I've Got You Under My Skin

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.

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.