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.”

55

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.”