Let Me Call You Sweetheart Part 7

"Yes, but all of them I met seemed to be pretty decent people," Kerry said. "And to answer your first question, Robin is a level-headed kid. She wouldn't imagine something like this." She hesitated. "It's the first time I let her get herself out in the morning, and I was bombarding her with warnings about what to do and not do."

"Call her from here," Green directed.

Robin answered Mrs. Weiser's telephone on the first ring. "I knew you'd call, Mom. I'm okay now. I want to go to school. Mrs. Weiser said she'd drive me. And Mom, I've still got to go out this afternoon. It's Halloween."

Kerry thought quickly. Robin was better off in school than sitting at home all day, thinking about the incident. "All right, but I'll be there at school to pick you up at quarter of three. I don't want you walking home." And I'll be right with you when you trick-or-treat, she thought. "Now let me talk to Mrs. Weiser, Rob," she said.

When she hung up, she said, "Frank, is it all right if I leave early today?"

His smile was genuine. "Of course it is. Kerry, I don't have to tell you to question Robin carefully. We have to know if there's any chance someone really was watching for her."

As Kerry was leaving, he added, "But isn't Robin a bit young to see herself off to school?"

Kerry knew he was fis.h.i.+ng to find out what had been so important that she had left Robin alone at home at six-thirty.

"Yes, she is," she agreed. "It won't happen again."

Later that morning, Joe Palumbo stopped by Kerry's office and told her about his call to Dolly Bowles. "She doesn't want to talk to me, Kerry, but I'd still like to go with you when you see her."

"Let me phone her now."

Her six-word greeting, "h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Bowles, I'm Kerry McGrath," led to being on the receiving end of a ten-minute monologue.

Palumbo crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair as with some amus.e.m.e.nt he watched Kerry try to interject a word or question. Then he was irritated when, after Kerry finally got an opportunity to say that she would like to bring her investigator, Mr. Palumbo, with her, it was obvious the answer was no.

Finally she hung up. "Dolly Bowles is not a happy camper about the way she was treated by this office ten years ago. That was the gist of the conversation. The rest is that her daughter and son-in-law don't want her talking about the murder or what she saw anymore, and they're coming back from a trip tomorrow. If I want to see her, it's got to be about five o'clock today. That's going to take some juggling. I told her I'd let her know."

"Can you get out of here in time?" Joe asked.

"I have a few appointments I'm canceling anyhow." She told Palumbo about Robin and the incident this morning.

The investigator rose to his feet and tried to close the jacket that always strained over his generous middle. I'll meet you at your place at five," he suggested. "While you're with Mrs. Bowles, let me take Robin for a hamburger. I'd like to talk to her about this morning." He saw the look of disapproval on Kerry's face and hastened to speak before she could protest. "Kerry, you're smart, but you're not going to be objective about this. Don't do my job for me."

Kerry studied Joe thoughtfully. His appearance was always a little disheveled, and his paperwork was usually somewhat disorganized, but he was just about the best there was at his job. Kerry had seen him question young children so skillfully that they didn't realize every word they said was being a.n.a.lyzed. It would be very helpful to have Joe's spin on this. "Okay," she agreed.

On Tuesday afternoon, Jason Arnott drove from Alpine to the remote area near Ellenville in the Catskills where his sprawling country home, hidden by the surrounding mountain range, concealed his priceless stolen treasures.

He knew the house was an addiction, an extension of the sometimes uncontrollable drive that made him steal the beautiful things he saw in the homes of his acquaintances. For it was beauty, after all, that made him do those things. He loved beauty, loved the look of it, the feel. Sometimes the urge to hold something, to caress it, was so strong it was almost overwhelming. It was a gift, and as such, both a blessing and a curse. Someday it would get him in trouble. As it almost had already. It made him impatient when visitors admired carpets or furniture or paintings or objets d'art in his Alpine home. Often he amused himself by contemplating how shocked they would be if he were to blurt out, "This place is ordinary by my standards."

But, of course, he never would say that, for he had no desire to share his private collection with anyone. That was his alone. And must be kept that way.

Today is Halloween, he thought dismissively as he drove swiftly up Route 17. He was glad to get away. He had no desire to be victimized by children endlessly ringing his doorbell. He was tired.

Over the weekend he had stayed at a hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, and used the time to burglarize a Chevy Chase home at which he had attended a party a few months earlier. At that gathering, the hostess, Myra Hamilton, had rattled on about her son's upcoming wedding, which would take place on October 28th in Chicago, effectively announcing to one and all that the house would be empty on that date.

The Hamilton house was not large, but it was exquisite, filled with precious items the Hamiltons had collected over the years. Jason had salivated over a Faberg with a gold egg-shaped handle. That and a delicate three-by-five-foot Aubusson with a central rosace that they used as a wall hanging were the two things he most wanted to wrest from them.

Now both objects were in the trunk of his car, on their way to his retreat. Unconsciously, Jason frowned. He was not experiencing his usual sensation of triumph at having achieved his goal. A vague, indefinable worry was nagging at him. Mentally he reviewed the modus operandi of entering the Hamilton home, going over it step by step.

The alarm had been on but easy to disengage. Clearly the house was empty, as he had antic.i.p.ated. For a moment, he had been tempted to go through the place quickly, looking for anything of great value he might have missed noticing at the party. Instead he stuck to his original plan, taking only those things he had scoped out earlier.

He had barely inched his way into the traffic on Route 240 when two police cars, sirens screaming and lights flas.h.i.+ng, raced past him and turned left onto the street he had just exited. It was obvious to him that they were on their way to the Hamilton home. Which, of course, meant that he had somehow triggered a silent alarm that operated independently of the master system.

What other kind of security did the Hamiltons have? he wondered. It was so easy to conceal cameras now. He had been wearing the stocking mask he always put on when entering one of the houses he had chosen to honor with his attention, but at one point this night he had pulled it up to examine a bronze figurine, a foolish thing to do--it had proved to be of no real value.

One chance in a million that a camera caught my face, Jason rea.s.sured himself. He would dismiss his misgivings and go on with his life, albeit a bit more cautiously for a while.

The afternoon sun was almost lost behind the mountains when he pulled into his driveway. At last he felt a measure of buoyancy. The nearest neighbor was several miles away. Maddie, the weekly cleaning woman--large, stolid, unimaginative and unquestioning woman that she was--would have been in yesterday. Everything would be s.h.i.+ning.

He knew she didn't recognize the difference between an Aubusson and a ten-dollar-a-yard carpet remnant, but she was one of those rare creatures who took pride in her work and was satisfied only with perfection. In ten years, she had never so much as chipped a cup.

Jason smiled to himself, thinking of Maddie's reaction when she found the Aubusson hanging in the foyer and the Faberg desk seal in the master bedroom. Hasn't he got enough stuff to dust? she would wonder and go on with her ch.o.r.es.

He parked the car at the side door and, with the rush of antic.i.p.ation that always surged over him when he came here, entered the house and reached for the light switch. Once again, the sight of so many beautiful things made his lips and hands moist with pleasure. A few minutes later, after his overnight case, a small bag of groceries and his new treasures were safely inside, he locked the door and drew the bolt. His evening had begun.

His first task was to carry the Faberg seal upstairs and place it on the antique dressing table. Once it was in place, he stood back to admire it, then leaned over to compare it with the miniature frame that had been on his night table for the past ten years.

The frame represented one of the few times he had been fooled. It was a decent Faberg copy, but certainly not the real thing. That fact seemed so obvious now. The blue enamel looked muddy when compared to the deep color of the desk seal. The gold border encrusted with pearls was nothing like authentic Faberg workmans.h.i.+p. But from inside that frame, Suzanne's face smiled back at him.

He didn't like to think about that night, almost eleven years ago. He had gone in through the open window of the sitting room of the master bedroom suite. He knew the house was supposed to be empty. That very day, Suzanne had told him about her dinner engagement for the evening, and the fact that Skip would not be home. He had the security code, but when he got there, he saw that the window was wide open. When he entered the upstairs floor, it was dark. In the bedroom he spotted the miniature frame he had seen earlier; it was on top of the night table. From across the room it looked authentic. He was just examining it closely when he heard a raised voice. Suzanne! Panicking, he had dropped the frame in his pocket and hidden in a closet.

Jason looked down at the frame now. Over the years he had sometimes wondered what perverse reason kept him from removing Suzanne's picture from it, or from throwing the whole thing away. The frame was, after all, only a copy.

But as he stared at it this night, he understood for the first time why he had left the picture and frame intact. It was because it made it easier for him to blot out the memory of how gruesome and distorted Suzanne's features had been when he made his escape.

"Well, we've got our jury impanelled and it's a good one," Bob Kinellen told his client with a heartiness he did not feel.

Jimmy Weeks looked at him sourly. "Bobby, with a few exceptions, I think that jury stinks."

"Trust me."

Anthony Bartlett backed up his son-in-law. "Bob's right, Jimmy. Trust him." Then Bartlett's eyes strayed to the opposite end of the defense table where Barney Haskell was sitting, his expression morose, his hands supporting his head. He saw that Bob was looking at Haskell too, and he knew what Bob was thinking.

Haskell's a diabetic. He won't want to risk years in prison. He's got dates and facts and figures that we'll have a h.e.l.l of a time contradicting... He knew all about Suzanne.

The opening arguments would begin the next morning. When he left the courthouse, Jimmy Weeks went directly to his car. As the chauffeur held the door open, he slid into the backseat without his usual grunted good-bye.

Kinellen and Bartlett watched the car pull away. "I'm going back to the office," Kinellen told his father-in-law. "I've got work to do."

Bartlett nodded. "I would say so." There was an impersonal tone to his voice. "See you in the morning, Bob."

Sure you will, Kinellen thought as he walked to the parking garage. You're distancing yourself from me so that if my hands get dirty, you're not part of it.

He knew that Bartlett had millions salted away. Even if Weeks was convicted and the law firm went under, he would be all right. Maybe he would get to spend more time in Palm Beach with his wife, Alice Senior.

I'm taking all the risks, Bob Kinellen thought as he handed his ticket to the cas.h.i.+er. I'm the one who risks going down. There had to be a reason Jimmy insisted on leaving the Wagner woman on the jury. What was it?

Geoff Dorso phoned Kerry just as she was about to leave the office. "I saw Dr. Smith this morning," she told him hurriedly, "and I'm seeing Dolly Bowles around five. I can't talk now. I've got to meet Robin at school."

"Kerry, I'm anxious to know what happened with Dr. Smith, and what you learn from Dolly Bowles. Can we have dinner?"

"I don't want to go out tonight, but if you don't mind a salad and pasta..." "I'm Italian, remember?"

"About seven-thirty?"

"I'll be there."

When she picked up Robin at school, it was clear to Kerry that her daughter's mind was much more on Halloween trick-or-treating than on the early-morning incident. In fact, Robin seemed to be embarra.s.sed about it. Taking her cue from her daughter, Kerry dropped the subject, for now at least.

When they reached home, she gave Robin's teenage sitter the afternoon off. This is the way other mothers live, she thought as, with several of them, she trailed a cl.u.s.ter of trick-or- treating children. She and Robin arrived back at their place just in time to let Joe Palumbo in.

He was carrying a bulging briefcase, which he tapped with a satisfied smile. "The records of the office investigation of the Reardon case," he told her. "It'll have Dolly Bowles' original statement. Let's see how it compares with what she has to say to you now."

He looked at Robin, who was wearing a witch's costume. "That's some outfit, Rob."

"It was between this and being a corpse," Robin told him.

Kerry did not realize she had winced until she caught the look of understanding in Palumbo's eyes.

"I'd better be on my way," she said hurriedly.

During the twenty-minute drive to Alpine, Kerry realized her nerves were on edge. She had finally gotten Robin to talk briefly about the incident that morning. By then, Robin was trying to play the whole thing down. Kerry wanted to believe that Robin had exaggerated what had happened. She wanted to conclude that someone had stopped to check an address and then realized he was on the wrong block. But Kerry knew her daughter would not have exaggerated or imagined the incident.

It was obvious to Kerry that Dolly Bowles had been watching for her. As soon as she was parked in the driveway of the ma.s.sive Tudor house, the door was yanked open.

Dolly was a small woman with thinning gray hair and a narrow, inquisitive face. She was already talking when Kerry reached her, "... just like your picture in The Record. I was so sorry I was busy baby-sitting and couldn't make it to the trial of that awful man who killed his supervisor."

She led Kerry into a cavernous foyer and indicated a small sitting room to the left. "Let's go in here. That living room is too big for my taste. I tell my daughter my voice echoes in it, but she loves it 'cause it's great for parties. Dorothy loves to throw parties. When they're home, that is. Now that Lou is retired, they never settle down; they're here and there, hither and yon. Why they need to pay a full-time housekeeper is beyond me. I say, why not have someone come in once a week? Save the money. Of course, I don't really like to be alone overnight, and I suppose that has something to do with it. On the other hand..."

Oh my G.o.d, Kerry thought, she's a sweet woman, but I'm just not in the mood for this. She chose a straight-backed chair, while Mrs. Bowles settled on the chintz-covered couch. "Mrs. Bowles, I don't want to take too much of your time and I have someone minding my daughter, so I can't stay too long..."

"You have a daughter. How nice. How old is she?"

"Ten. Mrs. Bowles, what I'd like to know--"

"You don't look old enough to have a ten-year-old daughter." "Thank you. I can a.s.sure you I feel old enough." Kerry felt as though she had driven into a ditch and might never get out. "Mrs. Bowles, let's talk about the night Suzanne Reardon died."

Fifteen minutes later, after she had heard all about Dolly baby- sitting across the street from the Reardons, and how Michael, the little boy she was minding that night, had serious developmental problems, she managed to isolate one nugget of information.

"You say that you are positive that the car you saw parked in front of the Reardons did not belong to one of the guests at the neighbors' party. Why are you so sure of that?"

"Because I talked to those people myself. They were entertaining three other couples. They told me who the guests were. They're all from Alpine, and after Mr. Green made me feel like such a fool on the stand, I called each of them myself. And you know what? None of those guests was driving Poppa's car."

"Poppa's car!" Kerry exclaimed incredulously.

"That's what Michael called it. You see, he had a real problem with colors. You'd point to a car and ask him what color it was, and he wouldn't know. But no matter how many cars were around, he could pick out one that was familiar, or one that looked just like a familiar car. When he said 'Poppa's car' that night, he had to have been pointing at the black Mercedes four-door sedan. You see, he called his grandfather Poppa and loved to ride with him in his car--his black Mercedes four-door sedan. It was dark, but the torch light at the end of the Reardons' driveway was on so he could see it clearly."

"Mrs. Bowles, you testified that you had seen the car."

"Yes, although it wasn't there at seven-thirty when I got to Michael's house, and when he pointed it out it was pulling away, so I didn't get a good look at it. Still, I had an impression of a 3 and an L on the license plate." Dolly Bowles leaned forward intensely, and behind the round gla.s.ses her eyes widened. "Ms. McGrath, I tried to tell Skip Reardon's defense attorney about this. His name was Farrer--no, Farrell. He told me that hearsay evidence usually isn't admissible and, even if it were, hearsay evidence from a developmentally disabled child would only dilute my testimony that I'd seen the car. But he was wrong. I don't see why I couldn't have told the jury that Michael became all excited when he thought he had seen his grandfather's car. I think that would have helped."

Her voice lost its faint quaver. "Ms. McGrath, at a couple of minutes past nine o'clock that night, a black Mercedes four-door sedan drove away from the Reardon home. I know that for a fact. Absolutely."

Jonathan Hoover was not enjoying his predinner martini this evening. Usually he savored this time of day, sipping the smooth gin diluted with precisely three drops of vermouth and enhanced with two olives, sitting in his wing chair by the fire, conversing with Grace about the day.

Tonight, added to his own concerns, it was obvious that something was troubling Grace. If the pain was worse than usual he knew she would never admit it. They never discussed her health. Long ago he had learned not to ask more than a perfunctory, "How do you feel, dear?"

The answer was inevitably, "Not bad at all."

The increasing rheumatic a.s.sault on her body did not prevent Grace from dressing with her innate elegance. Nowadays she always wore long loose sleeves to cover her swollen wrists and in the evening, even when they were alone, chose flowing hostess gowns that concealed the steadily progressing deformity of her legs and feet.

Propped up as she was, in a half-lying position on the couch, the curvature in her spine was not apparent, and her luminous gray eyes were beautiful against the alabaster white of her complexion. Only her hands, the fingers gnarled and twisted, were visible indicators of her devastating illness.

Because Grace always stayed in bed till midmorning, and Jonathan was an early riser, the evening was their time to visit and gossip. Now Grace gave him a wry smile. "I feel as though I'm looking in a mirror, Jon. You're upset about something too, and I bet it's the same thing that was bothering you earlier, so let me go first. I spoke to Kerry."

Jonathan raised his eyebrows. "And?"

"I'm afraid she has no intention of letting go of the Reardon case."

"What did she tell you?"

"It's what she didn't tell me. She was evasive. She listened to me, then said that she had reason to believe that Dr. Smith's testimony was false. She did acknowledge that she had no concrete reason to believe that Reardon wasn't the murderer, but she felt it was her obligation to explore the possibility that there might have been a miscarriage of justice."

Jonathan's face flushed to a deep, angry red. "Grace, there's a point where Kerry's sense of justice approaches the ludicrous. Last night I was able to persuade the governor to delay submitting to the senate the names of candidates for appointment to the bench. He agreed."

"Jonathan!"

"It was the only thing I could do short of asking him to withhold Kerry's appointment for the present. I had no choice. Grace, Prescott Marshall has been an outstanding governor. You know that. Working with him, I've been able to lead the senate in getting necessary reforms into law, in revising the tax structure, in attracting business to the state, in welfare reform that doesn't mean depriving the poor while searching out the welfare cheats. I want Marshall back in four years. I'm no great fan of Frank Green, but as governor he'll be a good benchwarmer and won't undo what Marshall and I have accomplished. On the other hand, if Green fails, and if the other party gets in, then everything we've accomplished will be taken apart."

Suddenly the intensity the anger had inspired drained from his face and he looked to Grace only very tired and every minute of his sixty-two years.

"I'll invite Kerry and Robin to dinner Sunday," Grace said. "That will give you another chance to talk sense to her. I don't think anyone's future should be sacrificed for that Reardon man."

"I'm going to call her tonight," Jonathan told her.

Geoff Dorso rang the doorbell at exactly seven-thirty and once again was greeted by Robin. She was still wearing her witch's costume and makeup. Her eyebrows were thick with charcoal. Pasty white powder covered her skin except where the lacerations streaked her chin and cheek. A wig of tangled black hair flapped around her shoulders.

Geoff jumped back. "You scared me."

"Great," Robin said enthusiastically. "Thanks for being on time. I'm due at a party. It's starting right now, and there's a prize for the scariest costume. I need to be going."

"You'll win in a landslide," Geoff told her as he stepped into the foyer. Then he sniffed. "Something smells good."