‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ Chapters 51-60

Sour-faced as always, Jane promptly appeared with a fresh pot of coffee and a new cup. Regina watched as the steaming cup of coffee replaced the one she had ignored.

As Regina began to sip, the familiar nightmare replayed itself in her head. Riding her bike in the driveway of the beautiful home with the priceless view of Long Island that she had lived in for fifteen years. Tapping the switch that raised the garage door. Seeing her father’s body as it swayed in the breeze that rushed in from the Sound. His jaw had slackened, his eyes were staring, his tongue was protruding. A paper was pinned to his jacket. One hand was clenched around the rope. At the last moment had he changed his mind about dying?

Regina remembered how she had felt numb and emotionless, how she had reached up for the note, unpinned it as his body moved under her touch, read it, and, shocked, stuffed it in her pocket.

In it, her father had written that he had been having an affair with Betsy and bitterly regretted it.

Betsy had told him that the hedge fund Rob had begun was about to explode in value and to invest everything he could in it. Even then, at age fifteen, Regina was sure Betsy was doing that at Powell’s direction.

I couldn’t let my mother see that note, Regina thought now. It would have broken her heart, and I knew her heart would be broken enough by Daddy’s death. And my mother despised Betsy Powell. She knew what a phony she was.

Now someone had that note. It almost had to be Josh, who was hanging around all day helping Jane. What can I do? she asked herself. What can I do?

At that moment Josh came into the room, a tray in his hands, to clear the table. He looked around to be sure they were alone.

“When can we talk, Regina?” he asked. “And I must tell you, you should have taken your son’s advice to burn your father’s suicide note. I’ve been thinking it over. No one has a stronger motive for killing Betsy Powell than you do. Don’t you agree? And don’t you think that the quarter of a million dollars you’re getting from Mr. Rob is little enough to assure that no one will ever see the note or hear the tape?”

She could not reply. Her face was frozen in a look of horror and self-reproach, and her eyes looked beyond Josh to something else—her father’s neatly dressed body, swaying from the rope around his neck.

 

Chapter 55

As if by instinct, Claire raced upstairs to her old bedroom after her interview with Alex Buckley.

She knew it had not gone well. She had rehearsed her answers to the questions about the Gala, from being in the den together after the party ended to rushing into her mother’s bedroom early the next morning. It had been easy enough to re-create that terrible moment: Rob on the floor writhing in pain, the coffee splattered on his hands, his skin already raised in angry blisters. Jane shrieking “Betsy, Betsy,” and holding the pillow that had smothered the life from her mother. The hair that had looked so glamorous when her mother had said good night to them was brassy in the early morning light, the radiant complexion now gray and mottled.

And I was glad, Claire thought. I was frightened, but I was glad.

All I could think of was that now I was free—now I could leave this house.

And I did the day of the funeral. I moved in with Regina and her mother in that tiny apartment. I slept on the couch in the living room.

There were pictures of Regina’s father all over the place. Her mother was sweet and kind to me, even though they had lost everything they had because he had invested in Robert Powell’s hedge fund.

Claire remembered hearing Betsy and Powell joking that Eric, Regina’s father, was so gullible. “Now remember, Betsy, I don’t like you doing this, but it’s necessary. It’s either him or us.”

And her mother’s answer: “Better he should go broke than us,” and laughing.

The nights I lay awake on that couch thinking that if it weren’t for my mother and stepfather, he would still be alive and they would still be living in that lovely house on the Sound.

And what about Alison? She worked so hard for that scholarship and lost it just so my mother could get into some club.

Claire shook her head. She had been standing at the window looking out over the long backyard. Even with the vans from the studio discreetly parked on the left side of the property, and Alison and Rod sitting on the bench near the pool, the scene seemed as still as a painted landscape.

But then she saw movement. The door of the pool house opened, and the swarthy figure of the man who had been puttering around the garden these last few days exited.

His hulking presence broke the sense of stillness, and sent a shiver through Claire. Then she heard the click of her bedroom door opening.

Robert Powell stood there, smiling. “Anything I can do for you, Claire?” he asked.

 

Chapter 56

Chief Ed Penn did not sleep well on Monday night. The sense of urgency that Leo Farley had imparted to him made whatever sleep he did manage to get troubled and fretful. And he had strange dreams. Someone was in danger. He didn’t know who. He was in a big empty house and, with his pistol in hand, he was searching through it. He could hear footsteps, but he could not tell where they were coming from.

At 4 A.M., Ed Penn woke up from that dream and did not go back to sleep.

He understood Leo’s concern that it was potentially dangerous to have those six people together again after twenty years. Penn had no doubt that one of those six—Powell, his housekeeper, Betsy’s daughter, or one of her three friends—had murdered Betsy Powell.

Sure, the door from the den to the patio was unlocked. So what? Sure, maybe a stranger mingled with the crowd.

But maybe not.

The thing he had noticed when he arrived that morning was that among those four girls, including the daughter, he had not sensed one bit of genuine grief at Betsy Powell’s passing.

And the housekeeper had kept begging to be allowed to go to the hospital to see “Mr. Rob.”

Then she realized how that looked and clamped her mouth shut, Penn thought.

Powell? Few men would deliberately scar themselves with third-degree burns on their hands. Spilling coffee may have been his cover, but it’s not clear what his motive would have been.

The housekeeper? Entirely possible. Interesting that the four girls had all agreed that she was screaming “Betsy, Betsy!” and holding the pillow in her hand.

Not that anyone’s first instinct wouldn’t be to rip the pillow off Betsy Powell’s face, but Jane shrieking “Betsy, Betsy!” was another matter. Ed Penn had learned that when Betsy became Mrs. Robert Nicholas Powell and hired her friend Jane as a housekeeper, she instructed Jane to call her “Mrs. Powell.”

Had Jane been burning with resentment for the nine years she had spent reduced from friend to servant?

That landscaper guy? He didn’t have a record. Maybe it was just that stupid name that made him stand out. What mother with a brain in her head would give her kid the name Bruno when his last name was Hoffa and the Lindbergh case was still front page news?

Well, I guess it’s better than some of the handles people are sticking their kids with these days, Ed decided.

There was no more use lying in bed. The police chief of Salem Ridge might as well get on the job. Ed thought, I’ll take a ride over to Powell’s place around noon and probably catch all of them at lunch.

He sat up. Then, from the other side of the bed, he heard his wife say, “Ed, will you please make up your mind? Either get up now or go back to sleep. The way you’ve been bouncing around is driving me crazy.”

“Sorry, Liz,” he mumbled.

As he got out of bed, Ed Penn realized that he was torn between two wishes. One, that somehow one of them would trip and reveal himself or herself as Betsy Powell’s killer. The other, equally ardent, was that the filming would be wrapped up tomorrow as planned and they would all go home. The unsolved crime had been a thorn in Ed Penn’s side for twenty years.

The Powell place is a tinderbox, he thought, and I can only watch it burst into flames.

When he returned to headquarters in the early afternoon, after his visit to the Powell home, his impressions had not changed.

 

Chapter 57

Laurie decided that she had to talk to her father again. The night prior he had looked so terribly tired, and his usually ruddy face had been pale.

When she called him on her way to work, he said he was just stepping into the shower, and that he was fine.

He’s not fine, she thought.

Now she got up and moved back to the chair behind the camera. “I’m just going to make a quick call to my father before Alison gets here,” she explained to Alex.

“Of course,” he said amiably.

But when she dialed the number and waited, he could sense her mounting nervousness.

“He’s not answering,” she said.

“Leave him a message,” Alex suggested.

“No, you don’t understand. My father would take a call from me if he was kissing the pope’s hand!”

“What do you think he might be doing?” Alex asked.

“Maybe he’s heard something about Blue Eyes and doesn’t want to tell me,” Laurie said, her voice trembling. “Or getting heart fibrillations again.”

Alex Buckley looked compassionately at the young woman who had suddenly lost all her professional veneer of authority. Until now he had been surprised that, with her husband’s murder unsolved and the threat hanging over her son and herself, she had still been able to do this program on an unsolved murder, but now he could see the degree to which she was acutely dependent on her father.

He had looked up the accounts of Greg Moran’s murder. The picture of the thirty-one-year-old widow with her father’s arm guiding her from the church behind her husband’s casket flashed in his mind.

He knew the father had resigned abruptly from the police force to watch over his grandson.

If anything happened to Leo Farley now, any protection Laurie felt from Blue Eyes would be destroyed.

“Laurie, who is your father’s doctor?”

“His cardiologist’s name is Dr. James Morris. He’s been my father’s friend for the last forty years.”

“Then phone and ask him if your father has been seeing him.”

“That’s a good idea.”

There was a tap on the door. Alex sprang to his feet. When Grace looked in, the question she had been about to ask—“Ready for us?”—died on her lips. She saw the troubled look on Laurie’s face as she held the phone to her ear and heard Alex’s “Give her a minute,” then closed the door.

 

Chapter 58

“You’re right, Laurie was terribly upset when I told her you were in the hospital,” Dr. Morris told Leo Farley. “But I managed to calm her down. She’s coming to see you straight from the filming, and as I suggested, the two of you can take Timmy’s call together.”

“It’s a relief to know I don’t have to try to figure out how to lie to her,” Leo Farley said. “Did you tell her that I’m getting out of here tomorrow?”

“I told her that, barring any more fibrillations, I’ll discharge you in the morning. I also told her that in forty years of practicing medicine, you’re the crankiest patient I have ever had. I promise you that’s what reassured her, Leo.”

Leo Farley laughed a relieved laugh. “Okay, I believe that. But I’m only cranky because I feel helpless with all of these damn monitors pinning me to this bed.”

Dr. James Morris took care not to let sympathy manifest itself in his voice. “Let’s both hope that you don’t get any more fibrillations, Leo. And I suggest that if you can force yourself to stay calm and maybe watch some game shows on television, you will be on your way home tomorrow morning.”

 

BRUNO LISTENED WITH GLEE. HACKING INTO Leo’s phone had been a brilliant idea. Leo had already called the head of the camp and told him that he was in the hospital. And now Bruno knew that both Laurie and her father would be on the phone with Timmy tonight.

If Leo and Laurie speak to Timmy around eight o’clock tonight, they’ll be reassured and not expect to speak to him again until tomorrow night, Bruno thought.

I’ll put on my police uniform and get up to the camp at ten o’clock, Bruno thought. I’ll tell whoever is in charge up there that the kid’s grandfather has taken a turn for the worse. If they call Mount Sinai, they’ll confirm that he’s a patient, but won’t say anything about his condition.

It will work. Bruno was so sure of it that he began to make preparations for his little guest. In the utility room of the pool house he laid out blankets and a pillow. It would be far too dangerous to put Timmy in the bedroom in the pool house. He would have to tie him up and put a loose gag on him. He knew that it was necessary to follow the routine and have Perfect Estates pick him up in the landscaping truck and drop him off again tomorrow morning. He would bring in some Cheerios and orange juice for Timmy. He always brought his lunch in a grocery bag, so having one would not seem unusual.

The production crew had left copies of the schedule all over the place. He knew that tomorrow Powell would do the last individual interview and then everyone would be photographed at the breakfast table, as they had been for the opening segment.

That’s when Timmy and I make our entrance, he thought. I’m holding his hand and have a gun to his head. I call Laurie to come out or I shoot him. Any good mother would come running out to save her little boy.

He laughed, a deep rumbling sound, then opened the door of the pool house. The graduate with the husband on crutches was sitting on the bench near the pool.

Bruno began to studiously examine the plantings around the pool house for any sign of imperfection.

Tomorrow they’ll be stained with blood, he thought gleefully. Mother and son. How appropriate that they’ll die together, even if I don’t get away.

 

Chapter 59

“I was right,” Laurie whispered as she turned off her phone. “Dr. Morris said that they’re doing an angiogram on Dad right now, that it’s just a precaution. But can I believe that?”

“Laurie, what exactly did the doctor say?” Alex asked.

“That Dad had heart fibrillations last night.” In a halting voice Laurie explained what the doctor had told her. “I know the reason for the fibrillations. Dad was afraid of my doing this program,” she said. “He thinks that one of these six people is a murderer, and could explode under pressure.”

He may be right, Alex thought. “Look, Laurie,” he said, “when you’re finished here tonight, let me take you straight to the hospital. You don’t have to wait for the company van. Let Jerry and Grace wrap up here.”

Then he added impulsively, “I’ll wait downstairs at the hospital until you have your visit, then we’ll get something to eat, unless you have other plans.”

“My plan for tonight was to have a hamburger with Dad. As ex-cop number one, he’ll want to know every detail of what went on today.”

“Then give him your report in the hospital and have a hamburger with me afterward,” Alex said firmly.

Laurie hesitated. Given the circumstances, she could not picture going out alone to a restaurant. Alex Buckley is a reassuring presence, she thought. And besides, I can talk to him about the interviews we’ll be doing.

“Thanks, I’ll take you up on that.” She smiled faintly, then, as Alex watched, she called, “Jerry, will you please tell the crew and Alison Schaefer to come in?” Her voice was crisp and authoritative again.

 

Chapter 60

A grim-faced Regina went looking for Josh Damiano. She found him vacuuming the huge living room. She remembered how Betsy had grandly referred to it as “the salon.” “Until the time she married Richard Powell, the only salon she ever walked into was a beauty salon.” That’s what Mother used to say about Betsy, Regina remembered.

Josh looked up and, when he saw her, turned off the vacuum. “I knew you’d be looking for me, Regina,” he said with a cheerful smile.

Regina had turned on her iPhone and was recording every word they exchanged. “You have different jobs, I see, Josh. Chauffeur-housemaid-blackmailer. Obviously there is no limit to your talents.”

The smile vanished from Damiano’s face. “Be careful, Regina,” he said evenly. “The only reason I’m helping in the house is because Mr. Powell canceled the usual maintenance service until Thursday, when everyone has gone.”

“The housekeeper label isn’t one you like, is it, Josh?” Regina asked. “How about embezzler? Are you sensitive about being called that?”

Josh Damiano did not blink. “I prefer to think that I am defending you from being accused of murdering Betsy Powell. Your father’s suicide note gives you the greatest motive to kill her, and remember, you lied to the cops over and over again that you had not found a suicide note on or near your father’s body.”

“I did, didn’t I?” Regina agreed. “On the other hand, I also did Robert Powell a great favor by not revealing that. Have you considered that? The note details how he let his wife have an affair with my father so she could feed him an inside tip about Powell’s hedge fund. The result was that my father lost his entire fortune, and by doing so, he bailed the Powells out.”

“So what?” Damiano asked.

“So I lied to my son in the conversation you taped in the car. I have another copy of my father’s note. Now I’m giving you an alternative: give me back the original and we call it quits. Otherwise I take the copy and my recording of this conversation today to Police Chief Penn, and you land behind bars. I assume you taped everyone else. I’ll bet they’ll all produce those tapes, if pressed hard enough.”

“You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not. I was fifteen years old when I found that note. As it was, my father’s suicide was the start of my mother’s slow decline. She would have gone quicker if she had known he was having an affair with Betsy as well.”

Josh Damiano attempted a laugh. “All the more reason you jumped at the chance to spend your first overnight in this house, to get revenge on Betsy.”

“Except that Betsy Powell wasn’t worth sacrificing the rest of my life in prison. I’m a bit claustrophobic. I hope you’re not.”

Without waiting for a reply she left the room. Once she was in the hallway, she began to tremble violently.

Would it work? It was her only hope. She went up to the bedroom where she would spend the night, locked the door, and checked her phone.

The battery was dead.

 

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.