Muriel’s expression became hard and calculating. “Do you think Rob has heard those tapes?”
“I don’t know. I would guess he has, but that’s just a guess. The chauffeur may be blackmailing us as his own little game and not telling Rob.”
“Then give him the fifty thousand dollars.”
Nina stared at her mother. “You have got to be joking! Rob Powell is making a fool out of you with this sudden attention. If he’d wanted you, why didn’t he call you twenty years ago when Betsy died?”
“Pay that chauffeur,” Muriel said flatly. “Otherwise I will tell Rob and the police that you confessed to me you killed Betsy to give me another chance at Rob. I’ll say that you thought I’d be very generous to you when I became Mrs. Robert Nicholas Powell.”
“You would do that?” Nina asked, white-lipped.
“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it?” Muriel sneered. “And don’t forget that Rob’s million-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Betsy’s murderer can always be my consolation prize if you’re right about his interest in me not being genuine. He posted that reward twenty years ago and it’s never been withdrawn.”
After she’d seen Alison rush outside and Muriel ordered Nina to go with her to the patio, Regina knew she had to listen to her own tape.
On the way to hear it, she thought, Josh must be the one to have that letter. The cassette player was on top of the vanity. She inserted the tape, then numb with fear, pressed the button. The sound of her conversation with her son, Zach, was crystal clear, even though he was calling from England.
It’s as bad as it can get, Regina thought wildly. Now what happens if I don’t admit that I saved Daddy’s suicide note? Josh can produce it at any time. Then I could be arrested for lying to the cops when they questioned me for hours on end. He’d have both the tape and the letter to show as evidence.
Knowing she had no choice but to pay Josh whatever he was demanding, she went back to the table and pushed away her coffee, which was cold now.
Sour-faced as always, Jane promptly appeared with a fresh pot of coffee and a new cup. Regina watched as the steaming cup of coffee replaced the one she had ignored.
As Regina began to sip, the familiar nightmare replayed itself in her head. Riding her bike in the driveway of the beautiful home with the priceless view of Long Island that she had lived in for fifteen years. Tapping the switch that raised the garage door. Seeing her father’s body as it swayed in the breeze that rushed in from the Sound. His jaw had slackened, his eyes were staring, his tongue was protruding. A paper was pinned to his jacket. One hand was clenched around the rope. At the last moment had he changed his mind about dying?
Regina remembered how she had felt numb and emotionless, how she had reached up for the note, unpinned it as his body moved under her touch, read it, and, shocked, stuffed it in her pocket.
In it, her father had written that he had been having an affair with Betsy and bitterly regretted it.
Betsy had told him that the hedge fund Rob had begun was about to explode in value and to invest everything he could in it. Even then, at age fifteen, Regina was sure Betsy was doing that at Powell’s direction.
I couldn’t let my mother see that note, Regina thought now. It would have broken her heart, and I knew her heart would be broken enough by Daddy’s death. And my mother despised Betsy Powell. She knew what a phony she was.
Now someone had that note. It almost had to be Josh, who was hanging around all day helping Jane. What can I do? she asked herself. What can I do?
At that moment Josh came into the room, a tray in his hands, to clear the table. He looked around to be sure they were alone.
“When can we talk, Regina?” he asked. “And I must tell you, you should have taken your son’s advice to burn your father’s suicide note. I’ve been thinking it over. No one has a stronger motive for killing Betsy Powell than you do. Don’t you agree? And don’t you think that the quarter of a million dollars you’re getting from Mr. Rob is little enough to assure that no one will ever see the note or hear the tape?”
She could not reply. Her face was frozen in a look of horror and self-reproach, and her eyes looked beyond Josh to something else-her father’s neatly dressed body, swaying from the rope around his neck.
55
As if by instinct, Claire raced upstairs to her old bedroom after her interview with Alex Buckley.
She knew it had not gone well. She had rehearsed her answers to the questions about the Gala, from being in the den together after the party ended to rushing into her mother’s bedroom early the next morning.
It had been easy enough to re-create that terrible moment: Rob on the floor writhing in pain, the coffee splattered on his hands, his skin already raised in angry blisters. Jane shrieking “Betsy, Betsy,” and holding the pillow that had smothered the life from her mother. The hair that had looked so glamorous when her mother had said good night to them was brassy in the early morning light, the radiant complexion now gray and mottled.
And I was glad, Claire thought. I was frightened, but I was glad.
All I could think of was that now I was free-now I could leave this house.
And I did the day of the funeral. I moved in with Regina and her mother in that tiny apartment. I slept on the couch in the living room.
There were pictures of Regina’s father all over the place. Her mother was sweet and kind to me, even though they had lost everything they had because he had invested in Robert Powell’s hedge fund.
Claire remembered hearing Betsy and Powell joking that Eric, Regina’s father, was so gullible. “Now remember, Betsy, I don’t like you doing this, but it’s necessary. It’s either him or us.”
And her mother’s answer: “Better he should go broke than us,” and laughing.
The nights I lay awake on that couch thinking that if it weren’t for my mother and stepfather, he would still be alive and they would still be living in that lovely house on the Sound.
And what about Alison? She worked so hard for that scholarship and lost it just so my mother could get into some club.
Claire shook her head. She had been standing at the window looking out over the long backyard. Even with the vans from the studio discreetly parked on the left side of the property, and Alison and Rod sitting on the bench near the pool, the scene seemed as still as a painted landscape.
But then she saw movement. The door of the pool house opened, and the swarthy figure of the man who had been puttering around the garden these last few days exited.
His hulking presence broke the sense of stillness, and sent a shiver through Claire. Then she heard the click of her bedroom door opening.
Robert Powell stood there, smiling. “Anything I can do for you, Claire?” he asked.
Chief Ed Penn did not sleep well on Monday night. The sense of urgency that Leo Farley had imparted to him made whatever sleep he did manage to get troubled and fretful. And he had strange dreams. Someone was in danger. He didn’t know who. He was in a big empty house and, with his pistol in hand, he was searching through it. He could hear footsteps, but he could not tell where they were coming from.
At 4 A.M., Ed Penn woke up from that dream and did not go back to sleep.
He understood Leo’s concern that it was potentially dangerous to have those six people together again after twenty years. Penn had no doubt that one of those six-Powell, his housekeeper, Betsy’s daughter, or one of her three friends-had murdered Betsy Powell.