The subject of Ed Collins’ office worried him. It had seemed the decent thing to leave it as it was until the official pronouncement of his death, but now it was just as well Meghan had said she wanted to pack up her father’s personal effects. One way or the other, Edwin Collins would never use it again.
Carter frowned. Victor Orsini. He just couldn’t like the man. Orsini had always been closer to Ed, but he did a damn good job, and his expertise in the field of medical technology was absolutely necessary today, and particularly valuable now that Ed was gone. He had handled most of that area of the business.
Carter knew there was no way to avoid giving Orsini Ed’s office when Meghan had finished clearing it out. Victor’s present office was cramped and had only one small window.
Yes, for the present, he needed the man, like him or not.
Nevertheless, Phillip’s intuition warned him that there was an elusive factor about Victor Orsini’s makeup that should never be ignored.
Lt. Story allowed a copy of the plastic-enclosed scrap of paper to be made for Meghan. “How long ago were you assigned that phone number at the radio station?” he asked her.
“In mid-January.”
“When was the last time you saw your father?”
“On January 14th. He was leaving for California on a business trip.”
“What kind of business?”
Meghan’s tongue felt thick, her fingers were chilled as she held the photocopy with her name looking incongruously bold against the white background. She told him about Collins and Carter Executive Search. It was obvious that Detective Jamal Nader had already told Story that her father was missing.
“Did your father have this number in his possession when he left?”
“He must have. I never spoke to him or saw him again after the fourteenth. He was due home on the twenty-eighth.”
“And he died in the Tappan Zee Bridge accident that night.”
“He called his associate Victor Orsini as he was starting onto the bridge. The accident happened less than a minute after their phone conversation. Someone reported seeing a dark Cadillac spin into the fuel tanker and go over the side.” It was useless to conceal what this man could learn by one phone call. “I must tell you that the insurance companies have now refused to pay his policies on the basis that at least parts of all the other vehicles have been found, but there’s been no trace of my father’s car. The Thruway divers claim that if the car went into the river at that point, they should have located it.” Meghan’s chin went up. “My mother is filing suit to have the insurance paid.”
She could see the skepticism in the eyes of all three men. To her own ears—and with this paper in her hand—she sounded like one of those unfortunate witnesses she had seen in court trials, people who stick doggedly to their testimony even in the face of irrefutable proof that they are either mistaken or lying.
Story cleared his throat. “Miss Collins, the young woman who was murdered Thursday night bears a striking resemblance to you and was carrying a slip of paper with your name and phone number written on it in your father’s handwriting. Have you any explanation?”
Meghan stiffened her back. “I have no idea why that young woman was carrying that piece of paper. I have no idea how she got it. She did look a lot like me. For all I know my father might have met her and commented on the similarity and said, ‘If you’re ever in New York, I’d like you to meet my daughter.’ People do resemble each other. We all know that. My father was in the kind of business where he met many people; knowing him, that would be the kind of comment he’d make. There is one thing I am sure of, if my father were alive, he would not have deliberately disappeared and left my mother financially paralyzed.”
She turned to Tom. “I’m assigned to cover the Baxter arraignment. I’d better get moving.”
“You okay?” Tom asked. There was no hint of pity in his manner.
“I’m absolutely fine,” Meghan said quietly. She did not look at Story or Nader.
It was Nader who spoke. “Meghan, we’re in touch with the FBI. If there’s been any report of a missing woman who fits the description of Thursday night’s stabbing victim, we’ll have it soon. Maybe a lot of answers are tied up together.”
15
Helene Petrovic loved her job as embryologist in charge of the laboratory of the Manning Clinic. Widowed at twenty-seven, she had emigrated to the United States from Rumania, gratefully accepted the largess of a family friend, worked for her as a cosmetician and begun to go to school at night.
Now forty-eight, she was a slender, handsome woman whose eyes never smiled. During the week, Helene lived in New Milford, Connecticut, five miles from the clinic, in the furnished condo she rented. Weekends were spent in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, in the pleasant colonial-style house she owned. The study off her bedroom there was filled with pictures of the children she had helped bring into life.
Helene thought of herself as the chief pediatrician of a nursery for newborns on the maternity ward of a fine hospital. The difference was that the embryos in her care were more vulnerable than the frailest preemie. She took her responsibility with fierce seriousness.
Helene would look at the tiny vials in the laboratory, and, knowing the parents and sometimes the siblings, in her mind’s eye she saw the children who might someday be born. She loved them all, but there was one child she loved the best, the beautiful towhead whose sweet smile reminded her of the husband she had lost as a young woman.
The arraignment of the stockbroker Baxter on inside trader charges took place in the courthouse on Centre Street. Flanked by his two attorneys, the impeccably dressed defendant pleaded not guilty, his firm voice suggesting the authority of the boardroom. Steve was Meg’s cameraman again. “What a con artist. I’d almost rather be back in Connecticut with the Munchkins.”
“I wrote up a memo and left it for Tom—about doing a feature on that clinic. This afternoon I’m going to pitch it to him,” Meghan said.
Steve winked. “If I ever have kids, I hope I have them the old-fashioned way, if you know what I mean.”
She smiled briefly. “I know what you mean.”
At four o’clock, Meghan was again in Tom’s office. “Meghan, let me get this straight. You mean this woman is about to give birth to the identical twin of her three-year-old?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. That kind of divided birth has been done in England, but it’s news here. Plus the mother in this case is quite interesting. Dina Anderson is a bank vice president, very attractive and well spoken, and obviously a terrific mother. And the three-year-old is a doll.
“Another point is that so many studies have shown that identical twins, even when separated at birth, grow up with identical tastes. It can be eerie. They may marry people with the same name, call their children by the same names, decorate their houses in the same colors, wear the same hairstyle, choose the same clothes. It would be interesting to know how the relationship would change if one twin is significantly older than the other.
“Think about it,” she concluded. “It’s only fifteen years since the miracle of the first test tube baby, and now there are thousands of them. There are more new breakthroughs in assisted reproduction methods every day. I think ongoing segments on the new methods—and updates on the Anderson twins—could be terrific.”
She spoke eagerly, warming to her argument. Tom Weicker was not an easy sell.
“How sure is Mrs. Anderson that she’s having the identical twin?”
“Absolutely positive. The cryopreserved embryos are in individual tubes, marked with the mother’s name, Social Security number and date of her birth. And each tube is given its own number. After Jonathan’s embryo was transferred, the Andersons had two embryos, his identical twin and one other. The tube with his identical twin was specially labeled.”
Tom got up from his desk and stretched. He’d taken off his coat, loosened his tie and opened his collar button. The effect was to soften his usual flinty exterior.
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He walked over to the window, stared down at the snarled traffic on West Fifty-sixth Street, then turned abruptly. “I liked what you did with the Manning reunion yesterday. We’ve gotten good response. Go ahead with it.”
He was letting her do it! Meghan nodded, reminding herself that enthusiasm was out of order.
Tom went back to his desk. “Meghan, take a look at this. It’s an artist’s sketch of the woman who was stabbed Thursday night.” He handed it to her.
Even though she had seen the victim, Meghan’s mouth went dry when she looked at the sketch. She read the statistics, “Caucasian, dark brown hair, blue-green eyes, 5´6", slender build, 120 pounds, 24–28 years old.” Add an inch to the height and they’d describe her.
“If that ‘mistake’ fax was on the level and meant you were the intended victim, it’s pretty clear why this girl is dead,” Weicker commented. “She was right in this neighborhood, and the resemblance to you is uncanny.”
“I simply don’t understand it. Nor do I understand how she got that slip of paper with my father’s writing.”
“I spoke to Lt. Story again. We both agreed that until the killer is found it would be better to pull you off the news beat, just in case there is some kind of nut gunning for you.”
“But, Tom—” she protested. He cut her off.
“Meghan, concentrate on that feature. It could make a darned good human interest story. If it works, we’ll do future segments on those kids. But as of now, you are off the news beat. Keep me posted,” he snapped as he sat down and pulled out a desk drawer, clearly dismissing her.
16
By Monday afternoon, the Manning Clinic had settled down from the excitement of the weekend reunion. All traces of the festive party were gone, and the reception area was restored to its usual quiet elegance.
A couple in their late thirties was leafing through magazines as they waited for their first appointment. The receptionist, Marge Walters, looked at them sympathetically. She had had no problem having three children in the first three years of her marriage. Across the room an obviously nervous woman in her twenties was holding her husband’s hand. Marge knew the young woman had an appointment to have embryos implanted in her womb. Twelve of her eggs had become fertilized in the lab. Three would be implanted in the hope that one might result in a pregnancy. Sometimes more than one embryo developed, leading to a multiple birth.
“That would be a blessing, not a problem,” the young woman had assured Marge when she signed in. The other nine embryos would be cryopreserved. If a pregnancy did not result this time, the young woman would come back and be implanted with some of those embryos.
Dr. Manning had called an unexpected lunchtime staff meeting. Unconsciously, Marge riffled her fingers through short blond hair. Dr. Manning had told them that PCD Channel 3 was going to do a television special on the clinic and tie it in with the impending birth of Jonathan Anderson’s identical twin. He asked that all cooperation be given to Meghan Collins, respecting of course the privacy of the clients. Only those clients who agreed in writing would be interviewed.
Marge hoped that she’d get to appear in the special. Her boys would get such a kick out of it.
To the right of her desk were the offices for senior staff. The door leading to those offices opened and one of the new secretaries came out, her step brisk. She paused at Marge’s desk long enough to whisper, “Something’s up. Dr. Petrovic just came out of Manning’s office. She’s very upset, and when I went in, he looked as though he was about to have a heart attack.”
“What do you think is going on?” Marge asked.
“I don’t know, but she’s cleaning out her desk. I wonder if she quit—or was fired?”
“I can’t imagine her choosing to leave this place,” Marge said in disbelief. “That lab is her whole life.”
On Monday evening, when Meghan picked up her car, Bernie had said, “See you tomorrow, Meghan.”
She had told him that she wouldn’t be around the office for a while, that she would be on special assignment in Connecticut. Saying that to Bernie had been easy, but as she drove home, she wrestled with the problem of how to explain to her mother that she’d been switched from the news team after just getting the job.
She’d simply have to say that the station wanted the feature to be completed quickly because of the impending birth of the Anderson baby. Mom’s upset enough without having to worry that I might have been an intended murder victim, Meghan thought, and she’d be a wreck if she knew about the slip of paper with Dad’s writing.
She exited Interstate 84 onto Route 7. Some trees still had leaves, although the vivid colors of mid-October had faded. Fall had always been her favorite season, she reflected. But not this year.
A part of her brain, the legal part, the portion that separated emotion from evidence, insisted that she begin to consider all the reasons why that paper with her name and phone number could have been in the dead woman’s pocket. It’s not disloyal to examine all the possibilities, she reminded herself fiercely. A good defense lawyer must always see the case through the prosecutor’s eyes as well.
Her mother had gone through all the papers that were in the wall safe at home. But she knew her mother had not examined the contents of the desk in her father’s study. It was time to do that.
She hoped she had taken care of everything at the newsroom. Before she left, Meg made a list of her ongoing assignments for Bill Evans, her counterpart from the Chicago affiliate, who would sub for her on the news team while the murder investigation was going on.
Her appointment with Dr. Manning was set for tomorrow at eleven o’clock. She’d asked him if she could go through an initial information and counseling session as though she were a new client. During a sleepless night, something else had occurred to her. It would be a nice touch to get some tape on Jonathan Anderson helping his mother prepare for the baby. She wondered if the Andersons had any home videos of Jonathan as a newborn.
When she reached home, the house was empty. That had to mean her mother was at the inn. Good, Meghan thought. It’s the best place for her. She lugged in the fax machine they’d lent her at the office. She’d hook it up to the second line in her father’s study. At least I won’t be awakened by crazy, middle-of-the-night messages, she thought as she closed and locked the door and began switching on lights against the rapidly approaching darkness.
Meghan sighed unconsciously as she walked around the house. She’d always loved this place. The rooms weren’t large. Her mother’s favorite complaint was that old farmhouses always looked bigger on the outside than they actually were. “This place is an optical illusion,” she would lament. But in Meghan’s eyes there was great charm in the intimacy of the rooms. She liked the feel of the slightly uneven floor with its wide boards, the look of the fireplaces and the French doors and the built-in corner cupboards of the dining room. In her eyes they were the perfect setting for the antique maple furniture with its lovely warm patina, the deep comfortable upholstery, the colorful hand-hooked rugs.
Dad was away so much, she thought as she opened the door of his study, a room that she and her mother had avoided since the night of the bridge accident. But you always knew he was coming back, and he was so much fun.
She snapped on the desk lamp and sat in the swivel chair. This room was the smallest on the first floor. The fireplace was flanked by bookshelves. Her father’s favorite chair, maroon leather with a matching ottoman, had a standing lamp on one side and a piecrust table on the other.
The table as well as the mantel held clusters of family pictures: her mother and father’s wedding portrait; Meghan as a baby; the three of them as she grew up; old Pat, bursting with pride in front of the Drumdoe Inn. The record of a happy family, Meghan thought, looking from one to another of a group of framed snapshots.
She picked up the picture of her father’s mother, Aurelia. Taken in the early thirties when she was twenty-four, it showed clearly that she had been a beautiful woman. Thick wavy
hair, large expressive eyes, oval face, slender neck, sable skins over her suit. Her expression was the dreamy posed look that photographers of that day preferred. “I had the prettiest mother in Pennsylvania,” her father would say, then add, “and now I have the prettiest daughter in Connecticut. You look like her.” His mother had died when he was a baby.
Meghan did not remember ever having seen a picture of Richard Collins. “We never got along,” her father had told her tersely. “The less I saw of him, the better.”
The phone rang. It was Virginia Murphy, her mother’s right-hand at the inn. “Catherine wanted me to see if you were home and if you wanted to come over for dinner.”
“How is she, Virginia?” Meghan asked.
“She’s always good when she’s here, and we have a lot of reservations tonight. Mr. Carter is coming at seven. He wants your mother to join him.”
Hmm, Meghan thought. She’d always suspected that Phillip Carter was developing a warm spot in his heart for Catherine Collins. “Will you tell Mom that I have an interview in Kent tomorrow and need to do a lot of research for it? I’ll fix something here.”
When she hung up, she resolutely got out her briefcase and pulled from it all the newspaper and magazine human interest stories on in vitro fertilization a researcher at the station had assembled for her. She frowned when she found several cases where a clinic was sued because tests showed the woman’s husband was not the biological father of the child. “That is a pretty serious mistake to make,” she said aloud, and decided that it was an angle that should be touched on in one segment of the feature.
At eight o’clock she made a sandwich and a pot of tea and carried them back to the study. She ate while she tried to absorb the technical material Mac had given her. It was, she decided, a crash course in assisted reproductive procedures.
The click of the lock a little after ten meant that her mother was home. She called, “Hi, I’m in here.”