That’s when Timmy and I make our entrance, he thought. I’m holding his hand and have a gun to his head. I call Laurie to come out or I shoot him. Any good mother would come running out to save her little boy.
He laughed, a deep rumbling sound, then opened the door of the pool house. The graduate with the husband on crutches was sitting on the bench near the pool.
Bruno began to studiously examine the plantings around the pool house for any sign of imperfection.
Tomorrow they’ll be stained with blood, he thought gleefully. Mother and son. How appropriate that they’ll die together, even if I don’t get away.
59
“I was right,” Laurie whispered as she turned off her phone. “Dr. Morris said that they’re doing an angiogram on Dad right now, that it’s just a precaution. But can I believe that?”
“Laurie, what exactly did the doctor say?” Alex asked.
“That Dad had heart fibrillations last night.” In a halting voice Laurie explained what the doctor had told her. “I know the reason for the fibrillations. Dad was afraid of my doing this program,” she said. “He thinks that one of these six people is a murderer, and could explode under pressure.”
He may be right, Alex thought. “Look, Laurie,” he said, “when you’re finished here tonight, let me take you straight to the hospital. You don’t have to wait for the company van. Let Jerry and Grace wrap up here.”
Then he added impulsively, “I’ll wait downstairs at the hospital until you have your visit, then we’ll get something to eat, unless you have other plans.”
“My plan for tonight was to have a hamburger with Dad. As ex-cop number one, he’ll want to know every detail of what went on today.”
“Then give him your report in the hospital and have a hamburger with me afterward,” Alex said firmly.
Laurie hesitated. Given the circumstances, she could not picture going out alone to a restaurant. Alex Buckley is a reassuring presence, she thought. And besides, I can talk to him about the interviews we’ll be doing.
“Thanks, I’ll take you up on that.” She smiled faintly, then, as Alex watched, she called, “Jerry, will you please tell the crew and Alison Schaefer to come in?” Her voice was crisp and authoritative again.
A grim-faced Regina went looking for Josh Damiano. She found him vacuuming the huge living room. She remembered how Betsy had grandly referred to it as “the salon.” “Until the time she married Richard Powell, the only salon she ever walked into was a beauty salon.” That’s what Mother used to say about Betsy, Regina remembered.
Josh looked up and, when he saw her, turned off the vacuum. “I knew you’d be looking for me, Regina,” he said with a cheerful smile.
Regina had turned on her iPhone and was recording every word they exchanged. “You have different jobs, I see, Josh. Chauffeur-housemaid-blackmailer. Obviously there is no limit to your talents.”
The smile vanished from Damiano’s face. “Be careful, Regina,” he said evenly. “The only reason I’m helping in the house is because Mr. Powell canceled the usual maintenance service until Thursday, when everyone has gone.”
“The housekeeper label isn’t one you like, is it, Josh?” Regina asked. “How about embezzler? Are you sensitive about being called that?”
Josh Damiano did not blink. “I prefer to think that I am defending you from being accused of murdering Betsy Powell. Your father’s suicide note gives you the greatest motive to kill her, and remember, you lied to the cops over and over again that you had not found a suicide note on or near your father’s body.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Regina agreed. “On the other hand, I also did Robert Powell a great favor by not revealing that. Have you considered that? The note details how he let his wife have an affair with my father so she could feed him an inside tip about Powell’s hedge fund. The result was that my father lost his entire fortune, and by doing so, he bailed the Powells out.”
“So what?” Damiano asked.
“So I lied to my son in the conversation you taped in the car. I have another copy of my father’s note. Now I’m giving you an alternative: give me back the original and we call it quits. Otherwise I take the copy and my recording of this conversation today to Police Chief Penn, and you land behind bars. I assume you taped everyone else. I’ll bet they’ll all produce those tapes, if pressed hard enough.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, I’m not. I was fifteen years old when I found that note. As it was, my father’s suicide was the start of my mother’s slow decline. She would have gone quicker if she had known he was having an affair with Betsy as well.”
Josh Damiano attempted a laugh. “All the more reason you jumped at the chance to spend your first overnight in this house, to get revenge on Betsy.”
“Except that Betsy Powell wasn’t worth sacrificing the rest of my life in prison. I’m a bit claustrophobic. I hope you’re not.”
Without waiting for a reply she left the room. Once she was in the hallway, she began to tremble violently.
Would it work? It was her only hope. She went up to the bedroom where she would spend the night, locked the door, and checked her phone.
The battery was dead.
61
Alison went into the den, outwardly calm but inwardly frantic with worry.
I was in Betsy’s room that night, was the uppermost thought in her mind.
She tried to remember Rod’s reassurances, but, oddly, all she could think of was that she had told him he couldn’t know what it was like to want something so badly and lose it.
He couldn’t? she asked herself.
She remembered the blazing headlines when he was signed by the Giants. The speculation about his brilliant future.
All the time she had spent studying, he had spent practicing football.
From kindergarten on, Rod had always been there for her.
But I was planning to marry a scientist, she thought. We’d be the new Dr. and Madame Curie. “Dr. and Dr.” Curie, she corrected herself.
The arrogance of me. And Rod accepted it. He proposed to me and I accepted because of his promise to send me to medical school.
While he was so sick, I did manage to become a pharmacist, but I couldn’t leave him. Underneath, I’ve always begrudged him the fact that I felt obligated to stay.
And even now, I’m thinking that if I had come here alone, I wouldn’t have been talking in the car. No recording would exist.
“Come right in, Alison,” Laurie Moran invited.
Alex Buckley stood up.
My God, he’s tall, Alison thought as she took the seat across the table from him. Her body felt so rigid that she worried some part of her would break like glass if she moved too quickly.
“Alison, thank you so much for being with us on this program,” Alex began. “It’s been twenty years since the Graduation Gala and Betsy’s Powell’s death. Why did you agree to be on this program?”
The question was friendly. Rod had warned her against letting her guard down. Alison chose her words carefully now. “Do you know, or can you imagine, what it’s like to be under suspicion of killing someone for twenty years?”
“No, I don’t, and I couldn’t even imagine it. As I’m a criminal defense lawyer, I have seen persons of interest live with an ax swinging over their head until a jury declared them not guilty.”
“Until a jury declared them not guilty,” Alison repeated, and he could hear the bitterness in her voice. “But don’t you see? That’s the problem. No one has formally accused any one of us, and so we are all treated as if we were guilty.”