The Shadow of Your Smile

19

On Monday evening, retired detective John Hartman phoned his neighbor Nan Rhodes. By now he knew that she sometimes met her sisters on Monday evenings, but he wasn’t sure whether it was a weekly commitment.

A childless widower who had been the only child of two only children, Hartman, despite his wide circle of friends, often regretted that he had not been born into a large family. Tonight for some reason, he felt particularly down and was immeasurably cheered when at seven thirty Nan answered her phone on the first ring.

At his suggestion that he half expected her to be at dinner with her siblings, Nan laughed. “We meet once a month,” she told him. “Weekly, and we’d probably be resuming old battles like ‘Remember when you wore my new sweater before I even had a chance to wear it myself?’ It’s better this way.”

“I’ve kept the picture of Dr. Farrell longer than I intended,” he said. “The fingerprints on it don’t match any known felon. Shall I slip it under your door?” Why did I make that suggestion? he asked himself. Why didn’t I ask if I could drop it off?

He was delighted to hear Nan’s response. “I just made a pot of tea and sinful as it’s now considered, I bought a chocolate layer cake at the bakery. Why don’t you just come in and sit down for a few minutes and share it with me?”

Not realizing that Nan was at once shocked at her invitation to him and pleased that he had accepted it, Hartman hastily grabbed a freshly cleaned cardigan from his closet and buttoned it over his casual shirt. Five minutes later he was sitting opposite Nan at her dinette table.

As she poured tea and sliced a generous piece of cake for him, he decided that he would not hand over the picture immediately. He found himself savoring the warmth that emanated from Nan Rhodes. He knew she had a son. Always ask about the offspring, he told himself. “Nan, how is your son doing?”

Her eyes lit up. “I just got a new picture of him with his wife, Sharon, and the baby.” Nan rushed to get the picture, and when she returned and he had made the appropriate comments, they began to talk about her family. Then the normally reserved John Hartman found himself telling her about his experience of growing up as an only child and how as a kid he already knew that someday he would be a detective.

It was only after the second cup of tea and a small second slice of chocolate cake that he pulled the envelope with the photograph of Monica holding the Garcia baby from his pocket. “Nan,” he said soberly. “I’m a pretty good detective, and when I was working I would get a hunch about a case and many times I was on target. As I told you when I phoned, whoever was holding that picture has no known past history of crime. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t something very wrong about the fact this picture exists and that Dr. Farrell’s two addresses are on it.”

“As I told you last week, that was my hunch, too, John,” Nan said. She reached for the envelope, took the picture out, studied it, then turned it over to read again the block printing with Monica’s addresses. “I have to show it to her,” she said reluctantly. “She might be annoyed that I didn’t give it to her last week, but that’s a chance I have to take.”

“I walked over to the hospital the other day,” John said. “I took some pictures from across the street to try to get the same angle of the steps and hospital that we see in this one. I think whoever took that picture was sitting in a car.”

“Do you mean someone might have been waiting for Dr. Monica to come out?” Now Nan’s voice was incredulous.

“It’s possible. Do you remember if anyone phoned last Monday to ask about her schedule?”

Nan frowned as she tried to sort out the myriad of calls that came into the office. “I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “But it isn’t unusual for someone like a pharmacist to phone and ask when the doctor is expected in. I wouldn’t even have noticed that as being unusual.”

“What would you have said if you had been called about her schedule last Monday?”

“I would have said that’s she’d be in around noon. There are often staff meetings at the hospital on Monday mornings and I don’t schedule anything at the office for her until one o’clock.”

“What time did she step out of the hospital with the Garcias to take that picture?”

“I don’t know.”

“When you give it to the doctor, please ask her what time it was.”

“All right.” Nan realized her throat was dry. “You really think that someone is stalking her, don’t you?”

“Maybe stalking is too strong a word. I checked on Scott Alterman, the ex-boyfriend, or whatever he was to the doctor. He’s a well-known, well-respected lawyer in Boston, recently divorced, and moved to Manhattan only last week to join a big-shot law firm on Wall Street. But he wasn’t the one who took the picture. Last Monday his firm had a farewell luncheon for him at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston and he was there.”

“Could he have had someone else take the picture for him?”

“He could have. But I doubt it. That doesn’t have the ring of truth to me.” Hartman pushed back his chair. “Nan, thanks for the hospitality. The cake was delicious and every time I have tea brewed in a teapot, I promise myself I’ll never use a tea bag again.”

Nan stood up with him. “I’ll be very aware of anyone phoning to try to get the doctor’s schedule,” she said, then brightened. “Oh, I have to tell you something interesting. The Garcia baby, the one who recovered from leukemia, was in today. Just a cold, but you can understand the concern of the parents. Tony Garcia, the father, works part-time as a driver. He told Dr. Monica that an elderly lady he drove last week claimed to know the doctor’s grandmother. Dr. Monica told me she thought it had to be a mistake, because she never knew her grandparents, but I couldn’t resist following up. I called Tony and he gave me the lady’s name. It’s Olivia Morrow, and she lives on Riverside Drive. I gave it to Dr. Monica and urged her to give the lady a call. As I told her, ‘What have you got to lose?’ ”