We'll Meet Again

9

“Why don’t you give Molly a call?”

Jenna Whitehall looked across the table at her husband. Dressed in a comfortable loose silk shirt and black silk slacks, she appeared dramatically attractive, an impression enhanced by her charcoal-brown hair and hazel eyes. She had arrived home at six o’clock and checked her messages. There had been no call from Molly.

Trying not to let her irritation show, she said calmly, “ Cal, you know I left a message on Molly’s answering machine. If she wanted company, she’d have gotten back to me. Clearly she doesn’t want company tonight.”

“I still can’t figure why she’d want to go back to that house,” he said. “I mean, how can she go into that study without remembering that night, without thinking about picking up that sculpture and smashing it into poor Gary ’s head? It would give me the creeps.”

“ Cal, I’ve asked you before, please don’t talk about it. Molly’s my closest friend, and I love her. She doesn’t remember a thing about Gary ’s death.”

“That’s her story.”

“And I believe it. Now that she’s home, I intend to be with her whenever she wants me. And when she doesn’t want me, I’ll give her space. Okay?”

“You’re very attractive when you’re mad and trying not to show it, Jen. Let it out. You’ll feel better.”

Calvin Whitehall pushed back the chair from the dining room table and crossed to his wife. He was a formidable-looking, broad-shouldered, broad-chested, heavy-featured man in his mid-forties, with thinning light red hair. Thick eyebrows over ice-blue eyes enhanced the aura of authority that emanated from him even in his home.

There was nothing in Cal ’s presence or bearing to suggest his humble beginnings. He’d put a lot of distance between himself and the two-family frame house in Elmira, New York, in which he’d been raised.

A scholarship to Yale, and the ability to quickly mimic the manners and bearing of his more highborn schoolmates, had led to a spectacular rise in the business world. His private joke was that the only useful thing his parents had ever given him was a name that at least sounded classy.

Now, comfortably settled in an exquisitely furnished twelve-room mansion in Greenwich, Cal was living the life he had dreamed about for himself years ago in the tiny, spartan bedroom that had been his retreat from his parents, who had spent their evenings drinking cheap wine and quarreling. When the quarrels got too loud or became violent, the neighbors had called the police. Cal learned to dread the sound of the police siren, the contempt in the eyes of the neighbors, the snickers of his classmates, the comments around town about his trashy parents.

He was very smart, certainly smart enough to know that the only road out for him was education, and in fact, his teachers in school soon realized he’d been blessed with near-genius intelligence. In his bedroom with its sagging floor, peeling walls, and single, dim overhead light, he’d studied and read voraciously, concentrating particularly on learning everything he could about the possibilities for and future of the computer.

At twenty-four, after getting an MBA, he went to work at a struggling computer company. At thirty, shortly after his move to Greenwich, he wrenched control of the company from the bewildered owner. It was his first opportunity to play cat and mouse, to toy with his prey while knowing all the time that it was a game he would win. The satisfaction of the kill appeased in him the lingering anger at his father’s bullying, the subsequent necessity of toadying to a variety of employers.

A few years later he sold the company for a fortune, and now he spent his time handling his myriad business enterprises.

His marriage had not produced children, and he was grateful that instead of becoming obsessed over that lack, as Molly Lasch had done, Jenna devoted her energies instead to her Manhattan law practice. She, too, had been part of his plan. The move to Greenwich. The choice of Jenna-a stunningly attractive, smart young woman from a good family of limited means. He knew very well that the life he could give Jenna was a big attraction to her. Like him, she enjoyed power.

He enjoyed toying with her too. Now, he smiled down on her benignly and ran his hand over her hair. “I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “It’s just that I think Molly would have welcomed a visit from you even if she didn’t call. It’s a big change to come home to that empty house, and it’s got to be pretty damn lonely for her there. She had plenty of company in prison, even if it was company she didn’t appreciate.”

Jenna lifted her husband’s hand from her head. “Stop it. You know that mussing my hair annoys me.” Abruptly she announced, “I have a brief I want to go over for a meeting tomorrow.”

“Always be prepared. That’s being a good lawyer. You haven’t asked about our meetings today.”

Cal was chairman of the board of Lasch Hospital and Remington Health Management. With a satisfied smile, he added, “It’s still a little tricky. American National Insurance wants those HMOs as much as we do, but we’ll get them. And when we do, we’ll be the biggest HMO in the East.”

Jenna looked at her husband with grudging admiration. “You always get what you want, don’t you?”

He nodded. “I got you, didn’t I?”

Jenna pressed the button under the table to signal the maid to clear. “Yes,” she said quietly, “I guess you did.”