I've Got You Under My Skin (3 page)

4

C
laire Bonner settled at a table in the Seafood Bar of The Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach. She was facing the ocean and watched with detached interest as the waves crashed against the retaining wall directly below the Bar. The sun was shining but the winds were stronger than she had expected in Florida on an early spring day.

She was wearing a newly purchased zippered jacket in a light shade of blue. She had bought it when she noticed that it carried the name of
THE BREAKERS
on the breast pocket. It was part of the fantasy of spending this long weekend here. Her short ash-blond hair framed a face that was half-hidden by oversized sunglasses. The glasses were seldom off, but when they were, Claire’s beautiful features were revealed, as well as the tranquil expression that had taken her years to achieve. In fact, a discerning observer might have realized that the expression was caused by the acceptance of reality rather than peace of mind. Her slender frame had an aura of fragility as though she had been recently ill. The same observer might have guessed her to be in her mid-thirties. In that case he would have been wrong. She was forty-one.

In the past four days she had had the same polite young waiter and now was greeted by name as he approached her table. “Let me guess, Ms. Bonner,” he said. “Seafood chowder and two large stone crabs.”

“You have it,” Claire said as a brief smile touched the corner of her lips.

“And the usual glass of chardonnay,” he added as he jotted down the order.

You do something for a few days in a row and it becomes the usual, she thought wryly.

Almost instantly the chardonnay was placed on the table before her. She picked up the glass and looked around the room as she sipped.

All of the diners were dressed in designer casual clothes. The Breakers was an expensive hotel, a retreat for the well-heeled. It was the Easter holiday week, and, nationwide, schools were closed. At breakfast in the dining room she had observed that families with children were usually accompanied by a nanny who skillfully removed a restless toddler so that the parents could enjoy the lavish buffet in peace.

The lunchtime crowd in the bar was composed almost totally of adults. In walking around she had noticed that the younger families gravitated to the restaurants by the pool, where the choice of casual fare was greater.

What would it have been like to vacation here every year from childhood? Claire wondered. Then she tried to brush away the memories of falling asleep each night in a half-empty theatre where her mother was working as an usher. That was before they met Robert Powell, of course. But by then Claire’s childhood was almost over.

As those thoughts went through her head, two couples, still in travel clothes, took the table next to hers. She heard one of the women sigh happily, “It’s so good to be back.”

I’ll pretend I’m coming back, she thought. I’ll pretend that every year I have the same oceanfront room and look forward to long walks on the beach before breakfast.

The waiter arrived with the chowder. “Really hot, the way you like it, Ms. Bonner,” he said.

The first day, she had asked for the chowder to be very hot and the crabs to be served as the second course. The waiter had also committed that request to memory.

The first sip of the chowder almost burned the roof of her mouth and she stirred the rest of it inside the soup bowl that was a scooped-out loaf of bread to cool it a bit. Then she reached for her glass and took a long sip of the chardonnay. As she had expected, it was crisp and dry, exactly as it had tasted for the last few days.

Outside an even stronger wind was churning the breaking waves into clouds of cascading foam.

Claire realized that she felt like one of those surges of water, trying to reach shore but at the mercy of the powerful wind. It was still her decision. She could always say no. She’d said no to returning to her stepfather’s house for years. And she passionately didn’t want to go now. No one could force her to go on a national cable television show and take part in reenacting the party and sleepover twenty years ago when the four of them, best friends, had celebrated their graduation from college.

But if she did take part in the show, the production company would give her fifty thousand dollars, and Rob would give her two hundred fifty thousand dollars.

Three hundred thousand dollars. It would mean that she could take a leave of absence from her job in Chicago’s youth and family services. The bout of pneumonia she had survived in January had come close to killing her, and she knew her body was still weak and tired. She had never accepted Powell’s offer of money. Not a single cent. She had torn up his letters and returned them to him. After what he did.

They wanted to call it the “Graduation Gala.” It had been a beautiful party, a wonderful party, Claire thought. Then Alison and
Regina and Nina had stayed overnight. And sometime during that night, my mother had been murdered. Betsy Bonner Powell, beautiful, vivacious, generous, funny, beloved Betsy.

I thoroughly despised her, Claire thought quietly.

I absolutely hated my mother, and I loathed her beloved husband, even though he kept trying to send me money.

5

R
egina Callari was sorry she had gone to the post office and picked up the registered letter from Laurie Moran, a producer at Fisher Blake Studios. Take part in a reality program that would reenact the night of the Graduation Gala! she thought, dismayed—and, frankly, shocked.

The letter upset her so much that she knew she had lost a sale. She had to fumble for the features of the house she was showing, and in the middle of the walk-through the prospective client said, abruptly, “I think I’ve seen enough; this is not the house I’m looking for.”

Then, after she got back to the office, she had to phone the owner, seventy-six-year-old Bridget Whiting, and tell her that she had been wrong. “I was sure we had a good prospect but it just didn’t happen,” she apologized.

Bridget’s disappointment was palpably evident in her voice. “I don’t know how long they’ll keep that apartment for me in the assisted-living home, and it’s
exactly
what I want. Oh dear! Regina, maybe I built up my hopes too much. It’s not your fault.”

But it is my fault, Regina thought, trying to keep raw anger out of her voice as she swore to Bridget that she was going to find her a buyer and fast, and then, knowing how difficult that would be in this market, said good-bye.

Her office, a one-room former garage, had once been part of a private residence on the main street in St. Augustine, Florida. The bleak housing market had improved, but not sufficiently for Regina to do more than eke out a living. Now she put her elbows on her desk and pressed her fingers to the sides of her forehead. Wisps of curly hair reminded her that her midnight-black hair was growing with its usual annoying rapidity. She knew she would have to make an appointment for a trim. The fact that the hairdresser always insisted on talking a blue streak was what had kept her from making the appointment—that, and the cost.

That silly fact made Regina annoyed at herself and her own always present impatience. So what, she told herself, if for twenty minutes Lena yak-yak-yakked away? She’s the only one who knows how to make this unruly mop look decent.

Regina’s dark brown eyes traveled to the picture on her desk. Zach, her nineteen-year-old son, smiled back at her from it. He was just completing his sophomore year at the University of Pennsylvania, an education fully paid for by his father, her ex-husband. Zach had phoned last night. Hesitantly, he had asked if she would mind if he went backpacking through Europe and the Middle East this summer. He had planned to come home and get a job in St. Augustine, but jobs were hard to find there. It wouldn’t cost all that much, and his father would finance him.

“I’ll be back in time to spend ten days with you before the term starts, Mom,” he had assured her, his tone pleading.

Regina had told him that it was a wonderful opportunity and that he should jump at it. She hadn’t let the keen disappointment she felt sound in her voice. She missed Zach. She missed the sweet little boy who used to come bounding into the office from the school bus, eager to share every single moment of his day with her. She missed the tall, shy adolescent who would have dinner waiting if she was out late with a client.

Since the divorce, Earl had been skillfully carving out ways to separate her from Zach. It had begun when, at age ten, Zach went to sailing camp in Cape Cod for the summer. The camp was followed by the shared holidays when Earl and his new wife took Zach skiing in Switzerland or to the South of France.

She knew Zach loved her, but a small house and a tight budget could hardly compete with life with his wildly rich father. Now he’d be gone for most of the summer.

Slowly, Regina reached for the letter from Moran and reread it. “She’ll pay fifty thousand, and the mighty Robert Nicholas Powell will pay each of us two hundred fifty thousand,” she murmured aloud. “Mr. Benevolence himself.”

She thought of her friends and former co-hosts of the Graduation Gala. Claire Bonner. She was beautiful, but always so quiet, like a faded shadow next to her mother. Alison Schaefer, so smart she put the rest of us to shame. I thought she’d end up the next Madame Curie. She got married the October after Betsy died, and then Rod, her husband, was in an accident. From what I understand, he’s been on crutches all these years. Nina Craig. We called her “the flaming redhead.” I remember even as a freshman if she got mad at you, watch out. She would even tell a teacher off if she thought she didn’t get a good enough mark on an essay.

And then there was me, Regina thought. When I was fifteen I opened the door of the garage to put my bike away and found my father swinging from a rope. His eyes were bulging and his tongue was lapping over his chin. If he had to hang himself, why didn’t he do it in his office? He knew that I’d be the one to find him in the garage. I loved him so much! How could he have done that to me? The nightmares have never stopped. They always started with her getting off her bike.

Before she called the police, and the neighbor’s house where her mother was playing bridge, she had taken the suicide note her father
had pinned to his shirt and hidden it. When the police came they said that most suicide victims leave a note for the family. Sobbing, her mother had searched the house for it, while Regina pretended to help.

The girls were my lifeline after that, Regina thought. We were such close friends. After the Gala and Betsy’s death, Claire and Nina and I were Alison’s bridesmaids. That had been such a stupid move. It was so soon after Betsy died; the tabloids had made a spectacle of the wedding. The headlines were all a rehashing of the Graduation Gala murder. That was when we realized that all four of us would continue to be under suspicion; maybe for the rest of our lives.

We never got together again, Regina lamented. After the wedding we all went out of our way to avoid any contact with each other. We all moved to different cities.

What would it be like to see them again, to be under the same roof? We were all so young then, so shocked and frightened when Betsy’s body was discovered. And the way the police questioned us, together, then separately. It’s a miracle one of us didn’t break down and confess to smothering her, the way they hammered at us.
“We know it was somebody inside that house. Which one of you did it? If it wasn’t you, maybe it was one of your friends. Protect yourself. Tell us what you know.”

Regina thought of how the police had wondered if Betsy’s emeralds might have been the motive. She left them on the glass tray on her dressing table when she went to bed. They suggested that she woke up while she was being robbed and whoever was there panicked. One of her earrings was on the floor. Had Betsy dropped it when she took it off, or had someone, wearing gloves, panicked and dropped it when she woke up?

Regina got up slowly and looked around. She tried to visualize having three hundred thousand dollars in the bank. Almost half
of that would go to income tax, she warned herself. But even so, it would be an unimaginable windfall. Or maybe it would bring back the days when her father had been so successful, and they, as well as Robert and Betsy Powell, had the big house in Salem Ridge with all the trimmings, housekeeper, a cook, a landscaper, a chauffeur, a top New York caterer for their frequent parties . . .

Regina looked around her one-room real estate office. Even with the Sheetrock walls painted light blue to coordinate with her white desk and the white armchairs with blue cushions for potential clients, the room looked like what it was: a brave effort to hide a thin budget. A garage is a garage is a garage, she thought, except for the one luxury I installed when I bought this property after the divorce.

The luxury was down the hall past the unisex restroom. Unmarked and always locked, it was a private bathroom with a Jacuzzi, steam shower, vanity sink, and wardrobe closet. It was here that sometimes, at the end of the day, she would shower, change, and then meet her friends or go out to a solitary dinner followed by a movie.

Earl had left her ten years ago, when Zach was going on nine. He hadn’t been able to put up with her bouts of depression. “Get help, Regina. I’m sick of the moods. I’m sick of the nightmares. It’s not good for our son, just in case you haven’t noticed.”

After the divorce, Earl, a computer salesman at the time, whose hobby had been writing songs, had finally sold a collection of his music to a major recording artist. His next step had been to marry budding rock singer Sonya Miles. When Sonya hit the charts with the album he wrote for her, Earl became a celebrity in the world he coveted. He took to that life as a duck takes to water, Regina thought as she walked over to the row of files on the far side of the room.

She took an unmarked package from the bottom of the locked
file. Buried under miscellaneous real estate advertisements, it was a cardboard box that contained all the newspaper coverage of the Graduation Gala murder.

I haven’t looked at it in years, Regina thought as she carried the box back to her desk, laid it down, and opened it. Some of the newspapers had begun to crumble at the edges, but she found what she was looking for. It was the picture of Betsy and Robert Powell toasting the four graduates—Claire, Alison, Nina, and herself.

We were all so pretty, Regina thought. I remember how we went shopping for dresses together. We all had done well in college. We had our plans and hopes for the future. And they were all destroyed that night.

She put the newspapers back in the box, carried it over to the file, and dropped it in the bottom drawer, carefully concealing it below the ads. I’m going to take his damn money, she thought. And that producer’s as well. Maybe if I do, I can take hold of my life. I do know I can use some of the money to take Zach on a fun vacation, before he goes back to school.

She slammed the drawer, put the
CLOSED
sign in the window of the office, turned out the lights, locked the door, and went back to her private bath. In it, as the water ran in the Jacuzzi, she stripped and looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the door. I’ve got two months before the show and I need to lose twenty pounds, she thought. I want to look good when I get there and tell what I remember. I want Zach to be proud of me.

An unwanted thought crept into her mind. I know Earl always wondered if I was the one who killed Betsy. Did he ever plant that suspicion in Zach’s mind?

Regina knew she didn’t love Earl anymore, didn’t want him anymore, but even more than that, she didn’t want to have any more nightmares.

The Jacuzzi was filled with water. She stepped into it, leaned back, and closed her eyes.

As her curly black hair became straight and sleek around her face, she thought, This is my chance to convince everyone that
I
wasn’t the one who killed that rotten slut.