Let Me Call You Sweetheart

14

Kerry and Robin sat in companionable silence in the family room. Because of the chilly evening, they had decided to have the first fire of the season, which in their case meant turning on the gas jet and then pressing the button that sent flames shooting through the artificial logs.

As Kerry explained to visitors, “I’m allergic to smoke. This fire looks real and gives off heat. In fact, it looks so real that my cleaning woman vacuumed up the fake ashes, and I had to go out and buy more.”

Robin laid out her change-of-season pictures on the coffee table. “What a terrific night,” she said with satisfaction, “cold and windy. I should get the rest of the pictures soon. Bare trees, lots of leaves on the ground.”

Kerry was seated in her favorite roomy armchair, her feet on a hassock. She looked up. “Don’t remind me of the leaves. I get tired.”

“Why don’t you get a leaf blower?”

“I’ll give you one for Christmas.”

“Funny. What are you reading, Mom?”

“Come here, Rob.” Kerry held up a newspaper clipping with a picture of Suzanne Reardon. “Do you recognize that lady?”

“She was in Dr. Smith’s office yesterday.”

“You’ve got a good eye, but it’s not the same person.” Kerry had just begun reading the account of Suzanne Reardon’s murder. Her body had been discovered at midnight by her husband, Skip Reardon, a successful contractor and self-made millionaire. He had found her lying on the floor in the foyer of their luxurious home in Alpine. She had been strangled. Sweetheart roses were scattered over her body.

I must have read about that back then, Kerry thought. It certainly must have made an impression on me, to bring on those dreams.

It was twenty minutes later when she read the clipping that made her gasp. Skip Reardon had been charged with the murder after his father-in-law, Dr. Charles Smith, had told the police that his daughter lived in fear of her husband’s insane attacks of jealousy.

Dr. Smith was Suzanne Reardon’s father! My God, Kerry thought.

Is that why he’s giving her face to other women? How bizarre. How many of them has he done that to? Is that why he made that speech to me and Robin about preserving beauty?

“What’s the matter, Mom? You look funny,” Robin said.

“Nothing. Just interested in a case.” Kerry looked at the clock on the mantel. “Nine o’clock, Rob. You’d better pack it in. I’ll come up in a minute to say good night.”

As Robin gathered her pictures, Kerry let the papers she was holding fall into her lap. She had heard of cases in which parents could not recover from the death of a child, where they had left the child’s room unchanged, the clothes still in the closet, just as the child had left them. But to “re-create” her and do it over and over? That went beyond grief, surely.

Slowly she stood up and followed Robin upstairs. After she kissed her daughter good night, she went into her own room, changed into pajamas and a robe, then went back downstairs, made a cup of cocoa and continued to read.

The case against Skip Reardon did seem open and shut. He admitted that he and Suzanne had quarreled at breakfast the morning of her death. In fact, he admitted that in the preceding days they had fought almost continually. He admitted that he had come home at six o’clock that evening and found her arranging roses in a vase. When he asked her where they came from, she had told him it was none of his business who sent them. He said he had then told her that whoever sent them was welcome to her, that he was getting out. Then he claimed he had gone back to his office, had a couple of drinks, fallen asleep on the couch and returned home at midnight, to find her body.

There had been no one, however, to corroborate what he said. The file contained part of the trial transcript, including Skip’s testimony. The prosecutor had hammered at him until he became confused and seemed to be contradicting himself. He had not made a very convincing witness, to say the least.

What a terrible job his lawyer had done in preparing him to testify, Kerry thought. She didn’t doubt that, with the prosecutor’s strong circumstantial case, it was imperative that Reardon take the stand to deny that he had killed Suzanne. But it was obvious that Frank Green’s scathing cross-examination had completely unnerved him. There’s no question, she thought, Reardon had helped to dig his own grave.

The sentencing had taken place six weeks after the trial ended. Kerry had actually gone in to witness it. Now she thought back to that day. She remembered Reardon as a big, handsome redhead who looked uncomfortable in his pin-striped suit. When the judge asked him if he wanted to say anything before sentence was passed, he had once again protested his innocence.

Geoff Dorso had been with Reardon that day, serving as assistant counsel to Reardon’s defense lawyer. Kerry knew him slightly. In the ten years since then, Geoff had built a solid reputation as a criminal defense lawyer, although she didn’t know him firsthand. She had never argued against him in court.

She came to the newspaper clipping about the sentencing. It included a direct quote from Skip Reardon: “I am innocent of the death of my wife. I never hurt her. I never threatened her. Her father, Dr. Charles Smith, is a liar. Before God and this court, I swear he is a liar.”

Despite the warmth from the fire, she shivered.