I've Got You Under My Skin

15

It had been a long day. Sitting in her office with Jerry and Grace, Laurie had gone over a myriad of details to ensure everything was in order for the first day of shooting.

She finally leaned back and said, “That’s it, the die is cast, we can’t do anything more now. The graduates are all here, and tomorrow we meet them. We start the day at nine A.M. Mr. Powell said that the housekeeper will have coffee and fruit and rolls prepared.”

“It’s amazing. They claim that not one of them has been in touch with the others all these years,” Jerry observed, “but I bet they google each other once in a while. I would if I were one of them. My aunt always googles to see what her ex is up to.”

“I would guess this meeting will be awkward for at least the first few minutes,” Laurie said, a worried note in her voice. “But they were close friends for years, and they all went through hell being interrogated by the police.”

“Nina Craig once told a reporter every one of them was accused of having been part of a plan to murder Betsy, and that the detective told her she’d better turn state’s witness to get a lighter sentence,” Jerry recalled. “That must have been pretty scary.”

“I still don’t get why any one of the graduates would have wanted to kill Betsy Powell,” Grace said, shaking her head. “They’re celebrating their graduation at a lavish party. They have their whole lives in front of them. They all look happy in the films of the party.”

“Maybe one of them wasn’t as happy as she looked,” Laurie suggested.

“This is the way I look at it,” Grace declared. “Betsy’s daughter, Claire, certainly didn’t seem to have any reason to kill her mother. They were always very close. Regina Callari’s father lost his money in one of Powell’s hedge funds, but even her mother admitted that Powell had repeatedly warned him that while he might make a lot of money, he should not invest more than he could afford to lose. Nina Craig’s mother was dating Powell when he met Betsy, but unless you’re really crazy you don’t suffocate someone for a reason like that. And Alison Schaefer married her boyfriend four months after graduation. He was already a football star with a multimillion-dollar contract. What reason would she have had for putting a pillow over Betsy Powell’s face?”

As she was speaking, Grace held up her fingers one by one to illustrate the point she was making. “And that sour-looking housekeeper had been hired by Betsy,” she continued. “My guess is it was as simple as a burglary gone wrong. The house is big. There are sliding glass doors all over the place. The alarm wasn’t on. One door was unlocked. Anyone could have gotten in. I think it was someone who was after the emerald necklace and earrings. They were worth a fortune. Don’t forget, one of the earrings was on the floor of her bedroom.”

“Someone in the crowd may have been a party crasher,” Laurie agreed. “Some of the guests asked to bring friends, and there are a couple of people in the films that no one could identify positively.” She paused. “Well, maybe this program will bring that out. If so, Powell, the housekeeper, and the graduates will certainly be glad they participated.”

“I think they’re already glad,” Jerry observed. “Three hundred thousand dollars net is a pretty nice number to put in your wallet. I wish I had it.”

“If I did, I’d treat myself to a new apartment that’s only a four-story walk-up,” Grace said with a sigh.

“But if it turns out that one of them did it, she could always hire Alex Buckley to defend her,” Jerry suggested. “With his fees, that three hundred thousand dollars would go up in smoke.”

Alex Buckley was the renowned criminal lawyer who would be the host of the program and would conduct separate interviews with Powell, the housekeeper, and the graduates. Thirty-eight years old, he was a frequent guest on television programs discussing major crimes.

He had become famous by defending a mogul accused of murdering his business partner. Against tremendous odds Buckley had secured a not-guilty verdict, which the press had deplored as a miserable miscarriage of justice. Then, ten months later, the business partner’s wife committed suicide, leaving a note saying that she had murdered her husband.

After watching countless videos of Alex Buckley, Laurie had decided he would be the ideal narrator of the Graduation Gala program.

Then she had to convince him.

She had called his office and made an appointment to see him.

A moment after she was ushered into his office he had taken an urgent phone call, and sitting across from his desk Laurie had had a chance to study him closely.

He had dark hair, blue-green eyes accentuated by black-rimmed glasses, a firm chin, and the tall, lanky build that she knew had made him a basketball star in college.

Observing him on television, she had decided that he was the kind of man people instinctively liked and trusted, and that was the quality she was looking for in a narrator who would also be on camera. That instinct was reinforced as she heard him reassuring the person he was speaking to that there was no reason to worry.

When he finished the phone call, his apologetic smile was warm and genuine. But his first question-“And what can I do for you, Ms. Moran?”-warned her not to waste his time.

Laurie had been prepared, succinct, and passionate.

She thought back to the moment when Alex Buckley leaned back in his chair and said, “I’d be very interested in taking part in the program, Ms. Moran.”

“Laurie, I was sure you were going to get turned down flat that day,” Jerry said.

“I knew that the money I could offer Buckley for being on the program wasn’t enough to compensate him, but my hunch was he might be intrigued by the unsolved Graduation Gala case. Thank heaven it turns out that I was right.”

“You were right on,” Jerry agreed heartily. “He’ll be great.”

It was six o’clock. “Let’s hope so,” Laurie said as she pushed back her chair and got up. “We’ve labored in the vineyard long enough. Let’s call it a day.”

Two hours later as they sipped coffee, Laurie said to her father, “As I told Jerry and Grace today, the die is cast.”

“What does that mean?” Timmy asked. Tonight he had not asked to be excused after he finished dessert.

“It means that I’ve done everything possible, and we start filming the people on the program tomorrow morning.”

“Will it be a series?” Timmy asked.

“From your mouth to God’s ear,” Laurie said fervently, then smiled at her son. So like Greg, she thought, not just in looks, but in the expression he gets when he’s thinking something through.

He always asked about any project she was working on. This one she had described in the broadest terms as “a reunion of four friends who grew up together but haven’t seen each other in twenty years.”

Timmy’s answer to that was, “Why didn’t they see each other?”

“Because they lived in different states,” Laurie answered honestly.

The last few months have been hard, she thought. It wasn’t only the pressure of the enormous amount of preparation for the filming. Timmy had received his First Holy Communion on May 25, and she had not been able to keep the tears from slipping past her dark glasses. Greg should be here. Greg should be here, but he’ll never be here for all the important events in Timmy’s life. Not his confirmation or graduations or when he gets married. Not any of them. Those thoughts had sounded like a drumbeat in her head, repeating themselves over and over as she made a desperate effort to stop crying.

Laurie realized that Timmy was looking at her, a worried expression on his face.

“Mom, you look sad,” he said anxiously.

“I didn’t mean to.” Laurie swallowed over the lump that was forming in her throat and smiled. “Why should I? I have you and Grandpa. Isn’t that right, Dad?”

Leo Farley was familiar with the emotion he sensed his daughter was feeling. He often had moments of intense sadness when he thought of the years he and Eileen had been married. And then to lose Greg to some devil incarnate-

Leo stopped that thought. “And I have you two,” he said heartily. “Remember, don’t stay up too late, either one of you. We all have to get up early tomorrow.”

In the morning Timmy was going away to camp for two weeks with some of his friends.

Leo and Laurie had wrestled with their abiding worry that Blue Eyes might somehow find out where Timmy was going, then realized that if they isolated him from activities with his friends, he would grow up nervous and fearful. In the five years since Greg’s murder, they’d struggled to make Timmy feel normal-while keeping him safe.

Leo had gone upstate personally to look the camp over, and had spoken with the head counselor and been assured that the boys Timmy’s age were under constant supervision, and that they had security guards who would spot a stranger in a heartbeat.

Leo told the counselor the words Timmy had been screaming: “Blue Eyes shot my daddy.” Then he repeated the description the elderly witness had given the police. “He had a scarf over his face. He was wearing a cap. He was average height, broad but not fat. He was around the block in seconds, but I don’t think he was young. But he could run really fast.”

For some reason the image of the guy who had skated past them on the sidewalk in March ran through Leo’s mind as he spoke the words “really fast.” Maybe it’s because he almost knocked over that pregnant lady who was ahead of us, he thought.

“A little more coffee, Dad?”

“No thanks.” Leo had made himself stop telling Laurie that getting those people from the Graduation Gala under one roof again was too risky. It was going to happen, and there was no use wasting his breath.

He pushed his chair back from the table, collected the dessert dishes and coffee cups, and brought them into the kitchen. Laurie was already there, about to start loading the dishes into the dishwasher.

“I’ll do those,” he said. “You double-check Timmy’s bag. I think I have everything in it.”

“Then everything is in it. I never knew anyone so organized. Dad, what would I do without you?”

“You’d do very well, but I plan to be around for a while.” Leo Farley kissed his daughter. As he said that, the words of the elderly woman who had witnessed Greg’s death and heard the murderer shout to Timmy, “Tell your mother that she’s next, then it’s your turn,” rang in his head for the millionth time.

At that moment Leo Farley decided that he would quietly drive up to Salem Ridge for the days of the filming. I’m enough of a cop that I can do surveillance without being observed, he thought.

If anything goes wrong, I want to be there, he told himself.