We'll Meet Again

“No, I did not.”

“Did you ever meet Annamarie Scalli?”

“No, the case was resolved before she was scheduled to testify.”

“Do you remember if anything ever came up about a house key that was always kept hidden in the garden here?”

Matthews frowned. “Something may have come up, but it didn’t amount to anything. Quite frankly, my feeling was that, because of the circumstances of the murder and the way Molly was covered with Dr. Lasch’s blood, the investigation into his death began and ended with her.

“Fran, go upstairs and tell Molly I have to see her right away,” Matthews said. “I remember she has a sitting room in her suite. I’ll talk to her there before I let the police get near her. I’ll get Mrs. Barry to have them wait down here somewhere.”

Just then a distressed Mrs. Barry hurried into the kitchen. “When I went upstairs a moment ago with her breakfast, Molly was in bed, fully dressed and with her eyes closed.” She paused. “Dear God, it’s just like the last time!”

37

Dr. Peter Black invariably started his day with a quick check of the international stock market on one of the cable financial channels. He then ate a spartan breakfast-during which he insisted upon complete silence-and later listened to classical music on the car radio as he drove to work.

Sometimes when he reached the hospital grounds he would take a brisk stroll before settling down at his desk.

On Monday morning the sun was out. Overnight the temperature had risen almost twenty degrees, and Black decided a ten-minute walk this morning would clear his head.

It had been a troubled weekend. The visit to Molly Lasch on Saturday evening had been another failure, Cal Whitehall’s stupid, ill-conceived notion of the way to win the woman’s cooperation.

Peter Black frowned as he noticed a gum wrapper lying at the edge of the parking lot and made a mental note to have his secretary call the maintenance department and warn them about their sloppiness.

Molly’s stubborn insistence on pursuing this idea of her innocence in Gary ’s death infuriated him. “I didn’t do it. The killer went thataway”-Who did she think she was kidding? He knew what she was doing, though. He thought of it as Molly-strategy: Tell a lie loud enough, emphatically enough, often enough, and eventually some people will believe you.

It will be all right, he reassured himself. The mergers will go through. After all, they had the inside track to absorb the other HMOs, and the process already was underway. This is where we miss Gary, Black thought. I just don’t have the patience for the endless socializing and glad-handing needed to keep key company executives on board with us. Cal can use business leverage to keep some of them in line, he told himself, but Cal ’s kind of aggressive power plays don’t work with everyone. If we’re not careful, some might switch to other health plans.

Frowning now, his hands in his pockets, Peter Black continued his walk around the new wing of the hospital, thinking back to his early days there, and remembering with grim admiration how Gary Lasch used to seem to thrive on all the socializing. He could turn on the charm and, when necessary, his solicitous demeanor, that look of concern that he had perfected.

Gary knew what he was doing when he married Molly too, Black reflected. Molly was the perfect Martha Stewart-type hostess, with her looks and money and family connections. Important people were actually flattered to be invited to her dinner parties.

Everything had been going so smoothly, just like clockwork, Peter Black thought, until Gary was fool enough to get involved with that Annamarie Scalli. Of all the sexy-looking young women in the world, he had to go and pick a nurse who also happened to be smart.

Too smart.

He had reached the entrance to the colonial style brick building that housed the offices of Remington Health Management Organization. He debated briefly about continuing his walk, but then decided to go in. The day was ahead of him, and he would have to deal with it sooner or later.

At ten o’clock he received a call from a nearly hysterical Jenna. “Peter, have you heard the news? A woman who was murdered last night in the parking lot of a diner in Rowayton has been identified as Annamarie Scalli, and the police are questioning Molly. On the radio they just about came out and called her a suspect.”

“Annamarie Scalli is dead?! Molly is a suspect?!” Peter Black proceeded to ask rapid-fire questions, pressing Jenna for details.

“Molly apparently met with Annamarie at the diner,” Jenna told him. “You’ll remember she said on Saturday that she wanted to see her. The waitress said Annamarie left the diner first, but that Molly followed her out less than a minute later. When the diner closed a little later still, apparently somebody noticed that a car had been in the lot for some time, and they checked it out because they’ve been having trouble with teenagers parking there and drinking. But what they found was Annamarie, stabbed to death.”

After Peter Black replaced the receiver, he leaned back, a contemplative look on his face. A moment later he smiled and heaved a great sigh, as though a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Reaching into one of the desk’s side drawers, he extracted a flask. Pouring himself a shot of whiskey, he lifted the small cup in a toast. “Thank you, Molly,” he said aloud, then drank.

38

On Monday afternoon, when Edna Barry arrived home from Molly’s house, her neighbor and close friend Marta came running over before she was even out of the car.

“It’s all over the news,” Marta said breathlessly. “They say Molly Lasch is being questioned by the police, and that she is a suspect in that nurse’s death.”

“Come in and have a cup of tea with me,” Edna said. “You just wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had!”

At the kitchen table, over tea and her homemade coffee cake, Edna described her shock at seeing Molly lying fully dressed under the quilt on the bed. “I thought my heart would stop. She was fast asleep, just like the last time. And when she opened her eyes, she looked all confused, and then she smiled. I tell you I got such a chill. It really was like six years ago-I almost expected to see blood on her.”

She explained how she had rushed downstairs to get that reporter, Fran Simmons, who’d shown up there first thing that morning, and Molly’s lawyer. They had made Molly sit up, then they walked her around her sitting room and made her drink several cups of coffee.

“After a while, Molly started to get some color in her cheeks, even though her eyes still had that funny vacant look in them. And then,” Edna Barry said, leaning closer to Marta, “Molly said, ‘Philip, I didn’t kill Annamarie Scalli, did I?’ ”

“No!” Marta gasped, her mouth a circle of amazement, her eyes wide behind her harlequin glasses.

“Well, let me tell you, the minute she said that, Fran Simmons took my arm and shoved me down the stairs so fast it would make your head spin. She didn’t want me to be able to report anything I might overhear to the police.”

Edna Barry did not add that Molly’s question had taken a great load of worry off her mind. Clearly Molly was mentally unstable. Nobody who wasn’t sick would kill two people and then not even know if they did it. All her secret worry about Wally had been for nothing.

Now, in the safety of her own kitchen, with her concerns about Wally removed, Edna freely dished up the events of the morning for her confidante. “We were no sooner downstairs than a couple of detectives showed up on the doorstep. They were from the state attorney’s office. Fran Simmons took them into the family room. She told them Molly was in consultation with her lawyer, but I knew he really was just trying to get her to talk some