I'll Be Seeing You (6 page)

“Has she been identified?” Meghan asked.

“No.” Nader hesitated. “But she seems to have known you.”

“Known me?” Meghan stared at him. “How do you figure that?”

“When they brought her into the morgue Thursday night they went through her clothing and found nothing. They sent everything to the district attorney's office to be stored as evidence. One of our guys went over it again. The lining of the jacket pocket had a deep fold. He found a sheet of paper torn from a Drumdoe Inn notepad. It had your name and direct phone number at WPCD written on it.”

“My name!”

Lt. Story reached into his pocket. The piece of paper was encased in plastic. He held it up. “Your first name and the number.”

Meghan and the two detectives were standing at Tom Weicker's desk. Meghan gripped the desktop as she stared at the bold letters, the slanted printing of the numbers. She felt her lips go dry.

“Miss Collins, do you recognize that handwriting?” Story asked sharply.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Who . . . ?”

She turned her head, not wanting to see that familiar writing anymore. “My father wrote that,” she whispered.

O
n Monday morning, Phillip Carter reached the office at eight o'clock. As usual he was the first to arrive. The staff was small, consisting of Jackie, his fifty-year-old secretary, the mother of teenagers; Milly, the grandmotherly part-time bookkeeper; and Victor Orsini.

Carter had his own computer adjacent to his desk. In it he kept files that only he could access, files that listed his personal data. His friends joked about his love for going to land auctions, but they would have been astonished at the amount of rural property he had quietly amassed over the years. Unfortunately for him, much of the land he had acquired cheaply had been lost in his divorce settlement. The property he bought at sky-high prices he acquired after the divorce.

As he inserted the key in the computer he reflected
that when Jackie and Milly learned that Edwin Collins' presumed death was being challenged, they would not lack for noon-hour gossip.

His essential sense of privacy recoiled at the notion that he would ever be the subject of one of the avid discussions Jackie and Milly shared as they lunched on salads that seemed to him to consist mostly of alfalfa sprouts.

The subject of Ed Collins' office worried him. It had seemed the decent thing to leave it as it was until the official pronouncement of his death, but now it was just as well Meghan had said she wanted to pack up her father's personal effects. One way or the other, Edwin Collins would never use it again.

Carter frowned. Victor Orsini. He just couldn't like the man. Orsini had always been closer to Ed, but he did a damn good job, and his expertise in the field of medical technology was absolutely necessary today, and particularly valuable now that Ed was gone. He had handled most of that area of the business.

Carter knew there was no way to avoid giving Orsini Ed's office when Meghan had finished clearing it out. Victor's present office was cramped and had only one small window.

Yes, for the present, he needed the man, like him or not.

Nevertheless, Phillip's intuition warned him that there was an elusive factor about Victor Orsini's makeup that should never be ignored.

Lt. Story allowed a copy of the plastic-enclosed scrap of paper to be made for Meghan. “How long ago were you assigned that phone number at the radio station?” he asked her.

“In mid-January.”

“When was the last time you saw your father?”

“On January 14th. He was leaving for California on a business trip.”

“What kind of business?”

Meghan's tongue felt thick, her fingers were chilled as she held the photocopy with her name looking incongruously bold against the white background. She told him about Collins and Carter Executive Search. It was obvious that Detective Jamal Nader had already told Story that her father was missing.

“Did your father have this number in his possession when he left?”

“He must have. I never spoke to him or saw him again after the fourteenth. He was due home on the twenty-eighth.”

“And he died in the Tappan Zee Bridge accident that night.”

“He called his associate Victor Orsini as he was starting onto the bridge. The accident happened less than a minute after their phone conversation. Someone reported seeing a dark Cadillac spin into the fuel tanker and go over the side.” It was useless to conceal what this man could learn by one phone call. “I must tell you that the insurance companies have now refused to pay his policies on the basis that at least parts of all the other vehicles have been found, but there's been no trace of my father's car. The Thruway divers claim that if the car went into the river at that point, they should have located it.” Meghan's chin went up. “My mother is filing suit to have the insurance paid.”

She could see the skepticism in the eyes of all three men. To her own ears—and with this paper in her hand—she sounded like one of those unfortunate witnesses she had seen in court trials, people who stick doggedly to their testimony even in the face of irrefutable proof that they are either mistaken or lying.

Story cleared his throat. “Miss Collins, the young woman who was murdered Thursday night bears a striking resemblance to you and was carrying a slip of paper with your name and phone number written on it in your father's handwriting. Have you any explanation?”

Meghan stiffened her back. “I have no idea why that
young woman was carrying that piece of paper. I have no idea how she got it. She did look a lot like me. For all I know my father might have met her and commented on the similarity and said, ‘If you're ever in New York, I'd like you to meet my daughter.' People do resemble each other. We all know that. My father was in the kind of business where he met many people; knowing him, that would be the kind of comment he'd make. There is one thing I am sure of, if my father were alive, he would not have deliberately disappeared and left my mother financially paralyzed.”

She turned to Tom. “I'm assigned to cover the Baxter arraignment. I'd better get moving.”

“You okay?” Tom asked. There was no hint of pity in his manner.

“I'm absolutely fine,” Meghan said quietly. She did not look at Story or Nader.

It was Nader who spoke. “Meghan, we're in touch with the FBI. If there's been any report of a missing woman who fits the description of Thursday night's stabbing victim, we'll have it soon. Maybe a lot of answers are tied up together.”

H
elene Petrovic loved her job as embryologist in charge of the laboratory of the Manning Clinic. Widowed at twenty-seven, she had emigrated to the United States from Rumania, gratefully accepted the largess of a family friend, worked for her as a cosmetician and begun to go to school at night.

Now forty-eight, she was a slender, handsome woman
whose eyes never smiled. During the week, Helene lived in New Milford, Connecticut, five miles from the clinic, in the furnished condo she rented. Weekends were spent in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, in the pleasant colonial-style house she owned. The study off her bedroom there was filled with pictures of the children she had helped bring into life.

Helene thought of herself as the chief pediatrician of a nursery for newborns on the maternity ward of a fine hospital. The difference was that the embryos in her care were more vulnerable than the frailest preemie. She took her responsibility with fierce seriousness.

Helene would look at the tiny vials in the laboratory, and, knowing the parents and sometimes the siblings, in her mind's eye she saw the children who might someday be born. She loved them all, but there was one child she loved the best, the beautiful towhead whose sweet smile reminded her of the husband she had lost as a young woman.

The arraignment of the stockbroker Baxter on inside trader charges took place in the courthouse on Centre Street. Flanked by his two attorneys, the impeccably dressed defendant pleaded not guilty, his firm voice suggesting the authority of the boardroom. Steve was Meg's cameraman again. “What a con artist. I'd almost rather be back in Connecticut with the Munchkins.”

“I wrote up a memo and left it for Tom—about doing a feature on that clinic. This afternoon I'm going to pitch it to him,” Meghan said.

Steve winked. “If I ever have kids, I hope I have them the old-fashioned way, if you know what I mean.”

She smiled briefly. “I know what you mean.”

At four o'clock, Meghan was again in Tom's office. “Meghan, let me get this straight. You mean this woman
is about to give birth to the identical twin of her three-year-old?”

“That's exactly what I mean. That kind of divided birth has been done in England, but it's news here. Plus the mother in this case is quite interesting. Dina Anderson is a bank vice president, very attractive and well spoken, and obviously a terrific mother. And the three-year-old is a doll.

“Another point is that so many studies have shown that identical twins, even when separated at birth, grow up with identical tastes. It can be eerie. They may marry people with the same name, call their children by the same names, decorate their houses in the same colors, wear the same hairstyle, choose the same clothes. It would be interesting to know how the relationship would change if one twin is significantly older than the other.

“Think about it,” she concluded. “It's only fifteen years since the miracle of the first test tube baby, and now there are thousands of them. There are more new breakthroughs in assisted reproduction methods every day. I think ongoing segments on the new methods—and updates on the Anderson twins—could be terrific.”

She spoke eagerly, warming to her argument. Tom Weicker was not an easy sell.

“How sure is Mrs. Anderson that she's having the identical twin?”

“Absolutely positive. The cryopreserved embryos are in individual tubes, marked with the mother's name, Social Security number and date of her birth. And each tube is given its own number. After Jonathan's embryo was transferred, the Andersons had two embryos, his identical twin and one other. The tube with his identical twin was specially labeled.”

Tom got up from his desk and stretched. He'd taken off his coat, loosened his tie and opened his collar button. The effect was to soften his usual flinty exterior.

He walked over to the window, stared down at the snarled traffic on West Fifty-sixth Street, then turned abruptly. “I liked what you did with the Manning reunion
yesterday. We've gotten good response. Go ahead with it.”

He was letting her do it! Meghan nodded, reminding herself that enthusiasm was out of order.

Tom went back to his desk. “Meghan, take a look at this. It's an artist's sketch of the woman who was stabbed Thursday night.” He handed it to her.

Even though she had seen the victim, Meghan's mouth went dry when she looked at the sketch. She read the statistics, “Caucasian, dark brown hair, blue-green eyes, 5´6", slender build, 120 pounds, 24–28 years old.” Add an inch to the height and they'd describe her.

“If that ‘mistake' fax was on the level and meant you were the intended victim, it's pretty clear why this girl is dead,” Weicker commented. “She was right in this neighborhood, and the resemblance to you is uncanny.”

“I simply don't understand it. Nor do I understand how she got that slip of paper with my father's writing.”

“I spoke to Lt. Story again. We both agreed that until the killer is found it would be better to pull you off the news beat, just in case there is some kind of nut gunning for you.”

“But, Tom—” she protested. He cut her off.

“Meghan, concentrate on that feature. It could make a darned good human interest story. If it works, we'll do future segments on those kids. But as of now, you are off the news beat. Keep me posted,” he snapped as he sat down and pulled out a desk drawer, clearly dismissing her.

B
y Monday afternoon, the Manning Clinic had settled down from the excitement of the weekend reunion. All traces of the festive party were gone, and the reception area was restored to its usual quiet elegance.

A couple in their late thirties was leafing through magazines as they waited for their first appointment. The receptionist, Marge Walters, looked at them sympathetically. She had had no problem having three children in the first three years of her marriage. Across the room an obviously nervous woman in her twenties was holding her husband's hand. Marge knew the young woman had an appointment to have embryos implanted in her womb. Twelve of her eggs had become fertilized in the lab. Three would be implanted in the hope that one might result in a pregnancy. Sometimes more than one embryo developed, leading to a multiple birth.

“That would be a blessing, not a problem,” the young woman had assured Marge when she signed in. The other nine embryos would be cryopreserved. If a pregnancy did not result this time, the young woman would come back and be implanted with some of those embryos.