Chief Penn signaled to his driver and walked over to his car. He happened to glance at Bruno, who was meticulously searching for any scrap of paper or matted grass that might be disrupting the serene beauty of the grounds. Penn barely caught a glimpse of Bruno’s profile, but as he got into the car he realized that something in his subconscious was bothering him. A little voice was saying, I should know this guy, but why?
As Alex Buckley followed Laurie into the den, he had exactly the same thought about Bruno. I should know that guy, but why? Alex hesitated, then reached into his pocket for his phone and snapped a photo. He made a mental note to get the landscaper’s name and forward it to his investigator.
And then, for the first time, the four graduates were alone, and Josh, who had been helping Jane serve coffee, saw his chance. “I have a present for the three of you,” he said, “except Claire.” He looked at Claire. “I tried to talk to you in the car, but you were having none of it.” Josh looked at the other three graduates. “Here is a tape I think each one of you will find very interesting. You especially, Regina. Maybe you’ve mislaid something I found?”
He handed separate envelopes to Regina, Alison, and Nina, then said, “There is a cassette player in the drawer of the vanity in the restroom by the kitchen. Why don’t we talk after the three of you have a chance to listen to the tapes?”
Then Josh picked up the coffee cups in front of him and said: “See you all later,” in a confident voice, with just the slightest undertone of threat.
47
Because his office was next to the den, where all the activity was taking place, Robert Powell chose to go back upstairs to the bedroom suite he had shared with Betsy for the nine years of their marriage. At his curt request Jane followed him with a fresh pot of coffee. Then, sensing his irritable mood, she closed the door to his bedroom so she could make up the room quickly and quietly. She skipped her usual vacuuming because she knew the sound of it would annoy him. Then she left by the bedroom door to go downstairs.
Robert was wondering once again whether he had made a drastic mistake by inviting these girls-women, he corrected himself sarcastically-to reenact what had happened twenty years ago. Had his doctor’s prognosis been the reason for it? Or was it because of a perverse need to see them again, to toy with them as Betsy had toyed with them all those years ago? Had he absorbed so much of Betsy’s personality that he no longer had anything left of his own, even twenty years later? Each graduate had a reason to kill Betsy, he knew that. It would be interesting to see if one of them broke down under Alex Buckley’s questioning. He was sure Buckley was capable of detecting prepared answers.
Powell would bet that all the graduates had carefully practiced what they would say in their one-on-one interview with Buckley. He was sure they would start with their first impressions of what they saw when they ran into Betsy’s room after hearing him shout.
It seemed like only yesterday that he had walked into her bedroom carrying the cup of coffee that she had always insisted be red-hot “to get the flavor through the coffee beans.”
Rob looked down at the angry scars on his hands that had resulted from walking into Betsy’s room and seeing the pillow covering her face. Betsy’s long blond hair had spilled out from under it, her hands still clutching the pillow’s edges. She had obviously been struggling to push the pillow away from her face.
He remembered shrieking her name and trying to keep the coffee cup from spilling before his knees buckled under him. He remembered Jane leaning over him and attempting some clumsy CPR while the girls stood around the bed like ghostly wraiths. The next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital, conscious of nothing but the pain in his hands, and calling out for Betsy.
Robert Powell leaned back in his chair. It was time to go downstairs and make some business calls. But he hesitated for a moment as he stopped to reflect on what Claire would be telling Buckley.
He realized that what had been amusing to him was no longer amusing. All he wanted now was to have these women out of this house and to resume what little time was left of his quiet and pleasant life.
Alex looked at Claire Bonner across the table from him in the den. Claire had once again resisted Meg Miller’s suggestion to touch up her lashes and eyebrows. Now, as Alex looked at her, he found it incongruous to compare her with the beautiful woman who had walked into this house yesterday.
It was easy to see what had made the difference. Claire’s long lashes and well-shaped eyebrows were very pale, as was her complexion. She wore no lip coloring, and he could swear that she had washed the gold highlights out of her hair. I’ll find out what she’s up to, he thought and smiled encouragingly at her when Laurie said, “Action,” and the camera’s red light went on.
“I’m here in the home of Wall Street financier Robert Nicholas Powell,” he began, “whose beautiful wife, Betsy Bonner Powell, was murdered twenty years ago following a Graduation Gala for Betsy’s daughter, Claire, and Claire’s three closest friends and fellow graduates. Claire Bonner is with me now. Claire, I know this has to be extraordinarily difficult for all of you to be here today. Why did you agree to come on the program?”
“Because the other girls and I, and to a lesser degree my stepfather and the housekeeper, have been under suspicion as ‘persons of interest’ in Betsy’s death, which is the new way of saying it, for the last twenty years,” Claire declared passionately. “Can you have any idea of what it’s like to be in a supermarket and see your own picture on the cover of some trashy magazine with the question ‘Was she jealous of her beautiful mother’?”
“No, I can’t,” Alex replied quietly.
“Or maybe there would be a picture of the four of us lined up, as if we had had mug shots taken of us by the police. That’s why we’re here today, to make the public realize how unfairly we four young women, who were traumatized beyond belief and bullied by the police, have been treated. That’s why I’m here now, Mr. Buckley.”
“And I assume that’s why the other girls are here, too,” Alex Buckley said. “Have you done much catching up with them?”
“We actually haven’t had very much time to visit,” Claire said. “I know it’s because you people didn’t want us to put our stories together. Well, let me tell you something: we have not boned up on each other’s stories, and I think you will find that out. They’ll be pretty much the same because we were together at the moment when everything was happening.”
“Claire, before we discuss your mother’s death, I’d like to go back in time a little. Why don’t we start with your mother’s meeting with Robert Powell? I understand you had only lived in Salem Ridge a short while. Is that right?”
“Yes, it is. I had graduated from grammar school in June, and my mother wanted to move up to Westchester County. Quite frankly, I know she wanted to meet a rich man. She found a rental in a two-family house, and I can assure you there aren’t many two-family houses in Salem Ridge.
“I started my freshman year in high school that September, and that’s when I became friends with Nina and Alison and Regina. My birthday is in October, and Mother splurged and took me to La Boehm in Bedford. Nina Craig and her mother were there. Nina spotted us, and asked us to come over and meet her mother. Of course we also met Robert Powell, who was at the table. I guess it was love at first sight for both of them, my mother and Robert. I do know that Nina’s mother has never gotten over the fact that ‘Betsy stole Rob from me when we were on the verge of becoming engaged,’ as she put it.”