Free Manhattan Mayhem by Mary Higgins Clark Page A

at the view of Central Park. He looked out over its trees, on toward his beloved West Side, and wished he were there with his wife and son, inside his own happy family, instead of here, intimately, on the East Side, with an unhappy one.
    When a white-jacketed waiter went down the line with a silver tray and wine, Sam was tempted, but he decided he’d better keep his wits about him.

    “I was her doctor,” Sam told her mother quietly.
    “I know who you are,” she said coldly.
    She’d been his patient, too, years before—right up until the day she’d taken Priss to him for a pregnancy test.
    “May I speak to you privately?” he asked.
    She stepped back, indicating with a head gesture that he should follow her to the window ledge behind her.
    “Excuse me for asking something that will seem none of my business, but did Priscilla speak to you in the days before she died?”
    “Speak to us? If you mean, come here without warning after years of saying nothing to us, then yes, she did. If you mean, did she speak the same unspeakable things she said to us years ago, yes, she did. And I’m assuming she spoke them to you as well, or you wouldn’t be here asking this question. I have to give you credit, Doctor. Apparently, you have never spoken of them to anyone else, because I think we would hear about it if you had broken your vow of confidentiality. So I will
confide
in you, Doctor, that my elder daughter was a hateful destructive liar, not the saint some people think she was.”
    He felt his own anger rise along with hers.
    He’d intended to ask if she knew about her daughter’s fatal condition. He thought it might comfort them to know the killer hadn’t taken away a long life from Priscilla, hadn’t deprived her of marriage, a career, children, future friends, and meaningful years. The cancer was going to steal all that, regardless.
    Now he didn’t feel like offering a single word of comfort.
    It sounded to him as if Priss had given her family one last chance. She had told the truth, and once again they had rejected it and her.
    He leaned in toward her mother. “If you ever want to know the real truth, Mrs. Windsor, I have the baby’s DNA. All you have to do is have your husband come in with a sample of his—”
    She slapped him.

    “Hey, hold up!”
    When he stopped his fast walk to the elevator and turned, he was so unnerved that he could feel the blood drain from his face—which must, he thought, make her slap stand out like finger paint on his pale face.
    The young woman chasing him down looked so like his late patient that he nearly blurted “Priscilla—”
    As she got closer, the eerily strong resemblance vanished; she was younger than Priss, but looked older.
    “Ha!” she said. “For a minute you thought I was her, didn’t you? I’ve spooked a whole lot of people today. So much fun. Speaking of which, what’d you do to piss off my mother?”
    “I said something she didn’t want to hear. You’re Priss’s younger sister?”
    “Yeah, I’m Sydney.” She laughed again. “I hope you think of something else offensive to say to my mother. That was very entertaining. Who are you, anyway?”
    “I was her doctor.”
    “Mom’s?”
    “Well, yes, at one time. But I meant your sister’s.”
    He saw a look of distaste cross her face. “Do you know, if she hadn’t given away all that money, I might be three million dollars richer now?”
    “What makes you think she’d have left it to you?”
    She gave him a sharp look. “And that’s your business how?”
    When he didn’t answer, she said, with a lift of her chin and an unpleasant smirk, “At least she left me her boyfriend. Although, to be honest, I stole him a little earlier than that.”
    Sam followed her glance to a dark-haired young man slouched against a wall, the sole of his left shoe propped against the gorgeous wallpaper, his hands crossed behind his back as he rested his weight on them. The propped foot made Sam feel like a grumpy