I've Got You Under My Skin

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.

“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.