to make a lot of placements there. It’s just changed in the last few years.”
“Then you never wondered about his frequent trips to California?”
“Catherine, Edwin was my senior partner. We both always went where we thought we’d find business.”
“I’m sorry, Phillip. I don’t mean to suggest that you should have seen something that I as Edwin’s wife of thirty years never even suspected.”
“Another woman?”
“Possibly.”
“It’s such a rotten time for you,” Phillip said veheently. “How’s Meg doing? Is she with you?”
“Meg’s fine. She’s away today. It would be the one day her boss phoned her.”
“Are you free for dinner tonight?”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m meeting Mac and Kyle at the inn.” Catherine hesitated. “Do you want to join us?”
“I don’t think so, thanks. How about tomorrow night?”
“It depends on when Meg gets back. May I call you?”
“Of course. Take care of yourself. Remember, I’m here for you.”
Two hours later Phillip was being interrogated in Assistant State Attorney John Dwyer’s office. Special investigators Bob Marron and Arlene Weiss were present with Dwyer, who was asking the questions. Some of them were the same ones Catherine had raised.
“Didn’t you at any time suspect your partner might be leading a double life?”
“No.”
“Do you think so now?”
“With that dead girl in the morgue in New York who looks like Meghan? With Meghan herself requesting DNA tests? Of course I think so.”
“From the pattern of Edwin Collins’ travels, can you suggest where he might have been involved in an intimate relationship?”
“No, I can’t.”
The assistant state attorney looked exasperated. “Mr. Carter, I get the feeling that everyone who was close to Edwin Collins is trying in one way or another to protect him. Let me put it this way. We believe he is alive. If he had another situation, particularly a long-term one, he may be there now. Just off the top of your head, where do you think that could be?”
“I simply don’t know,” Phillip repeated.
“All right, Mr. Carter,” Dwyer said brusquely. “Will you give us permission to go through all the Collins and Carter files if we deem it necessary, or will it be necessary to subpoena them?”
“I wish you would go through the files!” Phillip snapped. “Do anything you can to bring this dreadful business to a conclusion and let decent people get on with their lives.”
On his way back to the office, Phillip Carter realized he had no desire for a solitary evening. From his car phone he again dialed Catherine’s number. When she answered, he said, “Catherine, I’ve changed my mind. If you and Mac and Kyle can put up with me, I’d very much like to have dinner with you tonight.”
At three o’clock, from her hotel room, Meghan phoned home. It would be five o’clock in Connecticut, and she wanted to be able to talk to her mother before the dinner hour at the inn.
It was a painful conversation. Unable to find words to soften the impact, she told about the grueling meeting with Frances Grolier. “It was pretty awful,” she concluded. “She’s devastated, of course. Annie was her only child.”
“How old was Annie, Meg?” her mother asked quietly.
“I don’t know. A little younger than I am, I think.”
“I see. That means they were together for many years.”
“Yes, it does,” Meghan agreed, thinking of the photographs she had just seen. “Mom, there’s something else. Frances seems to think that Dad is still alive.”
“She can’t think he’s still alive!”
“She does. I don’t know more than that. I’m going to stay in this hotel until I hear from her. She said she wants to talk to me.”
“What more could she have to say to you, Meg?”
“She still doesn’t know very much about Annie’s death.” Meghan realized she was too emotionally drained to talk any more. “Mom, I’m going to get off the phone now. If you get a chance to tell Mac about this without Kyle hearing, go ahead.”
Meghan had been sitting on the edge of the bed. When she said goodbye to her mother, she leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes.
She was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. She sat up, aware that the room was dark and chilly. The lighted face of the clock radio showed that it was five past eight. She leaned over and picked up the phone. To her own ears, her voice sounded strained and husky when she murmured, “Hello.”
“Meghan, this is Frances Grolier. Will you come and see me tomorrow morning as early as possible?”
“Yes.” It seemed insulting to ask her how she was. How could any woman in her situation be? Instead, Meghan asked, “Would nine o’clock be all right?”
“Yes, and thank you.”
Although grief was etched deeply in her face, Frances Grolier seemed composed the next morning when she opened the door for Meghan. “I’ve made coffee,” she said.
They sat on the couch, holding the cups, their bodies angled stiffly toward each other. Grolier did not waste words. “Tell me how Annie died,” she commanded. “Tell me everything. I need to know.”
Meghan began, “I was on assignment in Roosevelt-St. Luke’s Hospital in New York . . .” As in the conversation with her mother, she did not attempt to be gentle. She told about the fax message she had gotten, Mistake. Annie was a mistake.
Grolier leaned forward, her eyes blazing. “What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know.” She continued, omitting nothing, beginning with the note found in Annie’s pocket, including Helene Petrovic’s false credentials and death and finishing with the warrant issued for her father’s arrest. “His car was found. You may or may not know that Dad had a gun permit. His gun was in the car and was the weapon that killed Helene Petrovic. I do not and cannot believe that he could take anyone’s life.”
“Nor do I.”
“Last night you told me you thought my father might be alive.”
“I think it’s possible.” Frances Grolier said, “Meghan, after today I hope we never meet again. It would be too difficult for me and, I suppose, for you as well. But you and your mother are owed an explanation.
“I met your father twenty-seven years ago in the Palomino Leather Shop. He was buying a purse for your mother and debating between two of them. He asked me to help make the choice, then invited me to lunch. That’s how it began.”
“He’d only been married three years at that time,” Meghan said quietly. “I know my father and mother were happy together. I don’t understand why he needed a relationship with you.” She felt she sounded accusing and pitiless, but she couldn’t help it.
“I knew he was married,” Grolier said. “He showed me your picture, your mother’s picture. On the surfa
ce, Edwin had it all: charm, looks, wit, intelligence. Inwardly he was, or is, a desperately insecure man. Meghan, try to understand and forgive him. In so many ways your father was still that hurt child who feared he might be abandoned again. He needed to know he had another place to go, a place where someone would take him in.”
Her eyes welled with tears. “It suited us both. I was in love with him but didn’t want the responsibility of marriage. I wanted only to be free to become the best sculptor that I was capable of being. For me the relationship worked, open-ended and without demands.”
“Wasn’t a child a demand, a responsibility?” Meghan asked.
“Annie wasn’t part of the plan. When I was expecting her, we bought this place and told people that we were married. After that, your father was desperately torn, always trying to be a good father to both of you, always feeling he was failing both of you.”
“Didn’t he worry about being discovered?” Meghan asked. “About someone bumping into him here the way his stepbrother did?”
“He was haunted by that fear. As she grew up, Annie asked more and more questions about his job. She wasn’t buying the story that he had a top-secret government job. She was becoming known as a travel writer. You were being seen on television. When Edwin had terrible chest pains last November he wouldn’t let himself be admitted to the hospital for observation. He wanted to get back to Connecticut. He said, ‘If I die, you can tell Annie I was on some kind of government assignment.’ The next time he came he gave me a bearer bond for two hundred thousand dollars.”
The insurance loan, Meghan thought.
“He said that if anything happened to him, you and your mother were well taken care of, but I was not.”
Meghan did not contradict Frances Grolier. She knew it had not occurred to Grolier that because his body had not been found a death certificate had not been issued for her father. And she knew with certainty that her mother would lose everything rather than take the money back that her father had given this woman.
“When was the last time you saw my father?” she asked.
“He left here on January twenty-seventh. He was going to San Diego to see Annie, then take a flight home on the morning of the twenty-eighth.”
“Why do you believe he’s still alive?” Meghan had to ask before she left. More than anything, she wanted to get away from this woman whom she realized she both deeply pitied and bitterly resented.
“Because when he left he was terribly upset. He’d learned something about his assistant that horrified him.”
“Victor Orsini?”
“That’s the name.”
“What did he learn?”
“I don’t know. But business had not been good for several years. Then there was a write-up in the local paper about a seventieth birthday party that had been given for Dr. George Manning by his daughter, who lives about thirty miles from here. The article quoted Dr. Manning as saying that he planned to work one more year, then retire. Your father said that the Manning Clinic was a client, and he called Dr. Manning. He wanted to suggest that he be commissioned to start the search for Manning’s replacement. That conversation upset him terribly.”
“Why?” Meghan asked urgently. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try to remember. Please. It’s very important.”
Grolier shook her head. “When Edwin was leaving, his last words were, ‘It’s becoming too much for me . . .’ All the papers carried the story of the bridge accident. I believed he was dead and told people he had been killed in a light-plane accident abroad. Annie wasn’t satisfied with that explanation.
“When he visited her at her apartment that last day, Edwin gave Annie money to buy some clothes. Six one-hundred-dollar bills. He obviously didn’t realize that the slip of Drumdoe Inn notepaper with your name and number fell out of his wallet. She found it after he left and kept it.”
Frances Grolier’s lip quivered. Her voice broke as she said, “Two weeks ago, Annie came here for what you’d call a showdown. She had phoned your number. You’d answered ‘Meghan Collins,’ and she hung up. She wanted to see her father’s death certificate. She called me a liar and demanded to know where he was. I finally told her the truth and begged her not to contact you or your mother. She knocked over that bust I’d sculpted of Ed and stormed out of here. I never saw her again.”
Grolier stood up, placed her hand on the mantel and leaned her forehead against it. “I spoke to my lawyer last night. He’s going to accompany me to New York tomorrow afternoon to identify Annie’s body and arrange to have it brought back here. I’m sorry for the embarrassment this will cause you and your mother.”
Meghan had only one more question she needed to ask. “Why did you leave that message for Dad the other night?”
“Because I thought if he were still alive, if that line were still connected, he might check it out of habit. It was my way of contacting him in case of emergency. He used to beep in to that answering machine early every morning.” She faced Meghan again.
“Let no one tell you that Edwin Collins is capable of killing anyone, because he isn’t.” She paused. “But he is capable of beginning a new life that does not include you and your mother. Or Annie and me.”
Frances Grolier turned away again. There was nothing left to say. Meghan took a last look at the bronze bust of her father and left, closing the door quietly behind her.
49
On Wednesday morning, as soon as Kyle was on the school bus, Mac left for Valley Memorial Hospital in Trenton, New Jersey.
At dinner the night before, when Kyle had left the table for a moment, Catherine had quickly told Mac and Phillip about Meghan’s call. “I don’t know very much except that this woman has had a long-term relationship with Edwin; she thinks he’s still alive, and the dead girl who looks like Meg was her daughter.”
“You seem to be taking it very well,” Phillip had commented, “or are you still in denial?”
“I don’t know what I feel anymore,” Catherine had answered, “and I’m worried about Meg. You know how she felt about her father. I never heard anyone sound so hurt as she did when she called earlier.” Then Kyle was back and they changed the subject.
Driving south on Route 684 through Westchester, Mac tried to tear his thoughts away from Meghan. She had been crazy about Edwin Collins, a real Daddy’s girl. He knew that these past months since she’d thought her father was dead had been hell for her. How many times Mac had wanted to ask her to talk it out with him, not to hold everything inside. Maybe he should have insisted on breaking through her reserve. God, how much time he had wasted nursing his wounded pride over Ginger’s dumping him.
At last we’re getting honest, he told himself. Everybody knew you were making a mistake tying up with Ginger. You could feel the reaction when the engagement was announced. Meg had the guts to say it straight out, and she was only nineteen. In her letter she’d written that she loved him and that he ought to have the sense to know she was the only girl for him. “Wait for me, Mac,” was the way she’d ended it.
He hadn’t thought about that letter for a long time. Now he found that he was thinking about it a lot.
It was inevitable that as soon as Annie’s body was claimed, it would be public knowledge that Edwin had led a double life. Would Catherine decide she didn’t want to live in the same area where everyone had known Ed, that she would rather start fresh somewhere else? It could happen, especially if she lost the inn. That would mean Meg wouldn’t be around either. The thought made Mac’s blood run cold.
You can’t change the past, Mac thought, but you can do something about the future. Finding Edwin Collins if he’s still alive, or learning what happened to him if he’s not, would release Meg and Catherine from the misery of uncertainty. Finding the doctor Helene Petrovic might have dated when she was a secretary at the Dowling Center in Trenton could be the first step to solving her murder.
Mac normally enjoyed driving. It was a good time for thinking. T
oday, however, his thoughts were in a jumble, filled with unsettled issues. The trip across Westchester to the Tappan Zee Bridge seemed longer than usual. The Tappan Zee Bridge—where it all began almost ten months ago, he thought.
It was another hour-and-a-half drive from there to Trenton. Mac arrived at Valley Memorial Hospital at ten-thirty and asked for the director. “I called yesterday and was told he could see me.”
Frederick Schuller was a compact man of about forty-five whose thoughtful demeanor was belied by his quick, warm smile. “I’ve heard of you, Dr. MacIntyre. Your work in human gene therapy is becoming pretty exciting, I gather.”
“It is exciting,” Mac agreed. “We’re on the cutting edge of finding the way to prevent an awful lot of diseases. The hardest job is to have the patience for trial and error when there are so many people waiting for answers.”
“I agree. I don’t have that kind of patience, which is why I’d never have been a good researcher. Which means that since you’re giving up a day to drive down here, you must have a very good reason. My secretary said that it’s urgent.”
Mac nodded. He was glad to get to the point. “I’m here because of the Manning Clinic scandal.”
Schuller frowned. “That really is a terrible situation. I can’t believe that any woman who worked in our Dowling facility as a secretary was able to get away with passing herself off as an embryologist. Somebody dropped the ball on that one.”
“Or somebody trained a very capable student, although trained her not well enough, obviously. They’re finding a lot of problems in that lab, and we’re talking about major problems like possibly mislabeling test tubes containing cryopreserved embryos or even deliberately destroying them.”
“If any field is calling for national legislation, assisted reproduction is first on the list. The potential for mistakes is enormous. Fertilize an egg with the wrong semen, and if the embryo is successfully transferred, an infant is born whose genetic structure is fifty percent different from what the parents had the right to expect. The child may have genetically inherited medical problems that can’t be foreseen. It—” He stopped abruptly. “Sorry, I know I’m preaching to the converted. How can I help?”
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