‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ Chapters 1-10

“And the usual glass of chardonnay,” he added as he jotted down the order.

You do something for a few days in a row and it becomes the usual, she thought wryly.

Almost instantly the chardonnay was placed on the table before her. She picked up the glass and looked around the room as she sipped.

All of the diners were dressed in designer casual clothes. The Breakers was an expensive hotel, a retreat for the well-heeled. It was the Easter holiday week, and, nationwide, schools were closed. At breakfast in the dining room she had observed that families with children were usually accompanied by a nanny who skillfully removed a restless toddler so that the parents could enjoy the lavish buffet in peace.

The lunchtime crowd in the bar was composed almost totally of adults. In walking around she had noticed that the younger families gravitated to the restaurants by the pool, where the choice of casual fare was greater.

What would it have been like to vacation here every year from childhood? Claire wondered. Then she tried to brush away the memories of falling asleep each night in a half-empty theatre where her mother was working as an usher. That was before they met Robert Powell, of course. But by then Claire’s childhood was almost over.

As those thoughts went through her head, two couples, still in travel clothes, took the table next to hers. She heard one of the women sigh happily, “It’s so good to be back.”

I’ll pretend I’m coming back, she thought. I’ll pretend that every year I have the same oceanfront room and look forward to long walks on the beach before breakfast.

The waiter arrived with the chowder. “Really hot, the way you like it, Ms. Bonner,” he said.

The first day, she had asked for the chowder to be very hot and the crabs to be served as the second course. The waiter had also committed that request to memory.

The first sip of the chowder almost burned the roof of her mouth and she stirred the rest of it inside the soup bowl that was a scooped-out loaf of bread to cool it a bit. Then she reached for her glass and took a long sip of the chardonnay. As she had expected, it was crisp and dry, exactly as it had tasted for the last few days.

Outside an even stronger wind was churning the breaking waves into clouds of cascading foam.

Claire realized that she felt like one of those surges of water, trying to reach shore but at the mercy of the powerful wind. It was still her decision. She could always say no. She’d said no to returning to her stepfather’s house for years. And she passionately didn’t want to go now. No one could force her to go on a national cable television show and take part in reenacting the party and sleepover twenty years ago when the four of them, best friends, had celebrated their graduation from college.

But if she did take part in the show, the production company would give her fifty thousand dollars, and Rob would give her two hundred fifty thousand dollars.

Three hundred thousand dollars. It would mean that she could take a leave of absence from her job in Chicago’s youth and family services. The bout of pneumonia she had survived in January had come close to killing her, and she knew her body was still weak and tired. She had never accepted Powell’s offer of money. Not a single cent. She had torn up his letters and returned them to him. After what he did.

They wanted to call it the “Graduation Gala.” It had been a beautiful party, a wonderful party, Claire thought. Then Alison and Regina and Nina had stayed overnight. And sometime during that night, my mother had been murdered. Betsy Bonner Powell, beautiful, vivacious, generous, funny, beloved Betsy.

I thoroughly despised her, Claire thought quietly.

I absolutely hated my mother, and I loathed her beloved husband, even though he kept trying to send me money.

 

Chapter 5

Regina Callari was sorry she had gone to the post office and picked up the registered letter from Laurie Moran, a producer at Fisher Blake Studios. Take part in a reality program that would reenact the night of the Graduation Gala! she thought, dismayed—and, frankly, shocked.

The letter upset her so much that she knew she had lost a sale. She had to fumble for the features of the house she was showing, and in the middle of the walk-through the prospective client said, abruptly, “I think I’ve seen enough; this is not the house I’m looking for.”

Then, after she got back to the office, she had to phone the owner, seventy-six-year-old Bridget Whiting, and tell her that she had been wrong. “I was sure we had a good prospect but it just didn’t happen,” she apologized.

Bridget’s disappointment was palpably evident in her voice. “I don’t know how long they’ll keep that apartment for me in the assisted-living home, and it’s exactly what I want. Oh dear! Regina, maybe I built up my hopes too much. It’s not your fault.”

But it is my fault, Regina thought, trying to keep raw anger out of her voice as she swore to Bridget that she was going to find her a buyer and fast, and then, knowing how difficult that would be in this market, said good-bye.

Her office, a one-room former garage, had once been part of a private residence on the main street in St. Augustine, Florida. The bleak housing market had improved, but not sufficiently for Regina to do more than eke out a living. Now she put her elbows on her desk and pressed her fingers to the sides of her forehead. Wisps of curly hair reminded her that her midnight-black hair was growing with its usual annoying rapidity. She knew she would have to make an appointment for a trim. The fact that the hairdresser always insisted on talking a blue streak was what had kept her from making the appointment—that, and the cost.

That silly fact made Regina annoyed at herself and her own always present impatience. So what, she told herself, if for twenty minutes Lena yak-yak-yakked away? She’s the only one who knows how to make this unruly mop look decent.

Regina’s dark brown eyes traveled to the picture on her desk. Zach, her nineteen-year-old son, smiled back at her from it. He was just completing his sophomore year at the University of Pennsylvania, an education fully paid for by his father, her ex-husband. Zach had phoned last night. Hesitantly, he had asked if she would mind if he went backpacking through Europe and the Middle East this summer. He had planned to come home and get a job in St. Augustine, but jobs were hard to find there. It wouldn’t cost all that much, and his father would finance him.

“I’ll be back in time to spend ten days with you before the term starts, Mom,” he had assured her, his tone pleading.

Regina had told him that it was a wonderful opportunity and that he should jump at it. She hadn’t let the keen disappointment she felt sound in her voice. She missed Zach. She missed the sweet little boy who used to come bounding into the office from the school bus, eager to share every single moment of his day with her. She missed the tall, shy adolescent who would have dinner waiting if she was out late with a client.

Since the divorce, Earl had been skillfully carving out ways to separate her from Zach. It had begun when, at age ten, Zach went to sailing camp in Cape Cod for the summer. The camp was followed by the shared holidays when Earl and his new wife took Zach skiing in Switzerland or to the South of France.

She knew Zach loved her, but a small house and a tight budget could hardly compete with life with his wildly rich father. Now he’d be gone for most of the summer.

Slowly, Regina reached for the letter from Moran and reread it. “She’ll pay fifty thousand, and the mighty Robert Nicholas Powell will pay each of us two hundred fifty thousand,” she murmured aloud. “Mr. Benevolence himself.”

She thought of her friends and former co-hosts of the Graduation Gala. Claire Bonner. She was beautiful, but always so quiet, like a faded shadow next to her mother. Alison Schaefer, so smart she put the rest of us to shame. I thought she’d end up the next Madame Curie. She got married the October after Betsy died, and then Rod, her husband, was in an accident. From what I understand, he’s been on crutches all these years. Nina Craig. We called her “the flaming redhead.” I remember even as a freshman if she got mad at you, watch out. She would even tell a teacher off if she thought she didn’t get a good enough mark on an essay.

And then there was me, Regina thought. When I was fifteen I opened the door of the garage to put my bike away and found my father swinging from a rope. His eyes were bulging and his tongue was lapping over his chin. If he had to hang himself, why didn’t he do it in his office? He knew that I’d be the one to find him in the garage. I loved him so much! How could he have done that to me? The nightmares have never stopped. They always started with her getting off her bike.

Before she called the police, and the neighbor’s house where her mother was playing bridge, she had taken the suicide note her father had pinned to his shirt and hidden it. When the police came they said that most suicide victims leave a note for the family. Sobbing, her mother had searched the house for it, while Regina pretended to help.

The girls were my lifeline after that, Regina thought. We were such close friends. After the Gala and Betsy’s death, Claire and Nina and I were Alison’s bridesmaids. That had been such a stupid move. It was so soon after Betsy died; the tabloids had made a spectacle of the wedding. The headlines were all a rehashing of the Graduation Gala murder. That was when we realized that all four of us would continue to be under suspicion; maybe for the rest of our lives.

We never got together again, Regina lamented. After the wedding we all went out of our way to avoid any contact with each other. We all moved to different cities.

What would it be like to see them again, to be under the same roof? We were all so young then, so shocked and frightened when Betsy’s body was discovered. And the way the police questioned us, together, then separately. It’s a miracle one of us didn’t break down and confess to smothering her, the way they hammered at us. “We know it was somebody inside that house. Which one of you did it? If it wasn’t you, maybe it was one of your friends. Protect yourself. Tell us what you know.”

Regina thought of how the police had wondered if Betsy’s emeralds might have been the motive. She left them on the glass tray on her dressing table when she went to bed. They suggested that she woke up while she was being robbed and whoever was there panicked. One of her earrings was on the floor. Had Betsy dropped it when she took it off, or had someone, wearing gloves, panicked and dropped it when she woke up?

Regina got up slowly and looked around. She tried to visualize having three hundred thousand dollars in the bank. Almost half of that would go to income tax, she warned herself. But even so, it would be an unimaginable windfall. Or maybe it would bring back the days when her father had been so successful, and they, as well as Robert and Betsy Powell, had the big house in Salem Ridge with all the trimmings, housekeeper, a cook, a landscaper, a chauffeur, a top New York caterer for their frequent parties ...

Regina looked around her one-room real estate office. Even with the Sheetrock walls painted light blue to coordinate with her white desk and the white armchairs with blue cushions for potential clients, the room looked like what it was: a brave effort to hide a thin budget. A garage is a garage is a garage, she thought, except for the one luxury I installed when I bought this property after the divorce.

The luxury was down the hall past the unisex restroom. Unmarked and always locked, it was a private bathroom with a Jacuzzi, steam shower, vanity sink, and wardrobe closet. It was here that sometimes, at the end of the day, she would shower, change, and then meet her friends or go out to a solitary dinner followed by a movie.

Earl had left her ten years ago, when Zach was going on nine. He hadn’t been able to put up with her bouts of depression. “Get help, Regina. I’m sick of the moods. I’m sick of the nightmares. It’s not good for our son, just in case you haven’t noticed.”

After the divorce, Earl, a computer salesman at the time, whose hobby had been writing songs, had finally sold a collection of his music to a major recording artist. His next step had been to marry budding rock singer Sonya Miles. When Sonya hit the charts with the album he wrote for her, Earl became a celebrity in the world he coveted. He took to that life as a duck takes to water, Regina thought as she walked over to the row of files on the far side of the room.

She took an unmarked package from the bottom of the locked file. Buried under miscellaneous real estate advertisements, it was a cardboard box that contained all the newspaper coverage of the Graduation Gala murder.

I haven’t looked at it in years, Regina thought as she carried the box back to her desk, laid it down, and opened it. Some of the newspapers had begun to crumble at the edges, but she found what she was looking for. It was the picture of Betsy and Robert Powell toasting the four graduates—Claire, Alison, Nina, and herself.

We were all so pretty, Regina thought. I remember how we went shopping for dresses together. We all had done well in college. We had our plans and hopes for the future. And they were all destroyed that night.

She put the newspapers back in the box, carried it over to the file, and dropped it in the bottom drawer, carefully concealing it below the ads. I’m going to take his damn money, she thought. And that producer’s as well. Maybe if I do, I can take hold of my life. I do know I can use some of the money to take Zach on a fun vacation, before he goes back to school.

She slammed the drawer, put the CLOSED sign in the window of the office, turned out the lights, locked the door, and went back to her private bath. In it, as the water ran in the Jacuzzi, she stripped and looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the door. I’ve got two months before the show and I need to lose twenty pounds, she thought. I want to look good when I get there and tell what I remember. I want Zach to be proud of me.

An unwanted thought crept into her mind. I know Earl always wondered if I was the one who killed Betsy. Did he ever plant that suspicion in Zach’s mind?

Regina knew she didn’t love Earl anymore, didn’t want him anymore, but even more than that, she didn’t want to have any more nightmares.

The Jacuzzi was filled with water. She stepped into it, leaned back, and closed her eyes.

As her curly black hair became straight and sleek around her face, she thought, This is my chance to convince everyone that I wasn’t the one who killed that rotten slut.

 

Chapter 6

Rod Kimball signed for the certified letter and opened it while his wife, Alison, was busy filling a prescription. When the customer left she hurried over to take it from him.

“Who’s sending a registered letter?” she asked, her tone worried, as without breaking stride she took it from him, turned, and went back to the pharmacy area of their drugstore, giving him no chance to warn her of the contents. Dismayed, he watched as her face flushed, then paled as she read the two-page missive. Then she dropped it on the counter. “I can’t go through that again,” she cried, her voice trembling. “My God, do they think I’m crazy?”

“Take it easy, love,” Rod cautioned. Trying not to grimace with pain, he slid off the stool behind the checkout counter and reached for his crutches. Twenty years after the hit-and-run accident that had crippled him, pain was always a fact of life for him. Yet some days, like this one, cold and wet in late March in Cleveland, Ohio, it was more severe than others. Pain was etched into the lines around his eyes and the resolute set of his jaw. His dark brown hair had turned almost completely gray. He knew he looked older than his forty-two years. He hobbled over to Alison. Across the counter from her, his six-foot body towering over her petite frame, he felt an overwhelming need to protect her. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he said firmly. “Tear up that letter.”

“No.” Shaking her head, Alison opened the drawer beneath the counter and shoved the letter into it. “I can’t talk about it now, Rod,” she said.

At that point the jingling sound that signaled the opening of the door told them that a customer was coming into the store, and Rod made his way back to the checkout counter.

He had been a rookie quarterback for the New York Giants when he and Alison were married. He was raised by a single mother who worked as a caretaker for an invalid to support him. His father, a hopeless alcoholic, died when he was two. The sportswriters were unanimous that a brilliant career was ahead of him when he had signed his first big contract. He and Alison were both twenty-two then, and he had been crazy about her since kindergarten. In fact, when they were in kindergarten together he had announced to the class that he was going to marry her someday.

Alison’s family had never had any money. Her father was the produce manager in a grocery store. Alison went to college on a mix of student loans and working part time. She had lived in a modest section of Salem Ridge, not far from where Rod Kimball had lived. She had missed out on a scholarship to graduate school.

He officially proposed the day he was offered the big contract with the New York Giants. That was two months after Betsy Powell’s murder. An important part of the proposal was that he knew Alison wanted to go to medical school and then into research. He promised to pay for her education, to tiptoe around the house when she was studying, and to delay having children until she obtained the degree she wanted so badly.

Instead, three weeks after the wedding, he had been in the accident, and Alison had spent the better part of the next four years at his bedside helping him to heal. The money he had saved from his one season with the Giants was soon exhausted.

At that point Alison had taken out more loans and gone back to school to become a pharmacist. Her first job came about because her elderly childless cousin had hired her to work with him in his drugstore in Cleveland. “Rod, there’s a job for you as well,” he had said. “My assistant is leaving. She does the ordering of everything except for the drugs, and she handles the cash register.”

They had both been glad to get out of the New York area, where they always seemed to encounter speculation over Betsy Powell’s death. A few years after they moved to Cleveland, the cousin retired and they took over the store. Now they had a wide circle of friends, and no one ever asked them about the Graduation Gala murder.

The nickname “Rod” had come about because in his college years on the football field, a sportswriter had commented that he moved as fast as a lightning rod. After the accident, Thomas “Rod” Kimball had managed not to let that nickname become a source of bitter irony.

The morning was fairly quiet, but in the afternoon business was brisk. They had two part-time assistants, a semiretired pharmacist and a clerk who stocked the shelves and helped at the cash register. Even with their help it was an exceptionally busy day, and by the time they closed at 8 P.M., he and Alison were both bone tired.

By then it was raining hard, a cold driving rain. Alison insisted that he use the wheelchair to get out to the car. “We’ll both be drowned if you try to use the crutches,” she said, an edge in her voice.

Many times over the years he had sought the courage to insist that she leave him, that she meet someone else and have a normal life. But he had never been able to bring himself to utter those words. He could not visualize a life without her now, any more than he could have visualized it all through his growing years.

He sometimes thought of an observation his grandmother had made long ago. “In most marriages, one of the couple is more in love than the other, and it’s best if it’s the man. The marriage will have a better chance of going the whole way.”

Rod did not need to be told that with Alison, he was the one who loved the most. He was almost sure that she would not have accepted his proposal if he had not offered to send her to medical school. And then, after the accident, she was too decent to walk out on him.

Rod didn’t let himself drown in that kind of speculation often, but the letter today brought back so much—the Graduation Gala, the pictures of the four girls plastered all over the newspapers, the circus the media had made of their wedding.

When they reached the car, Alison said, “Rod, let me drive. I know you’re hurting.”

She was shielding him with the umbrella as she opened the door, and without arguing he slid into the passenger seat. It was impossible for her to hold the umbrella and fold the wheelchair at the same time. He watched regretfully as the rain pelted her face and hair until she was finally settled behind the wheel. Then she turned to him. “I’m going to do it,” she said. Her tone was defiant, as if she expected him to argue with her.

When he said nothing, she waited for a long minute, then started the engine. “No comment?” Now he detected a slight tremor in her voice.

He was not going to tell her what he was thinking—that with her long brown hair wet on her shoulders, she looked so young and so vulnerable. He knew she was frightened. No, he thought. Make that terrified.

“If the others agree to take part in the program and you don’t, it wouldn’t be good,” he said quietly. “I think you have to go. I think we have to go,” he corrected himself quickly.

“I was lucky last time. This time I may not be so lucky.”

They were both silent for the rest of the trip. Their ranch-style home, designed to accommodate his disabilities, was a twenty-minute drive from the pharmacy. They were spared any further exposure to the downpour because a door from the garage opened into the kitchen. Once inside, shaking off her wet raincoat, Alison sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. “Rod, I’m so scared. I never told you but that night when we all went up to bed all I could think of was how much I hated Betsy and Rob Powell.” She hesitated and continued haltingly, “I think I was sleepwalking that night and I might have gone into Betsy’s room.”

“You thought you were in Betsy’s room that night!” Rod dropped his crutches as he pulled a chair closer to Alison and eased himself into it. “Do you think there is any possibility that anyone saw you?”

“I don’t know.”

Alison pulled away from his embrace and turned to face him. Her large, expressive light brown eyes were her dominant feature. Now with tears streaming from them, they looked haunted and defenseless. Then Rod heard a question he never expected to hear from his wife’s lips.

“Rod,” she asked, “isn’t it a fact that you have always believed that I killed Betsy Powell?”

“Are you crazy?” he asked. “Are you absolutely crazy?”

But even to his own ears, he knew that his protest sounded hollow and unconvincing.

 

Chapter 7

“Well, have you made up your mind if you’re going?”

That was the question Nina Craig heard as she pushed open the door of her condo in West Hollywood. Oh God, she’s in one of those moods, Nina thought, and bit her lip to keep from making a sharp reply to her sixty-two-year-old mother. It was five-thirty, and it was clear to her that Muriel Craig had started her private cocktail hour well before her usual five o’clock with a pitcher of apple martinis or a bottle of wine.

Muriel was still in her nightgown and robe, which meant that whatever time she had woken up, it was in the cloud of depression that so often enveloped her. It’s going to be a long night, Nina thought resentfully.

“No response from the Academy Award winner?” her mother asked sarcastically as she refilled her glass from the almost empty bottle.

Ten years ago Nina had given up the hope of becoming a successful actress one day and had joined the guild for extras, the background people who worked on a day-by-day basis. Arriving at 5 A.M., she’d spent all day on the set of a film about a revolution and had been one of the hundreds of extras who held up banners. The set was in the desert near Palm Springs, and it had been mercilessly hot.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Mom,” Nina said, trying to keep her tone even.

“Why not go? Three hundred thousand dollars is pretty good money. I’ll go with you. I wouldn’t mind getting an in-person look at good old Robert Nicholas Powell again.”

Nina looked at her mother. The hair that, like her own, had once been a natural deep red was now dyed a bright fire-engine shade and looked harsh against Muriel’s face. Years of smoking had left deep lines around her lips and cheeks, and her skin was mottled with brown spots. Her shoulders slumped as she leaned forward on the couch, her two hands encircling the glass.

It was hard to visualize the beautiful woman who at one time had been one of those rarities, an actress who worked steadily. She had talent, Nina thought bitterly, not like me. And now look at her!

Don’t you go into all that again, Nina warned herself. It’s the end of the day, and you’re hot and fed up with everything. “Mom, I’m going to shower and get into something comfortable,” she said. “I’ll join you for a glass of wine when I get dressed.”

“Take the three hundred thousand.” Her mother spat the words out at her. “Use it to buy me my own condo. You don’t want me living with you any more than I want to be here.”

Muriel had followed Nina to California after the acting jobs became fewer and fewer in New York. A year earlier, she had barely escaped being burned to death when her carelessly dropped cigarette had ignited the carpet in the living room of her apartment in a two-family house in Los Angeles. The people who owned the house where she had rented had refused to let her return after the damage to the apartment was repaired. “The same thing could happen in the middle of the night,” the owner told Nina. “I’m not taking any more chances.”

Her mother had been living with Nina for almost a year now. Now she, too, worked as an extra, but too often did not feel up to responding to a potential job.

I can’t take it much longer, Nina thought as she closed and locked the door of her bedroom. In her mother’s present frame of mind, it would not be unusual for her to follow Nina in to continue the discussion about the letter from the producer.

The room was cool and inviting. White walls, polished floors with white throw rugs on either side of the bed, narrow apple-green draperies at the windows. The white bedspread was accentuated by apple-green and white pillows. The four-poster bed and matching dresser were left over from her ten-year marriage to a mildly successful actor who had turned out to be a serial cheat. It was better that they had not had any children.

They’d been divorced for three years. I’m ready to find someone else, Nina thought. But I can’t while I’m stuck with my mother. Who knows? I still look good. If I go on that program I might be able to parlay it into getting back into real acting, or even one of those reality shows. I can be a mad housewife with the best of them.

What would it be like to see Claire and Regina and Alison again? We were such kids, Nina thought. We were all so scared. The cops kept twisting what we were saying. Mom gave the performance of the year when she was asked if it was true that she had been seriously dating Powell before he met Betsy. “I was dating at least three people at that time,” she said. “He was one of them.”

That’s not the way I heard it, Nina thought grimly. Her mother blamed her for introducing Betsy to Powell. She blamed me, and blamed me, and blamed me, Nina thought. It was all I ever heard from her. I ruined her life.

Muriel had turned down the part that would have made her a star because Powell didn’t want her to be locked into a contract when they got married. Those were the exact words he used: “When we get married.”

She’d thrown them at Nina often enough over the years.

Nina felt the white-hot anger that those memories evoked wash over her. She thought of the night of the Graduation Gala. Her mother had refused to come to the party. “I should be living in that house,” she had said.

Betsy had made a point of seeking Nina out.

“Where is your mother?” she had asked. “Or is she still a sore loser about Rob?”

I’m glad no one heard her ask me that question that night, Nina thought. It wouldn’t have looked good when Robert Powell discovered his wife’s body the next morning. But at that moment, if I had had that pillow, I would gladly have held it over her face.

I had much too much to drink that night. I don’t even remember going to bed. I don’t think I showed it, because no one mentioned it, including that nosy housekeeper who said that she thought Alison was drunk.

When she and the others got there Powell was collapsed on the floor, and the housekeeper pulled the pillow from Betsy’s face.

Her mother was turning the handle of the door. “I want to talk to you,” she called. “I want you to go on that program.”

With a supreme effort Nina managed not to show how angry she was as she called back, “Mom, I’m stepping into the shower. It’s all right. I am going to accept that offer. I’ll be able to get you your own place.”

Before I kill you, she added silently. And then wondered again what else she hadn’t remembered about the night Betsy Powell was suffocated.

 

Chapter 8

The agreements to participate in the reenactment of the events of the Graduation Gala had trickled in to Laurie’s office one by one. The last of them had taken nearly two weeks, and it was from Nina Craig. The letter stated that she had consulted a lawyer and there were additional conditions she felt were appropriate. Robert Powell should put in escrow two hundred fifty thousand dollars for each of the four graduates, and it should be a net sum to each of them. Fisher Blake Studios must also offer fifty thousand net to the graduates. “Both Mr. Powell and Fisher Blake can well afford to compensate us fairly,” Nina had written. “And now that I have contacted my longtime childhood friends, I realize that we have all suffered emotional damage from being in the Powell home the night Betsy Bonner Powell lost her life. I believe by once again exposing ourselves to the glare of publicity, we are surrendering our hard-earned anonymity, for which we should receive appropriate compensation.”

Dismayed, Laurie reread the letter. “To net them that much money will mean we’d just about have to double what we’re paying them,” she said.

“I don’t think Brett will go for it.” Jerry Klein’s flat tone did not match the disappointment that came over his face. He had signed for the certified letter from Ms. Nina Craig and carried it into Laurie’s office.

“He’s got to go along with it,” Laurie said. “And I think he will. He’s been talking the series up, and he won’t want to pull back now.”

“Well he won’t be happy about it.” The worried expression on Jerry’s face deepened. “Laurie, I hope you haven’t put yourself out on a limb with this Under Suspicion idea.”

“I hope not, too.” Laurie looked out the window toward the Rockefeller Center skating rink. It was a warm day for early April, and there were few skaters on the ice. Soon the rink would be gone, and the area it covered would be filled with tables and chairs for outside dining.

Once in a while Greg and I used to have dinner out there, she thought as a wave of longing for him swept over her. She knew why it had come at this moment. The show was about closure. Even though she had no intention of revealing her concern to either Jerry or Grace, she knew Jerry was right. After becoming openly enthusiastic about the project, her boss, Brett Young, would probably rather double the price he had agreed to pay the participants than back out.

“What about Robert Powell?” Jerry was asking. “Do you think he’ll pony up and pay the taxes so they clear the two hundred and fifty grand?”

“I can only ask,” Laurie said. “And I think I’d better do it in person. I’ll call and ask if he can see me today.”

“Shouldn’t you check with Brett first?” Jerry suggested.

“No. There’s no use in getting him going if it’s a lost cause. If Powell doesn’t agree to pay, our next move has to be for me to fly to Los Angeles and see if Nina Craig can be persuaded to accept our offer. The others all agreed to the original terms, but it’s obvious she got them stirred up.”

“What will you tell her?” Jerry asked.

“The truth. If necessary we’ll do it without her, and that wouldn’t look good for her. And don’t forget that Betsy Bonner Powell was forty-two years old when she died. She’d be only sixty-two or sixty-three now. Today many people live well into their eighties. Betsy was robbed of half of the life she might have enjoyed if someone hadn’t held a pillow over her face that night. The person who did that has woken up every morning since then and been able to enjoy a brand-new day while Betsy’s body is in a casket in a cemetery.”

Laurie knew her voice had become heated and angry and that it wasn’t just about Betsy Bonner Powell. It was about Greg and the fact that his killer was a free man. Not only free, but a living, breathing threat to her and Timmy. Then she said, “Sorry, Jerry. I know that I have to be careful not to make this sound like a personal crusade.”

She picked up the phone. “Time to make another appointment with Robert Nicholas Powell.”

 

Chapter 9

Rob Powell was on the three-hole golf course on the back lawn of his estate. The warm April day was conducive to getting out his clubs and practicing his swing before he joined a foursome at the Winged Foot Golf Club. Not bad, he thought as a well-struck putt rolled to the bottom of the cup.

Concentrating on his golf game had given him the opportunity to put aside the fact that he had not yet heard from the doctor. The chemo three years ago had seemed to take care of the nodules on his lungs, but he knew there was always a chance they would come back. He had had his semiannual checkup earlier in the week.

“Par for the course,” he said aloud as he made his way back to the house, swinging his golf club.

Fifteen minutes until his guest arrived. What did Laurie Moran want? he asked himself. She’d sounded concerned. Is she going to tell me that one of them won’t take part in the program? Rob frowned. I need to have them all here, he thought. No matter what it takes.

Even if Moran’s report was favorable, Rob had a sense of time going by too swiftly. He needed closure, and when Laurie Moran had come to see him in March and proposed her concept of reenacting the night of the Graduation Gala, it had been the answer to a prayer. Except, Rob thought, I’ve never been much of one to pray. I left all that to Betsy.

At that thought he laughed, a mirthless sound that came out more like a bark, and was followed by a fit of coughing.

Why hadn’t the doctor called with the results?

His housekeeper, Jane Novak, was opening the sliding glass door as he stepped from the cobblestone walk onto the patio. “Hole in one, Mr. Robert?” she asked cheerfully.

“Not quite, but not bad, Jane,” Rob said, trying not to be annoyed that Jane always asked that after he had been on the greens. If there was one thing about Jane he wished he could change, it was her total lack of any sense of humor. She meant that question to be a joke.

Jane, a solidly built woman with steel-gray hair and matching eyes, had come to work for him shortly after he married Betsy. He had understood why Betsy was not comfortable with the previous housekeeper, who had been hired by his first wife and who had stayed with him after her death. “Rob, that woman resents me,” Betsy had said. “I can feel it. Tell her it’s not working out and give her a healthy severance check. I know just who I want in her place.”

The person Betsy wanted was Jane Novak, who had worked backstage when Betsy was ushering in the theatre. “She’s a marvelous organizer. She actually keeps the dressing rooms neat. And she’s a good cook,” Betsy had raved.

Jane was all of that. After entering the country on a green card from Hungary, she was overwhelmed with joy to be put in charge of the mansion, and, as Betsy had promised, she was fully up to the job. Exactly Betsy’s age, Jane was now sixty-two. If she had any close friends or family, Rob had never seen them. Her very comfortable apartment was located behind the kitchen, and even on her days off, from what he could see, she seldom left it. Unless he was out of town, he knew that at seven-thirty every morning she would be in the kitchen ready to prepare his break- fast.

Over the years Rob had learned to see the slight nuances in Jane’s placid expression that signaled any kind of distress. As he stepped inside the house, he realized he was seeing them now. “You said that Ms. Moran was coming, Mr. Rob,” Jane said. “I hope you don’t mind if I ask, but does that mean that the program is going to happen?”

“I don’t mind you asking, but the answer is I don’t know,” Rob said. Even as he spoke, he realized that he did mind Jane asking, because there was a note of disapproval in her question.

He had just enough time to change into a long-sleeved sport shirt and go back downstairs before the doorbell chimed.

It was exactly four o’clock. He wondered if she had timed her arrival so precisely or if she had arrived a little early and waited in her car before coming up to the house.

It was the kind of totally irrelevant speculation that Rob Powell had found himself indulging in lately. “Woolgathering” is what they used to call it, he thought. He had even gone to the trouble of looking up the word in the dictionary. The definition was “indulging in idle fancies and daydreaming; absent- mindedness.”

Rob thought to himself, Snap out of it! and got to his feet. He had asked Jane to bring Laurie Moran into the library instead of his office. Betsy had liked the English custom of four o’clock tea. After her death he had gotten away from it, but today it suddenly seemed appropriate.

More woolgathering, he acknowledged as Jane came into the room, followed by Laurie Moran.

He had considered Moran to be an attractive woman when she came to the house last month, but now as she hesitated for a moment and stood framed in the doorway, he realized that she was beautiful. Her hair, a soft honey shade, was loose on her shoulders, and in place of the pin-striped suit she was wearing a long-sleeved print blouse and black-belted skirt that accentuated her small waist. Her black patent leather heels did not have the ridiculous stilts that were the fashion nowadays.

Once again, the seventy-eight-year-old appreciated her lovely looks.

“Come in, Ms. Moran, come in,” he said heartily. “I won’t bite you.”

“I wasn’t afraid of that, Mr. Powell,” Laurie said, smiling as she crossed the room and sat on the couch opposite the roomy leather armchair where he was settling himself.

“I’ve asked Jane to prepare tea,” he said. “You may serve it now, Jane, thank you.”

“How kind of you.”

It was kind of him, Laurie thought.

She drew a deep breath. Now that she was here, with so much at stake, it was difficult to appear calm. The four women, the stars of the Graduation Gala, would cost this man nearly two million dollars, instead of half that amount, to appear on the program. Laurie marshaled her pitch to him, but before she started she waited for Jane’s somewhat forbidding figure to turn and leave the room.

“I’m going to make this easy for you,” Robert Powell said unexpectedly. “A problem has come up. I don’t have to be particularly astute or a deep thinker to guess that it’s about money. One of the four girls—women now—doesn’t think we’re paying enough to coax them to expose themselves to public scrutiny.”

Laurie hesitated for the length of a few seconds, then said, “That’s right.”

Powell smiled. “Let me guess which one. It wouldn’t be Claire. She has refused to let me help her since Betsy died. When she learns I have left her a substantial amount of money in my will it will not impress her. When the time comes, she might even give the money to charity.

“We were very close, but Claire was very close to her mother, too. The fact that Betsy died was overwhelming for Claire. Somehow it became my fault, not that she thought I had killed her mother, mind you. Angry as she was, she knew that was impossible, but I think that in her mind, she was begrudging me the time I had alone with Betsy.” For a long moment he looked past Laurie.

“My guess,” he added slowly, “is that Nina Craig is the one holding us up for more money. In that way she’s very much like her mother. I actually dated Muriel Craig for a time. A very attractive woman, but with a touch of ruthlessness in her character. I didn’t stop seeing her only because I’d met Betsy. It would have happened anyhow. It was just a coincidence that it happened at approximately the same time.”

Jane carried in the tea tray, interrupting his reverie. She set it on the coffee table between the couch and Robert Powell’s chair. “Shall I pour, Mr. Powell?” she asked. She was already holding the teapot and pouring it into Laurie’s cup.

Robert Powell raised his eyebrows and cast an amused glance at Laurie. After Jane had offered cream or lemon and sugar or sweetener, and then left the room, he said, “As you can see, Jane asked a rhetorical question. She does that all the time.”

Laurie realized she had skipped lunch and was starved. She made herself take only a nibble of the quarter-sized crustless salmon sandwich. Her first instinct was to pop it into her mouth whole and reach for another one.

But even as she made herself eat slowly, daintily, she had the feeling that Robert Powell was toying with her. Did he really guess that Nina Craig was the one looking for more money, or had Nina contacted him personally?

And did he know how much she was going to demand?

“Am I right about Nina?” Powell asked as he crossed his legs and began to sip his tea.

“Yes,” Laurie said.

“How much does she want for all the graduates?”

“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars net each.”

“She’s even greedier than I remembered,” Powell murmured. “So like her dear mother.” The amused tone left his voice. “Tell her I’ll pay it.”

The abrupt change in his expression and tone shocked Laurie.

“Ms. Moran,” he explained, “you need to understand something: like the four girls at the Gala, I have lived with the cloud of suspicion hanging over me for a long time. Today people are living to be one hundred, but many more don’t live past eighty or eighty-five. Before I die, I want to have a chance for a wide audience to see the girls and me, and perhaps understand how big this house is, and how many people were in and out that night. How it could have been an intruder. As you know, we have extensive films of the party.”

“I do know that,” Laurie said. “I think I’ve read everything written about the case.”

“Well, then, you can understand that except for some generous donations to charity and the schools Betsy, Claire, and I attended, I have a great deal of money to spend before I die, so the amount Nina is holding out for is quite insignificant.

“But do me a favor. When you write to say we accept the conditions of their appearance, please tell Nina that I hope her mother is planning to come east with her. It would be a pleasure to see her again.”

He anticipated Laurie’s protest. “Of course, I don’t mean for her to stay as a guest in my home. I will reserve a room for her at the St. Regis.”

He’s going along with it. Laurie did not expect the tsunami of relief that swept over her. The possibility of the program had unexpectedly gathered momentum, and if Powell had flatly turned down Nina Craig’s demand, the show could easily have been doomed, and her job along with it. Two failed series, then a rejected proposal, after intense media interest, would easily have meant her dismissal.

Brett Young did not tolerate failure.

She started to thank Powell, then realized he was looking past her out onto the patio beyond the glass doors of his den. Her eyes followed to see what he was looking at that had caused the sudden expression of disapproval.

She saw a landscaper standing on the patio outside the den, edging the grass around it with a clipper.

Powell looked from the man to Laurie. “Sorry,” he said, “but I find it annoying that they’re working this late. I’ve made it clear that I want any work on the property completed by noon. If I have guests coming, I don’t want those big trucks in the driveway.”

 

OUTSIDE, BLUE EYES SAW THAT POWELL WAS looking at him. He finished clipping the last section around the patio and, without looking, carried his gardening equipment quickly back to the truck. It was his first day on the job for Perfect Estates. If Powell complained about him being there so late, Blue Eyes would say he stayed after hours to impress his new boss.

The Graduation girls won’t be the only ones here when they are filming that show, he thought. I’ll be here, too.

What a perfect scenario for him to take out Laurie Moran.

He had already prepared the sign he wanted to put on her body.

GOT GREG

GOT YOU

TIMMY’S NEXT

 

Chapter 10

In June, preproduction for the “Graduation Gala” went into high gear. Laurie had already obtained all available film footage taken of the party, but then Robert Powell willingly turned over the extra footage other guests had captured that night.

It was like watching Cinderella’s night at the ball. Only there were four Cinderellas, Laurie mused as she ran tape after tape.

After Betsy died, George Curtis, a member of the Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, had brought to the police the footage he had taken that evening. But it was mostly a duplicate of what the police already had. The tape was copied and given to Robert Powell, who had requested it. “It’s very similar to what I’ve already given you,” he had told the detective in charge of the investigation, “but there are some scenes of Betsy and me that are particularly precious to me.” He had pictures made of several of the frames in which he and Betsy had been together—one of them looking at each other, another of them dancing on the patio, another toasting the graduates.

“These films sure give us a look into the party,” Laurie commented to Grace and Jerry as she played the copies over and over in the screening room of the office, trying to decide which scenes she wanted to include.

I start with the body being discovered and the cops arriving, she thought. That was at 8 A.M. Powell went in to wake up Betsy. He was carrying a cup of coffee for her. He always brought her wake-up cup at that time, even if she had had a late night.

Jane rushed in, screaming Betsy’s name, and yelling for the others to dial 911.

We’ll end the first segment with Betsy and Powell toasting the graduates. We’ll have the narrator say, “At that moment, beautiful Betsy Bonner Powell had only four hours to live,” Laurie decided.

 

GEORGE CURTIS KNEW THAT HE MIGHT BE caught on security cameras around the Powell estate, but it did not worry him. Half of Salem Ridge is driving past this house, he thought as he followed the stream of cars on the quiet road.

So what if the cops think I’m a voyeur? he thought. Practically everyone else on this road is, too.

He had chosen to drive the SUV rather than his red Porsche convertible. Unless security cameras photographed the license plate, he doubted very much that he would be recognized. Plenty of Salem Ridge residents had top-of-the-line SUVs. He was wearing a cap and dark glasses.

Sixty-three years old, tall, with a full head of gray hair, George Curtis had the trim appearance of a seasoned athlete. Married for thirty-five years and with college-age twins, he had been the scion and sole heir of a big chain of fast-food restaurants. After his father’s death, when he was twenty-seven, he had taken over the business. A playboy until then, everyone expected him to sell the chain and live off his wealth. Instead he had married shortly afterward, and over time tripled the number of restaurants both in the United States and abroad until now the company boasted of serving a million meals a day.

Unlike Robert Powell, he had gone to Harvard as a fourth-generation legacy. The welcome mat had been laid out for him, as was his admission to Hasty Pudding, the student theatrical society at Harvard.

The fifteen-year difference in their ages had never interfered with his friendship with Robert Powell, even though, as he turned the car off Evergreen Lane, George thought, If he ever knew, if he ever guessed ...

But Rob Powell had never suspected. George was sure of that. George had never given him reason to.

The phone rang, an unexpected and abrupt sound. He pressed the answering button on the steering wheel.

“George Curtis,” he said.

“George, it’s Rob Powell.”

My God, was he looking out the window? George felt his face flush. No, he couldn’t possibly have read the license plate, and certainly couldn’t have recog- nized me just driving by.

“Rob, how are you, and when are we going to get together for a round of golf? I warn you, I broke eighty two Saturdays in a row.”

“That means you’ll never do it three weeks in a row! Tee-off time nine o’clock?”

“You’re on. I’ll make the reservation.” George felt a palpable sense of relief as he turned left onto his own street. Rob Powell was not one to stay on the line longer than necessary. That’s why when Rob said, “George, I have a favor to ask of you,” he was startled.

“Whatever it is, the answer is yes,” George said, sounding rattled to his own ears.

“I’ll take all your franchises in Europe,” Rob joked, then his tone became serious. “George, you can’t have missed the news that the anniversary of Betsy’s death in June is going to be the basis for a television program.”

“No, I didn’t miss that,” Curtis said quietly.

“The point is that, besides the girls, they’d like to have one of the friends who was there that night to comment on the party between excerpts from the films. I suggested you, and they leaped at the prospect of getting you on camera. Of course I should have asked you first, but you can always say no to them.”

Go on camera to talk about that night to a national audience? He could feel his hands turning sweaty on the steering wheel.

George Curtis found his throat constricting, but he kept his voice calm and warm as he said, “Rob, I told you a minute ago that whatever favor you wanted, it was yours. I meant it when I said it, and I mean it now.”

“Thanks. It was hard for me to ask, and I’m sure hard for you to agree.”

An abrupt click broke the connection. George Curtis realized that he was drenched with perspiration now. Was Rob Powell setting a trap for him? he asked himself as a feeling of dread engulfed him.

Now utterly distracted, he almost drove past his own driveway.

 

From I’VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN by Mary Higgins Clark. Copyright © 2014 by Mary Higgins Clark. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, LLC.