We'll Meet Again

“Thank you. I’d like that,” she said sincerely.

“Noon?”

“Great.”

“Please don’t dress up.”

“I wasn’t planning to dress up. Day of rest and all that.”

After Fran hung up she talked aloud to herself for the second time that morning: “Now what is this all about?” she asked. “It sure as blazes isn’t old-fashioned boy-meets-girl.”

Fran arrived at Neary’s to find Tim Mason deep in conversation with the bartender. He was wearing an open- necked sport shirt, dark green corduroy jacket, and tan slacks. His hair was rumpled, and his jacket felt cold when she touched his arm.

“I get the feeling you didn’t take a cab,” she said as he turned to look at her.

“I don’t like all those reminders about buckling your seatbelt,” he said. “So I walked. Good to see you, Fran.” He smiled down at her.

Fran was wearing ankle boots with low heels and realized that she felt the way she had in the first grade- short.

A smiling Jimmy Neary gave them one of his four corner tables, which immediately signaled to Fran that Tim Mason must be a favorite regular patron. In the weeks since she had moved to New York, she had come here once before, with a couple from her apartment building. They’d been given a corner table then, too, and they had explained its significance to her.

Over bloody marys, Tim talked about himself. “My folks left Greenwich when they got divorced,” he told her. “It was the year after college, and I was working for the Greenwich Time. The editor called me a cub reporter, but actually I was mostly a gofer. That was the last time I lived there.”

“How many years ago was that?” Fran asked.

“Fourteen.”

She made a quick mental calculation. “That’s why, when we met, you recognized my name. You knew about my father.”

He shrugged. “Yes.” His smile was apologetic.

The waitress handed them menus, but they both ordered eggs Benedict without even looking at the options. When the waitress was gone, Tim took a sip of his bloody mary, then said, “You haven’t asked, but I’m going to give you the story of my life, which I think you’ll find particularly enthralling since you obviously know your sports.”

We’re actually not too dissimilar, Fran thought as she listened to Tim talking about his early job, broadcasting the high school games in a small town she had never heard of in upstate New York. Then she told him about being an intern at a local cable system in a town located near San Diego, where the most exciting event was the town council meeting.

“Starting out, you take whatever job you can get,” she said as he nodded in agreement.

He, too, was an only child, but unlike her, he did not have stepsiblings.

“After the divorce my mother moved to Bronxville,” he explained. “That’s where both she and my father had been raised. She bought a townhouse. Guess what? My father bought one in the same complex. They never got along when they were married, but now they go out on dates, and on holidays we go to his place for cocktails and hers for dinner. It confused me at first, but it seems to work for them.”

“Well, I’m pleased to say my mother is very happy, and with good reason,” Fran said. “She’s been remarried for eight years. She figured that I’d be coming back to New York eventually and suggested I take my stepfather’s name. You certainly know how much publicity there was about my father.”

He nodded. “Yes, there was. Were you tempted to do that?”

Fran folded and unfolded her cocktail napkin. “No, never.”

“Are you sure it’s wise for you to be the one to research a program set in Greenwich?”

“Probably not wise, but why do you ask?”

“Fran, I was at a wake in Greenwich last night, for a woman I knew growing up. She died of a heart attack at Lasch Hospital. Her son is my friend, and he’s terribly angry. Seems to feel more could have been done for her and thinks that, while you’re at it, you should investigate the treatment they give patients at the hospital.”

“Could more have been done for his mother?”

“I don’t know. He may have been just crazy with grief, although I wouldn’t be surprised if you hear from him. His name is Billy Gallo.”

“Why would he call me?”

“Because he heard you were seen in the coffee shop at Lasch Hospital on Friday. I bet by now everyone in town has heard you were there.”

Fran shook her head in disbelief. “I didn’t think I’d been on air long enough for people to recognize me so easily. I’m sorry about that,” she said with a shrug. “I did pick up an interesting piece of information though, just by chatting with a volunteer in the coffee shop. She probably would have clammed up if she had known I was a reporter.”

“Was this visit connected to the program you’re doing on Molly Lasch?” he asked.

“Yes, although mostly for background,” she said, not anxious to go into the Molly Lasch investigation. “Tim, do you know Joe Hutnik at the Greenwich Time?”

“Yes. Joe was there when I was on the staff. A good guy. Why do you ask?”

“Joe doesn’t think much of HMOs in general, but he seems to think that Remington Health Management is no worse than the rest of them.”

“Well, Billy Gallo doesn’t think so.” He saw a look of concern on her face. “But don’t worry. He’s really a nice guy-just very upset right now.”

As the table was cleared and coffee served, Fran looked around. Almost every table was taken now, and there was a cheerful bustle in the cozy pub. Tim Mason is a really nice guy, she thought. Maybe his friend is going to call me, and maybe he isn’t. Tim’s real message is that I’m in the spotlight in Greenwich, and that the old stories-and jokes-about my father’s death are being revived.

As Fran looked around the room, she did not see Tim Mason’s compassionate glance, nor did she realize that the expression in her eyes brought back to him vividly the image of the teenage girl mourning her father.

34

Annamarie Scalli had agreed to meet Molly at eight o’clock at a diner in Rowayton, a town ten miles northeast of Greenwich.

The location and the hour had been Annamarie’s suggestion. “It’s not fancy, and it’s quiet on Sunday, especially that late,” she had said. “And I’m sure neither one of us wants to bump into anyone we know.”

At six o’clock-much too early, she knew-Molly was ready to leave. She had changed clothes twice, feeling too dressed up in the black suit she first put on, then too casual in denims. She finally settled on dark blue wool slacks and a white turtleneck sweater. She twisted her hair into a chignon and pinned it up, remembering how Gary had liked her to wear it that way, especially liked the tendrils that escaped and fell loosely on her neck and ears. He said it made her look real.

“You always look so perfect, Molly,” he would tell her. “Perfect and elegant and well bred. You manage to make a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt look like formal dress.”

At the time she thought he’d been teasing her. Now she wasn’t sure. It was what she needed to find out. Husbands talk to their girlfriends about their wives, she thought. I need to know what Gary told Annamarie Scalli about me. And while I’m asking questions, there’s something else I want to talk to her about: what she was doing the night Gary died. After all, she had a good reason to be very, very angry with him too. I heard the way she spoke to him on the phone.

At seven o’clock, Molly decided it finally was reasonable to leave for Rowayton. She took her Burberry from the downstairs closet and was headed toward the door when, as a last-minute thought, she went back up to her bedroom, took a plain blue scarf from the drawer, and searched until she found a pair of oversized Cartier