All Around the Town (33 page)

"Now some new and quite astonishing evidence has come to light that casts serious doubt on her culpability."

Sarah listened quietly as the prosecutor told the judge about the bracelet, the jewelry salesman's statement, the purchase of gas at the Clinton service station and then gave him the written affidavits of Anne Webster and Connie Santini.

They sat in silence for the three minutes it took Judge Armon to read the affidavits and examine the receipts. When he had finished, he shook his head and said, "Well, I've been on the bench for twenty years and I've never seen anything like this happen. Of course, under the circumstances, I'll adjourn the sentencing."

He looked at Sarah sympathetically as she sat gripping the arms of the chair, the mixture of emotions obvious in her face.

Sarah tried to keep her voice steady as she said, "Judge, on one level I'm obviously ecstatic and on another I'm devastated that I allowed her to plead guilty."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Sarah," Judge Armon said. "We all know you've turned yourself inside out to defend her."

The prosecutor stood up. "I was going to talk with Mrs. Grant before the sentencing about the statement she wanted to make in court. Instead I think I'm going to have a little talk with her about how her husband died."

"WHAT DO YOU mean the sentencing isn't going to take place on Monday?" Karen asked indignantly. "What kind of snag? Mr. Levine, I think you should realize that this is a terrible ordeal for me. I don't want to have to face that girl again. Just preparing the statement I'm going to make to the judge is upsetting."

"These technicalities come up," Levine said soothingly. "Why don't you come in tomorrow around ten. I want to go over it with you."

CONNIE SANTINI arrived in the office at two o'clock fully expecting to have Karen Grant's wrath descend on her. The prosecutor had warned her to say nothing to Karen about her meeting with him. Karen was preoccupied, however, and asked the secretary no questions. "You handle the phones," she told Connie. "Say I'm out. I'm working on my statement. I want that judge to know all I've been through."

THE NEXT morning, Karen dressed carefully for her meeting. It might be a little much to wear black today to the courtroom. Instead she chose a dark blue linen and matching pumps. She kept her makeup subdued.

The prosecutor did not keep her waiting. "Come in, Karen. I'm glad to see you."

He was always so pleasant and really a very attractive man. Karen smiled up at him. "I've prepared my statement for the judge. I think it really gets across everything I feel."

"Before we get to that, a couple of things have come up that I want to go over with you. Want to step in here?"

She was surprised that they did not go into his private office. Instead he took her into a smaller room. Several men and a stenotypist were already there. She recognized two of the men as the detectives who had spoken to her in the house the morning Allan's body was found.

There was something different about Prosecutor Levine. His voice was businesslike and remote as he said, "Karen, I'm going to read you your constitutional rights."

"What?"

"You have the right to remain silent. Do you understand that?"

Karen Grant felt the blood drain from her face. "Yes."

"You have a right to an attorney... anything you say can be used against you in a court of law..."

"Yes, I understand, but what the hell is going on? I'm the widow of the victim."

He continued to read her her rights, to ask if she understood them. Finally he requested, "Will you read and sign the waiver-of-rights form and speak to us?"

"Yes, I will, but I think you're all crazy." Karen Grant's hand shook as she signed the paper.

The questions began. She became oblivious to the video camera, barely aware of the faint clicking of the keys as the stenographer's fingers flew over the keyboard.

"No, of course I didn't leave the airport that night. No. I wasn't parked in a different spot. That old bag Webster is always half-asleep. I sat through that lousy movie with her snoring beside me."

They showed her the charge card receipt for the gas she had purchased at the service station.

"That's a mistake. The date's a mistake. Those people never know what they're doing."

The bracelet.

"They sell plenty of those bracelets. What do you think, I'm the only customer that store has? Anyhow I lost it in the office. Even Anne Webster said I didn't have it on at the airport."

Karen's head started to pound and the prosecutor pointed out that the catch on her bracelet was one of a kind, that Anne Webster's sworn statement was that she had seen the bracelet on Karen's wrist in the airport and had called to report it missing.

Time passed as she snapped answers to their questions.

Her relationship with Allan? "It was perfect. We were crazy about each other. Of course he didn't ask me for a divorce on the phone that night."

Edwin Rand? "He's just a friend."

The bracelet? "I don't want to talk about the bracelet anymore. No, I didn't lose it in the bedroom."

The veins in Karen Grant's neck were throbbing. Her eyes were watering. She was twisting a handkerchief in her hands.

The prosecutor and detectives could sense that she was beginning to realize she could not talk her way out of it. She was beginning to feel the net closing around her.

The older detective, Frank Reeves, took the sympathetic approach. "I can understand how it happened. You went home to make up with your husband. He was asleep. You saw Laurie Kenyon's bag on the floor beside the bed. Maybe you thought that Allan had been lying to you after all about being involved with her. You snapped. The knife was there. A second later you realized what you'd done. It must have been a shock when I told you that we'd found the knife in Laurie's room."

As Reeves spoke, Karen's head bowed, her whole body sagged. Her eyes welling with tears, she said bitterly, "When I saw Laurie's bag I thought he had been lying to me. He had told me on the phone that he wanted a divorce, that there was someone else. When you told me she had the knife, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe Allan was really dead either. I never meant to kill him."

She looked imploringly into the faces of the prosecutor and detectives. "I really loved him, you know," she said. "He was so generous."

Chapter
108

"IT'S BEEN QUIET a weekend," Justin said to Laurie as she settled herself on the couch.

"I still can't get it through my head," Laurie said. "Do you realize that this is the very hour I expected to be standing in court being sentenced?"

"How do you feel about Karen Grant?"

"I honestly don't know. I guess I'm having trouble believing that I had nothing to do with her husband's death."

"Believe it, Laurie," Justin said gently. He studied her carefully. The euphoria of the swiftly moving events had vanished. The after shock of all the strain was going to show for a while. "I think it's a great idea for you and Sarah to get away on vacation for a couple of weeks. Do you remember that not long ago you told me you'd give anything to play the golf course at St. Andrews in Scotland? Now you can do it."

"Can I?"

"Of course. Laurie, I'd like to thank the little boy who's taken such good care of you. He was the one who knew you were innocent. Can I talk to him?"

"If you like."

She closed her eyes, paused, sat up as she opened them again. Her lips tightened. Her features softened. Her posture altered. A polite boyish voice said, "All right. Doctor. I'm here now."

"I just wanted to let you know that you've been great," Justin said.

"Not that great. If I hadn't taken that bracelet, Laurie wouldn't have been blamed for everything."

"That's not your fault. You did your best, and you're only nine years old. Laurie is twenty-two and she's really getting strong. I think that soon you and Kate and Leona and Debbie ought to start thinking about joining her completely. I've hardly seen Debbie in weeks. I haven't seen that much of Kate or Leona either. Don't you think it's time to release all the secrets to Laurie and help her to get well?"

Laurie sighed. "Gosh I have a headache today," she said in her normal voice as she settled back on the couch. "Something's different today, Doctor. The others seem to want me to do the talking."

Justin knew it was an important moment, one that must not be wasted. "That's because they want to become part of you, Laurie," he said carefully. "They always have been part of you, you know. Kate is your natural desire to take care of yourself. She's self-preservation. Leona is the woman in you. You've frozen your normal womanly responses so long they had to come out another way."

"In a sex kitten," Laurie suggested with a half smile.

"She is, or was, pretty sexy," Justin agreed. "Debbie is the little girl lost, the child who wanted to go home. You're home now, Laurie. You're safe."

"Am I?"

"You will be if you'll only let that nine-year-old boy put the rest of the puzzle together. He's admitted that one of the names you're forbidden to say is Opal. Let go a little more. Have him surrender his memories to you. Do you know the boy's name?"

"Now I do."

"Tell it to me, Laurie. Nothing will happen, I promise."

She sighed. "I hope not. His name is Lee."

Chapter
109

THE PHONE would not stop ringing. Congratulations were pouring in. Sarah found herself saying the same thing over and over. "I know. It's a miracle. I don't think it's really sunk in yet."

Bouquets and baskets of flowers were arriving. The most elaborate basket came with the prayers and congratulations of the Reverend Bobby and Carla Hawkins.

"It's big enough to be from the chief mourner at a funeral," Sophie sniffed.

The words sent a clammy shock through Sarah. "Sophie, when you leave, take it with you, please. I don't care what you do with it."

"You're sure you don't need me anymore today?"

"Hey, give yourself a break." Sarah walked over to Sophie, hugged her. "We wouldn't have made it through all this without you. Gregg is coming over. His classes start next week, so he's leaving for Stanford tomorrow. He and Laurie are taking off for the day."

"And you?"

"I'm staying home. I need to collapse."

"No Dr. Donnelly?"

"Not tonight. He's got to drive to Connecticut for some meeting."

"I like him, Sarah."

"So do I."

SOPHIE WAS starting out the door when the phone rang. Sarah waved her off. "Don't worry, I'll get it."

It was Justin. There was something in his quick greeting that set off a warning signal to Sarah. "Is anything wrong?" she demanded.

"No, no," he said soothingly. "It's just that Laurie came up with a name today and I'm trying to remember in what context I heard it recently."

"What is it?"

"Lee."

Sarah frowned. "Let's see. Oh, I know. The letter Thomasina Perkins wrote me a couple of weeks ago. I told you about it. She's decided that she's stopped believing in Reverend Hawkins's miracles. In the letter she pointed out that while he was praying over her, he referred to Laurie as 'Lee.'"

"That's it," Justin said. "I noticed it myself the day I watched that program."

"How did Laurie use the name?" Sarah asked.

"It's what her nine-year-old boy alter calls himself. Of course it's probably just coincidence. Sarah, I've got to run. They need me upstairs. Laurie's on her way home. I'll call you later."

SARAH HUNG up slowly. A thought so frightening, so incredible and still so plausible burned in her mind. She dialed Betsy Lyons at the real estate agency. "Mrs. Lyons, please get out the file on our house. I'll be right over. I need to know the exact dates that the Hawkinses were in our house."

Laurie was on her way home. Gregg would be along any minute. As she ran from the apartment, Sarah remembered to hide the key under the mat for him.

Chapter
110

LAURIE DROVE across Ninety-sixth Street, up the West Side Drive, over the George Washington Bridge, west on Route 4, north on Route 17. She knew why she had this terrible sense that her time was running out.

It was forbidden to tell the names. It was forbidden to tell what he had done to her. Her car phone rang. She pushed the ANSWER button.

It was the Reverend Hawkins. "Laurie, Sarah gave me your number. Are you on your way home?"

"Yes. Where is Sarah?"

"Right here. She's had a minor accident but she's all right, dear."

"Accident! What do you mean?"

"She came over to pick up some mail and has twisted her ankle. Can you come directly here?"

"Of course."

"Hurry, dear."

Chapter
111

THE ISSUE of People magazine with the Reverend Bobby and Carla Hawkins on the cover arrived in mailboxes all over the country.

In Harrisburg, Thomasina Perkins oohed at the sight of that picture of the Hawkinses and almost forgave them their neglect other. She opened to the cover story and gasped at the totally different picture of the Hawkinses taken twenty years ago. His gold earring; the powerful hairy arms; the beard. Her stringy, dark, straight hair. They were holding guitars. Memory flooded Thomasina as she read: "Bic and Opal, the would-be rock stars." Bic. The name that had haunted her for so many years.