Let Me Call You Sweetheart

31

On Monday morning Kerry found a package in her office, and inside was a Royal Doulton china figurine, the one called “Autumn Breezes.” There was a note with it:

Dear Ms. McGrath,

Mom’s house is sold and we’ve cleared out all our stuff. We’re moving to Pennsylvania to live with our aunt and uncle.

Mom always kept this on her dresser. It had been her mother’s.

She said it made her happy to see it.

You’ve made us so happy by making sure that the guy who killed Mom pays for his crime that we want you to have it. It’s our way of saying thanks.

The letter was signed by Chris and Ken, the teenage sons of the supervisor who had been murdered by her assistant.

Kerry blinked back tears as she held the lovely object. She called in her secretary and dictated a brief letter:

By law, I’m not allowed to accept any gifts, but, Chris and Ken, I promise you, if it were different, this would be one I’d cherish. Please keep it for me and for your mom.

As she signed the letter she thought about the obvious bond between these brothers, and between them and their mother. What would become of Robin if something happened to me? she wondered. Then she shook her head. There’s nothing to be gained in being morbid, she thought. Besides, there was another, more pressing, parent/child situation to investigate.

It was time to pay a visit to Dr. Charles Smith. When she called his office, the answering service picked up. “They won’t be in until eleven today. May I take a message?”

Shortly before noon, Kerry received a return call from Mrs.

Carpenter.

“I’d like to have an appointment to speak with the doctor as soon as possible,” Kerry said. “It’s important.”

“What is this in reference to, Ms. McGrath?”

Kerry decided to gamble. “Tell the doctor it’s in reference to Suzanne.”

She waited nearly five minutes, then heard Dr. Smith’s cold, precise voice. “What do you want, Ms. McGrath?” he asked.

“I want to talk to you about your testimony at Skip Reardon’s trial, Doctor, and I’d appreciate doing it as soon as possible.”

By the time she hung up, he had agreed to meet with her in his office at seven-thirty the next morning. She mused that it meant she would have to leave home by six-thirty. And that meant she would have to arrange for a neighbor to phone Robin to make sure she didn’t fall back asleep after Kerry had gone.

Otherwise, Robin would be fine. She always walked to school with two of her girlfriends, and Kerry was sure that she was old enough to get herself a bowl of cereal.

Next she phoned her friend Margaret at her office and got Stuart Grant’s home phone number. “I talked to Stuart about you and your questions about that plastic surgeon, and he said his wife will be home all morning,” Margaret told her.

Susan Grant answered on the first ring. She repeated exactly what Margaret had reported. “I swear, Kerry, it was frightening. I just wanted to have a tuck around the eyes. But Dr. Smith was so intense. He kept calling me Suzanne, and I know that if I had let him have his way, I wouldn’t have looked like myself anymore.”

Just before lunch, Kerry asked Joe Palumbo to stop by her office. “I have a little extracurricular situation I need your help with,” she told him when he slumped in a chair in front of her desk. “The Reardon case.”

Joe’s quizzical expression demanded an answer. She told him about the Suzanne Reardon look-alikes and Dr. Charles Smith. Hesitantly she admitted that she had also visited Reardon in prison and that, while everything she was doing was strictly unofficial, she was beginning to have her doubts about the way the case was handled.

Palumbo whistled.

“And, Joe, I’d appreciate it if we could keep this just between us. Frank Green is not happy about my interest in the case.”

“I wonder why,” Palumbo murmured.

“The point is that Green himself told me the other day that Dr. Smith was an unemotional witness. Strange for a father of a murder victim, wouldn’t you say? On the stand, Dr. Smith testified that he and his wife had separated when Suzanne was a baby and that a few years later he allowed her to be adopted by her stepfather, a man named Wayne Stevens, and that she grew up in Oakland, California. I’d like you to locate Stevens. I’d be very interested in learning from him what kind of girl Suzanne was growing up, and especially I want to see a picture of her taken when she was a teenager.”

She had pulled out several pages of the Reardon trial transcript. Now she shoved them across the desk to Palumbo. “Here’s the testimony of a baby-sitter who was across the street the night of the murder and who claims she saw a strange car in front of the Reardon house around nine o’clock that night. She lives-or lived-with her daughter and son-in-law in Alpine. Check her out for me, okay?”

Palumbo’s eyes reflected keen interest. “It will be a pleasure, Kerry. You’re doing me a favor. I’d love to see Our Leader be the one on the hot seat for a change.”

“Look, Joe, Frank Green’s a good guy,” Kerry protested. “I’m not interested in upsetting things for him. I just feel that there were some questions left open in the case, and frankly, meeting Dr. Smith and seeing his look-alike patients has spooked me. If there’s a chance that the wrong man is in jail, I feel it’s my duty to explore it. But I’ll do it only if I am convinced.”

“I fully understand,” Palumbo said. “And don’t get me wrong. In most ways I agree with you that Green is an okay guy. It’s just that I prefer someone who doesn’t run for cover every time someone in this office is taking heat.”