I'll Be Seeing You (28 page)

The insurance loan, Meghan thought.

“He said that if anything happened to him, you and your mother were well taken care of, but I was not.”

Meghan did not contradict Frances Grolier. She knew it had not occurred to Grolier that because his body had not been found a death certificate had not been issued for her father. And she knew with certainty that her mother would lose everything rather than take the money back that her father had given this woman.

“When was the last time you saw my father?” she asked.

“He left here on January twenty-seventh. He was going to San Diego to see Annie, then take a flight home on the morning of the twenty-eighth.”

“Why do you believe he's still alive?” Meghan had to ask before she left. More than anything, she wanted to
get away from this woman whom she realized she both deeply pitied and bitterly resented.

“Because when he left he was terribly upset. He'd learned something about his assistant that horrified him.”

“Victor Orsini?”

“That's the name.”

“What did he learn?”

“I don't know. But business had not been good for several years. Then there was a write-up in the local paper about a seventieth birthday party that had been given for Dr. George Manning by his daughter, who lives about thirty miles from here. The article quoted Dr. Manning as saying that he planned to work one more year, then retire. Your father said that the Manning Clinic was a client, and he called Dr. Manning. He wanted to suggest that he be commissioned to start the search for Manning's replacement. That conversation upset him terribly.”

“Why?” Meghan asked urgently. “Why?”

“I don't know.”

“Try to remember. Please. It's very important.”

Grolier shook her head. “When Edwin was leaving, his last words were, ‘It's becoming too much for me . . .' All the papers carried the story of the bridge accident. I believed he was dead and told people he had been killed in a light-plane accident abroad. Annie wasn't satisfied with that explanation.

“When he visited her at her apartment that last day, Edwin gave Annie money to buy some clothes. Six one-hundred-dollar bills. He obviously didn't realize that the slip of Drumdoe Inn notepaper with your name and number fell out of his wallet. She found it after he left and kept it.”

Frances Grolier's lip quivered. Her voice broke as she said, “Two weeks ago, Annie came here for what you'd call a showdown. She had phoned your number. You'd answered ‘Meghan Collins,' and she hung up. She wanted to see her father's death certificate. She called me a liar and demanded to know where he was. I finally
told her the truth and begged her not to contact you or your mother. She knocked over that bust I'd sculpted of Ed and stormed out of here. I never saw her again.”

Grolier stood up, placed her hand on the mantel and leaned her forehead against it. “I spoke to my lawyer last night. He's going to accompany me to New York tomorrow afternoon to identify Annie's body and arrange to have it brought back here. I'm sorry for the embarrassment this will cause you and your mother.”

Meghan had only one more question she needed to ask. “Why did you leave that message for Dad the other night?”

“Because I thought if he were still alive, if that line were still connected, he might check it out of habit. It was my way of contacting him in case of emergency. He used to beep in to that answering machine early every morning.” She faced Meghan again.

“Let no one tell you that Edwin Collins is capable of killing anyone, because he isn't.” She paused. “But he
is
capable of beginning a new life that does not include you and your mother. Or Annie and me.”

Frances Grolier turned away again. There was nothing left to say. Meghan took a last look at the bronze bust of her father and left, closing the door quietly behind her.

O
n Wednesday morning, as soon as Kyle was on the school bus, Mac left for Valley Memorial Hospital in Trenton, New Jersey.

At dinner the night before, when Kyle had left the table for a moment, Catherine had quickly told Mac and Phillip
about Meghan's call. “I don't know very much except that this woman has had a long-term relationship with Edwin; she thinks he's still alive, and the dead girl who looks like Meg was her daughter.”

“You seem to be taking it very well,” Phillip had commented, “or are you still in denial?”

“I don't know what I feel anymore,” Catherine had answered, “and I'm worried about Meg. You know how she felt about her father. I never heard anyone sound so hurt as she did when she called earlier.” Then Kyle was back and they changed the subject.

Driving south on Route 684 through Westchester, Mac tried to tear his thoughts away from Meghan. She had been crazy about Edwin Collins, a real Daddy's girl. He knew that these past months since she'd thought her father was dead had been hell for her. How many times Mac had wanted to ask her to talk it out with him, not to hold everything inside. Maybe he should have insisted on breaking through her reserve. God, how much time he had wasted nursing his wounded pride over Ginger's dumping him.

At last we're getting honest, he told himself. Everybody knew you were making a mistake tying up with Ginger. You could feel the reaction when the engagement was announced. Meg had the guts to say it straight out, and she was only nineteen. In her letter she'd written that she loved him and that he ought to have the sense to know she was the only girl for him. “Wait for me, Mac,” was the way she'd ended it.

He hadn't thought about that letter for a long time. Now he found that he was thinking about it a lot.

It was inevitable that as soon as Annie's body was claimed, it would be public knowledge that Edwin had led a double life. Would Catherine decide she didn't want to live in the same area where everyone had known Ed, that she would rather start fresh somewhere else? It could happen, especially if she lost the inn. That would mean Meg wouldn't be around either. The thought made Mac's blood run cold.

You can't change the past, Mac thought, but you can do something about the future. Finding Edwin Collins if he's still alive, or learning what happened to him if he's not, would release Meg and Catherine from the misery of uncertainty. Finding the doctor Helene Petrovic might have dated when she was a secretary at the Dowling Center in Trenton could be the first step to solving her murder.

Mac normally enjoyed driving. It was a good time for thinking. Today, however, his thoughts were in a jumble, filled with unsettled issues. The trip across Westchester to the Tappan Zee Bridge seemed longer than usual. The Tappan Zee Bridge—where it all began almost ten months ago, he thought.

It was another hour-and-a-half drive from there to Trenton. Mac arrived at Valley Memorial Hospital at ten-thirty and asked for the director. “I called yesterday and was told he could see me.”

Frederick Schuller was a compact man of about forty-five whose thoughtful demeanor was belied by his quick, warm smile. “I've heard of you, Dr. MacIntyre. Your work in human gene therapy is becoming pretty exciting, I gather.”

“It is exciting,” Mac agreed. “We're on the cutting edge of finding the way to prevent an awful lot of diseases. The hardest job is to have the patience for trial and error when there are so many people waiting for answers.”

“I agree. I don't have that kind of patience, which is why I'd never have been a good researcher. Which means that since you're giving up a day to drive down here, you must have a very good reason. My secretary said that it's urgent.”

Mac nodded. He was glad to get to the point. “I'm here because of the Manning Clinic scandal.”

Schuller frowned. “That really is a terrible situation. I can't believe that any woman who worked in our Dowling
facility as a secretary was able to get away with passing herself off as an embryologist. Somebody dropped the ball on that one.”

“Or somebody trained a very capable student, although trained her not well enough, obviously. They're finding a lot of problems in that lab, and we're talking about major problems like possibly mislabeling test tubes containing cryopreserved embryos or even deliberately destroying them.”

“If any field is calling for national legislation, assisted reproduction is first on the list. The potential for mistakes is enormous. Fertilize an egg with the wrong semen, and if the embryo is successfully transferred, an infant is born whose genetic structure is fifty percent different from what the parents had the right to expect. The child may have genetically inherited medical problems that can't be foreseen. It—” He stopped abruptly. “Sorry, I know I'm preaching to the converted. How can I help?”

“Meghan Collins is the daughter of Edwin Collins, the man who is accused of placing Helene Petrovic at the Manning Clinic with false credentials. Meg's a reporter for PCD Channel 3 in New York. Last week she spoke to the head of the Dowling Center about Helene Petrovic. Apparently, some of Petrovic's coworkers thought she might be seeing a doctor from this hospital, but no one knows who he is. I'm trying to help Meg find him.”

“Didn't Petrovic leave Dowling more than six years ago?”

“Nearly seven years ago.”

“Do you realize how large our medical staff is here, Doctor?”

“Yes, I do,” Mac said. “And I know you have consultants who are not on staff but are called in regularly. It's a shot in the dark, but at this stage, when the investigators are convinced Edwin Collins is Petrovic's murderer, you can imagine how desperately his daughter wants to know if there was someone in her life with a reason to kill her.”

“Yes, I can.” Schuller began to make notes on a pad.
“Have you any idea how long Petrovic might have been seeing this doctor?”

“From what I understand, a year or two before she went up to Connecticut. But that's only a guess.”

“It's a start. Let's go back into the records for the three years she worked at Dowling. You think this person may have been the one who helped her to acquire enough skill to pass herself off as thoroughly trained?”

“Again, a guess.”

“All right. I'll see that a list is compiled. We won't leave out people who worked in the fetal research or DNA labs either. Not all the technicians are MDs, but they know their business.” He stood up. “What are you going to do with this list? It will be a long one.”

“Meg is going to dig into Helene Petrovic's personal life. She's going to collect names of Petrovic's friends and acquaintances from the Rumanian Society. We'll compare names from the personal list with the one you send us.”

Mac reached into his pocket. “This is a copy of a roster I compiled of everyone on the medical staff at the Manning Clinic while Helene was there. For what it's worth, I'd like to leave it with you. I'd be glad if you would run these names through your computer first.”

He got up to go. “It's a big fishnet, but we do appreciate your help.”

“It may take a few days, but I'll get the information you want,” Schuller said. “Shall I send it to you?”

“I think directly to Meghan. I'll leave her address and phone number.”

Schuller walked him to the door of his office. Mac took the elevator down to the lobby. As he stepped into the corridor, he passed a boy about Kyle's age in a wheelchair. Cerebral palsy, Mac thought. One of the diseases they were starting to get a handle on through gene therapy. The boy gave him a big smile. “Hi. Are you a doctor?”

“The kind who doesn't treat patients.”

“My kind.”

“Bobby!” his mother protested.

“I have a son your age who'd get along fine with you.” Mac tousled the boy's hair.

The clock over the receptionist's desk showed that it was quarter past eleven. Mac decided that if he picked up a sandwich and Coke in the coffee shop off the lobby he could eat it later in the car and drive right through. That way he'd be back in the lab by two o'clock at the latest and get in an afternoon of work.

He reflected that when you passed a kid in a wheelchair, you didn't want to lose any more time than necessary if your job was trying to unlock the secrets of genetic healing.

At least he'd made a couple hundred bucks driving yesterday. That was the only consolation Bernie could find when he awakened Wednesday morning. He'd gone to bed at midnight and slept right through because he was really tired, but now he felt good. This was sure to be a better day; he might even see Meg.

His mother, unfortunately, was in a terrible mood. “BerNARD, I was awake half the night with a sinus headache. I was sneezing a lot. I want you to fix those steps and tighten the railing so I can get down to that basement again. I'm sure you're not keeping it clean. I'm sure there's dust filtering up from there.”

“Mama, I'm not good at fixing things. That whole staircase is weak. I can feel another step getting loose. You wanna really hurt yourself?”

“I can't afford to hurt myself. Who'd keep this place nice? Who'd cook meals for you? Who'd make sure you don't get in trouble?”