“You didn’t tell me all that.”
“I said that she saw me and then drove away fast.”
“You didn’t say she stopped and rolled down the window, pal.”
“Uh-huh. I thought she was Meg. But her hair was longer. I told Meg that too. You know, it was around her shoulders. Like that picture of Mommy.”
Ginger had sent Kyle one of her recent publicity pictures, a head shot with her blond hair swirling around her shoulders, her lips parted, revealing perfect teeth, her eyes wide and sensuous. In the corner she’d written, “To my darling little Kyle, Love and kisses, Mommy.”
A publicity picture, Mac had thought in disgust. If he’d been home when it arrived, Kyle would never have seen it.
After stopping to see Kyle, visiting her mother and checking on the inn, Meghan arrived home at seven-thirty. Virginia had insisted on sending dinner home with her, a chicken potpie, salad and the warm salty rolls Meghan loved. “You’re as bad as your mother,” Virginia had fussed. “You’ll forget to eat.”
I probably would have, Meghan thought as she changed quickly into old pajamas and a robe. It was an outfit that dated back to college days and was still her favorite for an early, quiet evening of reading or watching television.
In the kitchen, she sipped a glass of wine and nibbled on the salt roll as the microwave oven zapped the temperature of the potpie to steaming hot.
When it was ready, she carried it on a tray into the study and settled down in her father’s swivel chair. Tomorrow she would begin digging into the history of the Manning Clinic. Researchers at the television station could quickly come up with all the background available on it. And on Dr. Manning, she thought. I’d like to know if there are any skeletons in his closet, she told herself.
Tonight she had a different project in mind, however. She absolutely had to find any shred of evidence that might link her father to the dead woman who resembled her, the woman whose name might be Annie.
A suspicion had insinuated itself into her mind, a suspicion so incredible that she could not bring herself to consider it yet. She only knew that it was absolutely essential to go through all her father’s personal papers immediately.
Not surprisingly the desk drawers were neat. Edwin Collins had been innately tidy. Writing paper, envelopes and stamps were precisely placed in the slotted side drawer. His day-at-a-glance calendar was filled out for January and early February. After that, only standing dates were entered. Her mother’s birthday. Her birthday. The spring golf club outing. A cruise her parents had planned to take to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary in June.
Why would anyone who was planning to disappear mark his calendar for important dates months in advance? she wondered. That didn’t make sense.
The days he had been away in January or had planned to be away in February simply carried the name of a city. She knew the details of those trips would have been listed in the business appointment book he carried with him.
The deep bottom drawer on the right was locked. Meghan searched in vain for a key, then hesitated. Tomorrow she might be able to get a locksmith, but she did not want to wait. She went into the kitchen, found the toolbox and brought back a steel file. As she hoped, the lock was old and easily forced open.
In this drawer stacks of envelopes were held together by rubber bands. Meghan picked up the top packet and glanced through it. All except the first envelope were written in the same hand.
That one contained only a newspaper clipping from the Philadelphia Bulletin. Below the picture of a handsome woman, the obituary notice read:
Aurelia Crowley Collins, 75, a lifelong resident of Philadelphia, died in St. Paul’s Hospital on 9 December of heart failure.
Aurelia Crowley Collins! Meghan gasped as she studied the picture. The wide-set eyes, the wavy hair that framed the oval face. It was the same woman, now aged, whose portrait was prominently placed on the table a few feet away. Her grandmother.
The date on the clipping was two years old. Her grandmother had been alive until two years ago! Meghan leafed through the other envelopes in the packet she was holding. They all came from Philadelphia. The last one was postmarked two and a half years ago.
She read one, then another, and another. Unbelieving, she went through the other stacks of envelopes. At random, she kept reading. The earliest note went back thirty years. All contained the same plea.
Dear Edwin,
I had hoped that perhaps this Christmas I might have word from you. I pray that you and your family are well. How I would love to see my granddaughter. Perhaps someday you will allow that to happen.
With love,
Mother
Dear Edwin,
We are always supposed to look ahead. But as one grows older, it is much easier to look back and bitterly regret the mistakes of the past. Isn’t it possible for us to talk, even on the telephone? It would give me so much happiness.
Love,
Mother
After a while Meg could not bear to read any more, but it was clear from their worn appearance that her father must have pored over them many times.
Dad, you were so kind, she thought. Why did you tell everyone your mother was dead? What did she do to you that was so unforgivable? Why did you keep these letters if you were never going to make peace with her?
She picked up the envelope that had contained the obituary notice. There was no name, but the address printed on the flap was a street in Chestnut Hill. She knew that Chestnut Hill was one of Philadelphia’s most exclusive residential areas.
Who was the sender? More important, what kind of man had her father really been?
20
In Helene Petrovic’s charming colonial home in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, her niece, Stephanie, was cross and worried. The baby was due in a few weeks, and her back hurt. She was always tired. As a surprise, she had gone to the trouble of preparing a hot lunch for Helene, who had said she planned to get home by noon.
At one-thirty, Stephanie had tried to phone her aunt, but there was no answer at the Connecticut apartment. Now, at six o’clock, Helene had still not arrived. Was anything wrong? Perhaps some last-minute errands came up and Helene had lived alone so long she was not used to keeping someone else informed of her movements.
Stephanie had been shocked when on the phone yesterday Helene told her that she had quit her job, effective immediately. “I need a rest and I’m worried about you being alone so much,” Helene had told her.
The fact was that Stephanie loved being alone. She had never known the luxury of being able to lie in bed until she decided to make coffee and get the paper that had been delivered in the predawn hours. On really lazy days, still resting in bed, she would eventually watch the morning television programs.
She was twenty but looked older. Growing up, it had been her dream to be like her father’s younger sister, Helene, who had left for the United States twenty years ago, after her husband died.
Now that same Helene was her anchor, her future, in a world that no longer existed as she knew it. The bloody, brief revolution in Rumania had cost her parents their lives and destroyed their home. Stephanie had moved in with neighbors whose tiny house had no room for another occupant.
Over the years, Helene had occasionally sent a little money and a gift package at Christmas. In desperation, Stephanie had written to her imploring help.
A few weeks later she was on the plane to the United States.
Helene was so kind. It was just that Stephanie fiercely wanted to live in Manhattan, get a job in a beauty salon and go to cosmetician school at night. Already her English was excellent, though she’d arrived here last year knowing only a few English words.
Her time had almost come. She and Helene had looked at studio apartments in New York. They found one in Greenwich Village that would be available in January, and Helene had promised they would go shopping to decorate it.
This house was on the market. Helene had always said she was not going to give up
her job and the place in Connecticut until it sold. What had made her change her mind so abruptly now, Stephanie wondered?
She brushed back the light brown hair from her broad forehead. She was hungry again and might as well eat. She could always warm up dinner for Helene when she arrived.
At eight o’clock, as she was smiling at a rerun of The Golden Girls, the front door bell pealed.
Her sigh was both relieved and vexed. Helene probably had an armful of packages and didn’t want to search for her key. She gave a last look at the set. The program was about to end. After being so late, couldn’t Helene have waited one more minute? she wondered as she hoisted herself up from the couch.
Her welcoming smile faded and vanished at the sight of a tall policeman with a boyish face. In disbelief she heard that Helene Petrovic had been shot to death in Connecticut.
Before grief and shock encompassed her, Stephanie’s one clear thought was to frantically ask herself, what will become of me? Only last week Helene had talked about her intention of changing her will, which left everything she had to the Manning Clinic Research Foundation. Now it was too late.
21
By eight o’clock on Tuesday evening, traffic in the garage had slowed down to a trickle. Bernie, who frequently worked overtime, had put in a twelve hour day and it was time to go home.
He didn’t mind the overtime. The pay was good and so were the tips. All these years the extra money had paid for his electronic equipment.
This evening when he went to the office to check out he was worried. He hadn’t realized the big boss was on the premises when at lunchtime that day he’d sat in Tom Weicker’s car and flipped through the glove compartment again for possible items of interest. Then he’d looked up to see the boss staring through the car window. The boss had just walked away, not saying a word. That was even worse. If he’d snarled at him it would have cleared the air.
Bernie punched the time clock. The evening manager was sitting in the office and called him over. His face wasn’t friendly. “Bernie, clean out your locker.” He had an envelope in his hand. “This covers salary, vacation and sick days and two weeks severance.”
“But . . .” The protest died on Bernie’s lips as the manager raised a hand.
“Listen, Bernie, you know as well as I do that we’ve had complaints of money and personal items disappearing from cars that were parked in this garage.”
“I never took a thing.”
“You had no damn business going through Weicker’s glove compartment, Bernie. You’re through.”
When he got home, still angry and upset, Bernie found that his mother had a frozen macaroni and cheese dinner ready to be put in the microwave. “It’s been a terrible day,” she complained as she took the wrapper off the package. “The kids from down the block were yelling in front of the house. I told them to shut up and they called me an old bat. You know what I did?” She did not wait for an answer. “I called the cops and complained. Then one of them came over, and he was rude to me.”
Bernie grasped her arm. “You brought the cops in here, Mama? Did they go downstairs?”
“Why would they go downstairs?”
“Mama, I don’t want the cops in here, ever.”
“Bernie, I haven’t been downstairs in years. You’re keeping it clean down there, aren’t you? I don’t want dust filtering up. My sinuses are terrible.”
“It’s clean, Mama.”
“I hope so. You’re not a neat person. Like your father.” She slammed the door of the microwave. “You hurt my arm. You grabbed it hard. Don’t do that again.”
“I won’t, Mama. I’m sorry, Mama.”
The next morning, Bernie left for work at the usual time. He didn’t want his mother to know he got fired. Today, however, he headed for a car wash a few blocks from the house. He paid to have the full treatment on his eight-year-old Chevy. Vacuum, clean out trunk, polish the dashboard, wash, wax. When the car came out, it was still shabby but respectable, the basic dark green color recognizable.
He never cleaned his car except for the few times a year his mother announced she was planning to go to church on the following Sunday. Of course it would be different if he were taking Meghan for a ride. He’d really have it shining for her.
Bernie knew what he was going to do. He had thought about it all night. Maybe there was a reason he’d lost the job at the garage. Maybe it was all part of a greater plan. For weeks it hadn’t been enough to see Meghan only in the few minutes when she dropped off or picked up her Mustang or a Channel 3 car.
He wanted to be around her, to take pictures of her that he could play during the night on his VCR.
Today he’d buy a video camera on Forty-seventh Street.
But he had to make money. No one was a better driver, so he could earn it by using his car as a gypsy cab. That would give him a lot of freedom too. Freedom to drive to Connecticut where Meghan Collins lived when she wasn’t in New York.
He had to be careful not to be noticed.
“It’s called ‘obsession,’ Bernie,” the shrink at Riker’s Island had explained when Bernie begged to know what was wrong with him. “I think we’ve helped you, but if that feeling comes over you again, I want you to talk to me. It will mean that you might need some medication.”
Bernie knew he didn’t need any help. He just needed to be around Meghan Collins.
22
The body of Helene Petrovic lay all Tuesday in the bedroom where she had died. Never friendly with her neighbors, she’d already said goodbye to the few with whom she exchanged greetings, and her car was hidden from sight in the garage of her rented condo.
It was only when the owner of the condo stopped by late that afternoon that she found the dead woman at the foot of the bed.
The death of a quiet embryologist in New Milford, Connecticut, was briefly mentioned on New York television news programs. It wasn’t much of a story. There was no evidence of a break-in, no apparent sexual attack. The victim’s purse with two hundred dollars in it was in the room, so robbery was ruled out.
A neighbor across the street volunteered that Helene Petrovic had one visitor she’d observed, a man who always came late at night. She’d never really gotten a good look at him but knew he was tall. She figured he was a boyfriend, because he always pulled his car into the other side of Petrovic’s garage. She knew he had to have left during the night, because she’d never seen him in the morning. How often had she seen him? Maybe a half-dozen times. The car? A late model dark sedan.
After the discovery of her grandmother’s obituary notice, Meghan had phoned the hospital and was told that her mother was sleeping and that her condition was satisfactory. Tired to the bone, she’d rummaged through the medicine cabinet for a sleeping pill, then gone to bed and slept straight through until her alarm woke her at 6:30 A.M.
An immediate call to the hospital reassured her that her mother had had a restful night and her vital signs were normal.
Meghan read the Times over coffee, and in the Connecticut section was shocked to read of the death of Dr. Helene Petrovic. There was a picture of the woman. In it, the expression in her eyes was both sad and enigmatic. I talked with her at Manning, Meghan thought. She was in charge of the lab with the cryopreserved embryos. Who had murdered that quiet, intelligent woman? Meghan wondered. Another thought struck her. According to the paper, Dr. Petrovic had quit her job and had planned on moving from Connecticut the next morning. Did her decision have anything to do with Dr. Manning’s refusal to cooperate on the television special?
It was too early to call Tom Weicker, but it probably wasn’t too late to catch Mac before he left for work. Meghan knew there was something else she had to face, and now was as good a time as any.
Mac’s hello was hurried.
“Mac, I’m sorry. I know this is a bad time to call but I have to talk to you,” Meghan said.
“Hi, Meg. Sure. Just hang on a minute.”
He must have put his hand over the phone. She heard
his muffled but exasperated call, “Kyle, you left your homework on the dining room table.”
When he got back on he explained, “We go through this every morning. I tell him to put his homework in his schoolbag at night. He doesn’t. In the morning he’s yelling that he lost it.”
“Why don’t you put it in his schoolbag at night?”
“That doesn’t build character.” His voice changed. “Meg, how’s your mother?”
“Good. I really think she’s okay. She’s a strong lady.”
“Like you.”
“I’m not that strong.”
“Too strong for my taste, not telling me about that stabbing victim. But that’s a conversation we’ll have another time.”
“Mac, could you stop by for three minutes on your way out?”
“Sure. As soon as His Nibs gets on the bus.”
Meghan knew that she had no more than twenty minutes to shower and dress before Mac arrived. She was brushing her hair when the bell rang. “Have a quick cup of coffee,” she said. “What I’m about to ask isn’t easy.”
Was it only twenty-four hours ago they had sat across from each other at this table? she wondered. It seemed so much longer. But yesterday she’d been in near-shock. Today, knowing her mother was almost certainly all right, she was able to face and accept whatever stark truth came to light.
“Mac,” she began, “you’re a DNA specialist.”
“Yes.”
“The woman who was stabbed Thursday night, the one who resembles me so much?”
“Yes.”
“If her DNA was compared to mine, could kinship be established?”
Mac raised his eyebrows and studied the cup in his hand. “Meg, this is the way it works. With DNA testing we can positively know if any two people had the same mother. It’s complicated, and I can show you in the lab how we do it. Within the ninety-ninth percentile we can establish if two people had the same father. It’s not as absolute as the mother-child scenario, but we can get a very strong indication of whether or not we’re dealing with half siblings.”