Daddy's Gone a Hunting by Mary Higgins Clark Page B

pretty much still salt-and-pepper. His manner was naturally easygoing but that changed swiftly if he spotted any incompetenceamong his underlings. In the department he was universally well liked.
    His wife, Celia, had heard the car pulling into the garage and had the door to the kitchen open for him. She had had a double mastectomy five years earlier and even though her doctor had now given her a clean bill of health, Frank was always fearful that one day when he opened the door, she might not be there. Now the sight of her, with her light brown hair caught in a ponytail, a sweater and slacks enhancing her slender body, a welcoming smile on her face, made a lump form in his throat.
    If anything ever happened to her . . . He pushed away the thought as he kissed her.
    “You’ve had some day,” she observed.
    “You could call it that,” Frank confirmed as he inhaled the welcoming scent of pot roast coming from the Crock-Pot. It was the meal Celia often prepared when there was a major fire and she knew that there was no way of telling when her husband would get home. “Give me ten minutes,” he said. “And I’ll have a drink before I eat.”
    “Sure.”
    Fifteen minutes later he was sitting side by side with her on the couch facing the fireplace in the family room. He took a sip of the vodka martini he was holding and fished out the olive. The television was set to a news station. “They’ve been showing the fire all day,” Celia said, “and they’ve dug up the coverage of the boating accident that killed Kate Connelly’s mother and uncle years ago. Have you heard any more about how she’s doing?”
    “She’s in a coma,” Frank said.
    “It’s such a shame about Gus Schmidt. I met him a couple of times, you now.”
    At her husband’s surprised expression, she explained: “It was when I was in chemotherapy at Sloan-Kettering. His wife, Lottie, was in treatment, too. I’m so sorry for her. It was obvious they werereally close. She must be devastated. As I remember, they have a daughter, but she lives in Minnesota somewhere.”
    She paused, then added, “I think I’ll try and find out what the funeral arrangements are. If there’s a service, I’d like to go to it.”
    That’s just like Celia, Frank thought. If there’s a service, she will go to it. Most people think about doing something like that but never follow through. He took another sip of the martini, totally unaware that his wife’s coincidental acquaintance with Lottie Schmidt would unlock one aspect of the investigation surrounding the destruction of the Connelly Fine Antique Reproductions plant.

20

    M ark Sloane’s curiosity about his neighbor was quickly satisfied the next day when he picked up Friday’s morning newspapers and stopped for coffee and a bagel at the counter of a coffee shop on his way to the office. The burning complex was on the first page of the papers and on the inside pages he saw a picture of Hannah Connelly outside the hospital, being rushed to a taxi by her father. Ironic, he thought. The firm he left and the one where he was now dealt with corporate real estate. He had seen his share of buildings conveniently being burned down when they became a financial liability.
    He remembered the time Billy Owens, a restaurant owner in Chicago, had collected on a large insurance policy after a second suspicious fire, and an investigator for the insurance company had sarcastically suggested that the next time Billy needed to unload some property he should try flooding it.
    As he bit into a bagel, Mark read that the widow of the dead man, Gus Schmidt, was adamant that Kate Connelly, the daughter of the owner, had been the one to make the predawn appointment at the complex. But according to the papers, Schmidt had been a disgruntled former employee of the firm. Mark’s analytical mind toyed with the idea that Schmidt might have been a logical person to involve if someone wanted to burn the complex down. There was a picture of