Unfortunately, Sylvie remembered that Pamela was one of the few people who knew that she had received comparatively little from the de la Marco estate.
“Oh, I’m doing the whole thing. I might as well get it all over with. I guess I’ll have to cast around for a rich husband.”
“I think you should. Of course that means you’ll have to trade off your title.”
“Never. When I find that guy I won’t take his name.”
Over a salad and their second gin martini, Pamela turned serious. “Sylvie, I wasn’t going to tell you this because I didn’t want to upset you, but ever since Parker Bennett’s secretary was indicted, the FBI has begun a new round of questioning people who were close to him. And they’re telling people that there is a two-million-dollar reward for information leading to his conviction.”
“Did they contact you?” Sylvie swallowed nervously.
“Yes.”
“And what did you tell them?”
“What would you expect? I said that yes, you and I are good friends. I said I do not believe that you and Parker were involved personally, that the fact you were seen at dinner alone with Parker meant nothing. I said that you are a very good businesswoman, that the count had dementia, and that you had a large investment in Parker’s firm.”
She paused. “How’s that for a pal? But seriously, Sylvie, I think the interior decorating now might be a big mistake.” Pamela took the last sip of her martini. “You know something you should consider? Barclay Cameron has always had an eye out for you. He told me so at La Grenouille last week. He said he’s called you a couple of times, but you’re always busy.”
“Barclay Cameron! He’s older than Eduardo.”
“No he isn’t. He’s eighty-two, healthy, lonely, and a widower. Sylvie, my guess is that right now the Feds are going over your finances with a fine-tooth comb. If they can prove that you’ve been receiving big bucks from Parker Bennett, you could get twenty years in prison. That’s what the FBI told me. I have a feeling they wanted me to pass that information on to you.”
When the check came, they carefully split the bill.
34
The decorative pillows for Anne Bennett’s living room arrived one week before Thanksgiving.
In the past two weeks, Lane had not heard from Eric. I understand why he hasn’t called, she told herself. Eric must have been terribly upset about the picture in the gossip columns of the two of them.
That was what Anne Bennett told her the minute she arrived in Montclair.
“Oh, Lane. Eric has been so distressed about that picture,” were her first words after she greeted Lane.
“Oh, he really shouldn’t have been,” Lane protested as she carried in a large plastic bag containing the pillows.
She took off her coat, dropped it on a chair in the foyer, and headed straight to the living room. One by one she took out the pillows and placed them on the couch and chairs, then stood back. “Just what I wanted,” she told Anne. “It gives this room the oomph it needed.”
As she spoke, Lane thought of Glady’s burst of generosity. At the last minute Glady had decreed that the room’s furnishings should not remind Anne of the fact that they had been used for the servants. “It’s very pretty now,” she had told Lane, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t be just as attractive with a different color scheme.”
The couch was now in a sand shade, the chairs in a small floral pattern with a sand background.
Glady had chosen a Persian rug in red with a striking geometric pattern from one of the guest rooms that gave warmth and color to the room. “I know why the auctioneer didn’t grab this,” she had told Lane. “Without speaking to me, the Bennetts hired some idiot who cut off the original fringe and replaced it with glaring white cording.” Glady later had had that fringe replaced by one that had an antique effect.
Anne had been surveying the room with delight. “Oh, Lane, you just don’t know how much I love this place. I always felt like I was tiptoeing around the house for fear I’d break something.”
It was eleven o’clock. “Lane, you’ve got to have a cup of coffee with me,” Anne said firmly.
There won’t be any chance that Eric will show up for lunch this early, Lane thought. “I’d love a cup of coffee,” she said sincerely.
She had had lunch in this kitchen a few weeks ago, but why did it feel as if she had been here many times? Lane asked herself. And why, even though she was sure Eric would not show up, did she find herself listening for the door to open and let her know that he was there?
Anne Bennett looks so much better and more animated, she thought as Anne placed the cup of steaming coffee in front of her and poured one for herself.
She sat down opposite Lane and smiled. “I have to tell you how pretty you are,” she said. “And certainly Eric has said that to me one hundred times since he met you. Lane, I’m about to be sixty-seven years old and I’ve always been somewhat timid. From modest circumstances, Parker fit in with people who were rich and socially prominent from impeccable backgrounds. I never felt comfortable with those people. I always felt as though I was in a world where I didn’t belong. I feel that I belong in this house and that through church I will get to make friends on my own.”
She looked away for a moment. When she looked back at Lane, her eyes were glistening. “What I have to say is my great concern is my son. These past two years have been absolute hell for him. He lost many of his own accounts. He’s pointed at wherever he goes. He couldn’t have a dinner with you without being secretly photographed.”
She took another sip of coffee, as though she was trying to compose herself. But then her eyes filled with tears. “Lane, Eric is very much in love with you. He told me that he cut that picture out of the newspaper and framed it for his apartment.”
Lane didn’t know what to say.
Anne sighed. “Remember that story about John Alden? He went to Priscilla to plead the case for her hand for his friend Captain Smith. Do you remember what Priscilla said?”
“She said something like, ‘Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?’ ” Lane answered.
“That’s right, and despite what Priscilla advised, I’m pleading for Eric. You surely know the consequences of being seen in public regularly with him. But is there a chance that you can face that problem? Eric won’t ask you to do that, but I can. Think it over.”
Anne put down the cup and said, “Lane, you don’t have to respond now.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small folded sheet of paper. She passed it across the table to Lane. “You probably have it already but here is Eric’s cell phone number. If he doesn’t hear from you, he will understand and never contact you again. And I guess you’ve finished the last of the decorating, haven’t you?”
“Yes, we have,” Lane said quietly.
“Well then, this may be good-bye but I hope and pray it is not.”
Five minutes later, Lane was driving back to New York.
I don’t know what to do, she thought.
I simply don’t know what to do.
35
There was one kind of crook Joel Weber despised over any other. That was the one who in some way caused injury to a child. In his long career he had dealt with a number of cases where someone deliberately murdered a child and tried to get rid of the body. It had been his savage pleasure to help convict them through the evidence he uncovered.
Next on his list was a sophisticated thief who preyed on decent hardworking people who were diligently putting aside money for their retirement or to pay for their children’s college expenses.
These were the little people who were sweet-talked by crooks like Bennett and ended up with nothing but the roof over their heads, if they were lucky. Sometimes not even that. A number of Parker Bennett’s victims had taken mortgages on their homes because of his advice. Make your money make money for you—that was Parker Bennett’s pitch.
It was mathematically impossible for Parker to have done all the necessary pa
perwork alone. He had to have had at least one, if not two, people in on the scheme with him.
Joel had considered Bennett’s wife, Anne, as a possible co-conspirator. She and Bennett had worked in the same investment firm before he went out on his own. But she had retired after their marriage forty-five years ago. When the fraud was discovered, she had been thoroughly investigated but nothing came of it. In the few years she had worked at the trading firm, she had been a secretary, pure and simple. Her job had been to take dictation, type letters, and answer the phones.
In the years leading up to when the Bennett Fund failed and he disappeared, she hadn’t owned a computer. All the servants in Greenwich attested to that.
Her son, of course, was a different story. At twenty-two he had started his career in compliance at Morgan Stanley. That gave him technical training and access to that firm’s computer database of statements, which he could have funneled to his father. Then Parker could have changed the names and some figures on the statements, put them on his firm’s letterhead, and sent them out to his investors.
Joel had made a list of all the schools Eric Bennett had attended. They were the usual ones to be expected for a rich child with an excellent brain: Greenwich Country Day School through eighth grade, Andover Prep in Westfield, Connecticut, and Magna Carta College in Montpelier.
In the middle of his first semester of his sophomore year at Magna Carta, Eric had withdrawn and switched to Trinity College in Dublin. He had graduated from there.
I can see why he might have wanted a year abroad, Joel thought, but why switch schools so suddenly? Did something go wrong at that point? Did he get in any kind of trouble? Was he staying out of the country for any reason?
I’ll start there and see what I can find out, he decided.
The next day he drove up to Montpelier, Vermont, and went into the office of student affairs at Magna Carta. There he was politely told that records showed that Eric Bennett had withdrawn on his own and there was no further information they could give him.
Dissatisfied, Joel walked over to the school library. On a hunch he looked up the list of benefactors to the school.
And found what he wanted. The same month Eric Bennett had abruptly left, his father, Parker Bennett, had made a ten-million-dollar donation to the college development fund.
36
Parker Bennett began to make his final preparations for leaving St. Thomas. Two years ago he had disappeared from his life as Parker Bennett with nothing but the clothes on his back.
Sometimes he wondered what had happened to the custom suits and jackets and ties and shirts and shoes in his closets in Greenwich. Did they sell or donate them? He hoped Anne wasn’t sentimental enough to keep them and let them rot in the closet. His mother had done that when his father died. Good God, Parker thought. We had two clothes closets in that dreary apartment and one of them was a shrine to that guy. Dropped dead of a heart attack after finishing his rounds as a postman. Only forty-seven years old, but a smoker. Every picture of him showed him holding a butt.
This time Parker was going to be sure that the clothes he bought were as nondescript as possible. Zip-up winter jacket, cap with earmuffs, heavy shoes.
He still couldn’t be sure if he would make a date to meet Sylvie. He wasn’t sure if he could trust her. He knew he had made a mistake showing her how upset he was when she asked him for two million dollars last week. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was short of money. The next time she called he’d be much nicer and say, “Of course, dear, right away.”
There was something else. He had read in the business section of the Wall Street Journal that the FBI was offering a two-million-dollar reward for information that would lead to his capture.
That was a new wrinkle. That kind of reward wasn’t usually made public in cases like this. Was there any chance that Sylvie had let something slip? Maybe to one of her friends after a few gin martinis? That possibility had always been lurking in the background of his mind, but now, with the announcement of the reward, it had become a full-fledged threat.
He had told people around here that he would be leaving in the next six weeks because of his job with the English government. He didn’t want to give them the sense that he was in any kind of hurry.
It wouldn’t be suspicious to say that the timing had been moved up and that he was leaving at the end of the month.
He had a golf date with Len this afternoon. He had to make it. Then if Len did talk about his resemblance to Parker Bennett, he’d remind him of that guy who looked so much like Lyndon Johnson that he posed for a whiskey ad and was paid to walk on the set of the Johnny Carson show and pass in back of Johnny without saying a word. This was when Johnson was in the White House.
Then he could always joke about the poem most people his age had read when they were in high school. It was about twins who looked alike. The last line was “And when I died they buried my brother John.”
That should do it, Parker thought as he felt himself rebuilding his confidence in his ability to throw that self-styled joker off course.
And today he would regretfully tell him that he would be leaving soon to go back to England.
37
Agent Jon Pierce, alias Tony Russo, had installed an eavesdropping system so sophisticated that even a sweep of Anne Bennett’s town house would not have detected it.
He had done it the second Sunday when he saw Anne leave for Mass, the day he spotted the old black car driving past the town house. It had been easy to get into the house undetected. The security system sensor was on the door leading from the garage into the den. Of course there was another one at the front door but there was no way he would take the chance on someone seeing him going in there.
It had not taken him much time to bug the interior. When Anne Bennett arrived home, she did not know that every word she said in the living room, kitchen, dining room, bedrooms, and den would be recorded.
That first Sunday he had heard nothing that was of any use. Anne Bennett was not someone who talked to herself. She was on the telephone only once and there was nothing in her conversation to a friend that had any meaning for him.
His job was to see if either Anne or her son was in touch with Parker Bennett.
Jon knew Eric’s New York apartment was bugged, and Eric would be too smart to say anything incriminating over any phone that might be tapped. But he did visit his mother every other evening to have dinner with her. He had come to dinner last Sunday night.
Anne brought up Parker Bennett’s name. She had said, “Eric, I know you’ll think I’m crazy, but something in me is telling me that your father is still alive.”
Eric’s answer had been, “Mom, try to put that thought out of your mind. And if he is, can you imagine how awful it would be for Dad to spend the rest of his life in prison? Because that’s what will happen if he is found.”
Anne Bennett’s answer had been, “Eric, suppose if your father is alive and they find him and he still has most of the money. Wouldn’t they give him a break? I mean, couldn’t he say that he had a mental breakdown?”
“Mom, nobody is going to give him a break and nobody is going to care about any mental breakdowns. There’s a two-million-dollar reward for anyone who can tell the FBI where to find Dad. If he is alive, I assure you that anyone who knows where he is will be rushing to get that reward.”
Anne’s next question shocked Jonathan Pierce. “How about that girlfriend of his, the countess? If your father is alive, I’ll bet he’s in touch with her.”
“Mom, Dad never thought you knew about her.”
As Jonathan listened, he realized that Anne Bennett had a totally honest core of reality, and that she was challenging her son.
“Eric,” she said. “I believe you are innocent of your father’s crime. I’m still not sure whether or not you are in touch with him if he’s alive. I certainly am not deaf, dumb, or blind. I always realized, even when I married him, that Parker was the kind of man who would proba
bly stray.”
There was a pause as Jonathan strained to hear, trying not to miss a word of the conversation.
“Eric,” Anne Bennett continued, “I’ve been aware of all your father’s affairs. But the way I’ve looked at it is that there are marriages where the wife can exist happily knowing the kind of man she married and is capable of living with it in a nontraditional way. Your father was involved with the countess for about eight years, and with many other women before that, in the years before he disappeared. But if he is still alive and she knows it, I’m afraid for him. If she finds out there is a reward, she would be just the kind to turn him in, if she knows where he is.”
Eric left soon after and for a long time Jonathan sat quietly absorbing what he had heard.
Anne Bennett was clearly warning Eric that if his father was still alive, Countess Sylvie de la Marco might be a threat to him, and that he should give him that message.
Later that week he listened as a tearful Anne Bennett pleaded with Lane to understand how much Eric was in love with her.
This from a woman who suspects that her husband is still alive and her son is in touch with him!
Don’t get caught up in this mess, Lane, he thought. Don’t get caught up in it.
38
Timidly, but with a sense of excitement, Eleanor Becker dialed Sean Cunningham. He was at his desk. The writing of his book was going well and Sean almost decided to ignore the call and let the answering machine take a message. But when he saw on the ID that it was Eleanor Becker, he rushed to pick it up.
“Eleanor,” he said. “How are you, and how’s Frank?”
“I’m what you’d expect and Frank, well, you know, Sean, all this tension is not good for him.”
“Of course it isn’t.”
“Sean, remember you told me that there may have been a few times when something hit me as odd, I mean about Parker Bennett?”