Mary Clark - Let Me Call You Sweetheart

Thank you for calling.”

As he listened, he decided that Grace Hoover was the kind of witness lawmen pray to find. She was logical in her reasoning, clear in her presentation and articulate in explaining how, looking up from her wheelchair, her eyes were probably at the same angle as the lens of the surveillance camera in the Hamilton house.

“Looking straight at Mr. Arnott you would think his face was fuller than it appears when you’re looking up at him,” she explained. “Also when I asked him if we knew each other, his lips pursed together very tightly. I think it may be a habit he has when he’s concentrating. Notice how they’re scrunched in your picture. My feeling is that when the camera caught him, he was concentrating very much on that statuette. I would guess he was deciding whether or not it was genuine. My friend tells me he’s quite an expert on antiques.”

“Yes, he is.” Si Morgan was excited. At last he had struck gold! “Mrs. Hoover, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this call. You do know that if this leads to a conviction, there’s a substantial reward, over one hundred thousand dollars.”

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” Grace Hoover said. “I’ll simply send it on to a charity.”

When Si hung up he thought of the tuition bills that were sitting on his desk at home for the spring semester at his sons’ colleges. Shaking his head he turned on the intercom and sent for the three investigators who were working on the Hamilton case.

He told them that he wanted Arnott followed round the clock. Judging from the investigation they had made of him two years ago, if he was the thief, he had done an excellent job of concealing his tracks. It would be better to trail him for a while. He might just lead them to where he was keeping stolen property.

“If this isn’t another red herring, and we can get proof he’s committed the burglaries,” Si said, “our next job will be to nail the Peale murder on him. The boss wants that one solved big time. The president’s mother used to play bridge with Mrs. Peale.”

Dr. Smith’s study was clean, but Kerry noticed that it had the shabby look of a room that had endured years of neglect. The ivory silk lamp shades, the kind she remembered from her grandmother’s house, were darkened with age. One of them had at some point been scorched, and the silk around the burn mark was split. The overstuffed velour chairs were too low and felt scratchy.

It was a high-ceilinged room that could have been beautiful, but to Kerry it seemed frozen in time, as though it were the setting for a scene in a black-and-white movie made in the forties.

She had slipped off her raincoat, but Dr. Smith did not attempt to take it from her. The lack of even the gesture of courtesy seemed to suggest that she would not be staying long enough for him to bother. She folded the coat and draped it on the arm of the chair in which she was sitting.

Smith sat rigidly erect in a high-backed chair that she was sure he never would have chosen if he were alone.

“What do you want, Ms. McGrath?” The rimless glasses enlarged eyes that chilled with their hostile probing.

“I want the truth,” Kerry said evenly. “I want to know why you claimed that it was you who gave Suzanne jewelry, when, in fact, it was given to her by another man. I want to know why you lied about Skip Reardon. He never threatened Suzanne. He may have lost patience with her; he may have gotten angry at her. But he never threatened her, did he? What possible reason would you have for swearing that he did?”

“Skip Reardon killed my daughter. He strangled her. He strangled her so viciously that her eyes hemorrhaged, so violently that blood vessels in her neck broke, her tongue hung out of her mouth like a dumb animal’s…” His voice trailed off. What had started as an angry outburst ended almost as a sob.

“I realize how painful it must have been for you to examine those pictures,.Dr. Smith.” Kerry spoke softly. Her eyes narrowed as she saw that Smith was looking past her. “But why have you always blamed Skip for the tragedy?”

“He was her husband. He was jealous, insanely jealous. That was a fact. It was clear to everyone.” He paused. “Now, Ms. McGrath, I don’t want to discuss this any further. I demand to know what you mean by accusing me of stalking Barbara Tompkins.”

“Wait. Let’s talk about Reardon first, Doctor. You are wrong. Skip was not insanely jealous of Suzanne. He did know she was seeing someone else.” Kerry waited. “But so was he.”

Smith’s head jerked as though she had slapped him. “That’s impossible. He was married to an exquisite woman and he worshiped her.”

“You worshiped her, Doctor.” Kerry hadn’t expected to say that, but when she did, she knew it was true. “You put yourself in his position, didn’t you? If you had been Suzanne’s husband and had found out she was involved with another man, you’d have been capable of murder, wouldn’t you?” She stared at him.

He did not blink. “How dare you! Suzanne was my daughter!” he said coldly. “Now get out of here.” He stood and moved toward Kerry as though he might grab her to throw her out.

Kerry jumped up, clutching her coat, and stepped back from him. With a glance she checked to see that, if necessary, she could get around him to the front door. “No, Doctor,” she said, “Susie Stevens was your daughter. Suzanne was your creation. And you felt you owned her, just as you believe you own Barbara Tompkins. Doctor, you were in Alpine the night Suzanne died. Did you kill her?”

“Kill Suzanne? Are you crazy?”

“But you were there.”

“I was not!”

“Oh yes you were, and we’re going to prove it. I promise you that. We’re going to reopen the case and get the innocent man you condemned out of prison. You were jealous of him, Dr. Smith. You punished him because he had constant access to Suzanne and you didn’t. But how you tried! In fact, you tried so hard that she became sick of your demands for her attention.”

“That’s not true.” The words escaped through his clenched teeth.

Kerry saw that Smith’s hand was trembling violently. She lowered her voice, took a more conciliatory tone. “Dr. Smith, if you didn’t kill your daughter, someone else surely did. But it wasn’t Skip Reardon. I believe that you loved Suzanne in your own way. I believe that you wanted her murderer to be punished. But do you know what you’ve done? You’ve given Suzanne’s killer a free ride. He’s out there laughing at you, singing your praises for covering up for him. If we had the jewelry Skip is sure you didn’t give Suzanne, we could try to trace it. We might be able to find out who did give it to her. Skip is certain that at least one piece is missing and may have been taken that night.”

“He’s lying.”

“No, he isn’t. It’s what he’s been saying from the beginning. And something else was stolen that night-a picture of Suzanne in a miniature frame. It had been on her night table. Did you take it?”

“I was not in that house the night Suzanne died!”

“Then who borrowed your Mercedes that night?”

Smith’s “Get out!” was a guttural howl.

Kerry knew she had better not stay any longer. She circled around him but at the door turned to him again. “Dr. Smith, Barbara Tompkins spoke to me. She is alarmed. She moved up a business trip solely to get away from you. When she returns in ten days, I’m going to personally escort her to the New York police to lodge a complaint against you.”

She opened the door to the old carriage house, and a blast of cold air swept into the foyer. “Unless,” she added, “you come to terms with the fact that you need both physical and psychological help. And unless you satisfy me that you have told the full truth about what happened the night Suzanne died. And unless you give me the jewelry you suspect may have been given to her by a man other than you or her husband.”