Dear Doctor R,

The salutation made him smile. Kelly had always called his father Dr. R.

You were right. I was not being candid with you when we met two weeks ago. There is a reason I’m so happy, and you are the first and only person I can tell.

I’ve met a man.

A wonderful, caring man who loves me, and I love him.

What a release to be cherished, respected, and liked. I feel as if all the other garbage has fallen away, and I’m free, with a new life ahead of me. Whether it will be with him or not, I don’t know, but I’m full of hope. I haven’t decided yet what to do about it all, and look forward to talking over possible strategies with you. But I am ecstatic!

Regarding the other two matters, we must discuss those. Whatever I plan for myself, I can’t leave and let them go unresolved.

Can we have lunch at the Plaza on Saturday, the twenty-seventh? I can’t bear to go to the estate on weekends anymore, and have pleaded hospital work as my excuse to stay in the city. Waiting to see you then.

Love,

Kelly

Mark’s pulse leapt.

The man could be the mystery person in the cab. If his father had kept the appointment with her, she’d probably told him who it was.

He quickly pulled out and unfolded the next two sets of documents in the file, hoping to see a note or follow-up letter about their meeting.

No such luck. In his hands he held photocopies of some New York City Hospital M and M reports, or Death Rounds, the conference that reviews patient morbidity and mortality.

What the hell were these doing here? Scanning through them, he saw that they were accounts of two separate cases involving digitalis toxicity. The first patient had lived, the second had died, but there were no names listed, only chart numbers, standard practice to preserve anonymity in such investigations. One was dated January 1974, the other June of the same year. They must be misfiled, he concluded, laying them aside.

The final contents were old newspaper clippings lauding the Braden family’s involvement in the community. A FAMILY AFFAIR read the headline of one. It praised the volunteer work of Mrs. Charles Braden and her daughter-in-law, Kelly McShane Braden, at a local home for unwed mothers called The Braden Foundation Clinic founded by Dr. Charles Braden III. LIKE FATHER LIKE SON ran the lead of another article featuring Chaz helping check out a newborn at another of Dad’s projects, an upscale maternity center in Saratoga Springs.

Nothing of use, Mark decided. The Bradens were renowned for lending their name to high-profile charities, as well as feeding the family fortune through commercial medical ventures such as high-priced private clinics. In fact Charles had pioneered the concept of combining the intimacy of home delivery with the latest in obstetrical technology in freestanding facilities, then franchised it through a well-known hospital chain. Mark returned the clippings to the file, having no idea why his father had stuck them here.

Still, he had Kelly’s letter. He’d contact Everett first thing in the morning and tell the detective he’d found proof that she had a lover. Chances were he might have been the mystery man in the taxi.

To which Everett would say, Who was he?

And he’d have to admit he didn’t know.

At that point Everett would probably hang up on him.

Shit!

He had another thought. Why hadn’t his father passed the letter on to the police? Obviously he kept it to himself even after she disappeared.

As Mark picked it up and read it again, it sank in just how abstract Kelly was to him. How different and tormented she must have been from his sunlit memories of her. He never caught so much as a hint of her unhappiness or that she needed to escape from it. Nor had he any specific recollection of her last days in Hampton Junction. He remembered only his father telling him that she’d had to leave without saying good-bye.

“Then I’ll say hello when she’s back,” Mark had said, accustomed to her comings and goings to medical school. But as days turned to weeks with no sign of Kelly, those few words with his dad became the landmark that stuck, not whatever laughing encounter with her that had been his last. Unlikely his take on her with the eyes of a seven-year-old would help explain anything about those final weeks anyway. Hell, he still had trouble reconciling his version of the woman he had known with the grisly remains lying in the mortuary.

He continued to stare at the letter. It at least pinned down one event in the countdown to her murder. The day Kelly and his father planned to have lunch together, presuming they met, she had little more than a week to live.

He pictured them at the Plaza. Had she been as rapturous and exuberant as she sounded in her writing? Was his father happy for her? Did they order champagne? The image of them toasting her well-deserved joy, oblivious to death being so near, filled Mark with sadness. Dreams could be so puny, struggle, hope, and daring so futile. She was on the verge of achieving everything – being a doctor, finding a man who loved her, making a clean break with her past. It made her moment of celebration seem all the more cruel.

Then a chill that had nothing to do with the cold shimmied through him.

That meeting, if it took place, also marked what would be the final two months of his father’s life.

10:00 P.M.

Buffalo, New York

“Can we do a cuddle sandwich now, Daddy?”

Earl looked up from his computer screen to see Brendan, dazed and tousled, totter through the study door. “What are you doing awake?”

“Isn’t Mummy home yet?”

“I’m afraid not.” He stood and picked the boy up. “But it’s back to sleep for you.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s very late.”

“I mean why isn’t she home?”

The vagaries of labor had sabotaged yet another evening of all three of them being together, but try and explain that to a four-year-old. “I told you, sometimes babies don’t want to come out on time,” he said, placing him in bed and tucking in his covers.

“Can’t she make them?”

“Sometimes, but not tonight.”

“She could holler real loud at them, like she does for us when we’re playing outside, and it’s time to eat.”

He grinned down at the budding obstetrical genius. “Mummy won’t be home until long after you’re asleep.”

“I can stay awake.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Look. My eyes are open wide.” He scissored his lids apart with his fingers and grinned like some goofy space creature.

Earl slowly reached toward him with twitching fingers. “Not for long.”

Brendan started to giggle. “Yes, for long.”

“But Mr. Tickle’s here.”

His small hands flew out to grab Earl’s. “No, not Mr. Tickle,” he squealed, wriggling with delight in his bed. “Cuddle sandwich! Cuddle sandwich!”

“Time to sleep, little man.”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“Hey, you’re as relentless as your mother.”

“What’s ‘rentless’?”

“Relentless. It means you never give up.”

“Do I get a cuddle sandwich?”

“Okay. Tomorrow morning, you can crawl into bed between Mummy and me, but not until the sun comes up.”

“Promise?”

“You bet. Now good night, and let’s see who can give the strongest hug.”

Brendan’s arms flew around Earl’s neck and squeezed for all their worth. The embrace had the restorative power of a resuscitation. “Night, Daddy,” he said.

Earl gently held him a second longer, pronounced him the winner, and turned out the light.

A quarter of an hour later, alone in his own bed, except for Muffy sprawled on her back, he once again wrestled with what to tell Janet. There’d been small follow-up stories on the evening newscasts, and other New York papers posted updates on their web sites. The only new development was that the NYPD had turned the investigation over to the local authorities in the Adirondacks who had found the remains. Anyone with pertinent information on the case should contact Sheriff Dan Evans or Dr. Mark Roper, coroner. Earl recognized a slough when he saw it, having had his own share of unwanted work dumped on him.