Twenty-four miles away in an equally expensive restaurant in Westchester County, Robert Powell and Muriel Craig were sipping champagne. “To our reunion,” he whispered.
“Rob, dear, I’ve missed you. Oh, how I’ve missed you.” Muriel reached across the table for his hand. “Why didn’t you ever call me in all these years?”
“I was afraid to call you. When we broke up I was very unfair to you. I know you had given up the chance to be in that series, and it became so successful. I owed you so much, I didn’t know where to begin.”
“I called and wrote to you,” Muriel reminded him.
“That only made me feel more guilty,” Robert Powell confessed. “And I haven’t told you yet how absolutely lovely you look tonight.”
Muriel knew that was not flattery. She had prevailed on Meg and Courtney to do her makeup and style her hair. She had found a beautiful dinner suit in an exclusive boutique in Bedford. The fact that she had already bought a beautiful dinner suit with matching accessories on Rodeo Drive in Hollywood did not trouble her. She was carrying Nina’s credit card.
Robert was saying, “I think we’d better order.”
Throughout the dinner, he skillfully intermingled compliments with subtle questions. “I was so flattered to hear that you blamed Nina for calling Claire and Betsy to the table that day, Muriel.”
“I could have killed her,” Muriel admitted, her voice thick and a little loud. “I was so in love with you.”
“And I often thought of you over the years and wondered how stupidly carried away I was, and how much I came to regret it.” He paused. “And then, when Betsy was mercifully off my hands, I wish I could have known who to thank.”
Muriel looked hesitant, then glanced around the dining room to be sure that the occupants at the surrounding tables were absorbed in their own conversations. Satisfied, she bent forward and leaned across the table as far as she could, getting a smear of butter on the lapel of her new suit.
“Robbie, do you mean you were glad when Betsy was smothered?”
“Promise not to tell anyone that,” he whispered.
“Of course not. It’s our secret. But you know how close my daughter, Nina, and I have always been?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, she was so upset with what Betsy wrote on my invitation, you know, how she wanted me to see how happy you two were and how glad she was that Nina had introduced you…”
“I learned about it later, and I was shocked.”
“I was hurt, but Nina was furious at her. She knew how much I loved you. Rob, I think Nina was the one who killed Betsy. She did it for me so that I would have another chance with you.”
“Are you sure, or are you guessing, Muriel?” Robert Powell’s eyes were suddenly alert, his tone of voice sharp.
Muriel Craig looked at him, vaguely aware of the change in his manner. “Of course I’m sure, Robbie. She called me. You remember, I was in Hollywood and she was crying over the phone. She said, ‘Mommy, I’m scared. They’re asking so many questions.
“ ‘Mommy, I did it for you.’ ”
Jane checked the bedrooms for the last time before they all got back. She had opened the bar in the den and laid out a platter of hors d’oeuvres just as she had done the night Betsy was murdered. She thought, Oh, to be rid of all of them at last!
After several days of all this activity, she was unused to the blessed silence in the house. Mr. Rob had taken that impossible Muriel Craig out to dinner. No question, she looked beautiful, but there was no doubt she already had a few under her belt.
And there was a faint smell of smoke in her bathroom.
Mr. Rob scorned anyone who drank too much or smoked.
Mr. Rob was toying with Muriel. Jane knew the signs. It was similar to the way Betsy had toyed with Regina’s father, until she got him to sink every nickel he had into the hedge fund.
Oh, they were quite the pair of experts at cheating people, she thought with admiration. Plus, Betsy was a two-faced fraud. She had skillfully hidden her little dalliances from Mr. Rob.
That was why Betsy had slipped me little gifts to keep my mouth shut, Jane thought.
But she was worried now. She had missed the fact that Josh had been playing his own little game, blackmailing people he taped in the car.
If Mr. Rob knew she had covered for Betsy, she would be fired at once. He must never know. But who would tell him? Not Josh. He’d lose his job, too.
I still have the jewelry that George Curtis gave Betsy, Jane thought as she turned down the beds for the visitors and lowered the shades in their rooms, a job she hadn’t done in twenty years-except, of course, for Mr. Rob. Sometimes she put a chocolate on his pillow, just as they did in hotels.
Mr. Curtis had been here this afternoon. Boy, he must have been squirming, she thought, talking to Alex Buckley about the Gala.
After the Gala, Jane had fixed the platter of hors d’oeuvres for the girls and brought them to the den. I was in and out for the first half hour or so and listened to all of them until they really let go on Betsy. Then they started to look at me and I said good night.
If push came to shove, I could make a case against any one of them, she told herself.
She laid her head on Mr. Rob’s pillow, just for an instant. Then she pulled herself up and with rapid fingers plumped it again.
Tomorrow night at this time she and Mr. Rob would be alone again.