We'll Meet Again (20 page)

Edna Barry could tell immediately that Molly had had company the night before. Even though the kitchen was tidy and the CLEAN signal was lit on the dishwasher, the subtle differences were there. Salt and pepper shakers were on the sideboard rather than on the counter, the fruit bowl was on the cutting board instead of the table, the coffeemaker was still out, uncovered, on the counter next to the stove.

The prospect of restoring the customary orderliness of the kitchen was a soothing prospect to Edna. I like my job, she thought as she hung her coat in the closet near the door. I’m going to hate having to give it up again.

It was inevitable, however. When Molly knew she was about to be released from prison, she had had her parents hire Edna to come in and spruce up the house and stock the kitchen. Now that she had been coming to Molly’s house regularly again, Wally had started being a problem. He’d hardly mentioned Molly while she was in prison, but her return had done something to him, had set him off. He kept talking about her and Dr. Lasch. And each time he talked about them, he became angry.

If I’m not in and out of here three times a week, it won’t be on his mind so much, Edna reasoned as she tied an apron over her matching polyester shirt and slacks. The apron was her own choice. Molly’s mother had always furnished a uniform, but Molly had said, “Oh, Edna, that isn’t necessary.”

Again this morning there was no sign that Molly had made coffee for herself, no sign, for that matter, that she was even awake yet. I’ll go upstairs and check on her, Edna decided. Maybe after all she’s gone through, she’s sleeping in. And she has gone through a lot. Why, since I was here Monday, Molly has been arrested again for murder and then released on bail. It’s just like six years ago. As much as I hate to even think this, maybe she’d be better off if she were put away.

Marta thinks I should stop working here because Molly is dangerous, Edna thought as she climbed the stairs, once again reminded of the arthritis in her knees.

You’re glad she thinks that, a voice whispered inside her head. Let the police focus on Molly and not think about Wally.

But Molly’s always been so kind to you, another voice suggested. You
could
help her, but you won’t. Wally was here that night-you
know
that. Maybe he could help her to remember what happened. But you can’t risk it. You can’t take a chance on what he might say.

Edna arrived upstairs just as Molly was getting out of the shower, and when she came into the bedroom in her thick terry bathrobe, her hair wrapped in a towel, she reminded Edna of the little girl Molly once had been, always so polite, who would say, “Good morning, Mrs. Barry,” in her soft, low voice.

“Good morning, Mrs. Barry.”

With a start, Edna realized that it was not an echo of memory; it was Molly, a grown woman, talking to her now.

“Oh, Molly, for just a moment there, I swear I was seeing you as a ten-year-old! Sounds like I’m losing it, doesn’t it?”

“Not you,” Molly said. “Me maybe, but surely not you. I’m sorry you had to come looking for me. I’m not as lazy as I look, though. I went to bed early enough, but then I didn’t fall asleep until almost dawn.”

“That’s not good, Molly. Can’t you get the doctor to give you something to help you sleep?”

“I did the other night, and it was a big help. I’ll see if I can’t get some more of the same. The trouble is that Dr. Daniels doesn’t really believe in pills.”

“I have some sleeping pills the doctor gave me to give to Wally in case he gets restless. They’re not too strong. Would you want some to keep on hand?”

Molly sat at her dressing table and reached for the hair dryer. Then she turned and looked directly at Edna Barry. “I really would like that, Mrs. Barry,” she said slowly. “Have you an extra bottle that I can replace?”

“Oh, you don’t want a full bottle. There’re about forty in the one I have in the medicine cabinet.”

“Then split them with me, okay? The way things are going, I may need one a night for the next several weeks.”

Edna had not known whether or not to let on that she knew Molly had been arrested again.

“Molly, I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened. You know.”

“Yes, I do. Thank you, Mrs. Barry. And now would you please bring me a cup of coffee?” She picked up the hair dryer and turned it on.

When she was sure Edna Barry was on her way downstairs, Molly turned off the dryer and let her damp hair fall on her neck. The warmth of the shower was gone, and the strands of hair felt cold and wet against her skin.

You don’t really intend to take an overdose of pills, do you? she asked herself. She looked at the face in the mirror-it seemed to her someone she hardly recognized. Isn’t it more like being in a strange place and looking for the exit, just in case you need to get out in a hurry? She leaned in closer to the mirror and stared into the eyes she saw there. Having asked the questions, she wasn’t sure of the answers.

An hour later, Molly was in the study going through one of the boxes she had brought down from the attic. The prosecutors had two cracks at these papers, she thought. They confiscated them after Gary died, returned them after the trial, then went through them again yesterday. I guess now they’ve given up looking for anything interesting in them.

But what am
I
looking for? she asked herself.

I’m looking for something that might make me understand what Annamarie Scalli meant when she told me as a doctor Gary wasn’t worth the price I paid for killing him. I don’t even care anymore about his infidelity.

There were some framed pictures in the box. She pulled one of them out and looked at it closely. It was a photograph of her and Gary taken at the Heart Association Charity Ball the year they were married. She studied it dispassionately. She remembered how Gran used to say that Gary reminded her of Tyrone Power, the movie star who had been her heartthrob sixty years before.

I guess I never saw beyond the looks and the charm, she thought. Clearly at some point Annamarie did. But how did she find out? And
what
did she learn?

At 11:30, Fran phoned. “Molly, I’d like to stop by for just a few minutes. Is Mrs. Barry there?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Good. See you in ten minutes.”

When Fran arrived, she went directly to Molly and put an arm around her. “I gather you had a lovely afternoon yesterday.”

“Never a better one.” She managed a wan smile.

“Where’s Mrs. Barry, Molly?”

“In the kitchen, I guess. She seems to be determined to fix lunch for me, even though I tell her I’m not hungry.”

“Come on in with me. I have to talk to her.”

Edna Barry’s heart sank when she heard Fran Simmons’s voice. Help me, please, dear Lord, she prayed. Don’t let her go asking me about Wally. It’s not his fault he’s the way he is.

Fran came directly to the point: “Mrs. Barry, Dr. Morrow was your son’s doctor, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s right. He saw a psychiatrist as well, but Dr. Morrow was his primary physician,” Edna replied, trying not to let her growing unease show in her face.

“Your neighbor Mrs. Jones told me the other day that Wally was very upset when Dr. Morrow died.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I gather Wally was in a cast around that time?” Fran asked.

Edna Barry bristled, then nodded stiffly. “Toe-to-knee cast,” she said. “He wore it for a week after they found poor Dr. Morrow.”

I shouldn’t have said that, she thought. She didn’t accuse Wally of anything.

“What I was going to ask, Mrs. Barry, is if you or Wally ever overheard Dr. Morrow talk about either Dr. Gary Lasch or Dr. Peter Black, or maybe refer to the two of them as a pair of murderers?”

Molly gasped.

“I don’t remember anything like that,” Edna Barry said softly, her distress apparent in the way she kept wiping her hands on her apron. “What is that all about?”

“I don’t think that if you had heard a statement like that it would be easily forgotten, Mrs. Barry. I know it certainly would make a lasting impression on me. On the way over in the car I called Mr. Matthews, Molly’s lawyer, and asked him about the spare key to this house that is kept in the garden. According to his notes, you gave it to the police the morning Dr. Lasch was found murdered in his study, and you told them it had been in the kitchen drawer for a long time. You said that Molly had forgotten her house key one day and had taken the spare from the hiding place, and it had never been put back.”

“But that is not
true,”
Molly protested. “I never once forgot my house key, and I know the spare was in the garden the week before Gary died. I was out in back and happened to check on it. Why would you say it had been in the house for a long time because of me, Mrs. Barry? I don’t understand.”

On the evening news hour, Fran wrapped up her report on the latest developments in the Annamarie Scalli murder investigation with an appeal: “According to Bobby Burke, the counterman on duty in the Sea Lamp Diner the night of the murder, a couple came in the diner and took a table near the door moments before Annamarie Scalli hurried out. Molly Lasch’s lawyer, Philip Matthews, is appealing to that couple to come forward and give a statement as to what they may have observed in the parking lot before they came into the diner or may have overheard in the diner itself. Attorney Matthews’s number is 212-555-2800, or you can call me at this station at 212-555-6850.”

The camera focused on Fran went dark. “Thanks for that report, Fran,” Bert Davis, the news anchor, said crisply. “Coming up: sports with Tim Mason, followed by the weather with Scott Roberts. But first, some messages.”

Fran unfastened the mike from her jacket and removed the earpiece. She stopped at Tim Mason’s desk on the way out of the studio. “Can I buy you a hamburger when you’re finished?” she asked.

Tim raised his eyebrows. “I was all set for a steak, but if it’s a hamburger you want, then I still accept with pleasure.”

“Nope. A steak is fine. I’ll be in my office.”

While she waited for Tim, Fran reviewed the events of the day. First there was the meeting with Dr. Roy Kirkwood, then her call to Philip Matthews, then Edna Barry’s flustered reaction during the discussion of the spare key. Mrs. Barry had claimed that she was almost certain the spare key had been in the drawer for months, and when Molly denied it, Barry said, “Molly must be mistaken; but then, she
was
so confused at that time.”

Driving back to the city, Fran had called Philip again and had told him that she had become more and more certain that Edna Barry had something to hide and that it had to do with that spare key. She certainly hadn’t been forthcoming when Fran questioned her about it, however, so Fran suggested that Philip might have to lean on her to tell the truth.

Philip had promised to study every word of Edna Barry’s statements to the police and testimony at the trial, then he had asked about Molly’s reaction to Mrs. Barry’s statement.

Fran told him that it clearly startled her, maybe even unsettled her. After Mrs. Barry went home, Molly had said something like, “I guess I must have been out of it even
before
the shock of finding out about Annamarie. I would have
sworn
that key was in the garden a few days before I overheard her call to Gary.”

And I bet you’re right, Molly, Fran said to herself angrily as Tim knocked, then poked his head around the door. She waved him in. “Let’s go,” he said. “I’ve made a reservation at Cibo’s on Second Avenue.”

“Good choice. I love it there.”

As they walked down Fifth Avenue to Forty-first Street, Fran lifted her arms in a salute to the buildings and the bustle around them. “My town,” she said with a sigh. “I love it. It’s so good to be back.”

“Me too,” Tim agreed, “and I’m also glad you’re back.”

In the restaurant they chose one of the private booths.

Once the waiter had poured their wine and left to place their dinner orders, she said, “Tim, I believe you said your grandmother died in Lasch Hospital. When was that?”

“Let’s see. It’s just over six years ago, I think…Why do you ask?”

“Because when I first met you last week, we discussed Gary Lasch. Didn’t you say that he took excellent care of your grandmother before she died?”

“Yes, I did. Why?”

“Because I’m starting to hear from some quarters that there was another side to Gary Lasch as a doctor. I spoke to the physician who treated Billy Gallo’s mother-a Dr. Kirkwood. He told me he fought for her to see a specialist but couldn’t get approval from the HMO for further treatment; then she had the major heart attack and died before anything could be done. Of course, Gary Lasch is long dead and had nothing directly to do with this, but Dr. Kirkwood said that this tightfisted approach to health care goes back some time. He’s only in his early sixties, and he says he’s packing it in, doesn’t plan to practice medicine anymore. He’s been tied to the Lasch Hospital most of his career, and he was most definite in saying that Gary Lasch had been nothing like his father. He said the problems he encountered with Mrs. Gallo were nothing new, that putting the patient’s welfare first hadn’t been a priority with the people running Lasch Hospital and Remington for a long time.” Fran leaned closer and lowered her voice. “He even told me that Dr. Morrow, the young doctor who died in a robbery two weeks before Gary Lasch was killed, once referred to Lasch and his partner, Dr. Black, as a pair of murderers.”

“That’s pretty strong language,” Tim said, breaking off a piece of roll. “Still, I’ve got to say my own experience was much more positive. As I said, I liked Gary Lasch and thought my grandmother got darn good care. I did think of one coincidence I may not have mentioned. Did I tell you that Annamarie Scalli was one of the nurses who took care of her?”

Fran’s eyes widened. “No, you didn’t tell me that.”

“It didn’t seem significant. All the nurses were excellent. I remember Annamarie as dedicated and very caring. When we got the call that my grandmother had died, we went straight to the hospital, of course. Annamarie was sitting by her bed, sobbing. How many nurses react like that, especially when it’s a patient they’ve known only a short time?”

“Not too many,” Fran agreed. “They couldn’t last if they got emotionally entangled with all their patients.”

“Annamarie was a very pretty girl, but she also struck me as kind of naïve,” Tim recalled. “She was only in her early twenties, for heaven sake. When I found out later that Gary Lasch was carrying on with her, I was disgusted with him as a man, but as a doctor I can’t remember a single thing about him to criticize.

“We joked that my grandmother had a crush on Lasch,” Tim reminisced. “He was a really handsome and charming guy, but he also made you feel that he cared about his patients deeply. The guy just inspired confidence. I remember my grandmother saying sometimes he’d look in on her as late as eleven o’clock at night. How many doctors do
that?”

“Molly Lasch quoted Annamarie Scalli as saying that as a doctor and as a husband, Gary Lasch wasn’t worth the price she paid for killing him,” Fran observed. “She said Annamarie was pretty positive about it.”

“But Fran, isn’t that the kind of talk you’d
expect
to hear from a woman in Annamarie’s position?”

“Maybe as a woman she’d say that, yes. But it sounds to me as if she was also talking from the point of view of a nurse.” Fran paused and shook her head. “I don’t know, maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, but adding that to Dr. Jack Morrow’s referring to Gary Lasch and Peter Black as murderers, I can’t help but think there’s something to all this. I sense that I’m onto something, and I suspect that an awful lot of this story has never come out.”

“You’re an investigative reporter, Fran. My bet’s on you to get to the truth. I hardly knew Annamarie Scalli, but I was grateful for the care she took of my grandmother. I’d like to see her murderer caught, and it’s a tragedy if Molly Lasch has been unfairly accused.”

The waiter was placing the salads in front of them.

“Unfairly accused for the
second
time,” Fran said pointedly.

“That may well be the case, but what’s your next step?”

“I managed to get a meeting tomorrow with Dr. Peter Black. Should be interesting. I’m still trying to set up an appointment with my Cranden Academy fellow student, Jenna Whitehall, and her husband, the mighty Calvin Whitehall.”

“Heavy-duty people.”

Fran nodded. “I know, but they’re all-important to the story, and I’m determined to get to them.” She sighed. “How about let’s give the subject a rest. So what do you think? Will my Yankees win the World Series again this year?”

Tim smiled. “Of course they will.”