“Molly, let go of it. Please.”
A moment of silence followed. When she spoke again, the tone of Molly’s voice had changed. “I knew I shouldn’t have expected you to understand. But that’s okay. ’Bye.”
Philip Matthews felt as well as heard the click in his ear. As he lowered the receiver, he remembered how, years ago, a Green Beret captain had cooperated with a writer who he thought would prove he was innocent of murdering his wife and children, only to have the writer later emerge as his chief accuser.
He walked to the window. His office was situated in Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park and overlooked New York’s Upper Bay and the Statue of Liberty.
Molly, if I’d been prosecuting you, I’d have convicted you of deliberate murder, he told himself. This program will destroy you if that reporter starts digging; what she’ll find is that you got off easy.
Oh God, he thought, why can’t she just admit she was under terrible stress and lost control that night?
7
Molly found it difficult to believe that she finally was home, harder still to realize she’d been away over five and a half years. When she’d first gotten there, Molly had waited until Philip’s car disappeared down the road before she opened her purse and took out the key that would unlock her house.
The front door was handsome dark mahogany with a stained-glass side panel. Once inside she’d dropped her bag, closed the door, and in a reflex gesture, pushed her heel down on the floor bolt. Then she’d walked slowly through every room of the house, running her hand along the back of the couch in the living room, touching her grandmother’s ornate silver tea service in the dining room while willing herself not to think of the prison dining room, the coarse plates, the meals that had been like ashes in her mouth. Everything seemed familiar; yet she couldn’t help feeling herself to be an intruder.
She’d lingered at the door of the study, looking inside, still surprised that it was not exactly as Gary had known it, with its mahogany paneling and oversized furniture and the artifacts he’d so painstakingly acquired. The chintz sofa and love seat seemed out of place, intrusive, too feminine.
Then Molly did what she’d dreamt of doing for five and a half years. She went upstairs to the master bedroom, undressed, reached into her closet for the fleecy robe she loved, went into the bathroom, and turned on the taps in the Jacuzzi.
She’d lingered in the steaming, scented water while it foamed and swirled around her, washing over her skin until it felt clean again. She’d sighed in relief as tension began to seep from her bones and muscles. Then she’d taken a towel from the heated towel rack and wrapped herself in it, reveling in its warmth.
After that she’d drawn the drapes and gone to bed. Lying there, she had closed her eyes, listening to the insistent rapping of the sleet against the windows; gradually she had fallen asleep, remembering all the nights when she’d promised herself that this moment would come, when once more she’d be in the privacy of her own room, under the down comforter, her head sinking into the softness of the pillow.
It had been late afternoon when she awoke, and immediately she’d put on her robe and slippers and gone down to the kitchen. Tea and toast now, she’d thought. That will tide me over until dinner.
Steaming tea cup in hand, she’d made the promised call to her parents: “I’m fine,” she’d said firmly. “Yes, it’s good to be home. No, I honestly need to be alone for a while. Not too long, but for a while.”
Then she listened to the messages on the answering machine. Jenna Whitehall, her best friend, the only person other than her parents and Philip whom she’d allowed to visit her in prison, had left a message. She said she wanted to stop by for a minute that evening, just to welcome Molly home. She asked that Molly give her a quick call if that was okay.
No, Molly thought. Not tonight. I don’t want to see anyone, not even Jenna.
She watched the six o’clock news on NAF, hoping to see Fran Simmons.
When the program ended, she had called the studio and reached Fran, asking that she make her a subject for a special investigation.
Then she had called Philip. His obvious disapproval was exactly what she knew to expect from him, and she tried not to let it bother her.
After talking to him, she had gone upstairs, dressed in a sweater and slacks, and slipped her feet back into her old slippers. For a few minutes she sat at her dressing table, studying her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was too long; it needed shaping. Should she lighten it a little? she wondered. It used to be fair; it had darkened over the last years. Gary used to joke that her hair was so golden blond that half the women in town were sure she was helping it along.
She’d pushed back the vanity bench and crossed to her walk-in closet. For the next hour she’d systematically examined everything in it, switching to one side the clothes she knew she would never wear again. Some outfits brought an unconscious smile, like the pale gold gown and jacket she’d worn to the New Year’s Eve party at the country club that last year, and the black velvet suit Gary had seen in the window of Bergdorf’s and had insisted she try on.
When she knew she was going to be released from prison, she’d sent Mrs. Barry a shopping list of groceries. At eight o’clock, Molly went back downstairs and began to prepare the supper she had planned and had been looking forward to for weeks now: a green salad with a balsamic-vinegar dressing; crisp Italian bread, heated in the oven; a light tomato sauce that she made from scratch, served over linguine cooked al dente; a glass of Chianti Riservo.
When it was prepared, she sat in the breakfast nook, a cozy spot that overlooked the backyard. She ate slowly, savoring the spicy pasta and crunchy bread and tangy salad, enjoying the velvety warmth of the wine, looking out into the dark yard, enjoying the anticipation of spring, only weeks away.
The flowers will be late, she thought, but soon things would be blooming again. That was another of the promises she had made to herself—to dig in the garden again, to feel the earth, warm and moist, to watch for the tulips as they sprang up with their potpourri of color, to once again plant impatiens along the borders of the flagstone walk.
She ate slowly, reveling in the silence, so different from the constant, mind-numbing noise at the prison. After tidying the kitchen, she went into the study. There she sat in the darkness, her hands wrapped around her knees. As she sat, she listened for the sound that had suggested to her there was someone else in the house that night Gary had died, the sound, familiar yet unfamiliar, that had been slipping in and out of her fragmented nightmares for nearly six long years. There was nothing but the wind outside and, nearby, the ticking of a clock.
8
When Fran left the studio, she walked across town to the four-room apartment she’d rented on Second Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street. It had been a jolt to sell her Los Angeles condo, but now that she was here, she realized that, as Gus had perceived, New York was indeed in her blood.
After all, I did live in Manhattan until I was thirteen, she thought as she walked up Madison Avenue and passed Le Cirque 2000, casting an admiring glance at the lighted courtyard that led to the entrance. Then Dad made a killing in the stock market and decided to be a country gentleman.
That was when they’d moved to Greenwich and bought a house only a short distance from where Molly lived now. The house was in an exclusive Lake Avenue neighborhood. It turned out, of course, that they couldn’t afford it, and the house was followed by a car they couldn’t afford and clothes they couldn’t afford. Maybe it was because he panicked that Dad couldn’t make money in the market again, Fran thought.
He loved being active in town affairs and getting to know people. He believed that volunteers make friends, and he was a dream volunteer. At least until he “borrowed” donations to the library fund.
She had been dreading the thought of sorting through the boxes she had shipped East, but the sleet had let up, and the cold was bracing. By the time she’d put the key in the lock of her apartment, 21E, she’d devel
oped a second wind.
At least the living room is in pretty decent shape, she told herself as she switched on the light and looked around the cheerful room with its moss-green velvet couch and chairs, its red and ivory and green Persian carpet.
The sight of the still almost-empty bookshelves galvanized her into action. She changed into an old sweater and slacks and got to work. Putting some lively music on the stereo helped relieve the monotony of emptying boxes and sorting books and tapes. The box with the kitchen equipment was the easiest to go through. Not that much in it, she thought wryly. Shows what kind of cook I am.
At quarter of nine she sighed a fervent amen and dragged the last of the empty boxes out to the disposal closet. It takes a lot of loving to make a house a home, she thought with satisfaction as she walked through the apartment, which at last did seem like home.
Framed snapshots of her mother and stepfather and of her stepbrothers and their families made them feel closer. I’m going to miss you guys, she thought. Coming to New York on a fast visit had been one thing, but actually moving here and knowing she wouldn’t be seeing any of them regularly was much more difficult. Her mother had put Greenwich behind her. She never mentioned having lived there, and when she remarried, she urged Fran to assume her stepfather’s name.
No way, Fran thought.
Pleased with all she’d accomplished, she debated going out for dinner, but then settled for a grilled cheese sandwich. She ate sitting at the tiny wrought-iron table in front of the kitchen window that offered a generous view of the East River.
Molly is having her first night home after five and a half years in prison, she thought. When I see her I’ll ask for a list of people I can talk to, people who’ll be willing to talk to me about her. But I have some questions of my own that I’ll try to get answered along the way, not all of them about Molly.
Some of these were questions that had been bothering her for a long time. No record had ever been found of the $400,000 her father had taken from the library fund. Given his history of betting on risky stocks, it was assumed that he had lost the money that way, but after his death not a single scrap of paper had turned up to show where he had made an investment of that size.
I was eighteen years old when we left Greenwich, Fran thought. That was fourteen years ago. But I’m back now, and I’ll be seeing a lot of people I used to know, talking to a lot of people in Greenwich about Molly and Gary Lasch.
She got up and reached for the coffeepot. As she poured, she thought of her father, and of what the lure of a hot tip would do to him. She remembered how anxious he had been to be invited to join the country club, to become one of the in crowd of men who regularly teed off together on the golf course.
The suspicion had begun to rise unbidden. Given their failure to find any record of the sum of money Dad had embezzled, she had to have doubts. Was it possible that someone in Greenwich, someone her father had been trying to impress, had given him a hot tip and then taken but never invested the $400,000 Dad had so foolishly “borrowed” from the library fund?
9
“Why don’t you give Molly a call?”
Jenna Whitehall looked across the table at her husband. Dressed in a comfortable loose silk shirt and black silk slacks, she appeared dramatically attractive, an impression enhanced by her charcoal-brown hair and hazel eyes. She had arrived home at six o’clock and checked her messages. There had been no call from Molly.
Trying not to let her irritation show, she said calmly, “Cal, you know I left a message on Molly’s answering machine. If she wanted company, she’d have gotten back to me. Clearly she doesn’t want company tonight.”
“I still can’t figure why she’d want to go back to that house,” he said. “I mean, how can she go into that study without remembering that night, without thinking about picking up that sculpture and smashing it into poor Gary’s head? It would give me the creeps.”
“Cal, I’ve asked you before, please don’t talk about it. Molly’s my closest friend, and I love her. She doesn’t remember a thing about Gary’s death.”
“That’s her story.”
“And I believe it. Now that she’s home, I intend to be with her whenever she wants me. And when she doesn’t want me, I’ll give her space. Okay?”
“You’re very attractive when you’re mad and trying not to show it, Jen. Let it out. You’ll feel better.”
Calvin Whitehall pushed back the chair from the dining room table and crossed to his wife. He was a formidable-looking, broad-shouldered, broad-chested, heavy-featured man in his mid-forties, with thinning light red hair. Thick eyebrows over ice-blue eyes enhanced the aura of authority that emanated from him even in his home.
There was nothing in Cal’s presence or bearing to suggest his humble beginnings. He’d put a lot of distance between himself and the two-family frame house in Elmira, New York, in which he’d been raised.
A scholarship to Yale, and the ability to quickly mimic the manners and bearing of his more highborn schoolmates, had led to a spectacular rise in the business world. His private joke was that the only useful thing his parents had ever given him was a name that at least sounded classy.
Now, comfortably settled in an exquisitely furnished twelve-room mansion in Greenwich, Cal was living the life he had dreamed about for himself years ago in the tiny, spartan bedroom that had been his retreat from his parents, who had spent their evenings drinking cheap wine and quarreling. When the quarrels got too loud or became violent, the neighbors had called the police. Cal learned to dread the sound of the police siren, the contempt in the eyes of the neighbors, the snickers of his classmates, the comments around town about his trashy parents.
He was very smart, certainly smart enough to know that the only road out for him was education, and in fact, his teachers in school soon realized he’d been blessed with near-genius intelligence. In his bedroom with its sagging floor, peeling walls, and single, dim overhead light, he’d studied and read voraciously, concentrating particularly on learning everything he could about the possibilities for and future of the computer.
At twenty-four, after getting an MBA, he went to work at a struggling computer company. At thirty, shortly after his move to Greenwich, he wrenched control of the company from the bewildered owner. It was his first opportunity to play cat and mouse, to toy with his prey while knowing all the time that it was a game he would win. The satisfaction of the kill appeased in him the lingering anger at his father’s bullying, the subsequent necessity of toadying to a variety of employers.
A few years later he sold the company for a fortune, and now he spent his time handling his myriad business enterprises.
His marriage had not produced children, and he was grateful that instead of becoming obsessed over that lack, as Molly Lasch had done, Jenna devoted her energies instead to her Manhattan law practice. She, too, had been part of his plan. The move to Greenwich. The choice of Jenna—a stunningly attractive, smart young woman from a good family of limited means. He knew very well that the life he could give Jenna was a big attraction to her. Like him, she enjoyed power.
He enjoyed toying with her too. Now, he smiled down on her benignly and ran his hand over her hair. “I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “It’s just that I think Molly would have welcomed a visit from you even if she didn’t call. It’s a big change to come home to that empty house, and it’s got to be pretty damn lonely for her there. She had plenty of company in prison, even if it was company she didn’t appreciate.”
Jenna lifted her husband’s hand from her head. “Stop it. You know that mussing my hair annoys me.” Abruptly she announced, “I have a brief I want to go over for a meeting tomorrow.”
“Always be prepared. That’s being a good lawyer. You haven’t asked about our meetings today.”
Cal was chairman of the board of Lasch Hospital and Remington Health Management. With a satisfied smile, he added, “It’s still a little tricky. American National Insurance wants those HMOs as much as we do
, but we’ll get them. And when we do, we’ll be the biggest HMO in the East.”
Jenna looked at her husband with grudging admiration. “You always get what you want, don’t you?”
He nodded. “I got you, didn’t I?”
Jenna pressed the button under the table to signal the maid to clear. “Yes,” she said quietly, “I guess you did.”
10
The traffic on I-95 is getting into the California freeway class, Fran thought as she craned her neck, looking for a chance to change lanes. Almost immediately she had regretted not taking the Merritt Parkway. The semitrailer ahead of her was rumbling so loudly that it sounded like a bombing attack was underway, but it was traveling ten miles below the speed limit, making the experience of being stuck behind it doubly irritating.
Overnight, the skies had cleared, and as the noncommittal weatherman on CBS put it, “Today will be partly sunny and partly cloudy, with a chance of rain.”
That covers just about every possible situation, Fran decided, then realized she was concentrating on the weather and the driving conditions because she was nervous.
As every rotation of the tires brought her nearer to Greenwich and her meeting with Molly Carpenter Lasch, she felt her thoughts insistently returning to the night her father shot himself. She knew why. On the way to Molly’s house she would be passing Barley Arms, the restaurant to which he’d taken her mother and her for what turned out to be their final family dinner together.
Details she had not thought of in years came back to her, odd little facts that for some reason stuck in her memory. She thought of the tie her father had been wearing—blue background with a small green check pattern. She remembered that it had been very expensive—her mother had commented on it when the bill came in. “Is it sewn with gold thread, Frank? That’s a crazy price to pay for a tiny strip of cloth.”