• • •
Jerry and Grace picked her up at 7:45. The rest of the crew would meet them at the Powell estate.
As usual, Grace was trying to pull herself awake. “I went to bed at ten o’clock,” she told Laurie, “and then I couldn’t sleep. I was trying to figure out which one of them might have killed Betsy Powell.”
“What’s your conclusion?” Laurie asked.
“Any one of them or all of them banded together—the four graduates, I mean. Like in Murder on the Orient Express. They all took turns stabbing the guy who had kidnapped the baby.”
“Grace, even for you that’s over the top,” Jerry said flatly. “I say the housekeeper is guilty. She so obviously wishes we were all on Planet Mars that I think it’s more than the fact that her usual routine is interrupted. I think she’s worried. What about you, Laurie?”
Laurie was pulling out her cell phone. She had heard the faint sound that indicated she had received a text message.
It was from Brett Young. It read, “Laurie, the financial statements for the quarter indicate another drop in revenue. As I told you, the last two pilots you produced were expensive and disappointing. Make sure this one works.”
36
Mr. Powell had awakened earlier than usual. By seven-fifteen he was finishing his second cup of coffee. From where he sat in the breakfast room he had a full view of the backyard, a sight that usually pleased him. But today, despite the fact that the rosebushes around the patio were in full bloom and the fountain was sending a spray of crystal water into the air and the plants around the pond made a display of color like the palette of an artist, the look on his face was one of displeasure. The film company had left two large vans pulled up to the side of the house in back, and Jane knew that the sight of them was as displeasing to Mr. Rob as it was to her.
Jane knew his moods. Last night he had seemed almost amused by the events of the day, like Nina Craig’s fainting and Muriel’s obvious and flirtatious reminders about dates they had shared before Betsy entered the picture.
How much did he know about George Curtis and Betsy? Jane wondered. She had been passing hors d’oeuvres at the Gala twenty years ago when she had sensed the palpable tension between Curtis and Betsy, and had managed to sidle close behind him in time to hear his threat to Betsy. Jane knew that if Betsy succeeded in getting $25 million from Curtis, she probably would have hidden the money, as she had the jewelry, and continued her life with Mr. Powell.
If you only knew how much I know about you, Jane thought as she firmly resisted the impulse to pat Mr. Powell on the shoulder. Should I remind him that he was the one who had agreed to all this and suggest he go to the office for the day, since from what I gather, he would not be needed on camera today? But she did not touch his shoulder or suggest he go to the office. She knew he would be appalled if she took either liberty. Instead she made the symbolic gesture of offering him more coffee, and after brusquely refusing, he quietly left the room.
Yesterday she had seen that sneak Josh go through the pocketbooks when the graduates were told to leave them on the table on the patio. He had removed something from one of them. She could not be sure which one, because he had been so quick about it. What had he found of interest? She had long known about his taping the people he was driving. She also knew that Betsy, “Mrs. Powell,” she sneered to herself, didn’t like his attitude. He wouldn’t have lasted long in this job if she had lived, Jane thought.
What was it that he had taken from the pocketbook? She did know this—if it was something that would be beneficial to Mr. Powell, Josh would show it to him and, like a dog getting a friendly pat from his master, he would end up with a few hundred dollars extra in his pocket.
“Jane, I don’t want to see anyone this morning,” Mr. Powell said. “I will be spending a lot of time on the phone with the office. The production company is bringing their own food, so there’s no reason to have an open kitchen for those people. The crew will be using the bathroom in the pool house. Let the others stay on the patio and come in and out through the kitchen to use the bathroom. I don’t want any of them going upstairs or wandering through the house. Is that clear?”
What had changed so drastically from last night, when he had seemed to be enjoying himself? Jane wondered. Or was he dreading the one-on-one interview with that lawyer, Alex Buckley? Jane had read up on Buckley and had seen him on television discussing crimes. She knew that at some point he would be asking her questions about that night, too.
Well, I’ve managed to keep my thoughts to myself for almost thirty years, she thought. I’m pretty sure I can continue to keep secrets. Jane smiled to herself as she thought of the jewelry she had taken from Betsy’s hiding place after her body was found. The earrings and ring and necklace George Curtis had given Betsy had of course never been worn around Mr. Powell. Betsy saved them for those quiet little get-togethers when he was out of town. Mr. Powell never knew about them, and George Curtis certainly wasn’t looking to get them back.
I wonder if all these years, Curtis has been wondering if that jewelry would be found and traced to him? He did threaten Betsy that night, and he lives only a ten-minute walk away. Well, if any suspicion falls on either Mr. Powell or myself about Betsy’s death, I can pretend that I just found them and let Mr. George Curtis be accused of her murder.
Satisfied with the reassuring presence of the jewelry well hidden in her apartment, Jane picked up the coffee cup that Robert Powell had put down when he left the room and, pressing it lovingly to her lips, finished the coffee he had left in the cup.
37
Claire had orange juice, coffee, and an English muffin sent up for breakfast. She was dressed and waiting long before the car arrived to pick her up and take her to the house where she had spent the nine most miserable years of her life.
She had deliberately dressed the way she usually dressed at home—a plain long-sleeved cotton shirt and black slacks. Today she did not put on makeup, nor, as was her custom at home, any jewelry. I’ve been fading into the background all of these years, she thought. When I was a child, my mother pushed me into it. Why should I change? Besides, it’s too late for anything to change.
There was only one satisfaction in Claire’s life—her job as a social worker dealing with domestic issues. She knew she was good at it, and it was only when she had helped to rescue women and children from unbearable circumstances that she had a sense of peace and fulfillment.
Why did I come back here? she wondered. What did I think I was going to get out of it? What did I think I was going to put to rest? By participating, each of the graduates risked revealing her own secret reasons for hating Betsy. Claire knew what those reasons were and sympathized with all of them. She remembered how the other three had been her strength during the high school years. When I was out with them, she thought, I could almost forget everything.
Now we’re all afraid of what people might know about us. Will this program bring the truth to light, or will it simply be a messy rehash of painful memories and destroyed lives? She shrugged impatiently, then turned on the news to kill time until the car arrived. One of the items mentioned the filming of the show about the murder of Betsy Bonner Powell and how it was destined to be “the most highly anticipated event of the television season.”
Claire pushed the remote control button and the screen darkened just as the telephone rang. From the lobby Josh Damiano asked in a cheery voice if she was ready to go.
Maybe I’ve been ready for twenty years, Claire thought as she picked up her pocketbook and slung it over her arm.
38
Chief Ed Penn had received a phone call from Leo Farley at nine o’clock on Monday evening. He could tell that Farley sounded fatigued but was shocked when Leo told him he was in the hospital. “They haven’t been able to get my heart back to a normal rhythm,” Leo told him. “And of course that means I’m not going to be around to keep an eye ou
t for any potential problems.”
Chief Penn’s first reaction was that Leo Farley had been under the strain of the threat to his daughter and grandson for five years and was breaking under it. After pointing out what Leo already knew—that the film company had a guard at the gate of the Powell estate to keep out paparazzi and that the guard was checking everyone who attempted to get inside the grounds—Penn promised Leo he would station a squad car on the back road to be sure no one attempted to scale the fence.
Now that the program was actually being made, Penn had taken home the exhaustive file on the case and had once again been reading it through.
When Leo phoned, he had been examining the pictures of the crime scene with a magnifying glass, the beautifully appointed bedroom in the background and the incongruous sight of Betsy Powell’s body, her hair loose on the pillow, her eyes staring, her satin nightgown curving on her shoulders.
The Chief read that the housekeeper had been in the kitchen when she heard the commotion upstairs and raced up to find Robert Powell gasping for breath on the floor by the bed, his hands burned from the coffee he had been carrying to Betsy.
The four graduates had rushed into the room when they heard Jane’s shriek. According to them, Jane Novak had screamed, “Betsy, Betsy,” even though she normally called her Mrs. Powell.
And immediately after pulling the pillow from the face of the victim, Jane admitted she had picked up the emerald earring from the carpet and put it on the night table.
“I guess it was because I almost stepped on it,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing.”
What she had been doing was contaminating the crime scene, Penn thought. First by handling the pillow, then by picking up the earring.
“And then I ran over to Mr. Powell,” Jane’s statement continued. “He had passed out. I thought he was dead. I had watched someone do CPR on television and I tried it on him in case his heart had stopped beating. And by then the girls came in and I shrieked to them to phone the police and get an ambulance.”
It was the collective calm of the four graduates that the Chief remembered noting immediately. Granted, they told him they had been up until 3 A.M. talking and had drunk plenty of wine. The lack of sleep and the excessive drinking might have numbed their immediate response to Betsy Powell’s death. But it seemed to him that even allowing for the shock of it, Claire Bonner was surprisingly composed for a young woman whose mother was dead.
But then, so were the other graduates when they were interrogated.
I still don’t think it was an intruder, Penn thought. I have always believed that someone in that house killed Betsy Powell.
The six people who had been there were Robert Powell, the housekeeper, and the four graduates.
They’re all being questioned by Buckley, Penn thought. He’s supposed to be dynamite when he’s cross-examining a witness. It will be interesting to compare their initial statements with what they say now on camera.
Shaking his head, the Chief looked around his den. He felt that it was a stain on his department that the crime had never been solved. His eyes lingered on the wall with the many citations he and his department had earned over the years. There was another one he wanted.
It would be for solving the murder of Betsy Bonner Powell.
Then he glanced at his watch. It was ten minutes past nine. No more time for useless speculation. He picked up the phone to order that a squad car be stationed at the back of the Powell estate starting the next morning.
39
Bruno woke on Tuesday morning at six, aware that he was getting closer and closer to the moment of glory when he could take his final revenge.
He turned on the television as he prepared his spartan breakfast. He was allowed to keep a small refrigerator in his room. He plugged in the coffeemaker, then poured yogurt and cereal into a bowl.
After the hard news and a dozen commercials, he heard what he had been waiting to hear. “The pilot for the Under Suspicion series is presently being filmed at the estate of Robert Powell. Twenty years after the Graduation Gala the four honorees have gathered to appear on a television program to protest their innocence in the death of beautiful socialite Betsy Bonner Powell.”
Bruno laughed aloud, a raspy, mirthless sound. Yesterday he had spoken with one of the surprisingly talkative television crew. He had said that they would be filming today and tomorrow. Tonight the graduates would stay overnight. They would be on camera, seated in the den as they had been twenty years ago. Then tomorrow morning they would be filmed at a farewell breakfast.
And while they were having breakfast, Bruno would emerge from the pool house with his rifle and take aim at her.
Bruno thought of that day long ago when, as a kid in Brooklyn, he had hung around the guys he knew were in the mob. He had a job as a busboy in the diner where some of them had breakfast every morning.
He heard a couple of them bragging about how they could shoot the apple off the head of William Tell’s kid, but with a rifle, not an arrow. That was when Bruno bought a rifle and a pistol secondhand and started practicing.
Six months later, when he was clearing the table, he told the two guys who had been boasting that he’d like to show them how good a shot he was. They laughed at him, but one of them said, “You know, kid, I don’t like people wasting my time with bragging. If you want to show off, I’ll give you a try.”
And that was how he was hired by the mob.
Bruno could take out Laurie Moran anytime, but he wanted to be sure the cameras would be rolling when she slumped over.
He slurped his coffee in anticipation of that moment.
The policeman in that squad car on the back road would come rushing over the fence and run toward the dining room. The television crew, too. When they were all past the pool house Bruno would leave by the back door and be over the fence in seconds.
It would take him only four minutes to jog to the public parking lot at the train station. The lot was only a block from the room he was sitting in right now.
He had chosen the car he would steal, a Lexus station wagon whose owner parked it at seven every morning to get on the seven-fifteen train to Manhattan.
Bruno would be driving away before they had even figured out where the shot had come from.
The owner wouldn’t report the car missing until Thursday evening.
Bruno was so busy going over his plan that he did not even realize his coffee cup was empty.
What were the possibilities of failure?
Of course there were a few. A policeman might not be able to scale the fence. In that case he’d be sure to challenge me, Bruno thought. I don’t want to have to shoot him. The noise would bring the other cop back. But if I used the butt of the rifle, I’d have all the time I need . . .
The element of surprise, the confusion over Laurie slumping over, blood beginning to pour from her head—all of this would work in his favor.
I might be caught, Bruno admitted to himself, and that would permanently end any hope of eliminating Timmy. But if I get away with it, I’ll take care of him fast. My luck won’t hold out forever.
By hacking into Leo Farley’s computer, Bruno knew that Timmy was at camp, and even knew which tent he was in and every detail of its layout. But even if he could get into the camp during the night and kidnap Timmy, Laurie would be notified in minutes, and he’d never be able to get near her. Timmy had to come second.
Bruno shrugged. He was sure that old lady had heard his threat, “Your mother’s next, then it’s your turn.” He’d have to stick to that plan.
He hadn’t checked Leo’s phone since yesterday, not that Leo had much to say to anyone.
Bruno listened to the recording of Leo’s call to the police chief last night. Leo Farley was in Mount Sinai Hospital in intensive care.
Bruno began to consider the possibilities this suggest
ed.
Then he began to smile.
Of course, of course, it would work. It would have to work. He could pull it off.
When Laurie was at the farewell breakfast, Bruno would come out of the pool house holding Timmy’s hand—and pointing a gun at his head.
40
Regina’s hands were trembling so violently that she could hardly pull the T-shirt over her head. Laurie Moran had told them to dress simply. She had had replicas made of the outfits they had been wearing when the police arrived after Betsy’s body was found. They had handed over their pajamas for evidence and been asked to wait in the den until they could be questioned.
Regina had been wearing a long-sleeved red T-shirt and jeans. The thought of wearing a similar outfit now was upsetting. She felt as if all the protective layers she had built around herself over twenty years were being peeled away.
Just thinking about that outfit made her remember how they had all sat huddled together, not allowed to go into the kitchen even to get a cup of coffee or a piece of toast. Jane, too, had been in the den with them, despite pleading to be allowed to go in the ambulance with Mr. Powell to the hospital.
Who had taken her father’s suicide note from her pocketbook? And what would that person do with it?
If the police found it, they could arrest her for taking the letter from her father’s body. She knew they always suspected that if he’d written a note, she’d taken it. She had lied over and over to them when they were investigating his death. Whoever had the note now could provide the police with everything they needed to indict her for Betsy’s murder.
Regina’s eyes filled with tears.