I've Got You Under My Skin (5 page)

8

T
he agreements to participate in the reenactment of the events of the Graduation Gala had trickled in to Laurie’s office one by one. The last of them had taken nearly two weeks, and it was from Nina Craig. The letter stated that she had consulted a lawyer and there were additional conditions she felt were appropriate. Robert Powell should put in escrow two hundred fifty thousand dollars for each of the four graduates, and it should be a net sum to each of them. Fisher Blake Studios must also offer fifty thousand net to the graduates. “Both Mr. Powell and Fisher Blake can well afford to compensate us fairly,” Nina had written. “And now that I have contacted my longtime childhood friends, I realize that we have all suffered emotional damage from being in the Powell home the night Betsy Bonner Powell lost her life. I believe by once again exposing ourselves to the glare of publicity, we are surrendering our hard-earned anonymity, for which we should receive appropriate compensation.”

Dismayed, Laurie reread the letter. “To net them that much money will mean we’d just about have to double what we’re paying them,” she said.

“I don’t think Brett will go for it.” Jerry Klein’s flat tone did not match the disappointment that came over his face. He had signed for the certified letter from Ms. Nina Craig and carried it into Laurie’s office.

“He’s got to go along with it,” Laurie said. “And I think he will. He’s been talking the series up, and he won’t want to pull back now.”

“Well he won’t be happy about it.” The worried expression on Jerry’s face deepened. “Laurie, I hope you haven’t put yourself out on a limb with this
Under Suspicion
idea.”

“I hope not, too.” Laurie looked out the window toward the Rockefeller Center skating rink. It was a warm day for early April, and there were few skaters on the ice. Soon the rink would be gone, and the area it covered would be filled with tables and chairs for outside dining.

Once in a while Greg and I used to have dinner out there, she thought as a wave of longing for him swept over her. She knew why it had come at this moment. The show was about closure. Even though she had no intention of revealing her concern to either Jerry or Grace, she knew Jerry was right. After becoming openly enthusiastic about the project, her boss, Brett Young, would probably rather double the price he had agreed to pay the participants than back out.

“What about Robert Powell?” Jerry was asking. “Do you think he’ll pony up and pay the taxes so they clear the two hundred and fifty grand?”

“I can only ask,” Laurie said. “And I think I’d better do it in person. I’ll call and ask if he can see me today.”

“Shouldn’t you check with Brett first?” Jerry suggested.

“No. There’s no use in getting him going if it’s a lost cause. If Powell doesn’t agree to pay, our next move has to be for me to fly to Los Angeles and see if Nina Craig can be persuaded to accept our offer. The others all agreed to the original terms, but it’s obvious she got them stirred up.”

“What will you tell her?” Jerry asked.

“The truth. If necessary we’ll do it without her, and that wouldn’t look good for her. And don’t forget that Betsy Bonner Powell was forty-two years old when she died. She’d be only sixty-two or sixty-
three now. Today many people live well into their eighties. Betsy was robbed of half of the life she might have enjoyed if someone hadn’t held a pillow over her face that night. The person who did that has woken up every morning since then and been able to enjoy a brand-new day while Betsy’s body is in a casket in a cemetery.”

Laurie knew her voice had become heated and angry and that it wasn’t just about Betsy Bonner Powell. It was about Greg and the fact that his killer was a free man. Not only
free,
but a living, breathing threat to her and Timmy. Then she said, “Sorry, Jerry. I know that I have to be careful not to make this sound like a personal crusade.”

She picked up the phone. “Time to make another appointment with Robert Nicholas Powell.”

9

R
ob Powell was on the three-hole golf course on the back lawn of his estate. The warm April day was conducive to getting out his clubs and practicing his swing before he joined a foursome at the Winged Foot Golf Club. Not bad, he thought as a well-struck putt rolled to the bottom of the cup.

Concentrating on his golf game had given him the opportunity to put aside the fact that he had not yet heard from the doctor. The chemo three years ago had seemed to take care of the nodules on his lungs, but he knew there was always a chance they would come back. He had had his semiannual checkup earlier in the week.

“Par for the course,” he said aloud as he made his way back to the house, swinging his golf club.

Fifteen minutes until his guest arrived. What did Laurie Moran want? he asked himself. She’d sounded concerned. Is she going to tell me that one of them won’t take part in the program? Rob frowned. I need to have them all here, he thought. No matter
what
it takes.

Even if Moran’s report was favorable, Rob had a sense of time going by too swiftly. He needed closure, and when Laurie Moran had come to see him in March and proposed her concept of reenacting the night of the Graduation Gala, it had been the answer to a prayer. Except, Rob thought, I’ve never been much of one to pray. I left all that to Betsy.

At that thought he laughed, a mirthless sound that came out more like a bark, and was followed by a fit of coughing.

Why hadn’t the doctor called with the results?

His housekeeper, Jane Novak, was opening the sliding glass door as he stepped from the cobblestone walk onto the patio. “Hole in one, Mr. Robert?” she asked cheerfully.

“Not quite, but not bad, Jane,” Rob said, trying not to be annoyed that Jane always asked that after he had been on the greens. If there was one thing about Jane he wished he could change, it was her total lack of any sense of humor. She meant that question to be a joke.

Jane, a solidly built woman with steel-gray hair and matching eyes, had come to work for him shortly after he married Betsy. He had understood why Betsy was not comfortable with the previous housekeeper, who had been hired by his first wife and who had stayed with him after her death. “Rob, that woman
resents
me,” Betsy had said. “I can
feel
it. Tell her it’s not working out and give her a healthy severance check. I know just who I want in her place.”

The person Betsy wanted was Jane Novak, who had worked backstage when Betsy was ushering in the theatre. “She’s a marvelous organizer. She actually keeps the dressing rooms neat. And she’s a good cook,” Betsy had raved.

Jane was all of that. After entering the country on a green card from Hungary, she was overwhelmed with joy to be put in charge of the mansion, and, as Betsy had promised, she was fully up to the job. Exactly Betsy’s age, Jane was now sixty-two. If she had any close friends or family, Rob had never seen them. Her very comfortable apartment was located behind the kitchen, and even on her days off, from what he could see, she seldom left it. Unless he was out of town, he knew that at seven-thirty every morning she would be in the kitchen ready to prepare his breakfast.

Over the years Rob had learned to see the slight nuances in Jane’s placid expression that signaled any kind of distress. As he stepped inside the house, he realized he was seeing them now. “You said that Ms. Moran was coming, Mr. Rob,” Jane said. “I hope you don’t mind if I ask, but does that mean that the program is going to happen?”

“I don’t mind you asking, but the answer is I don’t know,” Rob said. Even as he spoke, he realized that he
did
mind Jane asking, because there was a note of disapproval in her question.

He had just enough time to change into a long-sleeved sport shirt and go back downstairs before the doorbell chimed.

It was exactly four o’clock. He wondered if she had timed her arrival so precisely or if she had arrived a little early and waited in her car before coming up to the house.

It was the kind of totally irrelevant speculation that Rob Powell had found himself indulging in lately. “Woolgathering” is what they used to call it, he thought. He had even gone to the trouble of looking up the word in the dictionary. The definition was “indulging in idle fancies and daydreaming; absentmindedness.”

Rob thought to himself, Snap out of it! and got to his feet. He had asked Jane to bring Laurie Moran into the library instead of his office. Betsy had liked the English custom of four o’clock tea. After her death he had gotten away from it, but today it suddenly seemed appropriate.

More woolgathering, he acknowledged as Jane came into the room, followed by Laurie Moran.

He had considered Moran to be an attractive woman when she came to the house last month, but now as she hesitated for a moment and stood framed in the doorway, he realized that she was beautiful. Her hair, a soft honey shade, was loose on her shoulders, and in place of the pin-striped suit she was wearing a long-sleeved
print blouse and black-belted skirt that accentuated her small waist. Her black patent leather heels did not have the ridiculous stilts that were the fashion nowadays.

Once again, the seventy-eight-year-old appreciated her lovely looks.

“Come in, Ms. Moran, come in,” he said heartily. “I won’t bite you.”

“I wasn’t afraid of that, Mr. Powell,” Laurie said, smiling as she crossed the room and sat on the couch opposite the roomy leather armchair where he was settling himself.

“I’ve asked Jane to prepare tea,” he said. “You may serve it now, Jane, thank you.”

“How kind of you.”

It
was
kind of him, Laurie thought.

She drew a deep breath. Now that she was here, with so much at stake, it was difficult to appear calm. The four women, the stars of the Graduation Gala, would cost this man nearly two million dollars, instead of half that amount, to appear on the program.

Laurie marshaled her pitch to him, but before she started she waited for Jane’s somewhat forbidding figure to turn and leave the room.

“I’m going to make this easy for you,” Robert Powell said unexpectedly. “A problem has come up. I don’t have to be particularly astute or a deep thinker to guess that it’s about money. One of the four girls—women now—doesn’t think we’re paying enough to coax them to expose themselves to public scrutiny.”

Laurie hesitated for the length of a few seconds, then said, “That’s right.”

Powell smiled. “Let me guess which one. It wouldn’t be Claire. She has refused to let me help her since Betsy died. When she learns I have left her a substantial amount of money in my will it will not
impress her. When the time comes, she might even give the money to charity.

“We were
very
close, but Claire was very close to her mother, too. The fact that Betsy died was overwhelming for Claire. Somehow it became
my
fault, not that she thought I had killed her mother, mind you. Angry as she was, she knew that was impossible, but I think that in her mind, she was begrudging me the time I had alone with Betsy.” For a long moment he looked past Laurie.

“My guess,” he added slowly, “is that Nina Craig is the one holding us up for more money. In that way she’s very much like her mother. I actually dated Muriel Craig for a time. A very attractive woman, but with a touch of ruthlessness in her character. I didn’t stop seeing her only because I’d met Betsy. It would have happened anyhow. It was just a coincidence that it happened at approximately the same time.”

Jane carried in the tea tray, interrupting his reverie. She set it on the coffee table between the couch and Robert Powell’s chair. “Shall I pour, Mr. Powell?” she asked. She was already holding the teapot and pouring it into Laurie’s cup.

Robert Powell raised his eyebrows and cast an amused glance at Laurie. After Jane had offered cream or lemon and sugar or sweetener, and then left the room, he said, “As you can see, Jane asked a rhetorical question. She does that all the time.”

Laurie realized she had skipped lunch and was starved. She made herself take only a nibble of the quarter-sized crustless salmon sandwich. Her first instinct was to pop it into her mouth whole and reach for another one.

But even as she made herself eat slowly, daintily, she had the feeling that Robert Powell was toying with her. Did he really guess that Nina Craig was the one looking for more money, or had Nina contacted him personally?

And did he know how much she was going to demand?

“Am I right about Nina?” Powell asked as he crossed his legs and began to sip his tea.

“Yes,” Laurie said.

“How much does she want for all the graduates?”

“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars net each.”

“She’s even greedier than I remembered,” Powell murmured. “So like her dear mother.” The amused tone left his voice. “Tell her I’ll pay it.”

The abrupt change in his expression and tone shocked Laurie.

“Ms. Moran,” he explained, “you need to understand something: like the four girls at the Gala, I have lived with the cloud of suspicion hanging over me for a long time. Today people are living to be one hundred, but many more don’t live past eighty or eighty-five. Before I die, I want to have a chance for a wide audience to see the girls and me, and perhaps understand how big this house is, and how many people were in and out that night. How it could have been an intruder. As you know, we have extensive films of the party.”

“I do know that,” Laurie said. “I think I’ve read everything written about the case.”

“Well, then, you can understand that except for some generous donations to charity and the schools Betsy, Claire, and I attended, I have a great deal of money to spend before I die, so the amount Nina is holding out for is quite insignificant.

“But do me a favor. When you write to say we accept the conditions of their appearance, please tell Nina that I hope her mother is planning to come east with her. It would be a pleasure to see her again.”

He anticipated Laurie’s protest. “Of course, I don’t mean for her to stay as a guest in my home. I will reserve a room for her at the St. Regis.”

He’s going along with it. Laurie did not expect the tsunami of relief that swept over her. The possibility of the program had unex
pectedly gathered momentum, and if Powell had flatly turned down Nina Craig’s demand, the show could easily have been doomed, and her job along with it. Two failed series, then a rejected proposal, after intense media interest, would easily have meant her dismissal.

Brett Young did not tolerate failure.

She started to thank Powell, then realized he was looking past her out onto the patio beyond the glass doors of his den. Her eyes followed to see what he was looking at that had caused the sudden expression of disapproval.

She saw a landscaper standing on the patio outside the den, edging the grass around it with a clipper.

Powell looked from the man to Laurie. “Sorry,” he said, “but I find it annoying that they’re working this late. I’ve made it clear that I want any work on the property completed by noon. If I have guests coming, I don’t want those big trucks in the driveway.”

•   •   •

Outside, Blue Eyes saw that Powell was looking at him. He finished clipping the last section around the patio and, without looking, carried his gardening equipment quickly back to the truck. It was his first day on the job for Perfect Estates. If Powell complained about him being there so late, Blue Eyes would say he stayed after hours to impress his new boss.

The Graduation girls won’t be the only ones here when they are filming that show, he thought. I’ll be here, too.

What a perfect scenario for him to take out Laurie Moran.

He had already prepared the sign he wanted to put on her body.

GOT GREG

GOT YOU

TIMMY’S NEXT