Mary Clark - The Shadow of Your Smile

Another thought crossed his mind as he was led out of his office for the last time. My brother’s a murderer. I’m a thief. One of my sons is a public defender.

I wonder if he’d care to represent either one of us.

He doubted it.

At six thirty the last of her small patients was gone. Monica went into her private office, where Detectives Forrest and Whelan and John Hartman had been patiently waiting. “Why don’t we go into the reception area?” she asked. “You have to be careful not to trip over toys, but we’ll have more room there.”

When she had returned from the meeting at the Gannon Foundation, she had asked Nan to call John Hartman and ask him to stop at the office at around six. Then, halfway through the afternoon, Nan reported that Detectives Forrest and Whelan wanted to have another meeting with her.

“I told them, they’d just have to wait until six o’clock,” Nan had reported. “They were nice about it.”

“Dr. Jenner will be coming over, too,” Monica had told Nan.

Nan’s delighted smile telegraphed to Monica that she, too, was aware of the gossip about Ryan and herself.

Nan had tidied up the reception room. Without being asked, Forrest adjusted one of the couches so that they all sat facing each other. “Dr. Farrell…” he began.

The phone rang. Nan hurried to answer it. “It’s Dr. Jenner,” she said.

Monica got up and walked quickly to take the receiver from Nan’s hand.

“Monica,” Ryan said, “there’s been a nasty accident on the West Side Highway. Some head injuries. I’m waiting to see if I’m needed for surgery.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll call you back when I know how long I’ll be here.” He hesitated. “Unless it gets too late.”

“Call me back. I don’t care what time it is,” Monica said, then added, “I’m dying of curiosity about the lasagna.”

“I may never eat it again. I’ll get back to you.”

Monica replaced the phone on the cradle then went back to the reception room. John Hartman held a chair for her. As she sat down, she said to the detectives, “I’m glad you’re here. There is something that I was going to give to John, and I think it’s just as well that I’m able to talk to all of you about it.”

Carl Forrest said, “Before we discuss that, Dr. Farrell, I am very sorry to have to tell you that the body of Scott Alterman was found in the East River this morning. It may or may not be a suicide, but we are beginning to believe his death may have had something to do with his belief that you are connected to the Gannon family.”

“Scott is dead?” Monica repeated. “Dear God! But only yesterday at this very time you were suggesting that he might have been behind the attempt to kill me.”

Forrest nodded. “Dr. Farrell, you told us yourself that he had been obsessed with you. You told us that he called you shortly after you reached home, when you were pushed in front of a bus. What you did not tell us is that he believed you might be the granddaughter of Dr. Alexander Gannon-which, of course, would put you in line to inherit much of the Gannon fortune.”

For a long minute, Monica could not speak. In a whirlwind of memory, she thought of being her best friend Joy’s maid of honor at her wedding to Scott. She thought of how close she had been to both of them until after her father’s death, when Scott started to bombard her with phone calls and passionate e-mails.

“Scott was my father’s attorney,” Monica said, trying to choose her words carefully. “When my father became terminally ill and finally had to be placed in a nursing home, Scott handled all his affairs. My father was adopted, and was always seeking to learn his background, to find his birth family. He was a researcher, who late in life was a consultant in one of the labs in Boston founded by Dr. Alexander Gannon. The few years my father worked there, I was in medical school in Georgetown.”

She stopped as memories of trying to get back to Boston whenever she could possibly squeeze in a day or two, and her comfort in the fact that Joy and Scott had visited her father so frequently, raced through her mind.

“As long as I can remember, my father would cut out pictures of people whom he thought he resembled and wonder if he was related to them,” she said, sadly. “It became a desperate need for him to discover his roots. I used to tease him about it. Shortly before he died, he became fixated on the notion that he bore a striking resemblance to pictures he had seen of Alexander Gannon. Scott took him seriously. I never did, until today.”

Trying to keep her voice steady, Monica asked, “Nan, would you please print out the picture I took this morning on my cell phone?” She got up. “I have my father’s picture in my wallet but I have a larger one on my desk. Let me get that one and I’ll show you exactly what I saw this morning.”

She walked into her private office and for a minute stood there, hugging herself tightly to stop trembling. Scott, she thought. Poor Scott. If someone killed him, it was because he was trying to help me, because he thought I would come into a fortune.

She picked up her father’s framed picture and carried it back to the reception room. Nan had already printed out the one she had taken of the portrait of Alexander Gannon. Monica laid them side by side on the table. As the detectives leaned over to study them, she said, “As you can see, the pictures are virtually interchangeable.”

Without taking her eyes off the pictures, she said, “I think Scott Alterman lost his life trying to prove there was a blood relationship between Alexander Gannon and my father. And I also think that it doesn’t stop there. I believe that Olivia Morrow, the woman who was about to reveal the names of my grandparents, may have died last Tuesday night because she confided to someone else that I was coming to visit her on Wednesday evening.”

“Who is that person?” Forrest asked sharply.

Monica raised her head and looked directly across the table at him. “I believe Olivia Morrow told her cardiologist, Dr. Clayton Hadley, that she was going to give me proof that I am a Gannon descendant. Dr. Hadley is not only on the board of the Gannon Foundation, but he also visited Ms. Morrow late Tuesday evening. The next evening when I arrived at her apartment, she was dead.”

Monica turned to John Hartman. “I asked you to come here for a specific reason and it ties into all of this.”

Once again, Monica went into her private office and this time when she returned, she was carrying the plastic bag containing the pillow with the smear of blood that Sophie had taken from Olivia Morrow’s apartment. She explained to them why Sophie had taken it, and described Hadley’s response to Sophie about the missing pillowcase.

Forrest took the bag from her. “You have the makings of a good detective, Dr. Farrell. You can be sure we’ll take this to the lab right away.”

A few minutes later, they all left together. Declining John and Nan’s invitation to have dinner, Monica got in a cab and went home. Thoroughly exhausted from the events of the day, she double-locked the door, walked back into the kitchen, and looked at the afghan that was still draped over the glass half of the kitchen door.

When I put that up last night, it was because I was worried that Scott might harm me, she remembered. And now he’s dead because of me.

As a sort of unconscious tribute to him, she took it down, carried it back into the living room, curled up on the couch, and pulled it over her. Ryan may call anytime, she thought. I’ll keep both phones right next to me and close my eyes. I don’t think I’ll fall asleep, but if I do I just can’t miss his call. I need him.