Laurie and Alex looked at each other. It was Alex who answered. “You bet we are. Please ask Alison Schaefer to come in now.”
51
Later that morning, Leo Farley stared at the ceiling as his doctor and longtime friend checked his heartbeat. “There’s nothing the matter with me,” Leo said, his tone icy.
“That’s your opinion,” Dr. James Morris replied mildly, “but believe me, this is where you’re going to stay until I discharge you. And before you ask me why again, let me explain again. You were still having heart fibrillations yesterday evening. If you don’t want to have a heart attack, you’ll stay put.”
“All right, all right,” Leo said with angry resignation. “But Jim, you don’t get it. I don’t want Laurie to know I’m here, and I can tell she’s already guessed. She never calls me on the way to work, but she did today. She was so persistent asking me where I was last night… I can’t have her worrying about me while she’s doing this program.”
“Do you want me to phone Laurie now and reassure her?” Dr. Morris asked.
“I know Laurie. If you call, it would upset her even more.”
“When do you usually talk to her?”
“After she gets home from the studio. I got away with it last night, but tonight she’ll expect me to go out and at least grab a hamburger with her. I don’t know what my excuse will be,” Leo Farley said, his voice somber but no longer angry.
“Look, Leo, I can tell you this. You had two episodes of fibrillation yesterday. If you don’t have any tonight, I will discharge you tomorrow,” Dr. Morris promised. “And don’t forget, I still know how to reassure my patients’ relatives about their health. If you let me tell Laurie that, barring any more fibrillations, I’m discharging you tomorrow morning, I think that would be the best way to go. So think about it. She can always stop in here tonight and see you. Doesn’t Timmy call her between seven and eight?”
“Yes. She has him call at quarter to eight so she’s sure to be free to talk.”
“Then why not have her here in time to take the call, and the two of you can talk to him together? From what you tell me, he can only make one phone call every evening.”
Leo Farley’s face cleared. “As usual, you have a good idea, Jim.”
Dr. Morris knew of Leo Farley’s desperate worry about the threat to his daughter and grandson. And it won’t be over until that Blue Eyes guy is rotting in prison, he thought.
He touched Leo’s shoulder, but managed to close his lips before he uttered the two most useless words in the English language, “Don’t worry.”
After Josh handed the three of them the tapes, Alison was the first to go into the bathroom, take the cassette player from the vanity drawer, insert the tape, and listen to it. Aghast, she heard her conversation with Rod about her sleepwalking into Betsy’s room. Near hysteria, she grabbed the tape and rushed outside. Rod had seen her from the window and hurried as fast as possible to join her.
Now, his crutches beside him, he sat on the bench near the pool with his arm around her, their backs to the production crew outside. She had managed to stop crying, but her lips were still trembling.
“Don’t you see, Rod?” Alison said. “That’s the reason Powell had Josh pick all of us up at the airport in that fancy Bentley at two-hour intervals, except for Claire, who arrived the night before. Powell wouldn’t have done that except for one reason. The Bentley was bugged. Rod, don’t you remember we talked about my sleepwalking into Betsy’s bedroom?”
“Shh,” Rod cautioned, then looked around. There was no one within hearing distance. My God, I’m getting paranoid around this place, he thought.
He tightened his arm around Alison’s shoulder. “Alie, if they bring it up, say of course you were disappointed about the scholarship, but then it didn’t matter. You’d had a secret crush on me from the time we were in kindergarten.” He paused, then thought ruefully, at least that part was true for me.
“And you asked me to marry you, even though you believed I had been angry enough to kill Betsy Powell,” Alison said flatly. “You can’t deny that for all these years you have believed I might have killed her.”
“I know how much you hated her, but I never really believed that you could kill her.”
“I did hate her. I’ve tried to get over it, but I can’t. I still hate her. It was so unfair,” Alison said passionately. “Powell donated a ton of money to Waverly because Betsy was desperate to get into that fancy club. When the dean gave the scholarship to Betsy’s friend’s daughter, don’t you think I had a good reason to kill her? Did I mention that my fellow student flunked out her second year?”
“I think you may have mentioned it once or twice,” Rod said quietly.
“Rod, when everything you ever worked for and prayed for and dreamed about falls apart… I was half out of the chair to accept that award when the dean announced her name. You can’t imagine it!”
Then she looked at him, seeing the lines of pain on his handsome face, the crutches next to him. “Oh, Rod, how stupid of me to say that, to you of all people.”
“It’s all right, Alie.”
No it isn’t, she thought. It isn’t all right at all.
“Alison, they’re ready for you.”
It was Laurie’s assistant Jerry who was approaching them.
“Rod, I’m frightened I’m going to fall apart,” Alison whispered frantically as she stood up and bent to brush a kiss on his forehead.
“No, you’re not,” Rod said firmly as he looked up at the woman he loved so dearly. Her light-brown eyes, the most prominent features in her thin face, were ablaze. The tears had left her eyelids slightly swollen, but he knew the makeup artist would repair that.
He watched Alison as she walked to the house. In twenty years, he had not seen her so emotional. And he knew why-because she had a second chance at the career she wanted so desperately, the one that had been stolen from her.
A random thought hit him. Alie had let her hair grow longer, and now it was brushing her shoulders. He liked it that way. The other day she had said she was going to have it cut soon. He regretted that, but would never dream of saying so. There were so many things he had not told her over the past twenty years…
If she got through this program and received the money, Rod couldn’t help but worry, would it be her ticket to freedom-from him?
53
Nina was the second one who listened to her cassette. When she came back to the table her expression was almost triumphant. “This is more for you than it is for me,” she told her mother. “Why don’t you go in there and dwell on every word? And when you do, I don’t think you’ll be sobbing so much to Rob Powell that Betsy was your closest and dearest friend.”
“What are you talking about?” Muriel snapped as she stood up and pushed back her chair.
“The cassette player is in the center drawer of the vanity in the hall bathroom,” Nina said. “You should be able to find it.”
The contented expression Muriel had been wearing turned into one of uncertainty and worry. Without answering her daughter, she hurried to the hallway. A few minutes later the slamming of the bathroom door signaled her imminent return.
When she came out her face was set in hard angry lines. Her head jerked in Nina’s direction. “Come outside,” she said.
“Well? What do you want?” Nina demanded as soon as the door to the patio closed behind them.
“What do I want?” Muriel hissed. “What do I want? Are you crazy? Did you listen to that tape? It makes me sound terrible. And Rob asked me to have dinner tonight. Everything is going so well, the way it was before…”
“Before I ruined everything for you by introducing Rob Powell to Betsy when you were practically engaged to him,” Nina finished for her.