Jason looked down at the frame now. Over the years he had sometimes wondered what perverse reason kept him from removing Suzanne’s picture from it, or from throwing the whole thing away. The frame was, after all, only a copy.

But as he stared at it this night, he understood for the first time why he had left the picture and frame intact. It was because it made it easier for him to blot out the memory of how gruesome and distorted Suzanne’s features had been when he made his escape.

“Well, we’ve got our jury impanelled and it’s a good one,” Bob Kinellen told his client with a heartiness he did not feel.

Jimmy Weeks looked at him sourly. “Bobby, with a few exceptions, I think that jury stinks.”

“Trust me.”

Anthony Bartlett backed up his son-in-law. “Bob’s right, Jimmy. Trust him.” Then Bartlett ’s eyes strayed to the opposite end of the defense table where Barney Haskell was sitting, his expression morose, his hands supporting his head. He saw that Bob was looking at Haskell too, and he knew what Bob was thinking.

Haskell’s a diabetic. He won’t want to risk years in prison. He’s got dates and facts and figures that we’ll have a hell of a time contradicting… He knew all about Suzanne.

The opening arguments would begin the next morning. When he left the courthouse, Jimmy Weeks went directly to his car. As the chauffeur held the door open, he slid into the backseat without his usual grunted good-bye.

Kinellen and Bartlett watched the car pull away. “I’m going back to the office,” Kinellen told his father-in-law. “I’ve got work to do.”

Bartlett nodded. “I would say so.” There was an impersonal tone to his voice. “See you in the morning, Bob.”

Sure you will, Kinellen thought as he walked to the parking garage. You’re distancing yourself from me so that if my hands get dirty, you’re not part of it.

He knew that Bartlett had millions salted away. Even if Weeks was convicted and the law firm went under, he would be all right. Maybe he would get to spend more time in Palm Beach with his wife, Alice Senior.

I’m taking all the risks, Bob Kinellen thought as he handed his ticket to the cashier. I’m the one who risks going down. There had to be a reason Jimmy insisted on leaving the Wagner woman on the jury. What was it?

Geoff Dorso phoned Kerry just as she was about to leave the office. “I saw Dr. Smith this morning,” she told him hurriedly, “and I’m seeing Dolly Bowles around five. I can’t talk now. I’ve got to meet Robin at school.”

“Kerry, I’m anxious to know what happened with Dr. Smith, and what you learn from Dolly Bowles. Can we have dinner?”

“I don’t want to go out tonight, but if you don’t mind a salad and pasta…”

“I’m Italian, remember?”

“About seven-thirty?”

“I’ll be there.”

When she picked up Robin at school, it was clear to Kerry that her daughter’s mind was much more on Halloween trick-or-treating than on the early-morning incident. In fact, Robin seemed to be embarrassed about it. Taking her cue from her daughter, Kerry dropped the subject, for now at least.

When they reached home, she gave Robin’s teenage sitter the afternoon off. This is the way other mothers live, she thought as, with several of them, she trailed a cluster of trick-or-treating children. She and Robin arrived back at their place just in time to let Joe Palumbo in.

He was carrying a bulging briefcase, which he tapped with a satisfied smile. “The records of the office investigation of the Reardon case,” he told her. “It’ll have Dolly Bowles’ original statement. Let’s see how it compares with what she has to say to you now.”

He looked at Robin, who was wearing a witch’s costume. “That’s some outfit, Rob.”

“It was between this and being a corpse,” Robin told him.

Kerry did not realize she had winced until she caught the look of understanding in Palumbo’s eyes.

“I’d better be on my way,” she said hurriedly.

During the twenty-minute drive to Alpine, Kerry realized her nerves were on edge. She had finally gotten Robin to talk briefly about the incident that morning. By then, Robin was trying to play the whole thing down. Kerry wanted to believe that Robin had exaggerated what had happened. She wanted to conclude that someone had stopped to check an address and then realized he was on the wrong block. But Kerry knew her daughter would not have exaggerated or imagined the incident.

It was obvious to Kerry that Dolly Bowles had been watching for her. As soon as she was parked in the driveway of the massive Tudor house, the door was yanked open.

Dolly was a small woman with thinning gray hair and a narrow, inquisitive face. She was already talking when Kerry reached her, “… just like your picture in The Record. I was so sorry I was busy baby-sitting and couldn’t make it to the trial of that awful man who killed his supervisor.”

She led Kerry into a cavernous foyer and indicated a small sitting room to the left. “Let’s go in here. That living room is too big for my taste. I tell my daughter my voice echoes in it, but she loves it ‘cause it’s great for parties. Dorothy loves to throw parties. When they’re home, that is. Now that Lou is retired, they never settle down; they’re here and there, hither and yon. Why they need to pay a full-time housekeeper is beyond me. I say, why not have someone come in once a week? Save the money. Of course, I don’t really like to be alone overnight, and I suppose that has something to do with it. On the other hand…”

Oh my God, Kerry thought, she’s a sweet woman, but I’m just not in the mood for this. She chose a straight-backed chair, while Mrs. Bowles settled on the chintz-covered couch. “Mrs. Bowles, I don’t want to take too much of your time and I have someone minding my daughter, so I can’t stay too long…”

“You have a daughter. How nice. How old is she?”

“Ten. Mrs. Bowles, what I’d like to know-“

“You don’t look old enough to have a ten-year-old daughter.” “Thank you. I can assure you I feel old enough.” Kerry felt as though she had driven into a ditch and might never get out. “Mrs. Bowles, let’s talk about the night Suzanne Reardon died.”

Fifteen minutes later, after she had heard all about Dolly baby-sitting across the street from the Reardons, and how Michael, the little boy she was minding that night, had serious developmental problems, she managed to isolate one nugget of information.

“You say that you are positive that the car you saw parked in front of the Reardons did not belong to one of the guests at the neighbors’ party. Why are you so sure of that?”

“Because I talked to those people myself. They were entertaining three other couples. They told me who the guests were. They’re all from Alpine, and after Mr. Green made me feel like such a fool on the stand, I called each of them myself. And you know what? None of those guests was driving Poppa’s car.”

“Poppa’s car!” Kerry exclaimed incredulously.

“That’s what Michael called it. You see, he had a real problem with colors. You’d point to a car and ask him what color it was, and he wouldn’t know. But no matter how many cars were around, he could pick out one that was familiar, or one that looked just like a familiar car. When he said ‘Poppa’s car’ that night, he had to have been pointing at the black Mercedes four-door sedan. You see, he called his grandfather Poppa and loved to ride with him in his car-his black Mercedes four-door sedan. It was dark, but the torch light at the end of the Reardons’ driveway was on so he could see it clearly.”

“Mrs. Bowles, you testified that you had seen the car.”

“Yes, although it wasn’t there at seven-thirty when I got to Michael’s house, and when he pointed it out it was pulling away, so I didn’t get a good look at it. Still, I had an impression of a 3 and an L on the license plate.” Dolly Bowles leaned forward intensely, and behind the round glasses her eyes widened. “Ms. McGrath, I tried to tell Skip Reardon’s defense attorney about this. His name was Farrer-no, Farrell. He told me that hearsay evidence usually isn’t admissible and, even if it were, hearsay evidence from a developmentally disabled child would only dilute my testimony that I’d seen the car. But he was wrong. I don’t see why I couldn’t have told the jury that Michael became all excited when he thought he had seen his grandfather’s car. I think that would have helped.”