The Shadow of Your Smile Read online

“I certainly understand, Doctor, and I want you to take over as Sally’s pediatrician,” she said hurriedly, when Monica asked her if she had any questions. Then she called into the cubicle, “Kristina, you about ready? I’m running late.”

  She turned back to Monica. “I’ve got a car waiting outside, Doctor,” she explained. “I’ll drop Sally and Kristina at my apartment.” Then, seeing something in Monica’s face, she added, “Of course, I’ll make sure Sally is settled before I leave her.”

  “I’m sure you will. I’ll call you this evening to see how Sally is doing. You will be home, won’t you?” Monica asked, not caring that the tone of her voice was icy and disapproving. She looked at the chart. “This is your correct number, isn’t it?”

  Renée Carter nodded her head impatiently as Monica read off the number, then turned and hurried back into the cubicle. “For Pete’s sake, Kristina,” she snapped, “hurry up! I haven’t got all day.”

  11

  He’s on the warpath, Esther Chambers thought as Greg Gannon strode through her office after lunch on Wednesday without acknowledging her presence. What’s happened since this morning? She watched as he went into his private office and picked up the file she had prepared for him. A moment later he was standing at her desk. “I haven’t had time to go through this stuff,” he snapped. “You’re sure everything is in order?”

  She wanted to snap back, Tell me one time in thirty-five years it hasn’t been in order. Instead she bit her lip and said quietly, “I double-checked, sir.”

  With mounting resentment, she watched as he stalked toward the double glass doors and turned down the corridor that led to the conference room of the Gannon Foundation.

  He’s worried, Esther thought. What’s he got to worry about? His funds are all showing an excellent return, but half the time he’s in a rotten mood. I’m sick of it, she thought wearily, he’s getting worse and worse. With a flash of anger she remembered how Greg’s father was barely in his grave twenty-five years ago when Greg announced he was moving the offices of both the investment firm and the foundation to lavish suites on Park Avenue. That was also when he told her that for appearances’ sake, it would be better if she always addressed him as “Mr. Gannon,” not “Greg.”

  Now they were in even more lavish suites in the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle. “Dad was the little man’s hero, but no more of the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker clients for me,” he had said derisively.

  Not that it didn’t turn out he was right to go after big clients, Esther thought, but he didn’t have to be so dismissive of his father. Maybe he’s a big success now but it sure doesn’t look to me as though he bought himself any happiness with all those mansions of his and his trophy wife. I swear the first words that woman ever uttered were “I WANT.” His sons don’t even talk to him after the way he treated their mother, and he and his brother are probably fighting at the board meeting right now.

  “I’m sick of both of them.” Esther did not realize she had spoken aloud. She looked around quickly but of course there was no one in her office. Even so she felt her cheeks redden. One of these days I will say what I think, and that would not be smart, she warned herself. Why am I hanging around here? I can afford to retire, and when I sell the apartment, I’ll buy a house in Vermont instead of just renting there for a couple of weeks in the summer. The boys love to ski and snowboard. Manchester is a beautiful town and has great skiing nearby . . .

  Her lips relaxed into an unconscious smile as she thought of her sister’s teenaged grandchildren whom she loved as if they were her own. No time like the present, she thought as she swiveled her chair to face her computer desk. Her smile widening, she opened a new file, labeled it “Bye-bye Gannons,” and started to type: “Dear Mr. Gannon, after thirty-five years I feel it is time. . . .”

  The final paragraph read, “If you wish I will be glad to screen possible replacements for my position for one month, unless of course you prefer I leave sooner.”

  Esther signed the letter, and feeling as if she had lifted a weight from her shoulders, put it in an envelope and at five o’clock placed it on Greg Gannon’s desk. She knew that he might stop to check his messages after the board meeting and she wanted him to have a chance to digest the fact of her resignation overnight. He doesn’t like change unless he’s the one who makes it, she thought, and I don’t want him to persuade or bully me into staying longer than a month.

  The receptionist was on the phone. Esther waved good-bye to her and went down in the elevator to the lobby floor, trying to decide if she should take time to shop in the gourmet supermarket on the lower level. I don’t need anything for tonight, she decided. I’ll go straight home.

  She walked up Broadway to her apartment building opposite Lincoln Center, quietly enjoying the brisk temperature and the gusts of wind. Living in Vermont in the winter may be too much for some people, but I enjoy cold weather, she thought. I will miss the activity of the city, but that’s the way it is.

  In her apartment building she stopped at the desk to get her mail. “There are two gentlemen waiting for you, Ms. Chambers,” the concierge told her.

  Puzzled, Esther looked over at the seating area in the lobby. A dark-haired man, neatly dressed, was walking toward her. Speaking quietly so that the concierge could not hear him, he said, “Ms. Chambers, I’m Thomas Desmond from the Securities and Exchange Commission. My associate and I would like to have a word with you.” As he handed her his card, he said, “If possible we would prefer to talk in your apartment, where there’s no chance that we might be overheard.”

  12

  Sammy Barber had not become a successful hit man by behaving impulsively.

  In the most unobtrusive way possible Sammy began to methodically study the daily pattern of Monica Farrell’s comings and goings. Within a few days he was able to establish that she never arrived at the hospital later than 8:30 A.M. and two days out of three returned there at five P.M. Twice she took the Fourteenth Street bus across town from the hospital to her office. The other day she walked in both directions.

  She was a fast walker, he noticed, taking long, graceful strides in her low-heeled boots. He doubted that trying to push her in front of an oncoming bus would work. She never stood perched on the edge of the curb, or tried to beat a light as it was turning red.

  On Friday morning, at eight o’clock, he was sitting in his car on the opposite side of the street from the converted brownstone where she lived. He had already canvassed the neighborhood and knew that there was a wall about four feet high and a narrow alleyway separating the backyard of her residence from the backyard of the identical brownstone directly behind it. He decided it might be possible to get into her building that way.

  When Monica left her apartment at 8:10 Sammy waited until she was safely in a cab, then got out of his car and walked across the street. He was dressed in a hooded ski jacket and wearing dark glasses. Across his chest was a heavy canvas sack with empty boxes protruding from it. He knew that anyone seeing him would think he was a private service messenger.

  Averting his face to avoid the security camera, Sammy opened the door into the outer vestibule of Monica’s residence. In an instant he learned what he had come to find out. There were eight buzzers with name cards next to each of them. Two apartments to a floor, he thought. Monica Farrell was in 1B. That’s got to be the back apartment on this floor. His hands in gloves, he rang the bell of the tenant on the fourth floor, claimed a delivery, and gained entry into the inner hallway. Then, wedging the inner door open with his bag, he immediately called that woman back and claimed he had rung the wrong bell and the delivery was for the tenant in 3B, whose name he read from the card next to that bell.

  “Next time be more careful,” an annoyed voice told him.

  There won’t be a next time, Sammy thought as the door closed behind him. Wanting to know the layout of Monica’s apartment, he walked noiselessly down the long, narrow hall to 1B. He was about to try his string of master key
s to unlock the door when he heard the whine of a vacuum coming from her apartment. Her cleaning woman must be in there, he thought.

  Turning swiftly, he retreated down the hallway. The elevator was descending. He did not want to run into a tenant who might remember him. Moving rapidly now, he left the building. He had learned what he needed to know. Monica Farrell lived on the ground floor in the rear. That meant her apartment was the one with the patio, which meant she has a back door. There’s no lock I can’t open, Sammy thought, and if she has a back window, too, so much the better.

  It’s the best way to handle it, he thought dispassionately. A burglary attempt gone wrong. Intruder apparently got nervous when Dr. Farrell woke up and saw him. It happens every day.

  But as he got back in his car and tossed the delivery bag on the backseat, Sammy’s expression became morose. A dedicated Internet researcher, he had printed out all the information he could find on Monica Farrell. It wasn’t as if she was a celebrity, but that didn’t mean she was just any doctor. She’d written some articles about kids and gotten some awards.

  Who’d want to kill her and why? Sammy wondered. Am I doing it too cheap? That was a question that nagged him as he drove to his apartment on the Lower East Side, his eyes burning for sleep. He had worked at his regular job as bouncer from nine p.m. until four A.M., then gone directly to Monica’s street on the chance that she might have a middle-of-the-night emergency call.

  He’d been prepared for that, with a dark jacket, tie, and limo service ID, figuring that if she did come running out, she might very well take a gypsy limo instead of trying to find a taxi.

  I’m covering a lot of bases, Sammy thought. He pulled off his sweatshirt and jeans and threw himself into bed, too tired to undress fully.

  13

  Cardiologist Dr. Clay Hadley and psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Langdon had gone to medical school together and over the years had kept in close touch. Both in their early fifties, both divorced, and both members of the board of the Gannon Foundation, they had a mutual and very good reason that the foundation should stay in the hands of Greg and Peter Gannon.

  As a young doctor, Clay had been introduced to the Gannons by Olivia Morrow’s mother, Regina, and had quickly grasped the potential value of developing a strong friendship with Greg and Peter. It was not long before he had ingratiated himself onto the foundation board. Later, it was he who had introduced the Gannons to Langdon and suggested that he would make an ideal replacement when one of old Mr. Gannon’s friends retired from the board.

  On Friday evening, he and Langdon met for a cocktail in the Hotel Elysée on East Fifty-fourth and chose a quiet corner table where they felt they could talk privately. Visibly nervous, and aware that his habit of running his fingers through his hair often gave him a disheveled appearance, Clay deliberately clasped his hands on the table. He waited impatiently for the waitress to serve their martinis and get out of earshot, then, his voice low but strained, said, “I found out where Olivia went the other day.”

  His voice equally low, but calm, Langdon asked, “How did you manage that?”

  “One of the maintenance staff in her building tipped me off that she’d met a driver in the lobby and was gone most of Tuesday afternoon. He buys the story that I’m very worried about her health, so he was anxious to help me keep tabs on her, but he didn’t know where she was going. Then yesterday, I remembered that she always uses one car service and called them. Her driver that day, Tony Garcia, was off until this afternoon and they wouldn’t give me his phone number. Today he called me back.”

  Langdon waited. Impeccably dressed in a charcoal gray suit with faint blue stripes, his dark hair framing his strikingly handsome face, he exuded confidence and an air of calmness and strength. His thinking process was anything but calm, however. Clay may have been the one to tip me off about the granddaughter, but he’s not much good at helping to get rid of the old lady, he thought. “And what did the driver tell you?” he asked.

  “He said that he had taken Olivia up to Rhinebeck.”

  Langdon’s eyes widened. “Did she go to the motherhouse? Are you telling me she gave the Catherine file to the nuns?”

  “No. That’s the one good part of it. She only went to the cemetery where Catherine is buried. That says to me that she’s still trying to decide what to do.”

  “That would have been a very unfortunate development if Olivia Morrow had given the proof to the nuns. Monica Farrell’s death, coming on the heels of that discovery, would have seemed too coincidental to any decent investigator. Are you assuming that the file is still in Olivia’s safe?” Langdon’s voice was now icy.

  “She was putting it there when I was in the apartment the other night. Her two best friends died in the past year, so it’s not as though there’s anyone she would trust with it. My guess is that it’s still in the safe.”

  Langdon was silent for a long minute, then pressed, “You still can’t find a way to give Olivia something that would cause her to die at home in your presence?”

  “Not yet. Think about the risk. If she has passed on the Catherine file or shown it to anyone, even at her age and state of health the cops might decide to request an autopsy if Monica Farrell is suddenly dead as well. What about that guy you hired?”

  “I received a phone call, too. Sammy Barber’s price has gone up. It’s now one hundred thousand dollars, in cash, up front. As he artlessly expressed it, ‘You know I have a reputation as a man who never goes back on his word. But, given the target, I believe that my original fee was, regrettably, much too low.’ ”

  14

  Monica had no idea of what kind of living accommodations Ryan Jenner might have. She knew that if he was still paying off college and medical school loans, as most of his peers were, he might be in a small apartment even though he had a good income now. She found herself looking forward to the gathering of friends from Georgetown. Ryan had e-mailed her the details: cocktails seven to eight, then dinner at his local Thai restaurant.

  On Friday evening, thanks to several last-minute patients, she did not get home until quarter of seven. Painfully aware that she would be almost an hour late for the party, she took a quick shower, dressed in black silk pants and a fitted white cashmere sweater. Not too dressy, not too casual, she thought. Mascara and lip gloss were her only makeup. She had planned on twisting her hair into a chignon, but after a glance at the clock decided to let it hang loose. If I don’t show up by eight, they may think I’m not coming and then leave to go to the restaurant, she thought. I don’t even have Ryan’s cell number to let them know I’ll be late.

  That possibility speeding her even more, she stuffed her mother’s black pearls and earrings into her handbag and remembered to check the back door to see that it was bolted. Grabbing a coat, she darted out of her apartment, ran down the hallway, and rushed out of the town house.

  “Monica.”

  At the sound of the familiar voice she whirled around.

  It was Scott Alterman.

  He was standing on the sidewalk clearly waiting for her. “It’s cold,” he said. “Let me help you put your coat on. You’re beautiful, Monica. Even more beautiful than I remembered.”

  Monica pulled her coat away as he tried to take it from her. “Scott, you’ve got to understand something,” she said, her voice unsteady from the combination of shock and dismay she felt at his presence. “We’re not only finished. We never began. You drove me out of Boston. You are not going to drive me out of New York.”

  A cab with the available light glowing on its roof was passing. She raised her hand in a futile gesture to stop it.

  “I’ll drive you, Monica. My car is here.”

  “Scott, leave me alone!” Monica turned and ran down the street, wishing she had not at the last minute chosen to wear high heels. When she reached First Avenue, she glanced back over her shoulder. Scott had not tried to follow her. He was standing there, his hands in the pockets of the all-weather coat she was sure had been custom-made, his tall,
straight body illuminated by the streetlight.

  It was five minutes before she could find an empty cab and it was twenty past eight before she was on her way up in the elevator to Ryan’s apartment on West End Avenue. Reassured by the doorman that Dr. Jenner and his friends had not left yet, Monica tried to calm herself down, but could not overcome her dread at what might be coming her way now that Scott had reappeared.

  Scott’s wife, Joy, had been her best friend from their first day in kindergarten together. They had been like sisters, and as an only child, being so often included in Joy’s family activities had given Monica a sense of extended family that had become even more important after her mother’s death when she was only ten years old.

  Joy had been the one who constantly visited Monica’s father at the nursing home in Boston. She and Scott were with him when he died while I was taking final exams, Monica thought. She and Scott helped me make funeral arrangements. Because he’s a lawyer, Scott took on settling Dad’s affairs. But why in the name of God did he become obsessed with me? Joy blames me, but I know I never for one second encouraged him.

  It’s like that old joke, “My wife ran off with my best friend and I miss him.” Scott destroyed my friendship with Joy and I miss her terribly. Now if he’s moved to New York to be near me, what can I do? A restraining order, if it comes to that?

  She realized that the slow, creaking elevator had stopped on the ninth floor and the door was open. She managed to step out before the door closed again. I’m lucky I’m not on the way back down to the lobby, she thought. Resolutely she tried to put Scott out of her mind as she scanned the apartment numbers. Ryan had told her that he was in 9E. This way, she decided, and turned left.

  The door of the apartment opened the instant she put her finger on the bell. Ryan Jenner’s welcoming smile immediately lifted her spirits. He interrupted her apology. “Listen, I’ve been kicking myself for not getting your cell phone number. Don’t worry. I called the restaurant and we pushed the reservation back an hour.”