As Kerry listened, she felt a new wave of confusion and conflicting emotions sweep over her. Smith's a liar, she thought as she remembered his outrage at even the suggestion that he had performed any surgical procedure on his daughter. He's a liar and he's a good actor.

When the recorded conversation was finished, Palumbo smiled in antic.i.p.ation. "What next, Kerry?"

"I don't know," she said slowly.

"You don't know? Smith's lying."

"We don't know that yet. Let's wait for those pictures from Stevens before we get too excited. Lots of teenagers suddenly blossom after they get a good haircut and a makeover at a salon."

Palumbo looked at her in disbelief. "Sure they do. And pigs have wings."

Deidre Reardon had heard the discouragement in her son's voice when she spoke to him on Sunday and Tuesday, which was why she decided on Wednesday to make the long trip by bus and train and another bus to the Trenton prison to see him.

A small woman who had pa.s.sed on to her son her fiery red hair, warm blue eyes and Celtic complexion, Deidre Reardon now looked every day of her age, which would soon be seventy. Her compact body hinted of frailness, and her step had lost much of its bounce. Her health had forced her to give up her job as a saleswoman at A&S, and now she supplemented her social security check by doing some clerical work at the parish office.

The money she had saved during the years when Skip was doing so well and was so generous to her was gone now, most of it spent on the court costs of the unsuccessful appeals.

She arrived at the prison in midafternoon. Because it was a weekday, they could only communicate by telephone, with a window between them. From the minute Skip was brought in and she saw the look on his face, Deidre knew that the one thing she feared had happened. Skip had given up hope.

Usually when he was very discouraged, she tried to get his mind off himself with gossip about the neighborhood and the parish, the kind of gossip that someone would enjoy who was away but expected to come home soon and wanted to be kept up on events.

Today she knew such small talk was useless. "Skip, what's the matter?" she asked.

"Mom, Geoff called last night. That prosecutor who came down to see me. She's not going to follow up. She's pretty much washed her hands of me. I made Geoff be honest and not snow me."

"What was her name, Skip?" Deidre asked, trying to keep her voice matter-of-fact. She knew her son well enough to avoid offering plat.i.tudes now.

"McGrath. Kerry McGrath. Apparently, she's going to be made a judge soon. With my luck they'll put her on the appeals court so if ever Geoff does find another reason to file an appeal, she'll be there to kick it out."

"Doesn't it take a long time for judges to be put on the appeals court?" Deidre asked.

"What does it matter? We don't have anything but time, do we, Mom?" Then Skip told her that he had refused Beth's call today. "Mom, Beth has to get on with her life. She never will if all her life is tied up with worrying about me."

"Skip, Beth loves you."

"Let her love someone else. I did, didn't I?"

"Oh, Skip." Deidre Reardon felt the shortness of breath that always preceded the numbness in her arm and the stabbing pain in her chest. The doctor had warned that she was going to need another bypa.s.s operation if the angioplasty next week didn't work. She hadn't told Skip about that yet. She wouldn't now either.

Deidre bit back tears as she saw the hurt in her son's eyes. He had always been such a good kid. She had never had a hint of trouble with him when he was growing up. Even as a baby, when he was tired, he hadn't gotten crabby. One of her favorite stories about him was of the day he had toddled from the living room of the apartment into the bedroom and pulled his security blanket through the bars of the crib, wrapped himself up in it and gone to sleep on the floor under the crib.

She had left him alone in the living room while she started supper, and when she couldn't find him, she had gone racing through the tiny apartment, shouting his name, terrified that somehow he had gotten out, maybe was lost. Deidre had that same feeling now. In a different way, Skip was getting lost.

Involuntarily she reached out her hand and touched the gla.s.s. She wanted to put her arms around him, that fine, good man who was her son. She wanted to tell him not to worry, that it would be all right, just as she had years ago when something had hurt him. Now she knew what she had to say.

"Skip, I don't want to hear you talk like this. You can't decide that Beth isn't going to love you anymore, because she is. And I'm going to see that Kerry McGrath woman. There has to be a reason why she came to see you in the first place. Prosecutors don't just drop in on convicted people. I'm going to find out why she took an interest in you, and why she's turning her back on you now. But you've got to cooperate; don't you dare let me down by talking like this."

Their visiting time was up much too quickly. Deidre managed not to cry until after the guard had led Skip away. Then she dabbed her eyes fiercely. Her mouth set in a determined line, she stood up, waited for the stab of chest pain to pa.s.s and walked briskly out.

It feels like November, Barbara Tompkins thought as she walked the ten blocks from her office on Sixty-eighth Street and Madison Avenue to her apartment on Sixty-first and Third Avenue. She should have worn a heavier coat. But what did a few blocks of discomfort matter when she felt so good? There wasn't a day that she didn't rejoice in the miracle that Dr. Smith had performed for her. It seemed impossible that less than two years ago, she had been stuck in a drudge P.R. job in Albany, a.s.signed to getting mentions in magazines for small cosmetics clients.

Nancy Pierce had been one of the few clients she had enjoyed. Nancy always joked about being the Plain Jane with a total inferiority complex because she worked with gorgeous models. Then Nancy took an extended vacation and came back looking like a million dollars. Openly, even proudly, she told the world she had had aesthetic surgery.

"Listen," she had said. "My sister has the face of Miss America, but she's always fighting her weight. She says inside her there's a thin gal trying to fight her way out. I always said to myself that inside me there was a very pretty gal trying to fight her way out. My sister went to the Golden Door. I went to Dr. Smith."

Looking at her, at her new ease and confidence, Barbara had promised herself, "If I ever get money, HI go to that doctor too." And then, dear old Great Aunt Betty had been gathered to her reward at age eighty-seven and left $35,000 to Barbara, with the instruction that she kick up her heels and have fun with it.

Barbara remembered that first visit to Dr. Smith. He had come into the room where she was sitting on the edge of the examining table. His manner was cold, almost frightening. "What do you want?" he had barked.

"I want to know if you can make me pretty," Barbara had told him, somewhat tentatively. Then, gathering courage, she'd corrected herself. "Very pretty."

Wordlessly, he had stood in front of her, turned a spotlight on her, held her chin in his hand, run his fingers over the contours of her face, probed her cheekbones and her forehead and studied her for several long minutes.

Then he had stepped back. "Why?"

She told him about the pretty woman struggling to get out of the sh.e.l.l. She told him about how she knew that she shouldn't care so much, and then burst out, "But I do care."

Unexpectedly he had smiled, a narrow, mirthless, but nevertheless genuine smile. "If you didn't care, I wouldn't be bothered," he had told her.

The procedure he prescribed had been incredibly involved. The operations gave her a chin and reduced her ears, and took the dark circles from under her eyes and the heavy lids from over them, so that they became wide and luminous. The surgery made her lips full and provocative and removed the acne scars from her cheeks and narrowed her nose and raised her eyebrows. There had even been a process to sculpt her body.

Then the doctor sent her to a salon to have her hair changed from mousy tan to charcoal brown, a color that enhanced the creamy complexion he had achieved through acid peeling. Another expert at the salon taught her about the subtleties of applying makeup.

Finally, the doctor told her to invest the last of her windfall in clothes and sent her with a personal shopper to the Seventh Avenue designer workrooms. Under the shopper's guidance, she acc.u.mulated the first sophisticated wardrobe she had ever owned.

Dr. Smith urged her to relocate to New York City, told her where to look for an apartment and even took personal interest by inspecting the apartment she had found. Then he insisted that she come in every three months for checkups.

It had been a dizzying year since she had moved to Manhattan and started the job at Price and Veilone. Dizzying but exciting. Barbara was having a wonderful time.

But as she walked the last block to her apartment, she glanced nervously over her shoulder. Last night, she had had dinner with some clients in The Mark Hotel. When they were leaving, she had noticed Dr. Smith seated alone at a small table off to the side.

Last week she had caught a glimpse of him in the Oak Room at the Plaza.

She had dismissed it at the time, but the night last month when she met clients at The Four Seasons, she had had the impression that someone was watching her from a car across the street when she hailed a taxi.

Barbara felt a surge of relief as the doorman greeted her and opened the door. Then once again she looked over her shoulder.

A black Mercedes was stopped in traffic directly in front of the apartment building. There was no mistaking the driver, even though his face was turned partly away as though he were looking across the street.

Dr. Smith.

"You okay, Miss Tompkins?" the doorman asked. "You look like you don't feel so great."

"No. Thank you. I'm fine." Barbara walked quickly into the foyer. As she waited for the elevator, she thought, he is following me. But what can I do about it?

Although Kerry had fixed Robin one of their favorite meals--baked chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s, baked potatoes, green beans, green salad and biscuits--they ate in near silence.

From the moment Kerry arrived home and Alison, the high school baby-sitter, had whispered, "I think Robin's upset," Kerry had bided her time.

As she prepared dinner, Robin sat at the counter doing her homework. Kerry had waited for a time to talk to her, for some sign, but Robin seemed extraordinarily busy with her a.s.signments.

Kerry even made certain to ask, "Are you sure you're finished, Rob?" before she put their dinner on the table.

After she began to eat, Robin visibly relaxed. "Did you finish your lunch today?" Kerry asked, finally breaking the silence, trying to sound casual. "You seem hungry."

"Sure, Mom. Most of it."

"I see."

Kerry thought, she is so like me. If she's hurt, she handles it herself. Such a private person.

Then Robin said, "I like Geoff. He's neat."

Geoff. Kerry dropped her eyes and concentrated on cutting chicken. She didn't want to think about his derisive, dismissive comment when he left the other night. Good-bye, Your Honor.

"Uh-huh," she responded, hoping that she was conveying the fact that Geoff was unimportant in their lives.

"When is he coming back?" Robin asked.

Now it was Kerry's turn to be evasive. "Oh, I don't know. He really just came because of a case he's been working on."

Robin looked troubled. "I guess I shouldn't have told Daddy about that."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he was saying that when you're a judge, you'll probably meet a lot of judges and end up marrying one of them. I didn't mean to talk about you to him, but I said a lawyer I liked had come to the house on business the other night, and Daddy asked who it was."

"And you told him it was Geoff Dorso. There's nothing wrong with that."

"I don't know. Daddy seemed to get upset with me. We'd been having fun, then he got quiet and told me to finish my shrimp. That it was time to get home."

"Rob, Daddy doesn't care who I go out with, and certainly Geoff Dorso has no connection to him or any of his clients. Daddy is involved in a very tough case right now. Maybe you had kept his mind off it for a while, and then when dinner was almost over, he started thinking about it again."

"Do you really think so?" Robin asked hopefully as her eyes brightened.

"I really think so," Kerry said firmly. "You've seen me when I'm in a fog because I'm on a trial."

Robin began to laugh. "Oh boy, have I!"

At nine o'clock, Kerry looked in on Robin, who was propped up in bed reading. "Lights out," she said firmly as she went over to tuck her in.

"Okay," she said reluctantly. As Robin snuggled down under the covers, she said, "Mom, I was thinking. Just because Geoff came here on business doesn't mean we can't ask him back, does it? He likes you. I can tell."

"Oh, Rob, he's just one of those guys who likes people, but certainly he's not interested in me especially."

"Ca.s.sie and Courtney saw him when he picked me up. They think he's cute."

I think he is too, Kerry thought as she turned out the light. She went downstairs, planning to tackle the ch.o.r.e of balancing her checkbook. But when she got to her desk, she gazed for a long minute at the Reardon file Joe Palumbo had given her yesterday. Then she shook her head. Forget it, she told herself. Stay out of it.

But it wouldn't hurt just to take a look at it, she reasoned. She picked it up, carried it to her favorite chair, laid the file on the ha.s.sock at her feet, opened it and reached for the first batch of papers.

The record showed that the call had come in at 12:20 A.M. Skip Reardon had dialed the operator and shouted at her to connect him to the Alpine police. "My wife is dead, my wife is dead," he had repeated over and over. The police reported they had found him kneeling beside her, crying. He told the police that as soon as he came into the house he had known she was dead and had not touched her. The vase that the sweetheart roses had been in was overturned. The roses were scattered over the body.

The next morning, when his mother was with him, Skip Reardon had claimed he was sure a diamond pin was missing. He said he remembered it in particular because it was one of the pieces he had not given her, that he was certain another man must have given her. He also swore that a miniature frame with Suzanne's picture that had been in the bedroom that morning was gone.

At eleven o'clock, Kerry got to Dolly Bowles' statement. It was essentially the same story she had narrated when Kerry visited her.

Kerry's eyes narrowed when she saw that a Jason Arnott had been questioned in the course of the investigation. Skip Reardon had mentioned him to her. In his statement, Arnott described himself as an antiques expert who for a commission would accompany women to auctions at places like Sotheby's and Christie's and advise them in their efforts in bidding on certain objects.

He said that he enjoyed entertaining and that Suzanne often came to his c.o.c.ktail parties and dinners, sometimes accompanied by Skip, but usually alone.

The investigator's note showed that he had checked with mutual friends of both Suzanne and Arnott, and that there was no suggestion of any romantic interest between them. In fact one friend commented that Suzanne was a natural flirt and joked about Arnott, calling him "Jason the neuter."

Nothing new here, Kerry decided when she had completed half the file. The investigation was thorough. Through the open window, the Public Service meter reader had heard Skip shouting at Suzanne at breakfast. "Boy, was that guy steaming," was his comment.

Sorry, Geoff, Kerry thought as she went to close the file. Her eyes were burning. She would skim through the rest of it tomorrow and return it. Then she glanced at the next report. It was the interview with a caddie at the Palisades Country Club, where Suzanne and Skip were members. A name caught her eye, and she picked up the next batch of papers, all thought of sleep suddenly gone.

The caddie's name was Michael Vitti, and he was a fountain of information about Suzanne Reardon. "Everybody loved to caddie for her. She was nice. She'd kid around with the caddies and gave big tips. She played with lots of the men. She was good, and I mean good. A lot of the wives got sore at her because the men all liked her."

Vitti had been asked if he thought Suzanne was involved with any of the men. "Oh, I don't know about that," he said. "I never saw her really alone with anyone. The foursomes always went back to the grill together, you know what I mean?"

But when pressed he said that just maybe there was something going on between Suzanne and Jimmy Weeks.

It was Jimmy Weeks' name that had jumped out at Kerry. According to the investigator's notes, Vitti's remark wasn't taken seriously because, although Weeks was known to be a ladies' man, on being questioned about Suzanne, he absolutely denied that he had ever seen her outside the club and said that he had been having a serious relationship with another woman at that time, and besides, he had an ironclad alibi for the entire night of the murder.

Then Kerry read the last of the caddie's interview. He admitted that Mr. Weeks treated all the women pretty much alike and called most of them things like Honey, Darlin' and Lovey.

The caddie was asked if Weeks had a special name for Suzanne.

The answer: "Well, a couple of times I heard him call her 'Sweetheart.'"

Kerry let the papers drop in her lap. Jimmy Weeks. Bob's client. Was that why his att.i.tude changed so suddenly when Robin told him that Geoff Dorso had come to see her on business?

It was fairly widely known that Geoff Dorso represented Skip Reardon and had been trying doggedly, but unsuccessfully, for ten years to get a new trial for him.

Was Bob, as Jimmy Weeks' counsel, afraid of what a new trial might entail for his client?

A couple of times I heard him call her Sweetheart. The words haunted Kerry.

Deeply troubled, she dosed the file and went up to bed. The caddie had not been called as a witness at the trial. Neither had Jimmy Weeks. Did the defense team ever interview the caddie? If not, they should have, she thought. Did they talk to Jason Arnott about any other men Suzanne might have seemed interested in at his parties?

I'll wait for the pictures to come in from Suzanne's stepfather, Kerry told herself. It's probably nothing, or at least nothing more than what I told Joe today. Maybe Suzanne just had a good makeover done when she came to New York. She did have money from her mother's insurance policy. And Dr. Smith did, in effect, deny that he ever did any procedure whatsoever on Suzanne.

Wait and see, she told herself. Good advice, since it was all she could do for the present anyway.