In the DA’s office the case was known as the “Blue Eyes Murder.” Sometimes an expression of alarm would come over Timmy’s face if he happened to suddenly turn and look directly into Leo’s face. Leo’s eyes were a light china-blue shade. He was sure, and both Laurie and the psychologist agreed, that Greg’s killer must have had large, intense blue eyes.
Laurie had discussed with him her concept for a new series, leading with the Graduation Gala murder. Leo kept his dismay to himself. The idea of his daughter gathering together a group of people, one of whom was probably a murderer, was alarming. Someone had hated Betsy Bonner Powell enough to hold a pillow over her head until the last breath had been squeezed from her body. That same person probably had a passion for self-preservation. Leo knew that twenty years ago all four young women, and Betsy’s husband, had been interrogated by the best-of-the-best homicide detectives. Unless someone had managed to make his or her way into the house undetected, if the series was given the green light, the murderer and suspects would all be together again-a dangerous proposition.
All this was in Leo’s mind as he and Timmy walked home from Saint David’s on Eighty-ninth Street off Fifth Avenue to the apartment, eight blocks away on Lexington Avenue and Ninety-fourth Street. After Greg’s death Laurie had moved immediately, unable to bear the sight of the playground where Greg had been shot.
A passing police cruiser slowed as it drove by. The officer in the passenger seat saluted Leo.
“I like it when they do that to you, Grandpa,” Timmy announced. “It makes me feel safe,” he added matter-of-factly.
Be careful, Leo warned himself. I’ve always told Timmy that if I wasn’t around and he or his friends had a problem they should run to a police officer and ask for help. Unconsciously, he tightened his grip on Timmy’s hand.
“Well, you haven’t had any problems that I couldn’t solve for you.” Then he added carefully, “At least as far as I know.”
They were walking north on Lexington Avenue. The wind had shifted and felt raw against their faces. Leo stopped and firmly pulled Timmy’s woolen cap down over his forehead and ears.
“One of the guys in the eighth grade was walking to school this morning and some guy on a bike tried to grab his cell phone out of his hand. A policeman saw it and pulled the guy over,” Timmy said.
It hadn’t been an incident involving someone with blue eyes. Leo was ashamed to admit to himself how relieved that made him. Until Greg’s killer was apprehended, he needed to know that Timmy and Laurie were safe.
Someday justice will be served, he vowed to himself.
This morning, as she hurried out to work seconds after he arrived, Laurie had said that she was going to hear the verdict on the reality show she was proposing. Leo’s mind moved restlessly to that concern. He knew he would have to wait for the news until tonight. Over their second cup of coffee, when Timmy had finished dinner and was curled up in the big chair with a book, she would discuss it with him. Then he would leave for his own apartment a block away. At the end of the day, he wanted Laurie and Timmy to have their own space, and he was satisfied that no one would get past the doorman in their building without a phone call to the resident they claimed to be visiting.
If she got the go-ahead to do that series, it’s going to be bad news, Leo thought.
A man with a hooded sweatshirt, dark sunglasses, and a canvas bag on his shoulder, seeming to come out of nowhere, darted past him on roller skates, almost knocking over Timmy, then brushing a very pregnant young woman who was about ten feet ahead of them.
“Get off the sidewalk,” Leo shouted as the skater turned the corner and disappeared.
Behind the dark sunglasses, bright blue eyes glittered, and the skater laughed aloud.
Such encounters fed his need for the sense of power he felt when he literally touched Timmy and knew that on any given day he could carry out his threat.
3
Robert Nicholas Powell was seventy-eight years old but looked and moved like a man ten years younger. A full head of white hair framed his handsome face. His posture was still erect, although he was no longer over six feet tall. He had an air of authority that was instantly apparent to anyone in his presence. Except for Fridays, he still put in a full day at his Wall Street office, chauffeured back and forth by his longtime employee, Josh Damiano.
Today, Tuesday, March 16, Rob had made the decision to stay home and meet television producer Laurie Moran here in Salem Ridge instead of in his office. She had told him the reason for her visit and had couched it in an intriguing premise: “Mr. Powell, I believe that if you, your stepdaughter, and her friends agree to re-create the events of the Graduation Gala, the public will understand how incredible it is that any one of you could have been responsible for your wife’s death. You had a happy marriage. Everyone who knew you knew that. Your stepdaughter and her mother were very close. The other three graduates had been in and out of Betsy’s home from the time they were in high school, and then, when you and Betsy were married, you made them always feel welcome. You have a very large house, and with so many people at the party, there is every possibility that an intruder went undetected. Your wife was known to have beautiful and expensive jewelry. She was wearing her emerald earrings and necklace and ring that night.”
“The tabloids turned a tragedy into a scandal.” Robert Powell remembered his bitter retort to Laurie Moran. Well, she’ll be here soon, he thought. So be it.
He was sitting at the desk in his spacious downstairs office. Large windows looked out over the back gardens of the estate. A beautiful sight in spring and summer and early fall, Rob thought. When it was snowing, that bare and naked view was softened and sometimes magical but on a damp, cold, sunless winter day in March, when the trees were bare and the pool covered and the pool house was shuttered, no amount of expensive planting could soften the stark reality of the winter landscape.
His padded desk chair was very comfortable, and Rob, smiling to himself, pondered the secret that he did not share with anyone. He was sure that sitting behind the impressive antique mahogany desk with the elaborate carvings on the sides and legs lent even more prestige to the image he had so carefully cultivated. It was an image that began the day he left Detroit at age seventeen to begin his freshman year as a scholarship student at Harvard. There, he referred to his mother as a college professor and his father as an engineer; in fact she was a kitchen worker at the University of Michigan and he was a mechanic at the Ford plant.
Rob smiled, remembering how in his sophomore year he had bought a book on table manners, purchased a box of battered silver-plated table settings, and practiced using unfamiliar utensils such as a fish knife until he was sure he was comfortable with them. Following graduation, an internship at Merrill Lynch began his career in the financial world. Now, despite a few rocky years along the way, the R. N. Powell Hedge Fund was considered one of the best and safest investments on Wall Street.
At precisely eleven o’clock the sound of the chimes at the front door announced the arrival of Laurie Moran. Rob straightened his shoulders. Of course he would get up when she was escorted into his office, but not until she had seen him seated at his desk. He realized how curious he was to meet her. It was hard to tell her age from her voice over the phone. There was a crisp, matter-of-fact note in the way she had introduced herself, but then her tone had become sympathetic when she spoke about Betsy’s death.