You belong to me by Mary Higgins Clark Page A

for grants.
    When he had arrived this morning, she had the agenda spread out before her and looked up at him, her eyes cool and dismissive. "I don't care for any coffee," she had told him. "You go ahead. I'll see you in the boardroom."
    Not even a cursory "Thank you, Doug."
    There was one file that had drawn her attention in particular, because she brought it up at the meeting, asking a lot of tough questions. The file contained information on moneys marked for use at a facility for orphaned children in Guatemala.
    I had everything under control, Doug thought angrily, and then I blundered. Hoping to head off any discussion, like an imbecile, he had said, "That orphanage was particularly important to Regina, Mrs. Clausen. She once told me that."
    Doug shivered remembering the icy gaze Jane Clausen had directed at him. He had tried to cover himself by adding hastily, "I mean, you quoted her as saying that yourself at one of our first meetings, Mrs. Clausen."
    As usual, Hubert March, the chairman, was half asleep, but Doug could see the faces of the other trustees, who stared at him appraisingly as Jane Clausen said coldly, "No, I never said any such thing."

And now she was making a date to see Dr. Chandler. Hearing the click of the telephone receiver on the cradle, Doug Layton tapped on the door and waited for Mrs. Clausen's response. For a long moment, she did not respond. Then as he was about to knock again, he heard a faint groan, and rushed in.
    Jane Clausen was leaning back in the chair, her face contorted in pain. She looked up at him, shook her head, and pointed past him. He knew what she meant. Get out and close the door behind you.
    Silently he obeyed. There was no question that her condition was worsening. She was dying.
    He went directly to the receptionist. "Mrs. Clausen has a touch of a headache," he told the woman. "I think you should hold any calls until she's had a chance to rest."
    Back in his own office, he sat at his desk Realizing that his palms were soaked, he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, dried them, then got up and went out to the men's room.
    There he dashed cold water on his face, combed his hair, straightened his tie, and looked in the mirror. He always had been grateful that his appearance-dark blond hair, steel-gray eyes, and aristocratic nose-had been the product of the Layton genetic code. His mother was still vaguely pretty, but he winced at the memory of his maternal grandparents, with their plump, nondescript features.
    Now he was sure that in his Paul Stuart jacket and slacks and maroon-and-blue tie, he looked the part of the trusted advisor who would handle the affairs of the late Jane Clausen in the manner she would have wanted. There was no question that on her death Hubert March would turn the running of the trust over to him.
    Everything had gone so well until now. In her final days Jane Clausen could not be allowed to interfere with his master plan.
    30
    In Yonkers, twenty-five-year-old Tiffany Smith was still stunned that she actually had gotten through to Dr. Susan Chandler herself, and had talked to her, live, on air. A waitress on the evening shift at The Grotto, a neighborhood trattoria, she was famous for never forgetting a customer's face or what they had ordered at previous dinners.
    Names, though, didn't matter, so she never bothered to remember them. It was easier to call everyone "doll" or "honey."
    Since her roommate's marriage, Tiffany lived alone in a small apartment on the second floor of a two-family house. Her routine was to sleep till nearly ten each morning, then to listen to Dr. Susan in bed while she enjoyed her first cup of coffee.
    As she put it, "Being between boyfriends, it's comforting to know that a lot of women are having problems with their fellows too." A wiry-thin, teased blonde, with narrow, shrewd eyes, Tiffany displayed a sardonic outlook on life that was appealing to some and off-putting to others.
    Yesterday, when she heard the woman who