We'll Meet Again (9 page)

“Good morning, Doctor.”

Peter Black looked up from his desk. The uncertainty on his secretary’s face warned him that whatever she was about to say would not be welcome. As a person, Louise Unger was timid, but as a secretary she was extremely efficient. Her timidity annoyed him; her efficiency, he valued. His eyes flickered to the clock on the wall. It was only 8:30. She had arrived at work early, as she often did.

He murmured a greeting and waited.

“Mr. Whitehall was on the phone, Doctor. He had to take another call but asks you to be available.” Louise Unger hesitated. “I think he’s very upset.”

Peter Black had long ago learned to control his facial muscles so that his emotions were not reflected in his expression. With a faint smile, he said, “Thanks for the warning, Louise. Mr. Whitehall is often upset. We know that, don’t we?”

The woman nodded eagerly, her birdlike eyes shining as she bobbed her head. “Just wanted to give you advance warning, Doctor.”

For her, this was a bold statement. Peter Black chose to ignore it. “Thank you, Louise,” he said smoothly.

The phone on his desk rang. He nodded, indicating that she should pick up the receiver.

She began to say, “Dr. Black’s office,” but got no further than “Doctor-” “It’s Mr. Whitehall, Doctor,” she said, putting the phone on hold. She knew enough to scurry out and close the door.

Peter Black knew that to show weakness to Calvin Whitehall was to be doomed. He had taught himself to ignore Cal ’s references to his drinking and was convinced that the only reason Whitehall restricted himself to one glass of wine was to prove his superiority of will.

He picked up the phone and spoke immediately.

“ Cal, how goes the empire?” Peter Black enjoyed asking that question. He knew it irritated Whitehall.

“It would go a lot better if Molly Lasch weren’t out there making waves.”

Peter Black felt as though the resonant tone of Calvin Whitehall’s voice was making the receiver tingle. Holding the phone with his left hand, Black deliberately stretched the fingers of his right hand, a trick he had picked up to relieve tension. “I thought we’d already established that she was making waves,” he responded.

“Yes, after Jenna saw her night before last. Molly wants me to locate Annamarie Scalli. She insists she has to see her, and obviously she doesn’t intend to be put off. Jenna was hammering at me about it again this morning. I told her I had no idea where Scalli is.”

“Nor do I.” Black knew his tone was even, his words precise. He remembered the panic in Gary Lasch’s voice:
“Annamarie, for the sake of the hospital. You’ve got to help.”

I didn’t know at the time she was involved with Gary, Peter Black thought. What if Molly
did
get to her now? he wondered. Suppose Annamarie decided to tell what she knew. What then?

He became aware that Cal was still talking. What was he asking?

“… is there anyone at the hospital who might have stayed in touch with her?”

“I have no idea.”

After he put the receiver down a minute later, Dr. Peter Black spoke into the intercom. “Hold my calls, Louise.” He put his elbows on the desk and pressed his forehead with his palms.

The tightrope was fraying. How could he stop it from breaking and sending him hurtling to the ground?

“She didn’t want to worry you, Billy.”

Billy Gallo stared across his mother’s bed at his father as they stood in the intensive care unit at Lasch Hospital. Tony Gallo’s eyes were welling with tears. His sparse gray hair was disheveled, and the hand that patted his wife’s arm was trembling.

There was no mistaking the kinship of the two men. They had strikingly similar features-dark brown eyes, full lips, square jaw lines.

Sixty-six-year-old semiretired Tony Gallo, a former corporate security officer, was a school crossing guard in the town of Cos Cob, a stern and trusted fixture at the intersection of Willow and Pine. His son, Billy, thirty-five, a trombonist in the orchestra of the road company of a Broadway musical, had flown in from Detroit.

“It wasn’t Mom who didn’t want to worry me,” Billy said, his tone angry. “You wouldn’t
let
her call me, would you?”

“Billy, you were out of work for six months. We didn’t want you to lose this job.”

“To hell with the job. You should have called me-I would have stood up to them. When they refused her permission to go to a specialist, I wouldn’t have let them get away with it.”

“Billy, you don’t understand; Dr. Kirkwood fought to get her to a specialist. Now they’ve okayed surgery. She’ll be fine.”

“He
still
didn’t send her to a specialist soon enough.”

Josephine Gallo stirred. She could hear her husband and son arguing, and she had a vague awareness that it was over her. She felt sleepy and weightless. In some ways it was a nice sensation, to lie there and almost float, to not have to be a part of their argument. She was tired of begging Tony to help Billy when he was between jobs. Billy was a fine musician, and he wasn’t cut out for a nine-to-five job. Tony just didn’t understand that.

She kept hearing their angry voices. She didn’t want them to argue anymore. Josephine remembered the pain that had yanked her from her sleep this morning; it was the same pain that she’d been telling Dr. Kirkwood, her primary care physician, about.

They were still arguing; their voices seemed to be getting louder, and she wanted to tell them to please, please stop. Then somewhere off in the distance she heard bells clanging. She heard running feet. And a pain like the one that had awakened her that morning came rushing back. A tidal wave of pain. She tried to reach out to them: “Tony…Billy…”

As she drew in her last breath, she heard their voices, in unison, urgent, filled with fear, edged with grief: “Mommmmmmmm,” “Josieeeeeeeee.” Then she heard nothing.

At quarter of twelve, Fran walked into the lobby of Lasch Hospital. Pushing back the memories of that same place years earlier, memories of stumbling, and of her mother’s arms around her, she forced herself to stop and to look about the space.

The reception/information desk was on the far wall, opposite the entrance. That’s good, she thought. She didn’t want a solicitous volunteer or guard offering to help direct her to a patient. If that were to happen, she had a story ready: she was picking up a friend who was visiting a patient.

Any patient
, she thought.

She studied the area. The furniture-couches and individual chairs-was upholstered in green imitation leather and had plastic arms and legs in a faux maple finish. Less than half the seats were occupied. A corridor to the left of the reception desk had an arrow and a sign that read ELEVATORS. Then Fran found what she was looking for-the sign on the other side of the lobby that read COFFEE SHOP. As she headed for it, she passed the newspaper rack. The weekly community paper was displayed in it, and a picture showing Molly at the prison gate was on page one. Fran fished in her pocket for two quarters.

She deliberately had arrived before the lunch-hour rush began, and she stood at the entrance to the coffee shop for a moment as she looked around, trying to choose the most advantageous seat. There were about twenty tables in the restaurant, as well as a counter with a dozen stools. The two women behind the counter, wearing candy-striped aprons, were hospital volunteers.

There were four people sitting at the counter; about ten others were scattered at tables. Three men in standard white jackets, obviously doctors, were deep in conversation by the window. There was a small empty table next to them. For a moment Fran debated whether or not to ask for that table, as the hostess, also wearing a candy-striped apron, bore down on her.

“I’ll go to the counter,” Fran said quickly. Over coffee she might be able to strike up a conversation with one of the volunteers working there. Both women looked to be in their mid-sixties. Perhaps one or both of them had been volunteers there six years ago, when Gary Lasch was running the hospital.

The woman who served her coffee and a bagel was wearing a smiley-face name tag that read, “Hello, I’m Susan Branagan.” A pleasant-faced woman, with white hair and a bustling manner, she clearly felt that part of her job was to draw people out. “Can you believe that spring is less than two weeks away?” she asked.

It gave Fran the opening she wanted. “I’ve been living in California, so it’s hard to get used to the East Coast weather again.”

“Visiting someone in the hospital?”

“Just waiting for a friend who’s visiting. Have you been a volunteer long?”

Susan Branagan beamed. “Just got my ten-year pin.”

“I think it’s wonderful that you volunteer to help out here,” Fran said sincerely.

“I’d be lost if I didn’t come to the hospital three times a week. I’m a widow, and my kids are married and busy with their own lives. What would I do with myself, I ask you?”

Clearly it was a rhetorical question.

“I guess it must be pretty fulfilling,” Fran said. Trying to appear casual as she did it, she laid the community paper on the counter, placing it so that Susan Branagan could not miss seeing Molly’s picture and the headline above it: WIDOW OF DR. LASCH PROTESTS HER INNOCENCE.

Mrs. Branagan shook her head. “You may not realize, being that you’re from California, but Dr. Lasch used to be the head of this hospital. It was a terrible scandal when he died. Only thirty-six, and such a handsome man.”

“What happened?” Fran asked.

“Oh, he got involved with a young nurse here, and his wife-well, I guess the poor woman went into temporary insanity, or something. Claimed she didn’t remember killing him, although nobody really believes that, of course. What a tragedy and loss it was. And the sad thing is that the nurse, Annamarie, was the sweetest girl. Why, she was just about the last person in the world you’d think would carry on with a married man.”

“It happens all the time,” Fran commented.

“Isn’t that the truth? But still, it was something of a surprise, since there was this other young doctor-just the nicest man-who really
liked
her. We all thought that romance would blossom, but I guess she just got her head turned by Dr. Lasch. Anyway, poor Dr. Morrow was left out in the cold, may he rest in peace.”

Dr. Morrow. Rest in peace.

“You don’t mean Dr. Jack Morrow, do you?”

“Oh, did you know him?”

“I met him once, years ago, when I was here for a while.” Fran thought of the kind face of the young doctor who had tried to comfort her that terrible evening fourteen years ago, when she and her mother had followed her dying father to this hospital.

“He was shot in his office, only two weeks before Dr. Lasch was murdered. His medicine cabinet had been broken into.” Susan Branagan sighed, remembering that time. “Two young doctors, both dying so violently. I know the deaths were unrelated, but it seemed like such a terrible coincidence.”

Coincidence?
Fran thought, and both of them involved with Annamarie Scalli. Was there any such thing as coincidence when it came to murder?

Three nights at home, Molly thought. Three mornings of waking up in my own bed, in my own room.

Today she’d awakened a few minutes before seven, gone down to the kitchen, made coffee, poured it into her favorite mug, and returned upstairs, the coffee fragrant and steaming. She’d propped up the pillows, gotten back into bed, and slowly sipped the coffee. She looked about the room, freshly aware of a space that for the five years of her marriage she had taken for granted.

During sleepless nights in prison she had thought about her bedroom, thought about her feet touching the plush ivory carpeting, thought about the feel of the satin quilt against her skin, thought about her head sinking into the deep, soft pillows, thought of leaving the shades up so that she could look out into the night sky, something she often had done with her husband sleeping quietly beside her.

As she sipped the coffee, Molly reflected on the months and then years of those long prison nights. As her mind had slowly started to clear, she’d begun to formulate the questions that now almost obsessed her. Questions such as, if Gary had been able to dupe her so completely about their intimate relationship, was it possible that he was dishonest as well in other areas of his life?

She was on her way to take a shower when she stopped to look out the window. It was so simple a thing to do, yet it was something that had been denied her for five and a half years, and the freedom of it still amazed her. It was another cloudy day, and she could see patches of ice in the driveway; even so, she impulsively decided to put on her sweats and go for a run.

Run free, she thought as she began to quickly don her jogging clothes. And I am free-to go out without asking permission and without waiting for doors to be unlocked. She felt a sudden exhilaration. Ten minutes later she was jogging along the old, familiar streets that suddenly seemed unfamiliar.

Please don’t let me meet anyone I know, she prayed. Don’t let me be recognized by someone driving by. She passed Kathryn Busch’s house, a lovely old colonial that sat at the corner of Lake Avenue. She remembered that Kathryn had been on the board of the Philharmonic Society and had been very much involved in trying to develop a local chamber group.

As had Bobbitt Williams, Molly thought, picturing the face of an old schoolmate who almost had faded from memory. Bobbitt was in class at Cranden with Jenna and Fran and me, but she and I never socialized that much, and then she moved to Darien.

As Molly ran, her head seemed to clear, and people and houses and streets were coming into focus. The Browns had added a wing. The Cateses had repainted. Suddenly she realized that this was the first time she had been outside, on her own like this, since the day just over five and a half years ago when she had been handcuffed and chained and locked in the van for the drive to Niantic Prison.

The wind this morning was chilling, but invigorating-fresh, clean air that swept through her hair and filled her lungs and body, making Molly feel as though, inch by inch, her senses were coming alive.

She was breathing heavily and already beginning to ache when, after a two-mile round-trip, she ran back up her driveway. She was headed toward the kitchen door when a sudden impulse caused her to cut across the frozen lawn and walk almost the length of the house until she was facing the window of the room that had been Gary ’s study. She stopped, went up to the window, pushed aside the shrubbery, and looked in.

For a brief instant she expected to see Gary ’s handsome Wells Fargo desk still there, walls covered with mahogany paneling, bookcases filled with medical texts, the sculptures and paintings that Gary had collected with so much enthusiasm. Instead, she saw a room that was just another room in a house far too big for one person. The impersonal chintz-covered furniture and bleached oak tables looked suddenly very unattractive.

I was standing in the doorway, looking out
.

It was a random thought that suddenly entered her mind and just as quickly disappeared.

Suddenly self-conscious at the possibility of being observed peering into the window of her own home, Molly retraced her steps and let herself in through the kitchen door. As she pulled off her sneakers, she realized that she had time for another cup of coffee and an English muffin before Mrs. Barry arrived.

Mrs. Barry.

Wally
.

Now why would I suddenly think about
him?
Molly wondered, as she headed back upstairs, this time finally to take her shower.

Fran called her in the late afternoon, from her office where she was getting ready for the evening news broadcast. “Molly, a quick question,” she said. “Did you know Dr. Jack Morrow?”

Molly’s mind was wrenched back over a span of forgotten years to that morning when a phone call interrupted their breakfast. She had known immediately that it was bad news. Gary ’s face had turned a sickly gray color as he listened silently. Then, after he hung up, he spoke, almost in a whisper: “Jack Morrow was found shot to death in his office. It happened sometime last evening.”

“I hardly knew him,” Molly told Fran. “He was on staff at the hospital, and I’d met him at a few Christmas parties, that kind of thing. He and Gary were killed within two weeks of each other.”

Suddenly aware of her own words, she could imagine how that statement must sound to Fran. “Were killed.” Something that had happened to two men, but had nothing to do with any act she committed. At least no one can say that I was involved with Jack Morrow’s death, she thought. Gary and I were at a dinner party that night. She told that to Fran.

“Molly, you must know I wasn’t suggesting that you had anything to do with Dr. Morrow’s death,” Fran said. “I mention him only because I’ve uncovered an interesting bit of information. Did you know that he was in love with Annamarie Scalli?”

“No, I did not.”

“It’s becoming obvious that I have to talk to Annamarie. Do you know anyone who might know where to find her?”

“I’ve already asked Jenna to have Cal ’s people try to find her, but Jen says that Cal doesn’t want to get involved.”

There was a moment of silence before Fran responded. “You didn’t tell me
you
were trying to locate Annamarie, Molly.”

Molly could hear the startled tone in Fran’s voice. “Fran,” she said, “my desire to talk personally to Annamarie has nothing to do with your investigation. The five and a half years I spent in prison were directly connected to the fact that my husband was having an affair with her. It seems so odd that someone I don’t know at all could have had such a powerful impact in my life. Let’s make a deal-if I locate her, or even get a lead, I’ll tell you. Likewise, if
you
find her, you let me know, okay?”

“I’ll have to think about that,” Fran said. “I will tell you that I’m going to call your lawyer and ask him about her. Annamarie was on the list of scheduled witnesses at your trial, and because of that, he should have had her last address in the file.”

“I spoke to Philip about that already, and he swears he doesn’t have it.”

“I’ll try him anyway, just in case. I’ve got to run.” Fran paused. “Molly, be careful.”

“Funny. Jenna said the same thing to me just the other night.”

Molly replaced the receiver and thought of what she had told Philip Matthews-that if anything happened to her, at least it would prove that someone out there had reason to be afraid of Fran’s investigation into Gary’s death.

The phone rang again. Instinctively she knew that it was her mother and father calling from Florida. They talked of the usual inconsequential things before the subject of how she was faring “alone in that house” was broached. After reassuring them that she was doing well, she asked, “What happened to everything that was in Gary ’s desk after he died?”

“The prosecutor’s office took just about everything except the furniture from Gary ’s study,” her mother said. “After the trial, whatever they returned, I put in boxes in the attic.”

The answer made Molly anxious to end the conversation and sent her up to the attic as soon as she was off the phone. There she found the neatly packed boxes her mother had told her would be on the storage shelves. She pushed aside the ones containing books and sculptures, pictures and magazines, and reached for the two labeled DESK. She knew what she was looking for: the daily reminder diary Gary always carried and the appointment book he kept in the top desk drawer.

Maybe there are some kind of notations that will give me at least some idea of what else was going on in Gary ’s life, Molly thought.

She opened the first box with a sense of dread, afraid of what she might find, yet determined to learn whatever she could.