I've Got You Under My Skin

16

Alex Buckley’s alarm went off at 6 A.M., only seconds after his interior alarm made him stir in his sleep and open his eyes.

He lay quietly for a few minutes to collect his thoughts.

Today he would be in Salem Ridge for the first day of filming the Graduation Gala.

He pushed off the sheet and got up. Years ago, a client who was out on bail had come to his office. When he stood up to greet her, she had exclaimed, “My God, I never realized there’s no end to you!”

Six foot four, Alex had understood the remark and laughed. The woman was only five feet tall, a fact that had not prevented her from fatally stabbing her husband during a domestic quarrel.

The woman’s remark ran through his mind as he headed for the shower, but it quickly disappeared as he thought about the day ahead.

He knew why he had decided to accept the offer from Laurie Moran. He had read about the Graduation Gala when he was a sophomore at Fordham University and had followed the case with avid interest, trying to imagine which graduate had committed the crime. He had been sure it was one of them.

His apartment was on Beekman Place, by the East River, that was home to high-ranking UN delegates, as well as quietly wealthy businesspeople.

Two years ago he had happened to visit the apartment, and at the dinner table learned that the hosts were putting it on the market. He instantly decided to buy it. To him, its only downfall was the large, incessantly blinking red PEPSI-COLA sign on a building in Long Island City that marred the view of the East River.

But the apartment had six large rooms, as well as servant quarters. He knew he didn’t need so much space, but on the other hand, he rationalized, the full dining room meant he could have dinner parties; he could turn the second bedroom into a den; and it would be handy to have a guestroom. His brother Andrew, a corporate lawyer, lived in Washington, D.C., and came up to Manhattan regularly on business.

“Now you won’t need to go to a hotel,” he had told Andrew.

“I’m willing to pay the going rate,” his brother had joked, then added, “As it happens, I’m sick of hotels, so this will be great.”

When he bought the apartment, Alex decided that instead of a biweekly housekeeper it would be better to have one full-time employee who could keep the apartment clean, run errands, and prepare breakfast and dinner when he was home. Through the recommendation of the interior decorator who had furnished his new home with quiet good taste he had hired Ramon, who had been with one of her other clients but had chosen not to move to California with them. Ramon’s former employers were an eccentric couple who kept erratic hours, and what they didn’t wear they dropped on the floor.

Ramon happily settled in the studio-sized room and bath off the kitchen, which had been designed for a live-in helper. Sixty years old, born in the Philippines, he was long divorced, with a daughter in Syracuse.

Ramon had no interest in Alex’s private affairs, and it would never have occurred to him to read anything Alex left on his desk.

Ramon was already in the kitchen when Alex, dressed in his usual business suit, white shirt, and tie, took his seat in the breakfast nook. The morning papers were next to his plate, but after greeting Ramon and skimming the headlines, he pushed them away.

“I’ll read them when I get home tonight,” he said as Ramon poured coffee into his cup. “Anything exciting in them?”

“You’re on Page Six of the Post, sir. You escorted Miss Allen to the opening of a film.”

“Yes, I did.” Alex was still not used to the unwanted publicity that accompanied the celebrity status he had achieved by his frequent television appearances.

“She is a very beautiful woman, sir.”

“Yes, she is.” That was something else. As an unmarried, prominent lawyer, he could not escort a woman to an event without being linked to her. Elizabeth Allen was a friend, and nothing more.

Alex made short work of the fruit, cereal, and toast Ramon set before him. He realized that he was anxious to get up to the home of Robert Powell and meet both him and the returning graduates.

They’d all be forty-one or forty-two by now, he thought, Claire Bonner, Alison Schaefer, Regina Callari, and Nina Craig. Since he had agreed to be the narrator of the program, he had done extensive research on each, and had read everything that had been in the media at the time of Betsy Powell’s murder.

He had been asked to arrive at the Powell estate at nine o’clock. It was time to leave. “Will you be home for dinner tonight, Mr. Alex?” Ramon asked.

“Yes, I will.”

“Do you plan to have a guest or guests?”

Alex smiled at the diminutive man who was looking so anxiously at him.

Ramon is a perfectionist, he thought, not for the first time. He did not like to waste food when it could be avoided, and he happily welcomed being informed when Alex was inviting friends for dinner. Alex shook his head. “No guests,” he said.

A few minutes later Alex was in the garage of his building. Ramon had phoned ahead, so his Lexus convertible was already parked near the exit ramp with the roof down.

Alex put on his sunglasses, started the car, and headed for the East River Drive. The questions he would ask the six people who were known to be in the house on the night that Betsy Bonner Powell had been suffocated in her sleep were already in his head.