Free Let Me Call You Sweetheart by Mary Higgins Clark Page B

mortified. "Mother, I begged you not to talk to the police," Dorothy had snapped at the time.
But Dolly had felt she had to. She had known Skip Reardon and liked him and just felt she had to try to help him. Besides, she really had seen that car, as had Michael, the five-year-old little boy with all the learning problems she had been minding that night. He had seen the car too, but Skip's lawyer had told her not to discuss it.
"That would only hurt our case," Mr. Farrell had said. "All we want you to do is to tell what you saw, that a dark sedan was parked in front of the Reardon house at nine and drove away a few minutes later."
She was sure she had made out one of the numbers and one of the letters, a 3 and an L. But then the prosecutor had held up a license plate at the back of the courtroom and she hadn't been able to read it. And he had gotten her to admit that she was very fond of Skip Reardon because he had dug out her car one night when she got stuck in a snowdrift.
Dolly knew that just because Skip had been nice to her didn't mean that he couldn't be a murderer, but in her heart she felt that he was innocent, and she prayed for him every night. Sometimes, even now, when she was baby-sitting across the street from the Reardon house, she would look out and think about the night Suzanne was murdered. And she would think about little Michael--his family had moved away several years ago--who would be fifteen now, and how he had pointed to the strange black car and said, "Poppa's car." Dolly could not know that at the same time on that Sunday evening that she sat looking out the window at what used to be the Reardon house, some ten miles away, at Villa Cesare in Hillsdale, Geoff Dorso and Kerry McGrath were talking about her.
By tacit agreement, Kerry and Geoff refrained from any discussion of the Reardon case until coffee was served. During the earlier part of the meal, Geoff talked about spending his youngest years in New York. "I thought of my New Jersey cousins as living in the sticks," he said. "Then after we moved out ourselves and I grew up here, I decided to stay."
He told Kerry that he had four younger sisters.
"I envy you," she said. "I'm an only child, and I used to love to visit my friends' houses where there was a big family. I always thought it would be nice to have some siblings floating around. My father died when I was nineteen and my mother remarried when I was twenty-one and moved to Colorado. I see her twice a year."
Geoff's eyes softened. "That doesn't give you much family support," he said.
"No, I guess not, but Jonathan and Grace Hoover have helped to fill the gap. They've been wonderful to me, almost like parents."
They talked about law school, agreeing that the first year was a horror they would hate to have to endure again. "What made you decide to be a defense lawyer?" Kerry asked.
"I think it went back to when I was a kid. A woman in our apartment building, Anna Owens, was one of the nicest people I ever knew. I remember when I was about eight and ran through the lobby to catch the elevator, I slammed into her and knocked her over. Anyone else would have had a screaming fit, but she just picked herself up and said, 'Geoff, the elevator will come back, you know.' Then she laughed. She could tell how upset I was."
"That didn't make you become a defense lawyer." Kerry smiled.
"No. But three months later when her husband walked out on her, she followed him to his new girlfriend's apartment and shot him. I honestly believe it was temporary insanity, which was the defense her lawyer tried, but she went to prison for twenty years anyway. I guess the key phrase is 'mitigating circumstances.' When I believe those are present, or when I believe the defendant is innocent, as with Skip Reardon, I take the case." He paused. "And what made you become a prosecutor?"
"The victim and the family of the victim," she said simply. "Based on your theory I could have shot Bob Kinellen and pled mitigating