I've Got You Under My Skin (16 page)

43

O
n Tuesday morning Josh drove the Bentley to be hand-washed and detailed. Mr. Rob was very particular that it be kept in pristine order,
Or else,
Josh thought as he waited in the chair in the service center.

With a sense of satisfaction, Josh congratulated himself on solving the problem of how the graduates would be able to play the tapes he had recorded. He would put his cassette player in the powder room in the hallway next to the kitchen. There was a vanity table and bench in it for any guest who might want to touch up her makeup or hair. He would present the cassettes to Nina, Regina, and Alison and tell them they might be interested in hearing their conversations in the car, then suggest it might be worth fifty thousand dollars to have each copy destroyed.

They would be panicky, the three of them, he was sure of it. Claire hadn’t said a word in the car when he drove her, so there was no cassette for her. And yet, of all of them, Josh would bet that she had the most to reveal.

He had the suicide note that Regina had hidden in her purse. Josh had debated whether to give it to Mr. Rob or try to find a better use for it. Then he found his answer: charge Regina one hundred thousand dollars, maybe even more, to get it back and tell her that other
wise he would go straight to the police. That note might take any suspicion of killing Betsy off Mr. Rob, Jane, and the other graduates.

And Josh would be a hero and good citizen if he turned it over to the police chief. But the police might ask what he was doing going through ladies’ handbags. He did not have a good answer to that question, and he was hoping one would not be necessary.

Mr. Rob hadn’t sent him to pick up any of the graduates this morning. Instead, sounding testy, he instructed him to come to the house after he left the service center, in case he decided to go into the office.

It was obviously unsettling for Mr. Rob to have all these people around. Not only must it bring up a lot of memories, Josh thought, but Mr. Rob must know that he’s under suspicion, too, and want desperately to clear his name.

Like Jane, Josh had managed to sneak a look at Mr. Rob’s will when it was on his desk. He had left $10 million to Harvard, to be used to fund scholarships for deserving students, and $5 million to Waverly College, where he had received an honorary doctorate and had already had the library named after Betsy and him.

Alison Schaefer had gone to Waverly. Josh remembered how she was the best student of the four girls and had talked about going to medical school, but then married Rod Kimball instead four months after the Gala.

Josh had always wondered why she hadn’t brought Rod to the Gala that night. You never know, he told himself, they might have had an argument.

As the service manager approached Josh to tell him the car was ready, Josh concluded his line of thinking. Mr. Rob is a very sick man trying to ensure his legacy before he dies, he decided.

But as Josh got into the Bentley and drove away, he could not help thinking that there might be more reasons for Mr. Rob going ahead with the program than met the eye.

44

L
eo Farley’s impatience at his hospitalization grew with every passing moment. Disdainfully, he looked at the needle inserted in his left arm and the bottle of fluid connected to it dangling overhead. He had a heart monitor strapped to his chest, and when he had tried to get up a nurse came rushing in. “Mr. Farley, you cannot go to the bathroom alone. You have to be accompanied by a nurse. However, you
can
close the door.”

Isn’t that wonderful, Leo thought mockingly, even as he realized it wasn’t right to kill the messenger. Instead, he thanked the nurse and grudgingly allowed her to follow him to the door of the bathroom. At 9 
A.M.
when his doctor came in, Leo was loaded for bear. “Look,” he said, “I can get away without calling my daughter. She saw me last night just before I came in here, so I know she won’t look to speak to me until tonight. She has two more days to finish this program, and there’s a lot of pressure on her to make sure it’s successful. If I have to tell her I’m in the hospital, she’ll be terribly upset and probably end up coming here instead of finishing the show.”

Dr. James Morris, an old friend, was equally forceful. “Leo, your daughter will be a lot more upset if something happens to you. I’ll call Laurie—she knows you get these fibrillations—make it very clear to her that you’re stable now and I should be able to release
you tomorrow morning. I can do it before you call this evening or after. You will do her and your grandson a lot more good by staying alive and healthy than by risking a major heart attack.”

Dr. Morris’s beeper sounded. “I’m sorry, Leo, I have to go.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll finish this later.”

After Dr. Morris left him, he reached for his cell phone and called Camp Mountainside. He was connected to the camp administrator’s office, then the head counselor, whom he had met before. “This is the pain-in-the-neck grandfather,” he said. “I just wanted to know how Timmy was doing. Any nightmares?”

“No,” the counselor said firmly. “I inquired about him at breakfast, and the senior camper in his bunk said he slept for nine hours straight without stirring.”

Relieved, Leo said, “Well, that is really good news.”

“Stop worrying, Mr. Farley. We’re taking good care of him. And how are
you
doing?”

“I could be better,” Leo said ruefully. “I’m in Mount Sinai Hospital with heart fibrillations. I never like feeling that I’m not available for Timmy every minute of the day.”

Leo could not know that the counselor was thinking that with the strain he had been under for the last five years, it was no wonder he was having fibrillations. Instead he heard and appreciated the counselor’s assurances. “You take care of yourself, Mr. Farley. We’ll take care of your grandson. I promise.”

Two hours later, when Blue Eyes heard the recorded conversation, he thought excitedly, He has played into my hands. Now they’ll
never
doubt me.

45

J
ane Novak had worn the same-style plain black dress and white apron for the twenty-nine years she had been in the Powell household.

Her hair was also in the same style: combed back into a neat bun. The only difference was that it was now streaked with gray. Jane had never worn makeup and was scornful of Meg Miller’s attempt to put even the lightest powder and eyebrow pencil on her. “Mrs. Novak, it’s simply because the lights from the camera will wash you out,” Meg said. But Jane would have none of it. “I know I have good skin,” she said, “and that’s because I never used any of that silly junk on it.”

She did not know that even while Meg was saying, “Of course, as you wish,” she was thinking that Jane indeed had a beautiful complexion and good features. Except for the droop at the end of her lips and the almost-scowling expression in her eyes, Jane Novak would be a very attractive woman, Meg thought.

Claire was the next one who would accept only a minimum amount of makeup. “I never wore any,” she said. Then she added bitterly: “No one would look at me anyhow. They had my mother to rave over.”

Regina was obviously so nervous that Meg did her best to pat the light beads of perspiration from her forehead with a concealer, in case she continued to sweat.

Alison, very quiet, simply shrugged when Meg said, “We’re only doing a little because of the lights.”

Nina Craig said, “I’m an actress. I know what lighting does. Do the best you can.”

There was little that Courtney, the hairdresser, could do except to style the graduates’ hair as close to how it had looked in the twenty-year-old photograph.

While Laurie waited for her stars in the den, Jerry and Grace were ready to make any adjustments Laurie thought necessary.

An enlarged picture of the four graduates and Jane, taken twenty years ago by the police photographer, rested on an easel out of the range of the camera, a template for arranging the women for their interviews. The cameraman, his assistant, and the lighting technician had already placed the cameras accordingly. Three of the girls had been sitting on the long couch, giving the appearance of being huddled together. There were two armchairs on either side of the cocktail table in front of the couch. Jane Novak was in one of them, her face grief-stricken, her eyes shining with unshed tears. Claire Bonner was sitting opposite her, her expression contemplative, but without any visible sign of grief.

Busily observing the present activity, Alex Buckley sat near the door in the leather chair in which Mr. Rob often sat at the end of the day. “It’s a recliner,” Jane told Laurie. “He likes to adjust it so his feet are up. His doctor said it was good for circulation.”

It’s a beautiful room, Alex thought as he looked around appraisingly. The mahogany paneling on the walls was the background for the vivid Persian carpet. The wall-mounted television was in the center of the bookshelves and over the fireplace. The furniture had been broken into two seating groups; the couch and chairs where the graduates and Jane Novak were now seated, and the couch and armchair with the leather recliner. The sliding glass door to the patio was on the right side of the couch where the girls were sitting and
was, according to Jane, the door they had gone in and out to have cigarettes the night of the Gala, leaving it unlocked.

According to the police report, the ashtrays on the patio table had been filled to overflowing that morning. Jane indicated that at least three empty bottles of wine were in the glass disposal unit, left after she and the caterers had cleaned up after the party.

Alex listened as Laurie explained the photo shoot to the girls. “As you know, we simply want this shot of you to set the scene, with you in virtually the same outfits and in the same places as you were that morning. Then, separately, Alex Buckley will interview you in the spots where you are sitting now, to get your reflections on what you were thinking and feeling that morning. Were you talking to each other? From the old picture it doesn’t look as if you were.”

Nina answered for them. “We almost didn’t say a word. I guess we were all in shock.”

“I can understand that,” Laurie said soothingly. “So just sit the way you did that morning, and we’ll start taking pictures. Don’t look at the cameras. Look at the picture and try to re-create the same poses.”

From his vantage point behind one of the cameras, Alex Buckley could feel the tension in the room, the same kind of tension that he sometimes felt in a courtroom when an important witness was called to the stand. He knew Laurie Moran was going for dramatic impact by having the two pictures incorporated into the film, but he also knew that her goal was to unsettle the graduates and Jane until one or more of them gave a statement that contradicted what was on record. Alex watched as Meg, the makeup artist, came quietly into the den, a compact in her hand. He knew she was there in case the camera revealed anyone’s face to be too shiny.

He marveled at the graduates’ youthful appearances and how they all had stayed slender, and he thought that Nina, who didn’t look thirty, had probably had some work done. It had been a shock
to see Claire Bonner, who just yesterday had looked so glamorous and so like the pictures of her mother, by comparison look shockingly plain today. What kind of game is she playing? he wondered.

“All right, let’s get started,” Laurie was saying. “Grace, that pillow behind Nina, it’s too far to the right.” Grace adjusted it. Laurie checked the camera again and nodded to the cameraman. Alex watched as picture after picture was taken with an occasional comment from Laurie.

“Alison, try not to turn to the left. Nina, sit back the way you were in the original, otherwise you look as if you are posing. Jane, turn your head a little this way.”

It was thirty-five minutes before Laurie was satisfied with what she saw in the camera’s viewfinder. “Thanks very much,” she said briskly. “We’ll take a short break and then Alex will start interviewing you. Claire, he’ll start with you. We’ll be back in the den and you two will sit opposite each other in the chairs you and Jane are in now. The rest of you will have some downtime. There are newspapers and magazines in the dressing rooms. It’s such a beautiful day, I imagine you will want to sit on the patio?”

One by one they all got to their feet. Jane was the first one to head for the door. “I’ll put the snacks out and you can help yourselves,” she said. “You can have them outside or in the breakfast room. We’ll be having lunch at one-thirty.”