The Shadow of Your Smile (14 page)

“All right, but I want you to think about giving up that job. And something else, keep a close watch on that baby. If she’s wheezing, get the vaporizer on. And if she gets bad, don’t take any chances. Call the doctor. Do you have the doctor’s number?”

“Yes. Dr. Farrell called a couple of times checking on Sally. Every time she does, she gives me her cell phone number again.”

“All right. I guess you can’t do anything more for now. But if that woman doesn’t come back tomorrow maybe you’ll have to call the police.”

“I’m sure she’ll be back. I’ll talk to you, Mom.”

With a sigh, Kristina replaced the phone on the cradle. She had called from Sally’s bedroom, the one place where she had managed to keep the dog from entering. It was large and furnished in white wicker. The carpet was a pink and white design. The walls were fancifully painted with nursery figures. The windows were framed in
pink and white eyelet draperies. A row of shelves opposite the crib was filled with toys and children’s books. When Kristina saw the room for the first time she had complimented Renée Carter on it. Her response had been, “It should be nice. The decorator charged me a fortune.”

Sally had barely eaten any dinner. She had begun to play with her dolls but now, to Kristina’s concern, she wandered over to her crib, pulled her security blanket from it, and lay down on the floor.

She is getting sick again, Kristina thought. I’ll turn on the vaporizer and I’ll sleep on the sofa bed in here with her. If she isn’t better in the morning, whether or not her mother is back, I’m going to call Dr. Farrell. I’m sure Ms. Carter will be furious. I’ll have to admit to the doctor that she isn’t here but I don’t care.

Kristina walked across the room, bent down, and picked up the sleepy baby. “You poor kid,” she said. “You certainly got one bum break when you were born to that miserable woman.”

25
 

Monica had hoped to go home and freshen up before her meeting with Olivia Morrow. It would be cutting it too tight, she decided, as she drove back through the Lincoln Tunnel. I’d rather be in her neighborhood early than run the risk of keeping her waiting. She’s obviously not well.

She claims she knew my grandparents, Dad’s birth mother and father. How did that happen? Dad’s birth mother did everything she could to conceal her identity. The names listed in the birth records in the hospital in Ireland had the Farrells as the natural parents. What did Olivia Morrow mean when she said she wanted to tell me about them before it’s too late? Too late for what? Is she sick enough to be actually dying? If it weren’t for that chance remark to Tony Garcia when he drove her, I would never have contacted her. Would she ever have contacted me?

At twenty minutes of five, after parking the car in a nearby garage, Monica entered the lobby of Schwab House. At the desk she gave her name. “I have an appointment at five o’clock with Ms. Morrow,” she explained. “I’m a little early, so I’ll just wait before you call her.”

“Certainly, ma’am.”

The twenty minutes seemed like hours before Monica went back to the desk. “Will you call her now, please? Tell her Dr. Farrell is here.”

Her anticipation rising to a fever pitch, Monica watched as the desk clerk dialed a number. She saw the expression come over his face that clearly suggested a problem. Then he broke the connection, dialed the number again, and waited for several long minutes before he disconnected.

“She’s not answering,” he said flatly. “There may be a problem. I know for sure that Ms. Morrow has not gone out today. She’s not at all well, and when she came back yesterday, she looked too tired to walk to the elevator. I have her doctor’s number. I’m going to call him. The night clerk told me he was here last evening to see her.”

“I’m a doctor,” Monica said quickly. “If you think there is a medical problem, time may be of the essence.”

“I’ll call Dr. Hadley and then if it’s okay with him, I’ll go upstairs with you now.”

In an agony of impatience, Monica waited while the clerk made the call to Hadley. He was not in his office, but he answered on his cell phone. From what she could hear the clerk saying, he was concise in explaining the situation. Finally he hung up. “Dr. Hadley will be here as fast as he can make it, but he said for me to bring you to Ms. Morrow’s apartment immediately, and if she has the bolt on to break in.”

When the clerk turned the superintendent’s key in the lock they heard a click, and when he turned the handle the door opened. The bolt of the apartment where Olivia Morrow had lived for more than half her life was not on. “I’m sure she hasn’t gone out,” the clerk said again. “Dr. Hadley was here last night. If she was in bed, she probably didn’t bother to get up and slide the bolt closed after he left.”

There were no lights on, but there was still sufficient natural light coming in from the west for Monica to glance at an orderly living room, a dining area, the open door to a kitchen, and then hurry behind the clerk down the hall. “Her bedroom is at the end,” he said, the next door from the den.”

He took a moment to knock on the closed bedroom door, then hesitantly opened it and entered the bedroom. From the doorway Monica could see the small figure, her head resting on a raised pillow, the rest of her body under the covers.

“Ms. Morrow,” the clerk said, “it’s Henry. We’re just checking up on you. The doctor is worried that you may need him.”

“Turn on the light,” Monica ordered.

“Oh, sure, Doctor, sure,” Henry stammered.

The overhead fixture flooded the room with light. Monica walked swiftly to the side of the bed and looked down on the waxy face, the teeth clamped on a corner of her bottom lip, her eyes partially open. She’s been dead for hours, she thought. Rigor mortis has set in. Oh God, if only I had called her earlier! Will I ever know about my birth family now?

“Call the police, Henry,” she ordered. “It is necessary to report a death when someone dies alone. I’ll wait here until her own physician comes. He’s the appropriate person to sign the death certificate.”

“Yes, ma’am. Yes. Thank you. I’ll call from downstairs.” Henry clearly was eager to be out of the presence of the body.

There was a chair in the corner of the room. Monica pulled it over and sat by the remains of the woman whom she had wanted so much to meet. Obviously Olivia Morrow had been very ill. She looked almost emaciated. Had she really known about me, Monica wondered, or was it all a mistake? Now I’ll probably never know.

Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Clay Hadley came rushing in. He reached under the covers and lifted Olivia Morrow’s hand then gently laid it back down and pulled the covers over it again. “I was here last night,” he told Monica, his voice husky. “I begged Olivia to let me admit her to a hospital or to a hospice so she wouldn’t die alone. She was adamant that she wanted to be in her own bed when the end came. Have you known her for long, Doctor?”

“I never met her. I was supposed to see her this evening. Her voice was soft. “My father was an adopted child and Ms. Morrow claimed she had known my birth grandparents and wanted to tell me about them. Did she ever mention me to you?”

Hadley shook his head.

“Dr. Farrell, please don’t put any stock in anything Olivia said. These past few weeks since I had to tell her how very sick she was she had begun to hallucinate. The poor woman had no family and she began to think that anyone she ever met or heard of was in some way related to her.”

“I see. Frankly, I wondered if that wasn’t the case. I guess I had better stay until the police come because I was with the clerk when we found the body. They’ll probably want a statement from me.”

“Why don’t we wait in the living room?” Hadley suggested.

With a final glance at the bed where Olivia Morrow was lying, Monica left the room. But as she walked down the hall she had the nagging sensation that something was out of order, something was wrong.

Maybe I’m the one who’s going crazy, she thought. I guess I didn’t realize how very much I was counting on Olivia Morrow really being able to tell me about my background. I’m so desperately disappointed.

Sitting in the living room that was a tribute to the discerning good taste of Olivia Morrow, Monica continued to be troubled by the sense that somehow she had missed something important, something that was wrong about the death of a woman she had never met in her life.

But what?

26
 

On Thursday morning Doug Langdon phoned Sammy Barber. Acutely conscious that what he was about to say was possibly being recorded, he spoke briefly and tried to disguise his voice. “I agree to the terms of your settlement offer.”

“Oh, Dougie, relax,” Sammy told him. “I’m not taping you anymore. I’ve got all I need in case the terms aren’t satisfactory. You got the cash in old bills, right?”

“Yes.” Langdon spat out the word.

“Here’s the way I figure we do it. We each have a big black suitcase, the kind that we can pull down the block. We meet in the parking lot of our favorite diner in Queens. We park near each other and switch bags in the lot. No bothering to stop for a cup of coffee, even though their coffee, as I remember it, wasn’t bad. Sound like a plan?”

“When do you want to meet?”

“Dougie, you don’t sound happy. I want you to be happy. The sooner the better. How about this afternoon, maybe around three? It’s quiet then and the boss at the nightclub wants me to come in early this evening. We’ve got some red-hot celebrities who’ve booked tables, and I’m his man when the jerks try to bother them.”

“I’m sure you are. This afternoon at three o’clock in the parking lot of the diner.” Douglas Langdon no longer tried to disguise his voice. If Sammy Barber took the money and did not fulfill the
contract there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Except, he told himself grimly, find someone to take care of Sammy, but if that came to pass, he would make very sure there would be no way to trace Sammy’s demise back to him.

And yet I think that when he has the money he’ll go through with it, Langdon thought, as he sat in his office waiting for Roberta Waters, his first patient, another one who was chronically late. Not that he cared. He always stopped her at precisely the time her hour was up, even if she had only been on the couch for fifteen minutes. At her protest, he had said, “I cannot delay my next patient. That would not be fair. Think about it. One of the reasons for your strained relationship with your husband is that he gets frantic because you are never on time for anything, and in consequence you make him embarrassingly late for your joint engagements.”

God, was he sick of that woman!

Face it, he was sick of them all. But be careful, he warned himself. You’ve been getting pretty snappy with Beatrice, who is after all a good secretary, and no question, she was oozing curiosity when Sammy showed up here.

The phone rang. A moment later Beatrice announced, “Dr. Hadley calling, sir.”

“Thank you, Beatrice.” Doug forced warmth into his voice. His tone changed when he heard her click off. “I tried to get you last night. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“Because I was a wreck,” Clay Hadley replied, his voice quivering. “I’m a doctor. I save lives. It’s one thing to talk about killing someone. It’s another to hold a pillow over the head of a woman who was my patient.”

Disbelieving, Doug Langdon heard the unmistakable sound of sobbing on the other end of the line. If Beatrice hadn’t disconnected immediately she would have heard the outburst, he thought frantically. He wanted to shout at Hadley to shut up, but then he swallowed
over the tightness in his throat and said calmly, “Clay, get hold of yourself. At the most Olivia Morrow had only a few days to live. By eliminating those few days you saved yourself from spending the rest of your life in prison. You did tell me she was going to tell Monica Farrell about Alex and the Gannon fortune?”

“Doug, Monica Farrell was in Olivia’s apartment when I went back yesterday evening. She was in the bedroom, sitting by Olivia’s bed. She’s a doctor. She may have noticed something.”

“Like what?”

Langdon waited. Hadley had stopped sobbing, but there was a hesitation in his voice when he said, “I don’t know. I guess I’m just nervous. I’m sorry. I’ll be all right.”