Mystery Heiress. Suzanne Carey

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      Having stopped by his office to handle an emergency appointment after leaving the zoo and gone on to complete his late-afternoon rounds at Minn-Gen, Stephen was back behind the wheel of his sleek sedan, listening to light classical music on the radio as he drove toward his home on the wooded shore of Lake Travis, in the Minneapolis suburbs.

      Some people would say I have everything—a medical degree, an expensive car, a striking contemporary house with a view of the water, he thought with a familiar tug of irony and loneliness as he turned off the two-lane highway that led into what was referred to locally as “the village” and crossed the rustic bridge that spanned the creek that fed the lake. Well, they’d be wrong. Though he cared deeply about each of his patients and genuinely loved his work, his son’s death had eviscerated his personal life; for the past three years, it had been as empty as a discarded shell washed up on a beach, bereft of its former inhabitant.

      Yet as he passed the former home of Benjamin and Kate Fortune, half-hidden behind its screen of mature firs and oaks, and proceeded the half mile or so along Forest Road to his own somewhat less imposing gate-posts, he realized that a Rubicon of sorts had been crossed. Hesitant though he was to give his heart a second time to either child or woman, he’d allowed the mother and daughter he met at the zoo to open a chink in his armor. Into it had flowed an uncomfortable host of half-coveted possibilities.

      No need to get bent out of shape just yet, he thought wryly. It isn’t likely you’ll see them again.

      Set well back from the road, with its deck and its broad expanse of windows facing the lake, Stephen’s cedar-sided house appeared somewhat closed and unwelcoming. Raising the garage door with his remote control, he drove inside and shut off the Mercedes’s engine.

      Each time he ascended the shallow quarry-tiled steps that led into the silent, empty kitchen, he experienced a moment of heartache that there was no David to greet him, no eight-year-old clamoring for his attention. Some evenings, he couldn’t stop himself from going to the doorway of his son’s former room and touching the toy cars, plastic action figures and stuffed animals that lined the built-in shelving in unnaturally neat rows.

      Tonight, he switched on some music, popped a packet of frozen lasagna into the oven and poured himself a glass of Bardolino. At this time of year, the sun set around 7:30 p.m. Chelsea and Carter Todd, the young daughter and son of his next-door neighbors, were still playing outdoors, under the watchful eye of their sixtyish baby-sitter. Stepping out on the deck to sip his wine while the lasagna heated, Stephen stared at the blue expanse of water that fanned out from his pier and wondered if the laughter of another child, a different woman, would help to make him whole again.

      In the sitting room area of her downtown hotel suite, Jess had drifted off to sleep. She awoke shortly after 10:00 p.m., stiff from the unnatural position in which she’d been slumbering on the love seat, and somewhat unsettled, thanks to a confusing dream. Annie was still asleep, her forehead warm and dry against the back of Jess’s wrist, but not excessively feverish.

      Deciding to let her sleep, Jess poured out a glass of mineral water and returned to the sitting room. The local news was on. Someone handed the sandy-haired anchorman a note as she retook her seat. It was clear from his facial expression as he scanned it that he considered the note to be of major importance, and she turned up the sound a little.

      “This just in,” the man was saying. “Former Hollywood leading lady and longtime Minneapolis resident Monica Malone was found dead this evening in her Summit Avenue mansion. We take you to Mary Ann Galvin, our reporter at the scene. Mary Ann…”

      Positioned at the curb in front of the Malone mansion, which had clearly seen better days, the reporter gripped her microphone with barely disguised excitement. Several uniformed officers, the flashing lights of a police cruiser and a barrier of yellow crime-scene tape were visible behind her.

      “Thank you, Jay,” she said. “According to a spokesman for the Minneapolis Police Department, Miss Malone, thought to be in her midsixties, was found sprawled on her living room floor shortly after 10:00 p.m. She was pronounced dead at 10:15 p.m., when police arrived.

      “Stating that the matter is under investigation, officers have declined to comment on the cause of death, or speculate as to whether foul play was involved. However, a tenant of one of Miss Malone’s neighbors, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had heard she suffered a head injury….”

      The name of the deceased former movie star rang a bell with Jess, and not just because of her films. I’ve seen it mentioned somewhere, and recently—I know it, she thought. Seconds later, she remembered where. Monica Malone’s name had turned up in a long-outdated, somewhat sensationalized magazine article about Benjamin Fortune’s career that she managed to dig up at a library near her home in England before leaving for America. Its author, who claimed to have known the Fortune patriarch personally, had suggested that he and Monica Malone had “conducted an off-and-on affair for years.”

      In part because of Ronald’s infidelities during their marriage, Jess supposed, she strongly disapproved. Yet she couldn’t have denied that she found every scrap of information she could accumulate about the man she now believed to have been her grandfather extremely fascinating.

      When Jess awoke again, around 6:30 a.m., Annie was worse. Her temperature had soared to 103 degrees. She was coughing, shivering and whimpering. Terrified, Jess decided to take the advice of the tall blond doctor they’d met at the zoo and take her to Minnesota General Hospital’s emergency room. However, she didn’t think she could bear to see Annie carted off in an ambulance if it wasn’t necessary. It would scare her to death and, incidentally, break Jess’s heart.

      Accordingly, she bundled the girl up in two sweaters and a raincoat, and wrapped her in one of the hotel blankets. A sympathetic bellhop helped her carry Annie downstairs and summoned a taxi for them.

      “Mummy… Mummy…where are we going? You’re coming with me…aren’t you?” Annie asked in alarm as the bellhop settled her in the cab’s back seat.

      “Yes, of course I am. We’re going to the hospital that nice doctor told us about yesterday,” Jess said soothingly, unable to keep tears of consternation and panic from running down her cheeks as she got into the taxi beside her and drew her close. “You need better medicine than I can give you, darling. Plus some doctors and nurses to help make you better as soon as possible.”

      Both she and Annie were grim-faced, tense and more than a little frightened as their cab drew up to Minn-Gen’s emergency room entrance. Before Jess could get out and pay the driver, a nurse and an orderly were hurrying out to meet them. “You’re Mrs. Holmes, right?” the nurse asked. “The doorman at your hotel phoned to let us know you were coming.”

      The next few minutes passed in a blur. While the nurse examined Annie and took her vital signs, one of the secretaries at the nursing station helped Jess fill out an admitting form. The latter didn’t seem unduly concerned about Annie’s condition until Jess wrote leukemia under the heading Known Medical Conditions. A quick conference between the secretary, a nurse and a male physician who was in the process of tending to an accident victim ensued.

      “You’d better page Dr. Todd,” the male physician decided, adding for Jess’s benefit, “She’s a pediatrician. I think I saw her come in earlier. She’s probably still in-house.”

      With barely a skipped beat, the name of Dr. Lindsay Todd and the words “to the ER, stat” were being read over the hospital’s public address system.

      Jess barely had time to smooth Annie’s forehead and whisper a few calming СКАЧАТЬ