"That's what I thought. What are we having for dinner?"

"I stopped at the supermarket. How does a cheeseburger sound?"

"Perfect."

"No, it's not, but I try. Oh well, I guess you'll never have much reason to brag about your mother's home cooking, Rob."

The phone rang and Robin grabbed it. It was for her. She tossed the receiver to Kerry. "Hang up in a minute, okay? I'll take it upstairs. It's Ca.s.sie."

When she heard Robin's exuberant "I'm on," Kerry replaced the receiver, carried the mail into the kitchen, laid it on the counter and began to sort through it. A plain white envelope with her name and address in block printing caught her eye. She slit it open, pulled out a snapshot, looked at it and went cold.

It was a color Polaroid of Robin coming down the walk outside their house. Her arms were full of books. She was dressed in the dark blue slacks she had worn on Tuesday, the day she had been frightened by the car that she thought was going to hit her.

Kerry's lips felt rubbery. She bent over slightly as though reeling from a kick in the stomach. Her breath came in short, fast gasps. Who did this? Who would take Robin's picture, drive a car at her, then mail the picture to me, she wondered, her thoughts dazed and confused.

She heard Robin clattering down the stairs. Quickly she shoved the picture in her pocket. "Mom, Ca.s.sie reminded me that I'm supposed to be watching the Discovery Channel now. The program is about what we're studying in science. That doesn't count as entertainment, does it?"

"No, of course not. Go ahead."

The phone rang again as Kerry sank into a chair. It was Geoff Dorso. She cut off his apologies. "Geoff, I just opened the mail." She told him about the picture. "Robin was right," she half whispered. "There was someone watching her from that car. My G.o.d, suppose he had pulled her into it. She'd have disappeared, just like those kids in upstate New York a couple of years ago. Oh my G.o.d."

Geoff heard the fear and despair in her voice. "Kerry, don't say anything else. Don't let Robin see that picture or realize that you're upset. I'm on my way. I'll be there in half an hour."

Dr. Smith had sensed something amiss in Kate Carpenter's att.i.tude toward him all day. Several times he had caught her staring at him with a questioning look. Why? he wondered.

As he sat in his library that evening, in his usual chair, sipping his usual after-office c.o.c.ktail, he pondered the possible reasons for her odd behavior. He was sure Carpenter had detected the slight tremor in his hand when he performed the rhinoplasty the other day, but that wouldn't explain the looks she had given him. Whatever was on her mind now was something more troubling, of that he was certain.

It had been a terrible mistake to follow Barbara Tompkins last night. When his car was caught in traffic in front of her apartment building, he had turned away as much as possible, but even so, he thought she might have seen him.

On the other hand, midtown Manhattan was a place where people did frequently catch a glimpse of people they knew. So his being there really wasn't so unusual.

But a quick, casual glimpse wasn't enough. He wanted to see Barbara again. Really see her. Talk to her. She wasn't due for a checkup for another two months. He had to see her before then. He couldn't wait that long to watch the way her eyes, now so luminous without the heavy lids that had concealed their beauty, smiled at him across the table.

She wasn't Suzanne. No one could be. But like Suzanne, the more Barbara became accustomed to her beauty, the more her personality enhanced it. He recalled the sullen, plain creature who had first appeared in his office; within a year of the operation Suzanne had capped the transformation with her total change of personality.

Smith smiled faintly, remembering Suzanne's provocative body language, the subtle moves that made every man turn to look at her. Then she had begun to tilt her head just a little, so that she gave whomever she was talking with the sense of being the only person in the universe.

She had even lowered the tone of her voice until it had a husky, intimate quality. Teasingly she would run a fingertip over the hand of the man--and it was always a man--who was chatting with her.

When he had commented on the personality transformation she had undergone, she had said, "I had two good teachers, my stepsisters. We reversed the fairy tale. They were the beauties and I was ugly Cinderella. Only instead of a fairy G.o.dmother, I have you."

Toward the end, however, his Pygmalion fantasy had begun to turn into a nightmare. The respect and the affection she had seemed to have for him had begun to fade. She seemed no longer willing to listen to his counsel. Toward the end she had gone beyond simple flirting. How many times had he warned her that she was playing with fire, that Skip Reardon would be capable of murder if he found out the way she was carrying on?

Any husband of a woman that desirable would be capable of murder, Dr. Smith thought.

With a jolt he looked down angrily at his empty gla.s.s. Now there wouldn't be another chance to reach the perfection he had achieved in Suzanne. He would have to give up surgery before a disaster occurred. It was too late. He knew he was in the beginning stages of Parkinson's.

If Barbara wasn't Suzanne, she was of all his living patients the most striking example of his genius. He reached for the phone.

Surely that wasn't stress in her voice, he thought, when she picked up the receiver and said h.e.l.lo.

"Barbara, my dear, is anything wrong? This is Dr. Smith."

Her gasp was audible, but then she said quickly, "Oh, no, of course not. How are you, Doctor?"

"I'm fine but I think you might be able to do me a favor. I'm stopping in at Lenox Hill Hospital for a moment to see an old friend who is terminal, and I know I'll be feeling a bit down. Would you have mercy on me and join me for dinner? I could stop by for you at about seven-thirty."

"I, I don't know..."

"Please, Barbara." He tried to sound playful. "You did say that you owed me your new life. Why not spare me two hours of it?"

"Of course."

"Wonderful. Seven-thirty then."

"All right, Doctor."

When Smith hung up, he raised his eyebrows. Was that a note of resignation in Barbara's voice? he wondered. She almost sounded as though he had forced her into meeting him.

If so, it was one more way in which she was beginning to resemble Suzanne.

Jason Arnott could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. He had spent the day in New York with fifty-two-year-old Vera Shelby Todd, trailing after her as she took him on her endless hunt for Persian carpets.

Vera had phoned him that morning and asked if he could be available for the day. A Rhode Island Shelby, she lived in one of the handsome manor houses in Tuxedo Park and was used to getting her way. After her first husband died, she had married Stuart Todd but decided to keep the Tuxedo Park place. Now, using Todd's seemingly unlimited checkbook, Vera frequently availed herself of Jason's infallible eye for rare finds and bargains.

Jason had first met Vera not in New Jersey, but at a gala the Shelbys gave in Newport. Her cousins had introduced them, and when Vera realized how relatively close he lived to her Tuxedo Park home, she had begun inviting him to her parties and eagerly accepting invitations to his gatherings as well.

It always amused Jason that Vera had told him every detail of the police investigation into the Newport robbery he had committed years ago.

"My cousin Judith was so upset," she had confided. "She couldn't understand why someone would take the Pica.s.so and the Gainsborough and pa.s.s up the Van Eyck. So she brought in some art expert, and he said that she had a discriminating criminal: The Van Eyck is a fake. Judith was furious, but for the rest of us who had had to listen to her bragging about her peerless knowledge of the great masters, it's become a family joke."

Today, after having exhaustively examined ludicrously expensive rugs ranging from Turkomans to Safavids, with Vera finding none of them to be exactly what she had in mind, Jason was wild to get home and away from her.

But first, at her insistence they had a late lunch at The Four Seasons, and that pleasant interlude perked Jason up considerably. At least until, as she finished her espresso, Vera had said, "Oh, did I forget to tell you? You remember how five years ago my cousin Judith's place in Rhode Island was burglarized?"

Jason had pursed his lips. "Yes, of course I do. Terrible experience."

Vera nodded. "I should say. But yesterday Judith got a photograph from the FBI. There was a recent burglary in Chevy Chase, and a hidden camera caught the robber. The FBI thinks it may be the same person who broke into Judith's house and dozens of others."

Jason had felt every nerve in his body tingle. He had only met Judith Shelby a few times and hadn't seen her at all in almost five years. Obviously she hadn't recognized him. Yet.

"Was it a clear picture?" he asked casually.

Vera laughed. "No, not at all. I mean from what Judith says, it's in profile and the lighting is bad and a stocking mask was pushed up on the guy's forehead but was still covering his head. She said she could just about make out something of the nose and mouth. She threw it out."

Jason stifled a spontaneous sigh of relief, although he knew he had nothing to celebrate. If the photo went out to the Shelbys, it probably also went out to dozens of others whose homes he had broken into.

"But I think Judith is finally over her Van Eyck incident," Vera continued. "According to the information with the photograph, that man is considered dangerous. He's wanted for questioning in the murder of Congressman Peale's mother. She apparently stumbled in on him during a robbery at her house. Judith almost went home early the night her place was burglarized. Just think what might have happened if she'd found him there."

Nervously, Jason pursed his lips. They had tied him to the Peale death!

When they left The Four Seasons, they shared a taxi to the garage on West Fifty-seventh Street where both had parked. After an effusive good-bye and Vera's strident promise, "We'll just keep looking. The perfect rug for me is out there somewhere," Jason was at last on his way home to Alpine.

How indistinct was the picture the hidden camera had taken of him? he wondered as he drove in the steadily moving afternoon traffic up the Henry Hudson Parkway. Would someone look at it and find that it reminded him, or her, of Jason Arnott?

Should he cut and run? he asked himself as he crossed the George Washington Bridge and turned onto the Palisades Parkway. No one knew about the place in the Catskills. He owned it under an a.s.sumed name. Under other alternate ident.i.ties, he had plenty of money in negotiable securities. He even had a fake pa.s.sport. Maybe he should leave the country immediately.

On the other hand, if the picture was as indistinguishable as Judith Shelby found it, even if some people saw a resemblance to him, they would find it patently absurd to tie him to a theft.

By the time Jason exited onto the road into Alpine, he had made up his mind. With the exception of this photograph, he was almost sure he had left no tracks, no fingerprints. He had been extremely careful, and his caution had paid off. He simply couldn't give up his wonderful lifestyle just because of what might happen. He had never been a fearful man. If he had been, he certainly wouldn't have lived this life for so many years.

No, he would not panic. He would just sit tight. But no more jobs for a long time, he promised himself. He didn't need the money, and this was a warning.

He got home at quarter of four and went through the mail. One envelope caught his eye and he slit it open, pulled out the contents--a single sheet of paper--studied it, and burst out laughing.

Surely no one would link him to that vaguely comical figure with the stocking mask pushed up and the grainy caricature of a profile literally inches away from the copy of the Rodin figurine.

"Vive le junk," Jason exclaimed. He settled in the den for a nap. Vera's constant stream of talk had exhausted him. When he awoke, it was just time for the six o'clock news. He reached for the remote control and turned on the set.

The lead story was that Jimmy Weeks' codefendant, Barney Haskell, was rumored to be cutting a deal with the attorney general.

Nothing like the deal I could cut, Jason thought. It was a comforting reminder. But of course it would never happen.

Robin turned off the science program just as the doorbell rang. She was delighted to hear Geoff Dorso's voice in the foyer and came running out to greet him. She could see that both his face and her mother's were serious. Maybe they had a fight, she thought, and want to make up.

Throughout the meal, Robin noticed that her mother was unusually quiet, while Geoff was funny, telling stories about his sisters.

Geoff is so nice, Robin thought. He reminded her of Jimmy Stewart in that movie she watched with her mother every Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life. He had the same sort of shy, warm smile and hesitant voice, and the kind of hair that looked as though it wouldn't ever really stay in place.

But Robin noticed that her mother seemed to be only half listening to Geoff's stories. It was obvious something was up between them and that they needed to talk--without her in the room. So she decided to make the big sacrifice and work on her science project upstairs in her room.

After she had helped clear the table, she announced her plans and caught the look of relief in her mother's eyes. She does want to talk to Geoff alone, Robin thought happily. Maybe this is a good sign.

Geoff listened at the bottom of the stairs. When he heard the click of Robin's bedroom door closing, he went back into the kitchen. "Let's see the picture."

Kerry reached into her pocket, drew it out and handed it to him.

Geoff studied it carefully. "It looks to me as though Robin had it straight when she told what had happened," he said. "That car must have been parked directly across the street. Someone caught her coming head-on from the house."

"Then she was right about the car racing toward her," Kerry said. "Suppose it hadn't swerved into a U-turn? But Geoff, why?"

"I don't know, Kerry. But I do know that this has to be treated seriously. What are you thinking of doing about it?"

"Showing this to Frank Green in the morning. Getting a check to see if any s.e.x offenders have moved into the area. Driving Robin to school on my way to work. Not letting her walk home with the other kids but having the sitter pick her up. Notifying the school so that they're aware that someone may be after her."

"What about telling Robin?"

"I'm not sure. Not yet anyhow."

"Did you let Bob Kinellen know yet?"

"Good Lord, it never occurred to me. Of course Bob has to know about this."

"I'd want to know if it were my child," Geoff agreed. "Look, why don't you give him a call and let me pour us another coffee."

Bob was not at home. Alice was coldly civil to Kerry. "He's still at the office," she said. "He practically lives there these days. Is there a message I can give him?"

Only that his oldest child is in danger, Kerry thought, and she doesn't have the advantage of a live-in couple to be there to protect her when her mother is working. "I'll call Bob at the office. Good-bye, Alice."

Bob Kinellen picked up the phone on the first ring. He paled as he listened to Kerry's recounting of what had happened to Robin. He had no doubt who had taken the picture. It had Jimmy Weeks' signature all over it. That was the way he worked. Start a war of nerves, then step it up. Next week there would be another picture, taken from long range. Never a threat. No notes. Just a picture. A get-the-message-or-else situation.

It wasn't an effort for Kinellen to sound concerned and to agree with Kerry that it would be better if Robin were driven to and from school for a while.

When he hung up, he slammed his fist on the desk. Jimmy was spinning out of control. They both knew that it was all over if Haskell completed his deal with the U.S. attorney.

Weeks figured that Kerry would probably call me about the picture, Bob thought. It's his way of telling me to warn her away from the Reardon case. And it's his way of telling me I'd better find a way to get him off on this tax evasion charge or else. But what Weeks doesn't know, he told himself, is that Kerry doesn't get scared off. In fact, if she perceived that picture as a warning to her, it would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

But Kerry doesn't understand that when Jimmy Weeks turns on someone, it's all over for that person, he thought.

Bob's mind jumped back to the day nearly eleven years ago when Kerry, three months pregnant, had looked at him with eyes that were both astonished and furious. "You're quitting the prosecutor's office to go with that law firm? Are you crazy? All their clients have one foot in jail. And the other foot should be there," she'd said.

They had had a heated argument that ended with Kerry's contemptuous warning, "Just remember this, Bob. There's an old saying: Lie down with dogs and you'll get up with fleas."

Dr. Smith took Barbara Tompkins to Le Cirque, a very chic, very expensive restaurant in midtown Manhattan. "Some women enjoy quiet little out-of-the-way places, but I suspect you enjoy the high-profile spots where one can see and be seen," he said to the beautiful young woman.

He had picked her up at her apartment and did not miss the fact that she had been ready to leave immediately. Her coat was on a chair in the small foyer, her purse on the table beside it. She did not offer him an aperitif.

She doesn't want to be alone with me, he had thought.

But at the restaurant, with so many people around them and the attentive matre d' hovering nearby, Barbara visibly relaxed. "It's a lot different from Albany," she said. "I'm still like a kid having a daily birthday." He was stunned for a moment by her words. So similar to Suzanne, who had compared herself to a kid with an ever-present Christmas tree and gifts always waiting to be opened. But from being an enchanted child, Suzanne had changed into an ungrateful adult. I asked so little of her, he thought. Shouldn't an artist be allowed to take pleasure in his creation? Why should the creation be wasted among leering dregs of humanity while the artist suffers for a glimpse of it?

Warmth filled him as he noticed that in this room filled with attractive, elegant women, sidelong glances rested on Barbara. He pointed that out to her.

She shook her head slightly as though dismissing the suggestion.

"It's true," Smith persisted. His eyes became cold. "Don't take it for granted, Suzanne. That would be insulting to me."

It was only later, after the quiet meal was over and he had seen her back to her apartment, that he asked himself if he had called her Suzanne. And if so, how many times had he slipped?

He sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes. As the cab jostled downtown, Charles Smith reflected how easy it had been to drive past Suzanne's house when he was starved for a glimpse of her. When she wasn't out playing golf, she invariably sat in front of the television and never bothered to draw the drapes over the large picture window in her recreation room.

He would see her curled up in her favorite chair, or sometimes he would be forced to witness her sitting side by side on the couch with Skip Reardon, shoulders touching, legs stretched out on the c.o.c.ktail table, in the casual intimacy he could not share.

Barbara wasn't married. From what he could tell there wasn't anyone special in her life. Tonight he had asked her to call him Charles. He thought about the bracelet Suzanne had been wearing when she died. Should he give it to Barbara? Would it endear him to her?