Dr. James Morris, an old friend, was equally forceful. “Leo, your daughter will be a lot more upset if something happens to you. I’ll call Laurie-she knows you get these fibrillations-make it very clear to her that you’re stable now and I should be able to release you tomorrow morning. I can do it before you call this evening or after. You will do her and your grandson a lot more good by staying alive and healthy than by risking a major heart attack.”
Dr. Morris’s beeper sounded. “I’m sorry, Leo, I have to go.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll finish this later.”
After Dr. Morris left him, he reached for his cell phone and called Camp Mountainside. He was connected to the camp administrator’s office, then the head counselor, whom he had met before. “This is the pain-in-the-neck grandfather,” he said. “I just wanted to know how Timmy was doing. Any nightmares?”
“No,” the counselor said firmly. “I inquired about him at breakfast, and the senior camper in his bunk said he slept for nine hours straight without stirring.”
Relieved, Leo said, “Well, that is really good news.”
“Stop worrying, Mr. Farley. We’re taking good care of him. And how are you doing?”
“I could be better,” Leo said ruefully. “I’m in Mount Sinai Hospital with heart fibrillations. I never like feeling that I’m not available for Timmy every minute of the day.”
Leo could not know that the counselor was thinking that with the strain he had been under for the last five years, it was no wonder he was having fibrillations. Instead he heard and appreciated the counselor’s assurances. “You take care of yourself, Mr. Farley. We’ll take care of your grandson. I promise.”
Two hours later, when Blue Eyes heard the recorded conversation, he thought excitedly, He has played into my hands. Now they’ll never doubt me.
45
Jane Novak had worn the same-style plain black dress and white apron for the twenty-nine years she had been in the Powell household.
Her hair was also in the same style: combed back into a neat bun. The only difference was that it was now streaked with gray. Jane had never worn makeup and was scornful of Meg Miller’s attempt to put even the lightest powder and eyebrow pencil on her. “Mrs. Novak, it’s simply because the lights from the camera will wash you out,” Meg said. But Jane would have none of it. “I know I have good skin,” she said, “and that’s because I never used any of that silly junk on it.”
She did not know that even while Meg was saying, “Of course, as you wish,” she was thinking that Jane indeed had a beautiful complexion and good features. Except for the droop at the end of her lips and the almost-scowling expression in her eyes, Jane Novak would be a very attractive woman, Meg thought.
Claire was the next one who would accept only a minimum amount of makeup. “I never wore any,” she said. Then she added bitterly: “No one would look at me anyhow. They had my mother to rave over.”
Regina was obviously so nervous that Meg did her best to pat the light beads of perspiration from her forehead with a concealer, in case she continued to sweat.
Alison, very quiet, simply shrugged when Meg said, “We’re only doing a little because of the lights.”
Nina Craig said, “I’m an actress. I know what lighting does. Do the best you can.”
There was little that Courtney, the hairdresser, could do except to style the graduates’ hair as close to how it had looked in the twenty-year-old photograph.
While Laurie waited for her stars in the den, Jerry and Grace were ready to make any adjustments Laurie thought necessary.
An enlarged picture of the four graduates and Jane, taken twenty years ago by the police photographer, rested on an easel out of the range of the camera, a template for arranging the women for their interviews. The cameraman, his assistant, and the lighting technician had already placed the cameras accordingly. Three of the girls had been sitting on the long couch, giving the appearance of being huddled together. There were two armchairs on either side of the cocktail table in front of the couch. Jane Novak was in one of them, her face grief-stricken, her eyes shining with unshed tears. Claire Bonner was sitting opposite her, her expression contemplative, but without any visible sign of grief.
Busily observing the present activity, Alex Buckley sat near the door in the leather chair in which Mr. Rob often sat at the end of the day. “It’s a recliner,” Jane told Laurie. “He likes to adjust it so his feet are up. His doctor said it was good for circulation.”
It’s a beautiful room, Alex thought as he looked around appraisingly. The mahogany paneling on the walls was the background for the vivid Persian carpet. The wall-mounted television was in the center of the bookshelves and over the fireplace. The furniture had been broken into two seating groups; the couch and chairs where the graduates and Jane Novak were now seated, and the couch and armchair with the leather recliner. The sliding glass door to the patio was on the right side of the couch where the girls were sitting and was, according to Jane, the door they had gone in and out to have cigarettes the night of the Gala, leaving it unlocked.
According to the police report, the ashtrays on the patio table had been filled to overflowing that morning. Jane indicated that at least three empty bottles of wine were in the glass disposal unit, left after she and the caterers had cleaned up after the party.
Alex listened as Laurie explained the photo shoot to the girls. “As you know, we simply want this shot of you to set the scene, with you in virtually the same outfits and in the same places as you were that morning. Then, separately, Alex Buckley will interview you in the spots where you are sitting now, to get your reflections on what you were thinking and feeling that morning. Were you talking to each other? From the old picture it doesn’t look as if you were.”
Nina answered for them. “We almost didn’t say a word. I guess we were all in shock.”
“I can understand that,” Laurie said soothingly. “So just sit the way you did that morning, and we’ll start taking pictures. Don’t look at the cameras. Look at the picture and try to re-create the same poses.”
From his vantage point behind one of the cameras, Alex Buckley could feel the tension in the room, the same kind of tension that he sometimes felt in a courtroom when an important witness was called to the stand. He knew Laurie Moran was going for dramatic impact by having the two pictures incorporated into the film, but he also knew that her goal was to unsettle the graduates and Jane until one or more of them gave a statement that contradicted what was on record. Alex watched as Meg, the makeup artist, came quietly into the den, a compact in her hand. He knew she was there in case the camera revealed anyone’s face to be too shiny.
He marveled at the graduates’ youthful appearances and how they all had stayed slender, and he thought that Nina, who didn’t look thirty, had probably had some work done. It had been a shock to see Claire Bonner, who just yesterday had looked so glamorous and so like the pictures of her mother, by comparison look shockingly plain today. What kind of game is she playing? he wondered.
“All right, let’s get started,” Laurie was saying. “Grace, that pillow behind Nina, it’s too far to the right.” Grace adjusted it. Laurie checked the camera again and nodded to the cameraman. Alex watched as picture after picture was taken with an occasional comment from Laurie.
“Alison, try not to turn to the left. Nina, sit back the way you were in the original, otherwise you look as if you are posing. Jane, turn your head a little this way.”