The Shadow of Your Smile

  “My God, how she has bonded to you, Doctor, but then you’ve got the magic touch,” Rita Greenberg said. “There’s no one like you with the little ones.”

  “Sally knows that she and I are pals,” Monica said. “Let’s give her some warm milk, and I bet she’ll settle down.”

  As she waited for the nurse to return, Monica rocked the baby in her arms. Your mother should be doing this, she thought. I wonder how much attention she gives you at home? Her tiny hands soft on Monica’s neck, Sally’s eyes began to close.

  Monica laid the sleepy baby back in the crib and changed her wet diaper. Then she turned Sally on her side and covered her with a blanket. Greenberg returned with a bottle of warm milk but before she gave it to the baby, Monica reached for a cotton tip and swabbed the inside of Sally’s cheek.

  In the past week, she had noticed that several times when Sally’s mother came to visit, she had stopped at the large courtesy counter in the lounge area and then brought a cup of coffee with her into Sally’s room. Invariably she left it half empty on the nightstand by the crib.

  It’s only a hunch, Monica told herself, and I know I have no right to do it. But I’m going to send word to Ms. Carter that I must meet with her before I will discharge Sally. I’d love to compare the baby’s DNA with her DNA from the coffee cup. She swears she’s the birth mother, but if she’s not why would she bother to lie about it? Then reminding herself once more that she had no right to secretly compare the DNA, she threw the swab into the wastebasket.

  After checking her other patients, Monica went to her office on East Fourteenth Street for her afternoon hours. It was six thirty when, trying to conceal her weariness, she said good-bye to her last patient, an eight-year-old boy with an ear infection.

  Nan Rhodes, her receptionist-bookkeeper, was closing up at her desk. In her sixties, rotund, and with unfailing patience no matter how hectic the waiting room, Nan asked the question Monica had been hoping to put aside for another day.

  “Doctor, what about that inquiry from the Bishop’s Office in New Jersey, asking you to be a witness in the beatification process for that nun?”

  “Nan, I don’t believe in miracles. You know that. I sent them a copy of the initial CAT scan and MRI. They speak for themselves.”

  “But you did believe that with brain cancer that advanced, Michael O’Keefe would never see his fifth birthday, didn’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You suggested his parents take him to the Knowles Clinic in Cincinnati because it’s the best research hospital in brain cancer, but you did it knowing full well they’d confirm your diagnosis out there,” Nan persisted.

  “Nan, we both know what I said and what I believed,” Monica said. “Come on, let’s not play twenty questions.”

  “Doctor, you also told me that when you gave them the diagnosis, Michael’s father was so upset, he almost passed out, but that the mother told you that her son was not going to die. She was going to start a crusade of prayer to Sister Catherine, the nun who founded those hospitals for disabled children.”

  “Nan, how many people refuse to accept that an illness is terminal? We see it every day at the hospital. They want a second and third opinion. They want more tests. They want to sign up for risky procedures. Sometimes the inevitable is prolonged, but in the end the result is the same.”

  Nan’s expression softened as she looked at the slender young woman whose body posture was so clearly showing her fatigue. She knew Monica had been at the hospital during the night, when one of her little patients had a seizure. “Doctor, I know it isn’t my place to badger you, but there are going to be witnesses from the medical staff in Cincinnati to testify that Michael O’Keefe should not have survived. Today he’s absolutely cancer free. I think you have a sacred obligation to verify that you had that conversation with the mother the very minute you warned her that he could not recover, because that was the moment she turned to Sister Catherine for help.”

  “Nan, I saw Carlos Garcia this morning. He’s cancer free as well.”

  “It’s not the same and you know it. We have the treatment to beat childhood leukemia. We don’t have it for advanced and spreading brain cancer.”

  Monica realized two facts. It was useless to argue with Nan, and in her heart she knew Nan was right. “I’ll go,” she said, “but it won’t do that would-be saint any good. Where am I supposed to testify about this?”

  “A Monsignor from the Metuchen diocese in New Jersey is the one you should meet. He suggested next Wednesday afternoon. As it happens, I didn’t make any appointments for you after eleven o’clock that day.”

  “Then so be it,” Monica acquiesced. “Call him back and set it up. Are you ready to go? I’ll ring for the elevator.”

  “Right behind you. I love what you just said.”

  “That I’ll ring for the elevator?”

  “No, of course not. I mean you just said ‘so be it.’ ”

  “So?”

  “As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, ‘so be it’ is the translation for ‘amen.’ Kind of fitting in this case, don’t you think, Doctor?”

  3

  It was not an assignment he relished. The disappearance of a young woman doctor in New York was stuff for the tabloids and they would be sure to wring it dry. The money was good, but Sammy Barber’s instinct was to turn it down. Sammy had been arrested only once, then acquitted at trial because he was a very careful man and never came close enough to his victims to leave DNA evidence.

  Sammy’s shrewd hazel eyes were the dominant feature in a narrow face that seemed out of place on his short, thick neck. Forty-two years old, with muscles that bulged through the arms of his sports jacket, his official job was as a bouncer at a Greenwich Village night club.

  A cup of coffee in front of him, he was seated across the table from his would-be employer’s representative in a diner in Queens. Scrupulously aware of small details, Sammy had already sized him up. Well dressed. In his fifties. Classy. Very good-looking. Silver cuff-links with initials D.L. He had been told there was no need for him to know the man’s name, that the phone number would be sufficient for contact.

  “Sammy, you’re hardly in a position to refuse,” Douglas Langdon said mildly. “From what I understand, you’re not exactly living high on the hog from your lousy job. Furthermore, I have to remind you that if my cousin had not reached several of the jurors, you would be in prison right now.”

  “They couldn’t have proved it anyway,” Sammy began.

  “You don’t know what they could have proved, and you never know what jurors will decide.” The mild tone was no longer present in Langdon’s voice. He shoved a photograph across the table. “This was taken this afternoon outside the Village hospital. The woman holding the child is Dr. Monica Farrell. Her home and office addresses are printed on the back.”

  Before he touched anything, Sammy reached for a crumpled paper napkin, then used it to pick up the photograph. He held it under the dingy lamp at the table. “Beautiful broad,” he commented as he studied it. He turned the photo over and glanced at the addresses, then without being asked, he handed the photograph back to Langdon.

  “Okay. I don’t want to have this picture on me if I’m ever stopped by the police. But I’ll take care of everything.”

  “See that you do. And quickly.” Langdon shoved the picture back into his jacket pocket. As he and Sammy got up, he reached back into the pocket, took out a billfold, peeled off a twenty-dollar bill, and tossed it on the table. Neither he nor Sammy noticed that the snapshot had caught on the billfold and fluttered to the floor.

  “Thanks a lot, mister,” Hank Moss, the young waiter, called as Langdon and Sammy exited through the revolving door. As he picked up the coffee cups, he noticed the picture. Setting down the cups, he ran to the door but neither man was in sight.

  They probably don’t need this, Hank thought, but on the other hand the guy did leave a big tip. He turned the picture over and saw the printed addres
ses, one on East Fourteenth Street, and the other on East Thirty-sixth Street. The one on East Fourteenth had a suite number, the one on East Thirty-sixth, an apartment number. Hank thought of a particular kind of mail that sometimes came to his parents’ home in Brooklyn. Listen, he told himself. Just in case this is important to anyone I’ll drop it in an envelope and address it to “Occupant.” I’ll send it to the suite on Fourteenth Street. That’s probably the office of the guy who dropped it. Then if it’s important, he’s got it, at least.

  At nine o’clock when his shift was over, Hank went back to the hole-in-the-wall office next to the kitchen. “Okay if I take an envelope and stamp, Lou?” he asked the owner, who was tallying receipts. “Somebody forgot something.”

  “Sure. Go ahead. I’ll take the price of the stamp out of your paycheck.” Lou grunted with what passed for a smile. Short-tempered by nature, he genuinely liked Hank. The kid was a good worker and knew how to treat customers. “Here, use one of these.” He handed a plain white envelope to Hank, who quickly scribbled the address he had decided to use. Then Hank reached for the stamp Lou was holding out to him.

  Ten minutes later he dropped the envelope in a mailbox as he jogged back to his dorm at St. John’s University.

  4

  Olivia was one of the first tenants of Schwab House on the West Side of Manhattan. Now, fifty years later, she still lived there. The apartment complex was built on grounds that had previously been the site of the mansion of a wealthy industrialist. The builder had decided to retain his name, hoping that some of the grandeur surrounding the mansion would be passed on to its sprawling replacement.

  Olivia’s first apartment had been a studio facing West End Avenue. As she steadily climbed the ladder to the executive branch of B. Altman and Company, she had begun to look for a larger place. She had intended to move to the East Side of Manhattan, but when a two-bedroom with a magnificent view of the Hudson became available in Schwab House, she had happily taken it. Later, when the building became a cooperative, she had been glad to buy her apartment because it made her feel that at last she truly had a home. Before moving to Manhattan, she and her mother, Regina, had lived in a small cottage behind the Long Island home of the Gannon family. Her mother had been their housekeeper.

  Over the years Olivia’s secondhand furniture had been slowly and carefully replaced. Self-taught, and with innate good taste, she had developed an eye for both art and design. The cream-colored walls throughout the apartment became a setting for the paintings she acquired at estate sales. The antique rugs in the living room, bedroom, and library were the palette from which she chose colorful fabrics for upholstered pieces and window treatments.

  The overall effect on a first-time visitor was invariably the same. The apartment was a haven of warmth and comfort and gave off a sense of peace and serenity.

  Olivia loved it. In all those competitive years at Altman’s, the thought that at the end of the day she would be settled in her roomy club chair, a glass of wine in her hand, watching the sunset, had been an unfailing safety valve.

  It had even been her refuge forty years ago at the heartbreaking crisis of her life, when she had finally faced the fact that Alex Gannon, the brilliant doctor and researcher whom she desperately loved, would never allow their relationship to go beyond a close friendship . . . Catherine was the one he’d always wanted.

  After her appointment with Clay, Olivia went straight home. The fatigue that was the reason she had consulted Clay two weeks ago completely enveloped her. Almost too weary to take the trouble to change, she had forced herself to undress and replace her outer clothes with a warm robe in a shade of blue that she was vain enough to realize exactly matched the color of her eyes.

  A small and unwanted protest at her fate made her decide to lie down on the couch in the living room rather than on her bed. Clay had warned her that overwhelming fatigue was to be expected, “Until one day, you just don’t feel able to get up.”

  But not yet, Olivia thought, as she reached for the afghan that was always on the ottoman at the foot of the club chair. She sat on the couch, placed one of the decorative pillows where it would be directly under her head, lay down, and pulled the afghan over her. She then sighed a relieved sigh.

  Two weeks, she thought. Two weeks. Fourteen days. How many hours is that? It doesn’t matter, she thought as she drifted off to sleep.

  When she awoke, the shadows in the room told her that it was late afternoon. I had only a cup of tea this morning before I saw Clay, she thought. I’m not hungry, but I’ve got to eat something. As she pushed aside the afghan and slowly got to her feet, the need to review the proof about Catherine again suddenly became overwhelming. In fact, she had the frightening sense that it might somehow have disappeared from the safe in the den.

  But it was there, in the manila file her mother had given her only hours before her death. Catherine’s letters to Mother, Olivia thought, her lips quivering; the Mother Superior’s letter to Catherine; a copy of Edward’s birth certificate; the passionate note he had given my mother to pass on to Catherine.

  “Olivia.”

  Someone was in the apartment and was coming down the hallway toward her. Clay. Olivia’s fingers trembled as, without putting them back in the file, she thrust the letters and birth certificate into the safe, closed the door, and pushed the button that automatically locked it.

  She stepped out of the closet. “I’m here, Clay.” She did not attempt to conceal the icy disapproval in her voice.

  “Olivia, I was concerned about you. You promised to call this afternoon.”

  “I don’t remember making that promise.”

  “Well, you did,” Clay said heartily.

  “You did give me two weeks. I would guess that not more than seven hours have passed. Why didn’t you have the doorman announce you?”

  “Because I hoped you might be sleeping and if so, I would have left without disturbing you. Or why don’t I tell the truth? If I had been announced you might have turned me down and I wanted to see you. I did deliver a bombshell to you this morning.”

  When Olivia did not answer, Clay Hadley, his tone gentle, added, “Olivia, there is a reason why you gave me a key and permission to come in if I suspected a problem.”

  Olivia felt her resentment at the intrusion begin to disappear. What Clay had said was absolutely true. If he had called up I would have told him I was resting, she thought. Then she followed Clay’s glance.

  He was looking at the manila envelope in her hand.

  From where he stood he could obviously see the single word her mother had written across it.

  CATHERINE.

  5

  Monica lived on the first floor of a renovated town house on East Thirty-sixth Street. In her mind, being on the tree-lined block was like stepping back in time to the nineteenth century, when all the brownstones had been private residences. Her apartment was to the rear of the building, which meant she had exclusive use of the small patio and garden. When the weather was warm she enjoyed morning coffee in her bathrobe on the patio, or a glass of wine in the evening there.

  After the discussion with her receptionist, Nan, about Michael O’Keefe, the child who had had brain cancer, she had decided to walk home, as she frequently did. She had long since realized that walking the one-mile distance from her office was a good way of getting in some exercise, as well as a chance to unwind.

  Cooking at the end of the day was relaxing for her. A self-taught chef, Monica had culinary talents that were legendary among her friends. But neither the walk nor the excellent pasta and salad she prepared for herself that evening did anything to settle her uneasy sense that a dark cloud was hanging over her.

  It’s the baby, she thought. I have to discharge Sally tomorrow, but even if I check the DNA and learn that Ms. Carter isn’t the birth mother, what does that prove? Dad was an adopted child. I can hardly remember his parents, but he always said that he couldn’t imagine being brought up by anyone except them. In fact he
used to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice. A widower, Roosevelt had remarried when Alice was two years old. When asked about her stepmother, Alice had replied firmly, “She was the only mother I ever knew or wanted to know.”

  And having quoted that, and fully sharing for his adoptive parents the sentiment of Alice Roosevelt’s love for the stepmother who raised her, Dad always wondered and longed to know more about his birth parents, Monica mused. In his last few years, he was pretty much obsessed by it.

  Sally was terribly sick when she was brought into the emergency room but there wasn’t a hint of any kind of abuse and she was obviously well nourished. And certainly Renée Carter won’t be the first person who turns her child over to a babysitter or nanny to raise.

  The prospect of testifying about the disappearance of Michael O’Keefe’s brain cancer was another reason for concern. I don’t believe in miracles, Monica thought vehemently, then admitted to herself that Michael had been terminally ill when she examined him.

  As she lingered over demitasse and fresh-cut pineapple, she looked around, as always finding comfort in her surroundings.

  Because of the chilly evening, she had turned on the gas fireplace. The small round dining table and the upholstered chair where she was sitting faced the fireplace. Now the flickering flames sent darts of light across the antique Aubusson carpet that had been her mother’s pride and joy.

  The ringing of the phone was an unwelcome intrusion. She was bone-weary, but knowing it might mean a call from the hospital about one of her patients made her bolt from her chair and dart across the room. As she picked up the receiver she was saying “Dr. Farrell” even before she realized the call was coming through on her private line.

  “And Dr. Farrell is well, I trust,” a teasing male voice asked.

  “I’m very well, Scott,” Monica answered, her tone cool, even as she felt a sickening worry at the sound of Scott Alterman’s voice.