I've Got You Under My Skin

37

Claire had orange juice, coffee, and an English muffin sent up for breakfast. She was dressed and waiting long before the car arrived to pick her up and take her to the house where she had spent the nine most miserable years of her life.

She had deliberately dressed the way she usually dressed at home-a plain long-sleeved cotton shirt and black slacks. Today she did not put on makeup, nor, as was her custom at home, any jewelry. I’ve been fading into the background all of these years, she thought. When I was a child, my mother pushed me into it. Why should I change? Besides, it’s too late for anything to change.

There was only one satisfaction in Claire’s life-her job as a social worker dealing with domestic issues. She knew she was good at it, and it was only when she had helped to rescue women and children from unbearable circumstances that she had a sense of peace and fulfillment.

Why did I come back here? she wondered. What did I think I was going to get out of it? What did I think I was going to put to rest? By participating, each of the graduates risked revealing her own secret reasons for hating Betsy. Claire knew what those reasons were and sympathized with all of them. She remembered how the other three had been her strength during the high school years. When I was out with them, she thought, I could almost forget everything.

Now we’re all afraid of what people might know about us. Will this program bring the truth to light, or will it simply be a messy rehash of painful memories and destroyed lives? She shrugged impatiently, then turned on the news to kill time until the car arrived. One of the items mentioned the filming of the show about the murder of Betsy Bonner Powell and how it was destined to be “the most highly anticipated event of the television season.”

Claire pushed the remote control button and the screen darkened just as the telephone rang. From the lobby Josh Damiano asked in a cheery voice if she was ready to go.

Maybe I’ve been ready for twenty years, Claire thought as she picked up her pocketbook and slung it over her arm.

Chief Ed Penn had received a phone call from Leo Farley at nine o’clock on Monday evening. He could tell that Farley sounded fatigued but was shocked when Leo told him he was in the hospital. “They haven’t been able to get my heart back to a normal rhythm,” Leo told him. “And of course that means I’m not going to be around to keep an eye out for any potential problems.”

Chief Penn’s first reaction was that Leo Farley had been under the strain of the threat to his daughter and grandson for five years and was breaking under it. After pointing out what Leo already knew-that the film company had a guard at the gate of the Powell estate to keep out paparazzi and that the guard was checking everyone who attempted to get inside the grounds-Penn promised Leo he would station a squad car on the back road to be sure no one attempted to scale the fence.

Now that the program was actually being made, Penn had taken home the exhaustive file on the case and had once again been reading it through.

When Leo phoned, he had been examining the pictures of the crime scene with a magnifying glass, the beautifully appointed bedroom in the background and the incongruous sight of Betsy Powell’s body, her hair loose on the pillow, her eyes staring, her satin nightgown curving on her shoulders.

The Chief read that the housekeeper had been in the kitchen when she heard the commotion upstairs and raced up to find Robert Powell gasping for breath on the floor by the bed, his hands burned from the coffee he had been carrying to Betsy.

The four graduates had rushed into the room when they heard Jane’s shriek. According to them, Jane Novak had screamed, “Betsy, Betsy,” even though she normally called her Mrs. Powell.

And immediately after pulling the pillow from the face of the victim, Jane admitted she had picked up the emerald earring from the carpet and put it on the night table.

“I guess it was because I almost stepped on it,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing.”

What she had been doing was contaminating the crime scene, Penn thought. First by handling the pillow, then by picking up the earring.

“And then I ran over to Mr. Powell,” Jane’s statement continued. “He had passed out. I thought he was dead. I had watched someone do CPR on television and I tried it on him in case his heart had stopped beating. And by then the girls came in and I shrieked to them to phone the police and get an ambulance.”

It was the collective calm of the four graduates that the Chief remembered noting immediately. Granted, they told him they had been up until 3 A.M. talking and had drunk plenty of wine. The lack of sleep and the excessive drinking might have numbed their immediate response to Betsy Powell’s death. But it seemed to him that even allowing for the shock of it, Claire Bonner was surprisingly composed for a young woman whose mother was dead.

But then, so were the other graduates when they were interrogated.

I still don’t think it was an intruder, Penn thought. I have always believed that someone in that house killed Betsy Powell.

The six people who had been there were Robert Powell, the housekeeper, and the four graduates.

They’re all being questioned by Buckley, Penn thought. He’s supposed to be dynamite when he’s cross-examining a witness. It will be interesting to compare their initial statements with what they say now on camera.

Shaking his head, the Chief looked around his den. He felt that it was a stain on his department that the crime had never been solved. His eyes lingered on the wall with the many citations he and his department had earned over the years. There was another one he wanted.

It would be for solving the murder of Betsy Bonner Powell.

Then he glanced at his watch. It was ten minutes past nine. No more time for useless speculation. He picked up the phone to order that a squad car be stationed at the back of the Powell estate starting the next morning.