Mary Clark - The Shadow of Your Smile

“Acquitted because he or one of his slimy friends either threatened or paid off jurors,” Whelan remembered. “They don’t come any guiltier than he was. I did a lot of work on that case. I’d love to find a way to nail him now.”

The policewoman who had posed for the picture came over. A traffic officer, she had agreed to give up a few minutes of her break to help them out. “Did you get what you wanted?”

“You bet,” Forrest told her. “Thanks.”

“Anytime. I never thought of myself as being a model. Neither did anyone else.” With a brief wave, she was on her way.

After she left, Forrest turned on the ignition. “Even if we bring Sammy in for a lineup and the old lady identifies him, you know what will happen. If it got to trial, which is doubtful, a lawyer would shoot holes in her identification. It was dark. He was wearing sunglasses. His hood was pulled up. On top of that, there was a crowd on the corner. The bus was coming and people were lining up for it. She was the only one who thinks the doctor was shoved. The doctor herself claims it was an accident. Case dismissed.”

“But if Barber was stalking her, it was because someone is paying him to do it. Does she have any idea of who that could be?” Whelan asked.

John Hartman mentioned Scott Alterman. “I checked him out. He’s a successful lawyer. Just moved to New York, but apparently about five years ago he was stalking Dr. Farrell in Boston. He’s the only one John heard about as someone who might have a reason to take that picture of the doctor.”

“Or have someone like Sammy take the picture for him?” Whelan suggested.

“Possibly. But where are we going with that?” Forrest asked. “If it is Alterman, he won’t be the first rejected guy to order a hit on the woman who turned him down. We’ll keep an eye on him and see if there’s anything illegal Sammy has done at that bar where he’s a bouncer that we can make stick and get him off the street.”

On Saturday morning Scott Alterman followed the route Olivia Morrow had taken on the day of her death. After he left the Schwab House on Friday, he had called the driver service Olivia used and asked to speak to the chauffeur who had driven her on Tuesday.

He was told that the man’s name was Rob Garrigan and he was on a job now but would call him later. Scott had gone to his office and late in the afternoon Garrigan had phoned back. “Like they probably told you in the office, it was a four-hour round trip to Southampton,” he said. “She didn’t visit nobody. She just had me drive on the ocean block, and then to a cemetery.”

Scott had been dismayed. “She didn’t visit anybody?”

“Nope. She did have me stop in front of some pretty ritzy house. Well, they’re all ritzy on that block. She told me she lived there when she was a kid, not in that house, but in a cottage that was on the property. Then she had me drive to the cemetery and stop in front of a mausoleum. Is that the way you say it? Funny word, isn’t it? And she just sat there and looked at it, and I could tell she felt real bad.”

“If you went back could you point out the house and the mausoleum?”

“Sure. I’ve got eyes in my head.”

“Did she say anything else besides the fact that she lived in that cottage when she was young? I mean about her family?”

“Hardly a word. It seemed like it was an effort for her to talk. I mean, some people don’t want to talk, and I always respect that. Other people like to gab and that’s okay with me, too. My wife says I never shut up and I do her a favor if I get the talk bug out of my system on the job.”

Now on the way out to Southampton, Scott was realizing that Rob Garrigan, who had probably given him as much information as he knew, would be hard to silence for the rest of the drive.

“You know what Long Island Expressway stands for?” Garrigan asked.

“I guess not,” Scott said.

“Think of the initials. L. I. E. Spells ‘lie.’ That’s the Long Island Expressway. It’s not an expressway. It’s one long parking lot, especially in the summer. A seventy-mile parking lot. I could tell you wouldn’t know. You’re from Boston, aren’t you? I mean like the people who take ‘a waaak in the paaak.’ ”

“I didn’t realize I talked like that. Do you think I should learn to say, ‘Noo Yawk’?” Scott asked.

“That’s the way people from New Jersey say it, not New Yorkers.”

Scott did not know whether to be angry or amused. Eight generations of Altermans had lived in Bernardsville, New Jersey. I’d have been brought up there if Dad hadn’t taken the job in Boston after he graduated from Harvard, he thought. Then he met Mom and that was that. When I was a kid I loved coming down to the big house to visit my grandparents.

After they passed away, the family property had been sold and a country club with a golf course had been built on it.

Grandparents! Mine were such an important part of my life, Scott reflected.

Olivia Morrow had specifically told Monica that she had known both her birth grandparents. I bet anything that there is a link somehow to the Gannons, Scott thought. If I could only find it for Monica.

“Is it okay if I turn on the radio real low?” Garrigan asked.

“That would be absolutely fine,” Scott told him gratefully.

Nearly an hour later they were driving into Southampton. “The house she had me stop at was on the ocean,” Garrigan said. “Maybe I told you that. Not far now.” He drove for a few more minutes then Scott felt the car slowing down and stopping.

“Here we are,” Garrigan announced. “It’s one of the really big ones.”

Scott was not looking at the house. His eyes were riveted on the mailbox with the name GANNON in handsome raised letters. I knew it! I knew it, he thought. She was going to tell Monica something about the Gannons.

There was a Ferrari sports car parked in the circular driveway.

“Someone’s home. Are you going in there?” Garrigan asked.

“I’m going to stop in later but first I’d like to have you show me the mausoleum that you say Ms. Morrow visited.”

“Sure thing. Did you ever hear the biggest benefit of living next to a cemetery?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You have quiet neighbors.”

Too quiet, Scott thought minutes later, as he got out of the car and stood in front of the handsome mausoleum with the name GANNON carved in stone over the archway. I wish Alexander Gannon could talk to me now.

Olivia Morrow had lived as a young child on the Gannon estate, he mused. She was eighty-two, when she died last Wednesday. Alexander Gannon would be over one hundred years old now. Monica’s father was in his seventies when he died. If he was Alexander’s son, he was born when Alexander was in his mid-twenties. Olivia was a child at that time, so she certainly couldn’t have been the mother.

But what about Olivia’s mother? Scott asked himself. How old was she when they lived here? She could easily have been in her twenties. Was she involved with Alex and became pregnant, and gave up the baby for adoption? If so, did the Gannons buy her off? Why did Alex have that provision in his will, leaving his estate to a child if he had had one? Maybe he never knew, but simply suspected that someone who had worked for the family became pregnant with his child. Maybe his parents ended the relationship and made the girl swear to keep the secret? In those days, if something like that happened, the girl was usually sent away to have the baby and paid off to keep quiet about it.

With one last look at the mausoleum, Scott got back in the car.