As Time Goes By Read Free Page A

of his estate that he left to her will be mine. You’ve got some rich friends. Tell them to lend you money. Pay them interest.”
    He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and tossed a credit card on the table. “This one is caught up. The job in Atlanta photographing those houses paid for it. Use this for food and I’ll have the rent by the thirtieth.”
    Without bothering to say good-bye to his children, he stalked out of the four-room apartment on West 89th Street in Manhattan, left the building and with swift strides began to walk downtown.
    At thirty-five Alan closely resembled his dead father, a fact noted frequently by the media. Six feet tall, with reddish-brown hair and hazel eyes, he looked every inch the privileged Ivy League graduate who had been raised with a silver pacifier in his mouth.
    It was all Betsy’s fault, he thought. She and Alan were so close, but she was the one who had urged his father to no longer write him a check every time he had a problem but instead put him on a reasonable allowance. “Alan’s an excellent photographer,” she had pointed out. “If he concentrated less on being the playboy of the western world and settled down, he could make a good living.”
    That was when his father had stopped paying his bills and restricted him to a check for one hundred thousand dollars every Christmas. That did not go far enough to support him, an ex-wife with two children, and a ten-year-old son by a former girlfriend.
    As he walked, Alan’s anger began to fade. It was only a matter of time, he assured himself. There was no possibility that any jury would ever let Betsy off. It became worse for Betsy when it had come out that she had been quietly seeing some guy for two years before his father died. Dr. Peter Benson, the Chair of the Humanities Department at Franklin University in Philadelphia. Although he was weary, Alan decided that it would all come out all right. He’d get the money. Betsy wouldn’t inherit a penny. He just had to be patient.
    He hadn’t wanted to take that job shooting spring fashions for the new designer clothing firm that joke celebrity had founded. But it was necessary.
    As he cut over to Central Park West toward Columbus Circle, Alan smiled at the satisfying memory of how his father had attacked Betsy the evening they had gathered in a pointless effort to celebrate the demented man’s birthday. Her anguished cry, “I can’t take it anymore,” had been heard by everyone. And during that night his father had been murdered with Betsy alone in the house.
    When she’s found guilty, she can’t inherit, he thought, so every dime Dad left will be mine.
    Then he tried to banish the unwelcome thought that his father’s skull had been fractured by a powerful blow to the back of his head.

5

    B efore having breakfast Dr. Scott Clifton picked up the morning papers on the steps of his home in Ridgewood, New Jersey. A large and athletic fifty-seven-year-old man with a sunburned face and thick head of graying blonde hair, he did not need to be reminded that the lurid headlines were beginning again as the day for the trial approached.
    Over the course of twenty years he, Ted and Dr. Kent Adams had developed an extremely successful orthopedic practice. And then Ted had the onset of Alzheimer’s more than eight years ago. Since then, he and Kent had severed the partnership and gone their separate ways. In Kent’s absence, Scott’s surgical practice had declined significantly.
    Lisa didn’t often get down to have breakfast with him before he left for work. Not that she was a late sleeper, but he was always out of the house by eight o’clock at the latest. He fixed his own cereal and coffee.
    But today, unexpectedly, she came into the kitchen.
    â€œWhat’s on your mind?” he asked curtly.
    She hesitated, then said, “You were tossing and turning again last night. You kept