Sure, the door from the den to the patio was unlocked. So what? Sure, maybe a stranger mingled with the crowd.
But maybe not.
The thing he had noticed when he arrived that morning was that among those four girls, including the daughter, he had not sensed one bit of genuine grief at Betsy Powell’s passing.
And the housekeeper had kept begging to be allowed to go to the hospital to see “Mr. Rob.”
Then she realized how that looked and clamped her mouth shut, Penn thought.
Powell? Few men would deliberately scar themselves with third-degree burns on their hands. Spilling coffee may have been his cover, but it’s not clear what his motive would have been.
The housekeeper? Entirely possible. Interesting that the four girls had all agreed that she was screaming “Betsy, Betsy!” and holding the pillow in her hand.
Not that anyone’s first instinct wouldn’t be to rip the pillow off Betsy Powell’s face, but Jane shrieking “Betsy, Betsy!” was another matter. Ed Penn had learned that when Betsy became Mrs. Robert Nicholas Powell and hired her friend Jane as a housekeeper, she instructed Jane to call her “Mrs. Powell.”
Had Jane been burning with resentment for the nine years she had spent reduced from friend to servant?
That landscaper guy? He didn’t have a record. Maybe it was just that stupid name that made him stand out. What mother with a brain in her head would give her kid the name Bruno when his last name was Hoffa and the Lindbergh case was still front page news?
Well, I guess it’s better than some of the handles people are sticking their kids with these days, Ed decided.
There was no more use lying in bed. The police chief of Salem Ridge might as well get on the job. Ed thought, I’ll take a ride over to Powell’s place around noon and probably catch all of them at lunch.
He sat up. Then, from the other side of the bed, he heard his wife say, “Ed, will you please make up your mind? Either get up now or go back to sleep. The way you’ve been bouncing around is driving me crazy.”
“Sorry, Liz,” he mumbled.
As he got out of bed, Ed Penn realized that he was torn between two wishes. One, that somehow one of them would trip and reveal himself or herself as Betsy Powell’s killer. The other, equally ardent, was that the filming would be wrapped up tomorrow as planned and they would all go home. The unsolved crime had been a thorn in Ed Penn’s side for twenty years.
The Powell place is a tinderbox, he thought, and I can only watch it burst into flames.
When he returned to headquarters in the early afternoon, after his visit to the Powell home, his impressions had not changed.
57
Laurie decided that she had to talk to her father again. The night prior he had looked so terribly tired, and his usually ruddy face had been pale.
When she called him on her way to work, he said he was just stepping into the shower, and that he was fine.
He’s not fine, she thought.
Now she got up and moved back to the chair behind the camera. “I’m just going to make a quick call to my father before Alison gets here,” she explained to Alex.
“Of course,” he said amiably.
But when she dialed the number and waited, he could sense her mounting nervousness.
“He’s not answering,” she said.
“Leave him a message,” Alex suggested.
“No, you don’t understand. My father would take a call from me if he was kissing the pope’s hand!”
“What do you think he might be doing?” Alex asked.
“Maybe he’s heard something about Blue Eyes and doesn’t want to tell me,” Laurie said, her voice trembling. “Or getting heart fibrillations again.”
Alex Buckley looked compassionately at the young woman who had suddenly lost all her professional veneer of authority. Until now he had been surprised that, with her husband’s murder unsolved and the threat hanging over her son and herself, she had still been able to do this program on an unsolved murder, but now he could see the degree to which she was acutely dependent on her father.
He had looked up the accounts of Greg Moran’s murder. The picture of the thirty-one-year-old widow with her father’s arm guiding her from the church behind her husband’s casket flashed in his mind.
He knew the father had resigned abruptly from the police force to watch over his grandson.
If anything happened to Leo Farley now, any protection Laurie felt from Blue Eyes would be destroyed.
“Laurie, who is your father’s doctor?”
“His cardiologist’s name is Dr. James Morris. He’s been my father’s friend for the last forty years.”
“Then phone and ask him if your father has been seeing him.”
“That’s a good idea.”
There was a tap on the door. Alex sprang to his feet. When Grace looked in, the question she had been about to ask-“Ready for us?”-died on her lips. She saw the troubled look on Laurie’s face as she held the phone to her ear and heard Alex’s “Give her a minute,” then closed the door.
“You’re right, Laurie was terribly upset when I told her you were in the hospital,” Dr. Morris told Leo Farley. “But I managed to calm her down. She’s coming to see you straight from the filming, and as I suggested, the two of you can take Timmy’s call together.”
“It’s a relief to know I don’t have to try to figure out how to lie to her,” Leo Farley said. “Did you tell her that I’m getting out of here tomorrow?”
“I told her that, barring any more fibrillations, I’ll discharge you in the morning. I also told her that in forty years of practicing medicine, you’re the crankiest patient I have ever had. I promise you that’s what reassured her, Leo.”
Leo Farley laughed a relieved laugh. “Okay, I believe that. But I’m only cranky because I feel helpless with all of these damn monitors pinning me to this bed.”
Dr. James Morris took care not to let sympathy manifest itself in his voice. “Let’s both hope that you don’t get any more fibrillations, Leo. And I suggest that if you can force yourself to stay calm and maybe watch some game shows on television, you will be on your way home tomorrow morning.”
Bruno listened with glee. Hacking into Leo’s phone had been a brilliant idea. Leo had already called the head of the camp and told him that he was in the hospital. And now Bruno knew that both Laurie and her father would be on the phone with Timmy tonight.
If Leo and Laurie speak to Timmy around eight o’clock tonight, they’ll be reassured and not expect to speak to him again until tomorrow night, Bruno thought.
I’ll put on my police uniform and get up to the camp at ten o’clock, Bruno thought. I’ll tell whoever is in charge up there that the kid’s grandfather has taken a turn for the worse. If they call Mount Sinai, they’ll confirm that he’s a patient, but won’t say anything about his condition.
It will work. Bruno was so sure of it that he began to make preparations for his little guest. In the utility room of the pool house he laid out blankets and a pillow. It would be far too dangerous to put Timmy in the bedroom in the pool house. He would have to tie him up and put a loose gag on him. He knew that it was necessary to follow the routine and have Perfect Estates pick him up in the landscaping truck and drop him off again tomorrow morning. He would bring in some Cheerios and orange juice for Timmy. He always brought his lunch in a grocery bag, so having one would not seem unusual.
The production crew had left copies of the schedule all over the place. He knew that tomorrow Powell would do the last individual interview and then everyone would be photographed at the breakfast table, as they had been for the opening segment.