“What about school?”
“Somehow, between the East and West Coasts, I graduated from grammar school.”
“What about your father? I know your parents were divorced when you were very young.”
He couldn’t stand her, either, Nina thought. But he got away fast. “They married young and divorced when I was three.”
“Did you see much of him after that?”
“No, but he did contribute to my college education.” A little, she thought, a very little-what Mother could squeeze out of him in court.
“Actually, you saw very little of him from the time of the divorce, isn’t that true, Nina?”
“He tried his hand at acting, didn’t make it, then moved to Chicago, remarried, and had four more children. There wasn’t much room in that for me.”
Where is he going with this? Nina asked herself frantically.
“Then you never had a father in your growing-up years?”
“I think that’s obvious.”
“Why did you and your mother move to Salem Ridge, Nina?”
“My mother was dating Robert Powell.”
“Wasn’t she also offered the leading role in a pilot that became a series and ran for six years, and has been on reruns ever since?”
“Yes, that’s true. But Powell told her that he didn’t want to be married to anyone who would be working all the time.”
“Even when her relationship with Powell ended, the two of you stayed in Salem Ridge. That seems curious to me.”
“I don’t know why. She had rented a condo. There was a very nice old couple next door, the Johnsons. When she broke up with Robert Powell, my mother was offered a flurry of jobs. I had started high school. She paid the Johnsons to look after me when she was working.”
Don’t dwell on how lonesome it was after the Johnsons poked their heads in to say good night and I was left by myself for the night, Nina thought. And then when Mother got home from a job, she’d start ranting about how hard she was working, and how it was all my fault, over and over again. I’d miss her when she was away, then when she came home I’d wish she was away on a job anywhere else in the world.
“Your mother kept the condo until you went to college, didn’t she?”
“Yes. By then all the jobs were on the West Coast. She had bought a condo out there.”
“So you spent your semester breaks and vacations with her?”
“Whenever possible. But I was getting summer-stock jobs and grabbed them whenever they were offered.”
“Nina, let’s talk about the Gala.”
Laurie listened as, in different ways, Alex asked the same questions he had asked the other girls. Her answers were virtually the same as those of the other graduates. She, too, insisted that an intruder had to have been the culprit.
“Let’s go back,” Alex suggested. “Were you surprised when Claire called and told you that her mother and Robert Powell wanted to have a Graduation Gala for the four of you?”
“Yes, but it was a good chance to see the girls again.”
“Your mother was invited to attend as well?”
“Yes, but she didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“She couldn’t take the time off. She had an audition coming up.”
“Nina, wasn’t it because Betsy scrawled on the invitation that she and Robert couldn’t wait to see her, and how blessed she was that you had called her over to the table that wonderful day she and Robert met?”
“How do you know that? Who told you that?”
“Actually, your mother did,” Alex said amiably. “Shortly before lunch today.”
She’s building up to saying that I confessed to her that I murdered Betsy, Nina thought. No matter whether anyone believes her or not, that will be the end of any chance I have with Grant.
What was Alex Buckley asking her? How would she describe her feelings about Betsy Powell?
Why not tell the truth? Why not?
“I loathed her,” she said. “Especially after I read that note. She was mean. Make that cruel. There wasn’t a decent bone in her body, and when I looked down on her dead face, I had to force myself not to spit on it.”
73
George Curtis arrived at the Powell mansion at three-thirty. He had been asked to wear the same kind of evening attire he had worn at the Gala. He had a virtual replica of it in his closet. Because it was so warm, he carried his white dinner jacket, shirt, and bow tie on a plastic-covered hanger.
Before going to the club to play bridge with her friends, Isabelle had given him a cautionary note. “Just remember, you think you kept your little romance pretty quiet, but if I was suspicious, don’t you think anyone else was? Maybe even Rob Powell? Just be careful and don’t fall into a trap. You had the strongest motive of anyone to have Betsy dead.” Then, with a kiss and a wave of her hand, she stepped into her convertible.
“Isabelle, I swear to you-” he had begun.
“I know you do,” she said. “But remember, you don’t have to convince me, and I don’t care if you did it anyway. Just don’t let yourself get caught.”
The temperature had dropped a little, but it was still very hot. George parked his car in the front driveway, picked up the clothes hanger, and walked around to the back of the house. A flurry of activity greeted him. The production crew had their cameras aimed at designated spots on the grounds. He guessed that was where the graduates would be standing while he talked in the foreground with Alex Buckley. He had been told that the background would be a rolling shot of scenes from the Gala.
Laurie Moran approached as soon as she spotted him. “Thank you so much for agreeing to do this, Mr. Curtis. We’ll try not to keep you too long. Why don’t you wait inside with the others? It’s too hot out here.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” he agreed. He crossed the patio with reluctant steps and went into the house. The four graduates were in the main dining room, dressed in the gowns that he recognized were replicas of the ones they had worn that night. Even with the skillfully applied makeup they were wearing, the tension in their faces was unmistakable.
He did not have long to wait. Laurie’s assistant Grace came in to take the graduates outside. When she came back for him, he saw that they were all in place, standing like statues against what he knew would be the background of films of the Gala. He wondered what they were thinking. He wondered if every one of them didn’t feel as he had that night. I was terrified that Betsy had the power to ruin my marriage just as the children Isabelle and I had prayed for were becoming a reality, he thought. Alison had to have been bitter. She had lost out on her scholarship because of the donation Rob had made to her college. Occasionally I would pick up something in the grocery store where her father worked, and he would always brag about how hard Alison was studying…
There’s no one in town who didn’t hear Muriel tell the story of how Betsy stole Rob from her, and the fact that it was all because of Nina. And from what I hear, Claire had desperately wanted to board at Vassar, but neither Betsy nor Rob would hear of it. “A waste of money when she has such a beautiful home,” as Betsy put it. And Regina’s father committed suicide because of his investment in Rob’s hedge fund.
Who among those girls, amid all the extravagant display, could have avoided feeling bitterness that night? And from the next day on, for twenty years, they had lived under a cloud of suspicion.
George Curtis felt a deep sense of shame. I did come back here the night of the Gala, he remembered. It was about 4 A.M. I stood here on this spot. I knew where Betsy’s bedroom was. I was crazed with fear that Isabelle would divorce me if Betsy ever told her about us. But then I could see the reflection of someone moving in Betsy’s room. There was a light in the hallway, and when the door opened I was almost sure I could tell who it was.