“That’s fine, sir. Good night.”
Tony closed the door with a decisive click, and Leo reluctantly told the driver to take him to Mount Sinai Hospital.
At least it’s only a few blocks way, he thought as he again checked his rapidly accelerating pulse.
Alex Buckley pondered the events of the day as he drove home from Salem Ridge to Manhattan. The four girls, now women, had been friends since their freshman year in high school, and it was obvious that their greetings to each other had been guarded, although as the hours wore on they seemed to be warming up.
Their reaction to Robert Powell was unmistakably hostile, even as they kept up a thin veneer of cordiality.
Years of interrogating witnesses had given Alex the ability to cut through the surface of what someone was saying and study their eyes and body language. What he concluded from all four graduates today was that they despised Robert Powell.
The question was, why? Alex would bet the animosity began more than twenty years ago.
Then why did they go along with the Graduation Gala? Even if my best friend wanted to share his graduation party with me, I wouldn’t have done it if I hated his father, Alex thought. And that raised another question. How did they feel about Betsy Bonner Powell? If one of the four had killed her, there had to be a compelling motive for her to seize the opportunity to stay overnight at the Powell home.
These questions Alex began to sort in his head as he pulled the car into his garage and went to his apartment.
Ramon was quick to hear his key turn the lock in the door. He appeared in the foyer, a smile on his face. “Good evening, Mr. Alex. I hope you had a good day?”
“Let’s call it an interesting day,” Alex said, returning the smile. “I’m going to change right away. I certainly didn’t need to wear a tie and jacket today. It was hot outside.”
The apartment was comfortably cool, and as usual his closet was a masterpiece of precision, thanks to Ramon, who hung every jacket and shirt and tie in color groupings. Alex’s trousers were placed in the same orderly pattern.
Now Alex changed into a short-sleeved sport shirt and khakis. Then he washed his hands, splashed water on his face, and decided that what he wanted was a cold beer.
As he passed the dining room, he saw that the table was set for two.
“Ramon, who’s coming?” he asked as he opened the refrigerator door. “I don’t remember inviting anyone.”
“I didn’t have a chance to tell you, sir,” Ramon replied as he prepared a small plate of hors d’oeuvres. “Your brother should be here any minute. He has an appointment in New York in the morning.”
“Andrew’s coming, that’s great,” Alex said sincerely, although he had a fleeting moment of disappointment, since he had intended to jot down all his impressions of the day over dinner. But Andrew knew today was the beginning of the filming and would probably have lots of questions. Questions could be useful in drawing out facts. If anyone should know that, it’s me, Alex thought.
His first sip of beer coincided with the sound of chimes announcing Andrew’s arrival. He had his own key and was letting himself in when Alex walked into the foyer.
For a long time it had been just the two of them. Their mother had died when Alex was a freshman in college, and their father two years later. Alex had just turned twenty-one and had been appointed Andrew’s guardian.
Like most brothers, they had had their squabbles growing up. Both were competitive in sports, and a victory over the other in golf or tennis was a source of great joy.
But competition had disappeared when it was just the two of them. They had only distant cousins in their extended family, none of whom lived in New York. They sold their home in Oyster Bay and moved into a four-room apartment in Manhattan on East Sixty-seventh Street, which they shared until Andrew had graduated from Columbia Law School and accepted a job in Washington, D.C.
Alex, by then five years out of NYU Law and a rising star in a litigation firm, had stayed in that apartment until he bought the one on Beekman Place.
Unlike Alex, Andrew had married six years ago and now had three children-a five-year-old boy and twin two-year-old daughters.
“How are Marcy and the kids?” was the first question Alex asked after giving his brother a brief hug.
Andrew, six two to Alex’s six four, his hair slightly darker than Alex’s, his eyes blue-gray, but with the same disciplined body, laughed.
“Marcy is jealous that I’m getting away overnight. The twins are living the concept of the terrible twos. Their vocabulary consists of one word: ‘no.’ Johnny, as usual, is a great kid. If he ever was a two-year-old like the girls, I don’t remember it.”
He looked at the glass in his brother’s hand. “How about one of those for me?”
Ramon was already pouring the beer into a chilled glass.
They settled in the den, and Andrew hungrily reached for the plate of hors d’oeuvres. “I’m starving. I skipped lunch today.”
“You should have ordered out,” Alex suggested.
“That’s profound wisdom. If only I had thought of it.”
The brothers exchanged a brief grin, then Andrew asked, “And now for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. How did it go today?”
“Interesting, of course.” Alex began telling him about the breakfast gathering. When he came to the fact that Nina Craig had fainted at the sight of Claire, Andrew interrupted.
“Was it a real faint or was she faking it?”
“What makes you ask that?” Alex said quickly.
“Well, don’t forget, Marcy did a lot of acting before we were married. She lived in California for five years after college. When we knew that you were involved with all this and that the journalists were rehashing the case, she told me she had been in a play with Muriel Craig and that every night after the show Muriel would head for a bar, get drunk, and start telling people how she could have married Robert Powell except that her stupid daughter had dragged her friend’s mother over to meet him. She’d rant on about how she and Powell were practically engaged and that right now she could be living in a mansion with a handsome, rich husband if it hadn’t been for her stupid daughter, Nina. Apparently Nina was there one night, and after Muriel got finished, they almost came to blows!”
“Well, maybe that explains it,” Alex said. “I think the faint was genuine, but as she was coming out of it, Nina screamed at her mother to take her miserable hands off her!”
“How long had Betsy been married to Powell when she was murdered?” Andrew asked. “Wasn’t it six or seven years?”
“Nine years.”
“Do you think there’s any chance that Nina Craig took the opportunity to get rid of Betsy by staying over at the house after the Gala and hopefully make Powell available for her mother again? From what Marcy told me, Nina can be a tough cookie.”
Alex did not answer for a long minute, then said wryly, “Maybe you’re the one who should have been the criminal lawyer.”
Ramon was standing in the doorway. “Dinner is served if you are ready, sir.”
“I hope we have fish,” Alex commented as he stood up. “It’s supposed to be brain food, isn’t it, Ramon?”
35
Laurie had set the alarm for six o’clock but woke at five-thirty. A glance at the clock on her night table told her that she had the luxury of lying in bed for another half hour.
This was the hour when if Timmy woke up early, he would come into her room and snuggle against her in bed. She loved the feeling of putting her arm around him and having his head tucked under her chin. He was tall for his age, but he still seemed so little and vulnerable that a fierce need to protect him always filled her being. I would kill for you, she would think passionately when the threat Blue Eyes had shouted flooded her mind.