Because of the pregnancy, she had so few clothes, but once she was back to her normal size she’d fit in Helene’s things again. Helene had been a conservative dresser, but all her clothes were expensive and in good taste. Stephanie went through the closet and dresser drawers, rejecting only what she absolutely did not like.
Helene had a small safe on the floor of her closet. Stephanie knew where she kept the combination, so she opened it. It didn’t contain much jewelry, but there were a few very good pieces, which she slipped into a cosmetic bag.
It was a shame she couldn’t move the furniture out there. On the other hand, she knew from pictures she’d seen that in California they didn’t use old-fashioned up-holstered furniture and dark woods like mahogany.
She did go through the house and chose some Dresden figurines to take with her. Then she remembered the table silver. The big chest was too heavy to carry, so she put the silver in plastic bags and fastened rubber bands around them to keep it from rattling in the suitcase.
The lawyer, Mr. Potters, called at five o’clock to see how she was feeling. “Perhaps you’d like to join my wife and me for dinner, Stephanie.”
“Oh, thank you,” she said, “but someone from the Rumanian Society is going to drop in.”
“Fine. We just didn’t want you to be lonesome. Remember, be sure to call me if you need anything.”
“You’re so kind, Mr. Potters.”
“Well, I only wish I could do more for you. Unfortunately, where the will is concerned, my hands are tied.”
I don’t need your help, Stephanie thought as she hung up the phone.
Now it was time to write the letter. She composed three versions before she was satisfied. She knew that some of her spelling was bad, and she had to look up some words, but at last it seemed to be all right. It was to Mr. Potters:
Dear Mr. Potters,
I am happy to say that Jan, the father of my baby, is the one who came to see me. We are going to get maried and he will take care of us. He must get back to his job right awaye so I am leaving with him. He now works in Dallas.
I love Jan very much and I know you will be pleassed for me.
Thank you.
Stephanie Petrovic
The car came for her promptly at seven. The driver carried her bags out. Stephanie left the note and house key on the dining room table, turned off the lights, closed the door behind her and hurried through the darkness, down the flagstone walk to the waiting vehicle.
On Monday morning, Meghan tried to phone Stephanie Petrovic. There was no answer. She settled down at the dining room table, where she had begun to go through her father’s business files.
She immediately noticed something. He’d been registered and billed for five days at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, from 23 January to 28 January, the day he flew to Newark and disappeared. After the first two days there were no extra charges on that bill. Even if he ate most of his meals out, Meghan thought, people send for breakfast or make a phone call or open the room bar and have a drink—something.
On the other hand, if he’d been on the concierge floor, it would be very like her father just to go to the courtesy buffet and help himself to juice, coffee and a roll. He was a light-breakfast eater.
The first two days, however, did have extra charges on the bill, like the valet, a bottle of wine, an evening snack, phone calls. She made a note of the dates of the three days when there were no extra expenses.
There might be a pattern, she thought.
At noon she tried Stephanie again, and again the phone was not answered. At two o’clock she began to be alarmed and phoned the lawyer, Charles Potters. He assured her that Stephanie was fine. He’d spoken to her the evening before and she’d said someone from the Rumanian Society was dropping by.
“I’m glad,” Meghan said. “She’s a very frightened girl.”
“Yes, she is,” Potters agreed. “Something that isn’t generally known is that when someone leaves an entire estate to a charity or a medical facility such as the Manning Clinic, if a close relative is needy and inclined to try to break the will, the charity or facility may quietly offer a settlement. However, after Stephanie went on television literally accusing the clinic of being responsible for her aunt’s murder, any such settlement was out of the question. It would seem like hush money.”
“I understand,” Meghan said. “I’ll keep trying Stephanie, but will you ask her to call me if you hear from her? I still think someone should go after the man who got her pregnant. If she gives away her baby, she may someday regret it.”
Meghan’s mother had gone to the inn for the breakfast and lunch service, and she returned to the house just as Meg was finishing the conversation with Potters. “Let me get busy with you,” she said, taking a seat next to her at the dining room table.
“Actually you can take over,” Meghan told her. “I really have to drive to my apartment and get clothes and pick up my mail. It’s the first of November, and all the little window envelopes will be in.”
The evening before, when her mother had returned from the inn, she had told her about the man with the camera who had frightened Kyle. “I asked someone at the station to check it out for me; I haven’t heard yet, but I’m sure one of those sleazy programs is putting together a story on us and Dad and the Andersons,” she said. “Sending someone to spy on us is the way they work.” She had not allowed Mac to call the police.
She showed her mother what she was doing with the files. “Mom, watch the hotel receipts for times when there were no extra expenses for three or four days in a row. I’d like to see if it only happened when Dad was in California.” She did not say that Los Angeles was half an hour by plane from Scottsdale.
“And as for Palomino Leather Goods,” Catherine said, “I don’t know why, but that name has been churning around in my mind. I feel as though I’ve heard it before, but a long time ago.”
Meghan still had not decided if she would stop at PCD on her way to the apartment. She was wearing comfortable old slacks and a favorite sweater. It’ll do, she thought. That was one of the aspects she had loved about the job, the behind-the-scenes informality.
She brushed her hair quickly and realized that it was growing too long. She liked it to be collar length. Now it was touching her shoulders. The dead girl’s hair had been on her shoulders. Her hands suddenly cold, Meghan reached back, twisted her hair into a French knot and pinned it up.
When she was leaving, her mother said, “Meg, why don’t you go out to dinner with some of your friends? It will do you good to get away from all this.”
“I’m not much in the mood for social dinners,” Meg said, “but I’ll call and let you know. You’ll be at the inn?”
“Yes.”
“Well, when you’re here after dark be sure to keep the draperies drawn.” She raised her hand, palm upright and outward, fingers spread. “As Kyle would say, ‘Give me a high five.’ ”
Her mother raised her hand and touched her daughter’s palm in response. “You’ve got it.”
They looked at each other for a long minute, then Catherine said briskly, “Drive carefully.”
It was the standard warning ever since Meg had gotten her driving permit at age sixteen.
Her answer was always in the same vein. Today she said, “Actually I thought I’d tailgate a tractor trailer.” Then she wanted to bite her tongue. The accident on the Tappan Zee Bridge had been caused by a fuel truck tailgating a tractor trailer.
She knew her mother was thinking the same thing when she said, “Dear God, Meg, it’s like walking through a mine field, isn’t it? Even the kind of joking remark that has been part of the fabric of our lives has been tainted and twisted. Will it ever end?”
That same Monday morning, Dr. George Manning was again questioned in Assistant State Attorney John Dwyer’s office. The questions had become sharper with an edge of sarcasm in them. The two investigators sat quietly as their boss handled the interrogation.
“Do
ctor,” Dwyer asked, “can you explain why you didn’t tell us immediately that Helene Petrovic was afraid that she had mixed up the Anderson embryos?”
“Because she wasn’t sure.” George Manning’s shoulders slumped. His complexion, usually a healthy pink, was ashen. Even the admirable head of silver hair seemed a faded, graying white. Since the Anderson baby’s birth he had aged visibly.
“Dr. Manning, you’ve said repeatedly that founding and running the assisted reproduction clinic has been the great achievement of your lifetime. Were you aware that Helene Petrovic was planning to leave her rather considerable estate to research at your clinic?”
“We had talked about it. You see, the level of success in our field is still not anything like what we would wish. It’s very expensive for a woman to have in vitro fertilization, anywhere from ten to twenty thousand dollars. If a pregnancy is not achieved, the process starts all over. While some clinics claim a one out of five success ratio, the honest figure is closer to one out of ten.”
“Doctor, you are very anxious to see the ratio of successful pregnancies at your clinic improved?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Wasn’t it quite a blow to you last Monday when Helene Petrovic not only quit but admitted she might have made a very serious mistake?”
“It was devastating.”
“Yet, even when she was found murdered, you withheld the very important reason for quitting that she had given you.” Dwyer leaned across his desk. “What else did Ms. Petrovic tell you at that meeting last Monday, Doctor?”
Manning folded his hands together. “She said that she was planning to sell her house in Lawrenceville and move away, that she might go to France to live.”
“And what did you think of that plan?”
“I was stunned,” he whispered. “I was sure she was running away.”
“Running away from what, Doctor?”
George Manning knew it was all over. He could not protect the clinic any longer. “I had the feeling that she was afraid that if the Anderson baby was not Jonathan’s twin, it would start an investigation that might reveal many mistakes in the lab.”
“The will, Doctor. Did you also think that Helene Petrovic would change her will?”
“She told me she was sorry, but it was necessary. She planned to take a long time off from work and now she had family to consider.”
John Dwyer had found the answer he had guessed was there. “Dr. Manning, when was the last time you spoke to Edwin Collins?”
“He called me the day before he disappeared.” Dr. George Manning did not like what he saw in Dwyer’s eyes. “It was the first contact I had had with him either by phone or letter since he placed Helene Petrovic in my clinic,” he said, looking away, unable to cope with the disbelief and mistrust he was reading in the demeanor of the assistant state attorney.
44
Meghan decided to skip going to the office and reached her apartment building at four o’clock. Her mailbox was overflowing. She fished out all the envelopes and ads and throwaways, then took the elevator up to her fourteenth-floor apartment.
She immediately opened the windows to blow away the smell of stale heat, then stood for a moment looking out over the water to the Statue of Liberty. Today the lady seemed remote and formidable in the shadows cast by the late afternoon sun.
Often when she looked at it she thought of her grandfather, Pat Kelly, who had come to this country as a teenager with nothing and worked so hard to make his fortune.
What would her grandfather think if he knew that his daughter Catherine might lose everything he had worked for because her husband had cheated on her for years?
Scottsdale, Arizona. Meg looked over the waters of New York Harbor and realized what had been bothering her. Arizona was in the Southwest. Palomino had the sound of the Southwest.
She went over to the phone, dialed the operator and asked for the area code for Scottsdale, Arizona.
Next she dialed Arizona information.
When she reached that operator, she asked, “Do you have a listing for an Edwin Collins or an E. R. Collins?”
There was none.
Meg asked another question. “Do you have a listing for Palomino Leather Goods?”
There was a pause, then the operator said, “Please hold for the number.”
Part Three
45
On Monday evening when Mac got home from work, Kyle was his usual cheerful self. He informed his father that he had told all the kids at school about the guy in the woods.
“They all said how scared they’d be,” he explained with satisfaction. “I told them how I really ran fast and got away from him. Did you tell your friends about it?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“It’s okay if you want to,” Kyle said magnanimously.
As Kyle turned away, Mac held his arm. “Kyle, wait a minute.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Let me take a look at something.”
Kyle was wearing an open-necked flannel shirt. Mac pushed it back, revealing yellowish and purple bruises at the base of his son’s neck. “Did you get these last night?”
“I told you that guy grabbed me.”
“You said he pushed you.”
“First he grabbed me, but I got away.”
Mac swore under his breath. He had not thought to examine Kyle the night before. He’d been wearing the ghost costume, and under that, a white turtleneck shirt. Mac had thought that Kyle had only been pushed by the intruder with the camera. Instead he had been grabbed around the neck. Strong fingers had caused those bruises.
Mac kept an arm around his son as he dialed the police. Last night he had reluctantly gone along with Meghan when she pleaded with him not to call them.
“Mac, it’s bad enough now without giving the media a fresh angle on all this,” she had said. “Mark my words, somebody will write that Dad is hanging around the house. The assistant state attorney is sure he’s going to contact us.”
I’ve let Meg keep me out of this long enough, Mac thought grimly. She’s not going to any longer. That wasn’t just some cameraman hanging around out there.
The phone was answered on the first ring. “State Trooper Thorne speaking.”
Fifteen minutes later a squad car was at the house. It was clear the two policemen were not pleased that they had not been called earlier. “Dr. MacIntyre, last night was Halloween. We’re always worried that some nut might be hanging around, hoping to pick up a kid. That guy might have gone somewhere else in town.”
“I agree I should have called,” Mac said, “but I don’t think that man was looking for children. He was directly in line with the dining room windows of the Collins’ home, and Meghan Collins was in full view.”
He saw the looks the cops exchanged. “I think the state attorney’s office should know about this,” one of them said.
All the way home from her apartment, the bitter truth had been sinking in. Meghan knew she now had virtual confirmation that her father had a second family in Arizona.
When she’d phoned the Palomino Leather Goods Shop she’d spoken to the owner. The woman was astonished when asked about the message on the answering machine. “That call didn’t come from here,” she said flatly.
She did confirm that she had a customer named Mrs. E. R. Collins who had a daughter in her twenties. After that she refused to give further information over the phone.
It was seven-thirty when Meg reached Newtown. She turned into the driveway and was surprised to see Mac’s red Chrysler and an unfamiliar sedan parked in front of the house. Now what? she thought, alarmed. She pulled up behind them, parked and hurried up the porch steps, realizing that any unexpected occurrence was enough to start her heart pounding with dread.
Special Investigator Arlene Weiss was in the living room with Catherine, Mac and Kyle. There was no apology in Mac’s voice when he told Meg why he’d called the local police and then the assistant state attorney’s office about the i
ntruder. In fact, Meg was sure from the clipped way he spoke to her that he was angry. Kyle had been man-handled and terrified; he might have been strangled by some lunatic, and I wouldn’t let Mac notify the police, she thought. She didn’t blame him for being furious.
Kyle was sitting between Catherine and Mac on the couch. He slid down and came across the room to her. “Meg, don’t look so sad. I’m okay.” He put his hands on her cheeks. “Really, I’m okay.”
She looked into his serious eyes, then hugged him fiercely. “You bet you are, pal.”
Weiss did not stay long. “Miss Collins, believe it or not, we want to help you,” she said as Meghan accompanied her to the door. “When you don’t report, or allow other people to report, incidents like last night’s, you are hindering this investigation. We could have had a police vehicle here in a few minutes if you’d called. According to Kyle, that man was carrying a large camera that would have slowed him down. Please, is there anything else we should know?”
“Nothing,” Meg said.
“Mrs. Collins tells me that you were at your apartment. Did you find any more faxed messages?”
“No.” She bit her lip, thinking of her call to Palomino Leather Goods.
Weiss stared at her. “I see. Well, if you remember anything that you think will interest us, you know where to reach us.”
When Weiss left, Mac said to Kyle, “Go into the den. You can watch television for fifteen minutes. Then we have to go.”
“That’s okay, Dad. There’s nothing good on. I’ll stay here.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion.”
Kyle jumped up. “Fine. You don’t have to get sore about it.”
“Right, Dad,” Meghan agreed. “You don’t have to get sore about it.”
Kyle gave her a high five as he passed her chair.
Mac waited until he heard the click of the den door. “What did you find out while you were at your apartment, Meghan?”
Meg looked at her mother. “The location of the Palomino Leather Goods Shop and that they have a customer named Mrs. E. R. Collins.”