Excerpt of The Second Time Around by Mary Higgins Clark

The stockholders' meeting, or maybe the stockholders'
uprising is a better way to describe the event, took place
on April 21 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. It was
an unseasonably cold and wintry day, but suitably bleak
considering the circumstances. The headline two weeks
earlier that Nicholas Spencer, president and chief
operating officer of Gen-stone had been killed in the
crash of his private plane while flying to San Juan had
been greeted with genuine and heartfelt grief. His company
expected to receive the blessing of the Food and Drug
Administration for a vaccine that would both eliminate the
possibility of the growth of cancer cells and bring to a
halt the progression of the disease in those already
afflicted -- a preventive and a cure that he alone was
responsible for bringing to the world. He named the
company "Gen-stone," a reference to the Rosetta stone that
had unveiled the language of ancient Egypt and allowed the
appreciation of its remarkable culture.

The headline proclaiming Spencer's disappearance was
followed in short order by the announcement from the
chairman of the board of Gen-stone that there had been
numerous setbacks in the experiments with the vaccine and
that it could not be submitted to the FDA for approval in
the foreseeable future. The announcement further said that
tens of millions of dollars had been looted from the
company, apparently by Nicholas Spencer.

I'm Marcia DeCarlo, better known as Carley, and even as I
sat in the roped-off media section at the stockholders'
meeting, observing the furious or stunned or tearful faces
around me, I still had a sense of disbelief in what I was
hearing. Apparently Nicholas Spencer, Nick, was a thief
and a fraud. The miracle vaccine was nothing more than the
offspring of his greedy imagination and consummate
salesmanship. He had cheated all these people who had
invested so much money in his company, often their life
savings or total assets. Of course they hoped to make
money, but many believed as well that their investment
would help make the vaccine a reality. And not only had
investors been hurt, but the theft had made worthless the
retirement funds of Gen-stone's employees, over a thousand
people. It simply didn't seem possible.

Since Nicholas Spencer's body had not washed ashore along
with charred pieces of his doomed plane, half the people
in the auditorium didn't believe he was dead. The other
half would willingly have driven a stake through his heart
if his remains had been discovered.

Charles Wallingford, the chairman of the board of Gen-
stone, ashen-faced but with the natural elegance that is
achieved by generations of breeding and privilege,
struggled to bring the meeting to order. Other members of
the board, their expressions somber, sat on the dais with
him. To a man they were prominent figures in business and
society. In the second row were people I recognized as
executives from Gen-stone's accounting firm. Some of them
had been interviewed from time to time in Weekly Browser,
the syndicated Sunday supplement for which I write a
financial column.

Sitting to the right of Wallingford, her face alabaster
pale, her blond hair twisted into a French knot, and
dressed in a black suit that I'm sure cost a fortune, was
Lynn Hamilton Spencer. She is Nick's wife -- or widow --
and, coincidentally my stepsister whom I've met exactly
three times and whom I confess I dislike. Let me explain.
Two years ago my widowed mother married Lynn's widowed
father, having met him in Boca Raton where they lived in
neighboring condominiums.

At the dinner the evening before the wedding, I was as
annoyed by Lynn Spencer's condescending attitude as I was
charmed by Nicholas Spencer. I knew who he was, of course.
The stories about him in Time and Newsweek had been
detailed. He was the son of a Connecticut family doctor, a
general practitioner whose avocation was research biology.
His father had a laboratory in his home, and from the time
that Nick was a child, he spent most of his free time
there, helping his dad with experiments. "Other kids had
dogs," he had explained to interviewers. "I had pet mice.
I didn't know it, but I was being tutored in microbiology
by a genius." He had gone the business route, getting an
MBA in business management with the plan of owning a
medical supply operation someday. He started work at a
small supply business and quickly rose to the top and
became a partner. Then, as microbiology became the wave of
the future, he began to realize that was the field he
wanted to pursue. He began to reconstruct his father's
notes and discovered that shortly before his sudden death
his father had been on the verge of making a major
breakthrough in cancer research. Using his medical supply
company as a base, he set out to create a major research
division.

Venture capital had helped him launch Gen-stone, and word
of the cancer-inhibiting vaccine had made the company the
hottest stock on Wall Street. Initially offered at $3 a
share, the stock had risen as high as $160, and
conditional on FDA approval, Garner Pharmaceutical
contracted to pay $1 billion for the rights to distribute
the new vaccine.

I knew that Nick Spencer's wife had died of cancer five
years ago, that he had a ten-year-old son, and that he'd
been married to Lynn, his second wife, for four years. But
all the time I spent boning up on his background didn't
help when I met him at that "family" dinner. I simply was
not prepared for the absolutely magnetic quality of Nick
Spencer's personality. He was one of those people who are
gifted with both inherent personal charm and a genuinely
brilliant mind. A little over six feet tall, with dark
blond hair, intensely blue eyes, and a trim athletic body,
he was physically very attractive. It was his ability to
interact with people, however, that came through as his
greatest asset. As my mother attempted to keep the
conversational ball going with Lynn, I found myself
telling Nick more about myself than I had ever revealed to
anyone at a first meeting.

Within five minutes he knew my age, where I lived, my job,
and where I grew up.

"Thirty-two," he said, smiling. "Eight years younger than
I am."

Then I not only told him that I had been divorced after a
brief marriage to a fellow MBA student at NYU, but even
talked about the baby who lived only a few days because
the hole in his heart was too big to close. This was so
not like me. I never talk about the baby. It hurts too
much. And yet it was easy to tell Nicholas Spencer about
him.

"That's the sort of tragedy our research will prevent
someday," he had said gently. "That's why I'll move heaven
and earth to save people from the kind of heartbreak
you've experienced, Carley."

My thoughts were quickly brought back to the present
reality as Charles Wallingford hammered the gavel until
there was silence -- an angry, sullen silence. "I am
Charles Wallingford, the chairman of the board of Gen-
stone," he said.

He was greeted with a deafening chorus of boos and
catcalls.

I knew Wallingford was forty-eight or forty-nine years
old, and I had seen him on the news the day after
Spencer's plane crashed. He looked much older than that
now. The strain of the last few weeks had added years to
his appearance. No one could doubt that the man was
suffering.

"I worked with Nicholas Spencer for the past eight years,"
he said. "I had just sold our family retail business, of
which I was chairman, and I was looking for a chance to
invest in a promising company. I met Nick Spencer, and he
convinced me that the company he had just started would
make startling breakthroughs in the development of new
drugs. At his urging I invested almost all the proceeds
from the sale of our family business and joined Gen-stone.
So I am as devastated as you are by the fact that the
vaccine is not ready to be submitted to the FDA for
approval, but that does not mean if more funds become
available, further research will not solve the problem --
"

Dozens of shouted questions interrupted him: "What about
the money he stole?" "Why not admit that you and that
whole bunch up there cheated us?"

Abruptly Lynn stood up and in a surprise gesture pulled
the microphone from in front of Wallingford. "My husband
died on his way to a business meeting to get more funding
to keep the research alive. I am sure that the missing
money can be explained -- "

One man came running up the aisle waving pages that looked
as though they had been torn from magazines and
newspapers. "The Spencers on their estate in Bedford," he
shouted. "The Spencers hosting a charity ball. Nicholas
Spencer smiling as he writes a check for 'New York's
Neediest.'"

Security guards grabbed the man's arms as he reached the
dais. "Where did you think that money was coming from,
lady? I'll tell you where. It came from our pockets! I put
a second mortgage on my house to invest in your lousy
company. You wanna know why? Because my kid has cancer,
and I believed your husband's promise about his vaccine."

The media section was in the first few rows. I was in an
end seat and could have reached out and touched the man.
He was a burly-looking guy of about thirty, dressed in a
sweater and jeans. I watched as his face suddenly crumpled
and he began to cry. "I won't even be able to keep my
little girl in our house," he said. "I'll have to sell it
now."

I looked up at Lynn and our eyes met. I knew it was
impossible for her to see the contempt in my eyes, but all
I could think was that the diamond on her finger was
probably worth enough to pay off the second mortgage that
was going to cost a dying child her home.

The meeting didn't last more than forty minutes, and most
of it consisted of a series of agonized recitals from
people who had lost everything by investing in Gen-stone.
Many of them said they had been persuaded to buy the stock
because a child or other family member had a disease that
the vaccine might reverse.

As people streamed out, I took names, addresses, and phone
numbers. Thanks to my column, a lot of them knew my name
and were eager to talk to me about their financial loss as
well. They asked whether or not I thought there was any
chance of recouping some or all of their investment.

Lynn had left the meeting by a side door. I was glad. I
had written her a note after Nick's plane crashed, letting
her know I would attend a memorial service. There hadn't
been one yet; they were waiting to see if his body would
be recovered. Now, like almost everyone else, I wondered
if Nick had actually been in the plane when it crashed or
if he had rigged his disappearance.

I felt a hand on my arm. It was Sam Michaelson, a veteran
reporter for Wall Street Weekly magazine. "Buy you a
drink, Carley," he offered.

"Good God, I can use one."

We went down to the bar on the lobby floor and were
directed to a table. It was four-thirty.

"I have a firm rule not to have vodka straight up before
five o'clock," Sam told me, "but, as you're aware,
somewhere in the world it is five o'clock."

I ordered a glass of Chianti. Usually by late April I'd
have switched to chardonnay, my warm weather choice of
vino, but feeling as emotionally chilled as I did after
that meeting, I wanted something that would warm me up.

Sam gave the order, then abruptly asked, "So what do you
think, Carley? Is that crook sunning himself in Brazil as
we speak?"

I gave the only honest answer I could offer: "I don't
know."

"I met Spencer once," Sam said. "I swear if he'd offered
to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge, I'd have fallen for it.
What a snake oil salesman. Did you ever meet him in the
flesh?"

I pondered Sam's question for a moment, trying to decide
what to say. The fact that Lynn Hamilton Spencer was my
stepsister, making Nick Spencer my stepbrother-in-law, was
something I never talked about. However, that fact did
keep me from ever commenting publicly or privately on Gen-
stone as an investment because I felt that might be
considered a conflict of interest. Unfortunately, it did
not keep me from buying $25,000 worth of Gen-stone stock
because, as Nicholas Spencer had put it that evening at
dinner, after this vaccine eliminated the possibility of
cancer, there would someday be another to eliminate all
genetic abnormalities.

My baby had been baptized the day he was born. I'd called
him Patrick, giving him my maternal grandfather's name. I
bought that stock as kind of a tribute to my son's memory.
That night two years ago Nick had said that the more money
they could raise, the faster they would have the tests on
the vaccine completed and be able to make it
available. "And, of course, eventually your twenty-five
thousand dollars will be worth a great deal more," he had
added.

That money had represented my savings toward a down
payment on an apartment.

I looked at Sam and smiled, still debating my answer.
Sam's hair is a kind of grizzled gray. His one vanity is
to comb long strands of it over his balding dome. I've
noticed that these strands often are somewhat askew, as
they were now, and as an old pal I've had to resist
saying, "Surrender. You've lost the hair battle."

Sam is pushing seventy, but his baby blue eyes are bright
and alert. There's nothing babyish behind that pucklike
face, however. He's smart and shrewd. I realized it
wouldn't be fair not to tell him of my somewhat tenuous
connection to the Spencers, but I would make it clear that
I'd actually met Nick only once and Lynn three times.

I watched his eyebrows raise as I filled him in on the
relationship.

"She comes through as a pretty cool customer to me," he
said. "What about Spencer?"

"I would have bought the Brooklyn Bridge from him, too. I
thought he was a terrific guy."

"What do you think now?"

"You mean, whether he's dead or somehow arranged the
crash? I don't know."

"What about the wife, your stepsister?"

I know I winced. "Sam, my mother is genuinely happy with
Lynn's father, or else she's putting on one hell of a
performance. God help us, the two of them are even taking
piano lessons together. You should have heard the concert
I got treated to when I went down to Boca for a weekend
last month. I admit I didn't like Lynn when I met her. I
think she kisses the mirror every morning. But then, I
only saw her the night before the wedding, at the wedding,
and one other time when I arrived in Boca last year just
as she was leaving. So do me a favor and don't refer to
her as my stepsister."

"Noted."

The waitress came with our drinks. Sam sipped
appreciatively and then cleared his throat. "Carley, I
just heard that you applied for the job that's opening up
at the magazine."

"Yes."

"How come?"

"I want to write for a serious financial magazine, not
just have a column that is essentially a financial filler
in a general interest Sunday supplement. Reporting for
Wall Street Weekly is my goal. How do you know I applied?"

"The big boss, Will Kirby, asked about you."

"What did you tell him?"

"I said you had brains and you'd be a big step up from the
guy who's leaving."

Half an hour later Sam dropped me off in front of my
place. I live in the second-floor apartment of a converted
brownstone on East 37th Street in Manhattan. I ignored the
elevator, which deserves to be ignored, and walked up the
single flight. It was a relief to unlock my door and go
inside. I was down in the dumps for very good reasons. The
financial situation of those investors had gotten to me,
but it was more than that. Many of them had made the
investment for the same reason I had, because they wanted
to stop the progress of an illness in someone they loved.
It was too late for me, but I know that buying that stock
as a tribute to Patrick was also my way of trying to cure
the hole in my heart that was even bigger than the one
that had killed my little son.

My apartment is furnished with chattels my parents had in
the house in Ridgewood, New Jersey, where I was raised.
Because I'm an only child, I had my choice of everything
when they moved to Boca Raton. I reupholstered the couch
in a sturdy blue fabric to pick up the blue in the antique
Persian I'd found at a garage sale. The tables and lamps
and easy chair were around when I was the smallest but
fastest kid on the varsity basketball team at Immaculate
Heart Academy.

I keep a picture of the team on the wall in the bedroom,
and in it I hold the basketball. I look at the picture and
see that in many ways I haven't changed. The short dark
hair and the blue eyes I inherited from my father are
still the same. I never did have that spurt of growth my
mother assured me I'd experience. I was just over five
feet four inches then, and I'm five feet four inches now.
Alas, the victorious smile isn't around anymore, not the
way it was in that picture, when I thought the world was
my oyster. Writing the column may have something to do
with that. I'm always in touch with real people with real
financial problems.

But I knew there was another reason for feeling drained
and down tonight.

Nick. Nicholas Spencer. No matter how overwhelming the
apparent evidence, I simply could not accept what they
were saying about him.

Was there another answer for the failure of the vaccine,
the disappearance of the money, the plane crash? Or was it
something in me that let me be conned by smooth-talking
phonies who don't give a damn about anyone but themselves?
Like I was by Greg, the Mr. Wrong I married nearly eleven
years ago.

When Patrick died after living only four days, Greg didn't
have to tell me that he was relieved. I could see it. It
meant that he wouldn't be saddled with a child who needed
constant care.

We didn't really talk about it. There wasn't much to say.
He told me that the job he was offered in California was
too good to pass up.

I said, "Don't let me keep you."

And that was that.

All these thoughts did nothing but depress me further, so
I went to bed early, determined to clear my head and make
a fresh start the next day.

I was awakened at seven in the morning by a phone call
from Sam. "Carley, turn on the television. There's a news
bulletin. Lynn Spencer went up to her house in Bedford
last night. Somebody torched it. The fire department
managed to get her out, but she inhaled a lot of smoke.
She's in St. Ann's Hospital in serious condition."

As Sam hung up, I grabbed the remote from the bedside
table. The phone rang just as I clicked the TV on. It was
the office of St. Ann's Hospital. "Ms. DeCarlo, your
stepsister, Lynn Spencer, is a patient here. She very much
wants to see you. Will you be able to visit her today?"
The woman's voice became urgent. "She's terribly upset and
in quite a bit of pain. It's very important to her that
you come."