I Heard That Song Before (24 page)

“And then, in the presence of other people, the night of the dinner party, she fell off the wagon. Mr. Hammond, if, as you have just suggested, your wife was aware of your affair, is it possible that she spiked Grace’s club soda that night?”

“Unlikely, but I guess it’s possible. Somebody did, that’s for sure. Grace would never have risked drinking in front of Elaine and Vincent Slater. Either one of them would have told Peter—she knew that.”

“You have told me that you went home minutes after Peter went up to bed. Were the gates in the driveway open?”

“Yes. Of course, they can be closed, but they seldom were, even at night. I doubt if Peter and Grace even remembered to turn on the alarm system half the time.”

Greco wondered if that was really true, or if Hammond was indicating, for some reason of his own, that both the grounds and the house were easily accessible. “You would have gone home about what time?” he asked.

“A little after eleven. As you have seen, we live quite close to the Carringtons, even though we’re not in the estate section of town.”

“What did you do after you got home?”

“I went up to bed. Nancy wasn’t tired and stayed downstairs to read.”

“Do you remember what time she came to bed?”

Jeffrey Hammond’s face turned red. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “We had had a pretty big row, and I was sleeping in my son’s room. He was away at a sleepover with a friend.”

“You have been more than candid with me, Mr. Hammond,” Greco said. “Frankly, I wonder why.”

“I’ll tell you why.” Suddenly Jeffrey Hammond’s voice was filled with the controlled fury Greco had heard earlier when he expressed the wish that the death penalty would be kept in New Jersey. “I
loved
Grace. We could have had a lifetime of happiness together. I want her killer found. If there’s one thing I
don’t
have it’s a motive for killing her. I think you can see that, so I don’t have to worry about being a suspect in her death. Maybe she got up, went outside, and lost her balance at the edge of the pool. I know that’s possible. But if someone
did
take her life, I want that person found and convicted, even if it means publicly acknowledging our relationship, with all that implies. I love my son, but not enough to let a beautiful woman’s life be snuffed out by someone who gets away with it.”

“Do
you
think Peter Carrington killed Grace?”

“I do and I don’t. Not over the issue of the money—that wouldn’t have mattered to him. Peter is not his father’s son in that respect. I don’t think he’d kill her out of pride, either, the cuckolded-husband outrage. I just don’t see Peter doing that. He was frustrated rather than furious when he grabbed the glass out of her hand. From what I know now, I do think it’s possible he might have killed her in a sleepwalking state. After seeing that tape of him attacking that policeman, I think that’s entirely possible.”

“Do you also think it’s possible that your wife went back to the mansion, perhaps woke up Grace, and suggested they go outside for a breath of air, and then pushed her into the pool?”

“Nancy never would have done that,” Hammond said vehemently. “She’s far too clearheaded to lose control that way. She’d never risk going to prison, because then she’d surely be separated from me and our son for good. The ultimate irony has been that she feels about me the way that I felt about Grace. She still hopes that in time I’ll fall in love with her again.”

“Will you, Mr. Hammond?”

“I only wish I could.”

A
fter Banks and Markinson left, I went upstairs and lay down to rest. It was almost five o’clock. I knew that a security guard was at the gate and another on the grounds. I had sent Jane home, telling her that I wasn’t feeling well, and that I would heat some of her homemade soup later on. Thank God, she didn’t protest. I think it must have been evident from my manner that I absolutely wanted to be alone.

Alone in this great, sprawling house from which, hundreds of years ago, in another country, a priest had been dragged out and hacked to death on the lawn. As I lay on the bed in our suite, I, too, felt like I had been hacked to pieces.

Was it possible, I asked myself, that my husband, Peter Carrington, had rushed me to the altar because he needed to make sure I could never testify against him?

Was it possible that all his declarations of love were merely the calculations of a cold-blooded killer who, rather than take the chance of murdering me, married me instead?”

I thought of Peter standing in that holding cell, looking at me, with eyes that were alive with his love for me. Behind that expression, had he been mocking me, Kay Lansing, daughter of the landscaper, who had the colossal stupidity to think that he had fallen in love with her at first sight?

There are none so blind as those who will not see
, I reminded myself.

I put my hand on my abdomen, a gesture that was becoming almost a reflex reaction to thoughts or situations I did not want to deal with. I was sure the baby was a boy, not because I preferred to have a boy rather than a girl, but because I just knew it was a boy. I was sure I was carrying Peter’s son.

Peter
does
love me, I told myself fiercely. There is no other answer.

Am I deluding myself? No. No. No.

Hold fast to what you have, for it is happiness
. Who said that? I forget. But I shall and will hold fast to my love for Peter, and to his belief in me. I must, because every instinct tells me that this is truth. This is what is real.

I eventually felt myself calming down. I guess I even dozed a little, because the ring of the phone on the bedside table startled me awake. It was Elaine.

“Kay,” she said, I could hear a quivering in her voice.

“Yes, Elaine.” I was hoping that if she was in her house, she didn’t want to drop in on me.

“Kay, I must talk with you. It’s desperately important. May I come over in five minutes?”

I clearly had no choice but to tell her to come. I got up and dashed some cold water on my face, then touched my lashes with mascara and my lips with a light touch of color, and went downstairs. It may sound silly that I bothered to go to that trouble for Peter’s stepmother, but I had a growing sense of a looming turf battle between me and Elaine. With Peter in jail and me so new on the scene, she had been getting in the habit of walking in and out of the house as if it were once again her home.

When she came in this evening, however, there was nothing of the lady of the manor reestablishing her position about her. Elaine was ghastly pale, and her hands were trembling. There was no question that she was nervous and terribly upset. I noticed that she was carrying a plastic bag under one arm.

She didn’t even give me a chance to greet her before she said, “Kay, Richard is in terrible trouble. He’s been gambling again. I must have a million dollars right away.”

A million dollars! That was more money than I would have made if I had worked my entire life at the library. “Elaine,” I protested, “first of all, I don’t have anything like that kind of money, and it’s useless to ask Peter for it. He has told me he thinks you’re very foolish to keep bailing Richard out. He said that the day you refuse to pay his gambling debt is the day Richard is finally going to have to do something about his addiction to gambling.”

“If Richard doesn’t pay this debt, he won’t be alive long enough to do anything about his addiction.” Elaine said. She was clearly on the verge of hysteria. “Listen to me, Kay. I’ve been protecting Peter for nearly twenty-three years. I saw him come home the night he killed Susan. He was sleepwalking, and there was blood on his shirt. I didn’t know what kind of trouble he was in, but I knew I had to protect him. I took that shirt out of the hamper so that the maid wouldn’t see it. If you think I’m lying, look at this.”

She dropped the plastic bag she was carrying on the coffee table and pulled something out of it. It was a man’s white dress shirt. She held it up for me to see. There were dark smudges on the collar and around the top three buttons. “Do you understand what this is?” she asked.

A wave of dizziness made me sink down onto the couch. Yes, I understood what she was holding. I did not doubt for a single instance that it was Peter’s shirt, or that the dark stains were Susan Althorp’s blood.

“Have the money for me tomorrow morning, Kay,” Elaine said.

My mind was suddenly filled with the image of Peter hurting Susan. The antopsy report showed that she had suffered a severe blow to her mouth. That was the way he had flailed out at the cop. My God, I thought, my God. There is no hope for him.

“Did you see Peter come home that night?” I asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“You’re
sure
he was sleepwalking?”

“I am positive. He walked past me in the corridor and never even saw me.”

“What time did he come in?”

“At two o’clock.”

“Why were you in the corridor at that time?”

“Peter’s father was still ranting about the cost of the party, so I decided to go to one of the other bedrooms. That’s when I saw Peter coming up the stairs.”

“And then you went into Peter’s bathroom to get the shirt. Suppose he had seen you, Elaine. What then?”

“I would have told him that I knew he’d been sleepwalking, and was concerned that he went safely back to bed. But he didn’t wake up. Thank God I took the shirt with me. If it had been found in the hamper the next morning, he’d have been arrested and convicted. He’d probably still be in prison.”

Elaine started to look relieved. I guess she realized that I would get the money for her. She folded the shirt neatly and put it back in the plastic bag, as though she were a clerk in a department store, completing a sale.

“If you were really trying to help Peter, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to get rid of the shirt?” I challenged her.

“No, because it was proof that I did see Peter that night.”

A kind of insurance policy, I thought. Something tucked away against a rainy day. “I’ll get you the money, Elaine,” I promised, “but only if you give that shirt to me.”

“I will. Kay, I’m sorry to do this. I’ve protected Peter because I love him. Now I have to protect my son. That’s why I’m here bargaining with you. When you have a child of your own, you’ll understand.”

Maybe I do already, I thought. I had not told anyone except the lawyers that I was pregnant. It was too soon, and besides, I didn’t want it leaked to the press. I certainly was not going to tell Elaine about the baby now, I thought bitterly, not when I was bargaining to buy the bloody shirt that proved its father was a killer.

V
incent Slater had attended a business dinner in Manhattan and was not home in time to respond to Kay’s urgent request to call him. “If you don’t get back to me this evening, be sure to call first thing in the morning,” she told his answering machine.

It was 11:30
P.M
. when he got the message. He knew Kay went to bed fairly early, so he wouldn’t try to call her now. But what could be so urgent? he wondered. That night, even though he was usually a sound sleeper, he found himself waking up several times.

His phone rang at seven
A.M
. It was Kay. “I don’t want to talk over the phone,” she said. “Be sure to stop by here on your way to the city.”

“I’m up and dressed already,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

When he got to the mansion, Kay brought him back to the kitchen, where she had been having a cup of coffee. “I wanted to see you before Jane gets here at eight o’clock,” she said. “Last month, that first morning after we got back from our honeymoon, Peter and I went jogging early. I made coffee for us before we went out. It was fun being just the two of us, Mr. and Mrs. Newlywed living in suburbia. It seems a lifetime ago.”

In the harsh morning light, Slater could see that it looked as if Kay was losing weight. Her cheekbones seemed more prominent, her eyes enormous. Afraid of what he might hear, he asked what had happened to upset her so much.

“What happened? Nothing very much. It’s just that it seems Peter’s loving stepmother claims she has been protecting him for years, and now she needs a little help in return.”

“What do you mean, Kay?”

“She is willing to sell me an object that could hurt Peter very much if it fell into the hands of the wrong person—meaning the prosecutor. The price is one million dollars, and she must have it today.”

“What object?” Slater snapped. “Kay, what are you talking about?”

Kay bit her lip. “I can’t tell you what it is, so don’t ask me any questions about it. She needs that money today because her wonderful son Richard is deeply in debt after making losing bets. I know Peter opened a joint account for us. How much is in it? Is there enough for me to write a check to her?”

“Kay, you’re not using your head. A check takes time to clear. The only way I can get money that fast is to wire it directly into her account. Are you
sure
you want to do this? You know how Peter feels about Richard’s gambling. He’d want no part of subsidizing it. Maybe Elaine’s bluffing.”

“She—is—not—bluffing! She—is—not—bluffing!” Kay shouted, then clasped her hands to her face as a flood of tears rushed down her cheeks.

Startled, Slater watched as she impatiently brushed the tears away in an effort to control her emotions. “I’m sorry. It’s just—”

“All right, Kay,” he said soothingly. “All right. Don’t do this to yourself. I’ll wire the money to her.”

“I don’t want Peter to know,” Kay said, her voice low but controlled. “At least not yet. He goes to that sleep disorder center tonight. He’s got enough to deal with without having to worry about this, too.”

“He doesn’t have to know yet. I have power of attorney to transfer money. But realize something: Once that money is transferred, you can’t get it back. Will she turn this object over to you before the transfer?”

“I doubt it very much. Let me finish this cup of coffee, then I’ll call her. I don’t want to sound upset when I’m talking to her.”