Mary Clark - The Shadow of Your Smile

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 keys 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.

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.’ ”

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.