We'll Meet Again

6

When Philip Matthews had driven Molly home from prison, he’d wanted to go into the house with her, but she wouldn’t allow it. “Please, Philip, just leave my bag at the door,” she’d directed. Then she’d added wryly, “You’ve heard that old Greta Garbo line, ‘I vant to be alone’? Well, that’s me.”

She’d looked thin and frail, standing on the porch of the handsome home she’d shared with Gary Lasch. In the two years since the inevitable break with his wife, who was now remarried, Philip Matthews had come to realize that his visits to Niantic Prison had become perhaps more frequent than was professionally appropriate.

“Molly, did you arrange for anyone to shop for you?” he’d asked. “I mean, do you even have any food in the house?”

“Mrs. Barry was to take care of that.”

“Mrs. Barry!” He knew his voice had risen two decibels. “What’s she got to do with it?”

“She’s going to start working for me again,” Molly had told him. “The couple who have been checking on the house are gone now. As soon as I knew I was getting out, my parents contacted Mrs. Barry, and she came over and supervised sprucing up the house and stocked the kitchen. She’ll begin coming in three days a week again.”

“That woman helped to put you in prison!”

“No, she told the truth.”

All through the rest of the day, even when he was in conferences with the prosecutor about his newest client, a prominent real estate dealer accused of vehicular homicide, Philip could not shake off his growing sense of apprehension over knowing that Molly was alone in that house.

At seven o’clock, as he was locking his desk and debating whether or not to call Molly, his private phone rang. His secretary was gone. It rang several times before curiosity overcame his initial inclination to let the answering machine pick up.

It was Molly. “Philip, good news. Do you remember my telling you that Fran Simmons, who was at the prison this morning, went to school with me?”

“Yes, I do. Are you okay, Molly? Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine. Philip, Fran Simmons is coming over tomorrow. She’s willing to do an investigation into Gary ’s death for a show she works on called True Crime. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if by some miracle she can help me prove there was someone else in the house that night?”

“Molly, let go of it. Please.”

A moment of silence followed. When she spoke again, the tone of Molly’s voice had changed. “I knew I shouldn’t have expected you to understand. But that’s okay. ‘Bye.”

Philip Matthews felt as well as heard the click in his ear. As he lowered the receiver, he remembered how, years ago, a Green Beret captain had cooperated with a writer who he thought would prove he was innocent of murdering his wife and children, only to have the writer later emerge as his chief accuser.

He walked to the window. His office was situated in Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park and overlooked New York ’s Upper Bay and the Statue of Liberty.

Molly, if I’d been prosecuting you, I’d have convicted you of deliberate murder, he told himself. This program will destroy you if that reporter starts digging; what she’ll find is that you got off easy.

Oh God, he thought, why can’t she just admit she was under terrible stress and lost control that night?