Kerry smoothed it back. “Can I trust you?”
Robin looked up with a slow, sleepy smile. “Uh-huh.”
“Okay.” Kerry kissed the top of her head. “Now remember, same rules as any other time. Don’t open the door for anyone. I’ll set the alarm. You deactivate it only when you’re ready to leave, then reset it. Don’t take a ride from anyone unless you’re with Cassie and Courtney and it’s one of their parents.”
“I know. I know.” Robin sighed dramatically.
Kerry grinned. “I know I’ve given you the same spiel a thousand times. See you tonight. Alison will be here at three.”
Alison was the high school student who stayed with Robin after school until Kerry came home. Kerry had thought about having her come over this morning to see Robin off but had acceded to her daughter’s vigorous protest that she wasn’t a baby and could get herself off to school.
“See you, Mom.”
Robin listened to Kerry’s steps going down the stairs, then went over to the window to watch the car pull out of the driveway.
The room was chilly. By seven o’clock, when she usually got up, the house was toasty warm. Just for a minute, Robin thought as she slipped back into bed. I’ll just lie here for a minute more.
At seven o’clock, after the phone had rung six times, she sat up and answered it. “Oh, thanks, Mrs. Weiser. Yes, I’m sure I’m up.”
I am now, she thought as she hurried out of bed.
36
Despite the early hour, the traffic into Manhattan was heavy.
But at least it was moving at a reasonable clip, Kerry thought. Nevertheless it took her a full hour to drive from New Jersey, down what was left of the West Side Highway and across town to Dr. Smith’s Fifth Avenue office. She was three minutes late. The doctor let her in himself. Even the minimal courtesy he had shown on Robin’s two visits was lacking this morning. He did not greet her except to say, “I can give you twenty minutes, Ms. McGrath, and not a second more.” He led her to his private office.
If that’s the way we’re going to play it, Kerry thought, then fine. When she was seated across his desk from him, she said, “Dr. Smith, after seeing two women emerge from this office who startlingly resembled your murdered daughter, Suzanne, I became curious enough about the circumstances of her death to take time this last week to read the transcript of Skip Reardon’s trial.”
She did not miss the look of hatred that came over Dr. Smith’s face when she mentioned Reardon’s name. His eyes narrowed, his mouth tightened, deep furrows appeared on his forehead and in vertical slashes down his cheeks.
She looked directly at him. “Dr. Smith, I want you to know how terribly sorry I am that you lost your daughter. You were a divorced parent. I’m a divorced parent. Like you, I have an only child, a daughter. Knowing the agony I was in when I received the call that Robin had been in an accident, I can only imagine how you felt when you were told about Suzanne,”
Smith looked at her steadily, his fingers locked together. Kerry had the feeling that there was an impenetrable barrier between them. If so, the rest of their conversation was entirely predictable. He would hear her out, make some sort of statement about love and loss, and then usher her to the door. How could she break through that barrier?
She leaned forward. “Dr. Smith, your testimony is the reason Skip Reardon is in prison. You said he was insanely jealous, that your daughter was afraid of him. He swears that he never threatened Suzanne.”
“He’s lying.” The voice was flat, unemotional. “He truly was insanely jealous of her. As you said, she was my only child. I doted on her. I had become successful enough to give her the kinds of things I could never give her as a child. It was my pleasure from time to time to buy her a piece of fine jewelry. Yet, even when I spoke to Reardon, he refused to believe that they had been gifts from me. He kept accusing her of seeing other men.”
Is it possible? Kerry wondered. “But if Suzanne was in fear for her life, why did she stay with Skip Reardon?” she asked.
The morning sun was flooding the room in such a way that it shone on Smith’s rimless glasses, making it so that Kerry could no longer see his eyes. Could they possibly be as flat as his expressionless voice? she thought to herself. “Because unlike her mother, my former wife, Suzanne had a sense of deep commitment to her marriage,” he responded after a pause. “The grave mistake of her life was to fall in love with Reardon. An even graver mistake was not to take his threats seriously.”
Kerry realized she was getting nowhere. It was time to ask the question that had occurred to her earlier, but that possibly held implications she wasn’t sure she was prepared to face. “Dr. Smith, did you ever perform any surgical procedures of any kind on your daughter?”
It was immediately clear that her question outraged him. “Ms. McGrath, I happen to belong to the school of physicians who would never, except in dire emergency, treat a family member. Beyond that, the question is insulting. Suzanne was a natural beauty.”
“You’ve made at least two women resemble her to a startling degree. Why?”
Dr. Smith looked at his watch. “I’ll answer this final question, and then you will have to excuse me, Ms. McGrath. I don’t know how much you know about plastic surgery. Fifty years ago, by today’s standards, it was quite primitive. After people had nose jobs, they had to live with flaring nostrils. Reconstructive work on victims born with deformities such as a harelip was often a crude procedure. It is now very sophisticated, and the results are most satisfying. We’ve learned a great deal. Plastic surgery is no longer for only the rich and famous. It is for anyone, whether he or she needs it, or simply wants it.”
He took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead as though he had a headache. “Parents bring in teenagers, boys as well as girls, who are so conscious of a perceived defect that they simply can’t function. Yesterday I operated on a fifteen-year-old boy whose ears stuck out so much that they were the only thing one saw when looking at him. When the bandages come off, all his other quite pleasing features, which had been obscured by this offending problem, will be what people see when they look at him.
“I operate on women who look in the mirror and see sagging skin or baggy eyes, women who had been beautiful girls in their youth. I raise and clamp the forehead under the hairline, I tighten the skin and pull it up behind the ears. I take twenty years off their appearance, but more than that, I transform their self-deprecation into self-worth.”
His voice rose. “I could show you before-and-after pictures of accident victims whom I have helped. You ask me why several of my patients resemble my daughter. I’ll tell you why. Because in these ten years, a few plain and unhappy young women came into this office and I was able to give them her kind of beauty.”
Kerry knew he was about to tell her to leave. Hurriedly, she asked, “Then why several years ago did you tell a potential patient, Susan Grant, that beauty sometimes is abused, and the result is jealousy and violence? Weren’t you talking about Suzanne? Isn’t it a fact that Skip Reardon may have had a reason to be jealous? Perhaps you did buy her all the jewelry Skip couldn’t account for, but he swears he did not send Suzanne those roses she received on the day of her death.”
Dr. Smith stood up. “Ms. McGrath, I should think in your business you ought to know that murderers almost inevitably plead innocence. And now, this discussion is over.”
There was nothing Kerry could do except follow him from the room. As she walked behind him, she noticed that he was holding his right hand rigidly against his side. Was that a tremor in his hand? Yes, it was.
At the door he said, “Ms. McGrath, you must understand that the sound of Skip Reardon’s name sickens me. Please call Mrs. Carpenter and give her the name of another physician to whom she can forward Robin’s file. I do not want to hear from you or see you or your daughter again.”
He was so close to her that Kerry stepped back involuntarily. There was something genuinely frightening about the man. His eyes, filled with anger and hatred, seemed to be burning through her. If he had a gun in his hand right now, I swear he’d use it, she thought to herself.
