The Daughter-in-Law (23 page)

Worst of all, her whole life was a lie. Her time in Chicago was unexplained. In New York, she had lived as an escort on the edge of the law, carried drugs for a gangster, and tried to sleep her way to a stage career. The only thing this novice actress had struggled with was the clasp on her bra. She was subtle and evasive where the other fortune hunters had been obvious. She was dangerous while they had been amusing.

And this was the last person to see her son alive. The only witness to his mysterious death. The beneficiary to his sizable estate. Was there any doubt that she was, in one way or another, the cause of his death? Then why was it so hard to believe that she would kill again to protect what she had killed for once before?

Alexandra made her own call to Greg Lambert. “Keep digging! Get all the details on every moment of her life.” There was a smoking gun out there somewhere, and Alexandra was determined to find it.

THIRTY-SEVEN

N
ICOLE WAS
on the edge of rage when she appeared in Ben Tobin’s waiting room. She was in a skirt and sweater that seemed all business and with barely the essential makeup. Her eyes were fiery and she charged into Ben’s office with a nearly athletic gait.

“Well, what do we do now? Just wait around until she kills me?”

Ben blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know what happened?” Nicole was stunned until she realized that a fire in a suburban outbuilding probably didn’t make the evening news. “You don’t know about the explosion?”

His expression told her that he didn’t, so she dropped into one of his side chairs, poured herself a glass of water, and then gave him the full story. She began with her arrival at the caretaker’s cottage, her realization that she was very early, and her decision to spend a few minutes down past the cabana. Then the explosion and her race back to the cottage where she found the building in flames and Jack bending over what seemed like Pam’s dead body. “The security people came. One ran from somewhere on the grounds and another one drove up from the gate. And then the fire trucks and police cars followed by an ambulance. I was just standing there, maybe ten feet from where they were working on Pam. And all I could think of was that it was supposed to be me. I thought Pam might die and I knew that I was the one who was supposed to have been killed.”

Ben was as critical of the charge as Jack had been with Alexandra. “Who? Who tried to kill you?”

Nicole explained the arrangements for the peace conference between her and Alexandra. “It was just supposed to be the two of us. Cookies and tea in the cottage. A chance to explain ourselves and iron out our differences.”

Ben was nodding. That was exactly the kind of meeting that he had discussed with Victor Crane.

“If I had parked the car and walked into the cottage like I was
supposed to, I would have been the one caught in the explosion. Kind of a scary coincidence, don’t you think? The daughter-in-law they are trying to get rid of gets killed in an improbable accident? How many houses on the North Shore do you think have blown up in the past ten years? How many when the evil daughter-in-law had just stepped inside?”

“I don’t believe this,” Ben managed.

Nicole nodded. “Neither will anyone else. That’s what makes it so perfect. Who would ever believe that one of America’s great families would blow up a house just to get rid of their son’s widow? So, if it had worked, I’d be out of the picture. And if it didn’t, at least I’d know just how far they’d go to get what they want...”

“I guess I don’t know them all that well. But, still, I’m completely stunned by what you’re telling me.”

“Maybe that’s what makes the rich, rich. There’s nothing they won’t do to get what they want. Well, if they think I’m just going to run and hide, they’re in for a surprise. I don’t want a nice, quiet settlement. I want to make them pay!”

He still couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. He had known Jack Donner for years. He was a tough boss and a ruthless competitor. If he had wanted to scare Nicole off, he would have done it himself. Jack didn’t have to resort to murder to get what he wanted. And he knew Alexandra to be tough and demanding. “They like to recall that in the early days, when Jack was just getting started and Alexandra was his office manager, that clients and suppliers were more afraid of Alexandra than they were of her husband. People would call to complain about something, and if they got Alexandra they’d just hang up.” He had to agree that she would have gone to any lengths to protect her son. But rigging a bomb? That was inconceivable.

“What’s our next step?” Nicole demanded. “And don’t tell me about friendly negotiations with the Donners. I’d be afraid to be in the same room with either of them.”

Ben urged her to reconsider. The worst thing a client could do was get emotionally involved in her own case. If this were contested in court, the probate lawyers would gather around the case like vultures. It might take years before any real money was awarded. But now, if the explosion had really put Nicole in danger, then the Donners would be that much more anxious to avoid any kind of a public
airing. It took him half an hour to get her agreement for him to take up the discussions with Jack’s lawyers.

Ben discussed the situation with his bosses, repeating Nicole’s story as accurately as he could remember it.

“Jack Donner in a clumsy bomb scheme,” one of the partners laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. Your client must be smoking the drapes.”

“Don’t even mention the fire,” another advised. “Just get the biggest number you can without aggravating Jack. Let’s try to get through this without making the Donners our enemies.”

The consensus was that Ben shouldn’t even meet with Jack. He didn’t have enough experience and Jack Donner would eat him alive. “If he gets involved personally, one of us will handle it.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

G
REG LAMBERT’S
arson experts lifted every stick of the caretaker’s cottage and scooped up every ash. They also checked the electric lines and gas lines leading to the structure, the gas and electric meters, and the telephone service lines. The report took ten double-spaced pages plus another eight pages of drawings and exhibits.

It confirmed that the household gas had been the source of the explosion, and that the volume of gas was extraordinary. Due to the porosity of the structure, the gas source needed to fill the building had to be much more than a doused pilot light. That amount of gas would vent out almost as quickly as it entered. But there was no way of knowing exactly what the source was. It might have been the broken gas line that was observed after the fire.

Telephone records showed that the phone line was not in use. In fact, no calls had been placed from the cottage in several days, nor had any calls been received. Most destructive of Alexandra’s theory was that no phone attachment or other electronic device was found. The inspectors had to look elsewhere to determine the source of ignition.

There were several candidates. Pam might have created a static electrical charge just by running across the hall carpet in her tennis shoes. That could have been sufficient to ignite a high concentration of gas. The cause might have been the sunlight focused by a window pane. Even a momentary beam created by the sun’s position could cause a hot spot within the house. But the weight of the investigation pointed to the security system. Once she opened the door, Pam had twenty seconds to push the “OK” button. At the end of that time the alarm system would assume that an intruder— unfamiliar with the alarm—had entered, and it would automatically send a telephone signal to the alarm monitoring company. The relay, the report stated in both words and diagrams, was burned from the inside, indicating that it had sparked. That spark, occur-
ring exactly twenty seconds after someone entered the door, could certainly have ignited the dense atmosphere of gas. But this, of course, was only a possibility.

The conclusion was inconclusive. The gas leak could be the result of failure of the old gas line or carelessness on the part of a housekeeper. There were many plausible explanations for the source of ignition but there was no evidence that it had been caused by an outside agent.

“I don’t give a damn what it says,” Alexandra snapped when Jack told her. “How do we know that she didn’t come early just so she could go inside and turn on the burners? And she could have left a small candle burning or even a cigarette.”

“How would the candle know when someone was inside the building?” Jack pressed. “Face it, Alexandra, she may well wish you were dead and buried, but she didn’t plan the explosion. Nothing in her sordid background qualifies her as a bomb expert.”

He was right. There was nothing. Alexandra had investigated Nicole from every angle for every period of her life. The girl hadn’t even taken high school chemistry. No one could seriously accuse her of rigging the explosion.

In fact, if the evidence pointed anywhere, it would have to be toward Alexandra. She would have had any number of opportunities to enter the cottage and disconnect the gas line. She was also completely familiar with the security system, which was the same one used in the main house and throughout the property. She knew that twenty seconds after the front door was opened, a signal would be sent to the security people at the front gate, and a phone call would be placed. Did she know that either of those operations could prove deadly in a gas-filled room?

THIRTY-NINE

P
AM WAS
put in charge of the preparations for the traditional Newport party, one of the highlights of the town’s social season. Each August, when the Donners opened their Newport house, they brought their Manhattan friends up the coast to Rhode Island for a gathering that usually rated a full page in the
Times
society section. Most came by boat, either their own yachts or hired cruisers. Some of the Hamptons crowd arrived by helicopter, setting down the dock amid the masts of the gathering fleet. Those already vacationing on the Cape or in Maine made the trip by car. No one ever passed up the invitation.

It was a two-day affair with most of the guests sleeping aboard the boats while close family used the rooms in the house. The arrivals came in their vacation attire, and gathered around the pool for cocktails. Then they moved out to the great lawn for a clambake that featured the morning’s catch from the coast of Maine. The day ended with a fireworks display.

The second day was spent around the pool with a long brunch that lasted into the cocktail hour. The guests left to dress, returning in a show of summer’s hottest fashions, and were treated to a banquet under a tent. Then there was dancing to the wee hours of the morning.

The event had its legends. A middle-aged gentleman, still spending a fortune made in the railroad days, had smuggled one of the catering girls aboard his yacht. On seeing his wife returning in a launch, he had instantly tossed the young lady over the side. He dove in after her when he realized she couldn’t swim, and then became an instant hero for rescuing a poor, deluded woman who was trying to commit suicide. The wife, of course, suspected the truth, and filed for a divorce as soon as they returned home. She was awarded the yacht and half the old railroad fortune.

Another year, a stray shell from the fireworks display had landed
on the deck of a forty-foot ketch and burned the boat down to the waterline. The owner, who had already written off the yacht to his corporation and its shareholders, was among the revelers who toasted and saluted as the ship went down.

Most scandalous was the young Puerto Rican boy from the gardening crew who had passed himself off as a South American polo player. He had had his way with two of the debutante daughters, and was halfway through the main course at the banquet, before being discovered. For obvious reasons, no one had come forth to press charges. Over the years there had been enough dalliances, pratfalls, and brazenly outrageous behavior so that guests came expecting some sort of scandal. In most years, they hadn’t been disappointed.

Pam had invitations printed that included a photo of the burning ketch to remind most of the regulars of the event’s checkered past. But she delivered Nicole’s invitation personally so that she could explain the affair’s history. She wanted to be sure that Nicole didn’t simply decline what she might think was just another stuffy party, nor did she want her sister-in-law to break from the family. Pam still hoped that Nicole might join her in her plans for an art gallery.

Nicole’s invitation had been Jack’s idea, something he had discussed with Victor Crane without sharing with his wife. Negotiations for a settlement with Nicole were going nowhere, his latest final offer of five million dollars having been rejected. Nicole, according to Ben Tobin, was fully prepared to risk a court test of her inheritance rights, which would involve delving into exactly what the value of the estate was.

Jack didn’t want there to be any suspicion that there even were issues. Everyone would expect Jonathan’s widow to at least make an appearance so that there could be some expression of sympathy. It would be best if she were seen as a member of the family, and not as the fuse about to ignite another society scandal. He also wanted to hold out an olive branch, hoping that a sign of goodwill might make her negotiating stance a bit less contentious.

“Have you gone completely mad?” Alexandra had demanded when he launched the first trial balloon. “I’m supposed to give a woman who tried to kill me run of the house? Give Jonathan’s killer access to all our friends so that she can spread her lies?”

He had countered that no one, not even their own investigators, supported Alexandra’s theories and accusations. He reminded her
how much worse it would be if all this rotten business were aired in court in front of tabloid reporters. “It would be the biggest thing since the Jack Welch affair,” he warned, referencing the gleeful headlines when the great CEO’s marital difficulties were made public. Then he reminded her that there was a lot to be gained. There could be no negotiations through a barrier of animosity and suspicion. They had to win their daughter-in-law’s trust before they could hope to settle her claims.