Eyes on You (33 page)

“A good lawyer will understand. I’ll help you find the right one.”

She took a deep breath and dabbed at her tears with the end of her belt. “I need tissues,” she said.

“Just use your napkin,” I said. I felt a new surge of panic.

She bounded up and quickly skirted around the back of her chair and then mine. I started to rise, but before I could move, she was behind me, thrusting her hands in front of my torso. I saw a flash of the belt from her robe. She had it stretched in front of me, and she pulled it toward me, pinning my arms and chest against the back of the chair.

“What are you doing?” I yelled.

She tightened the belt, and I could feel her tying it behind me.

“Please, Ann, no,” I yelled. I tried wiggling to free myself.

She yanked the chair back on the rear wheels and began rolling it across the patio toward the pool. I swung my legs over the sides, trying to grip the ground with my feet, but I couldn’t reach it. We were at the edge of the pool. I felt one more push from behind.

And then I was toppling over sideways into the deep end.

The chair seemed to freeze on top of the water. I held my breath, willing it to just stay there. But then, quickly, it began to sink. I thrust my head up, gasping for air, and in seconds I was underwater, being sucked to the bottom of the pool.

I pressed my lips tight and struggled to free my arms. The belt was wet, and it felt like I was glued to the chair.

My lungs started to burn from holding my breath. I was going to die.

Then there was an explosion of sound and a force torpedoing through the water toward me. Someone had plunged into the pool. It’s Ann, I thought. She’s going to hold me down.

I could feel hands tugging on the belt. I was free suddenly, and the swimmer’s arm was around my upper torso, dragging me through the water. My lungs were searing, desperate for air. Against my will, my mouth opened and filled with water.

Then I was above the surface and being hoisted onto the patio. I spat out water and gasped for air. A man was holding me. It was Alex. He was panting and dripping wet. He leaned me farther forward, patting my back. More water spurted from between my lips.

“Can you breathe okay?” he asked.

I couldn’t answer. My throat felt raw, and I had started to shiver.

“Yes, I think so,” I said finally. “Where is she?”

“Over there,” he said, jerking his head. “She came after me, and I punched her. I knocked her out. I need to restrain her, though.”

Alex scrambled up and ran across the patio. He tore off his belt and used it to secure Ann’s wrist to the base of the grill. She started moaning, not fully conscious yet.

“Robin, where’s your phone?” Alex called out. “Mine’s ruined.”

I felt for it in the pocket of the robe. “Ruined, too,” I said. “There’s a landline in the house. In the kitchen.”

“Yell to me if she moves,” he said.

As he ran into the house, I saw him glance up and scan the second story of the house. He disappeared inside.

My head was throbbing, as if someone were whacking it with a hammer. I wanted to lie back, but I didn’t dare let Ann out of my sight. A minute later, Alex was back, talking to the 911 operator on the house phone.

“You don’t remember Lisa’s number, do you?” he said after hanging up.

“No, everything’s in my phone.”

“Okay, I’ll figure something out. We need a lawyer for when we deal with the cops.”

Alex found rope in the tool shed to better secure Ann. Next, he helped me out of the sopping wet robe and led me to one of the dining chairs, easing me into it, and draped a dry towel around my shoulders. He pulled up a chair next me. Haltingly, I described the circumstances and Ann’s confession. She had come to and was thrashing on the patio, trying to escape.

“Stop or I’m going to punch you again,” Alex yelled to her.

Five minutes later, two sets of cops from the town arrived. I related what had happened. Ann was screaming, demanding to be freed. They placed her in handcuffs, and two of the cops led her off somewhere. An ambulance arrived, and the EMTs examined me. They tried to pressure me into going to the hospital, but I insisted that I was okay. One of the cops said detectives would be there soon.

I rested my head on the table. My brain felt clogged with water, as if I were still in the pool. After a while I could hear Alex talking to someone, but I couldn’t make out the words, and then a detective was sitting next to me, introducing himself. He was young, only in his thirties, I guessed. I quickly told the story, trying to make the shivering stop.

“Why don’t I let you put on dry clothes,” he said, “and we can talk more in a minute.”

I staggered back into the guest bedroom, stripped off my bathing suit, and changed into jeans and a sweater. I grabbed my purse from the chair. When I returned to the patio, I saw that the overhead lights around the pool had been switched on. It was bright out there, like a photo shoot.

“They’re taking us to the police station in separate cars,” Alex said, approaching me. “I’ve found a lawyer to meet us there. You don’t need to say anything else until he arrives, okay?”

Inside the car, my shivering began to subside, but I still felt shaken to the core. Ann was a murderer. She’d killed Sharon, and she would have killed me if it weren’t for Alex. She’d been my friend for over four years, offering advice, sharing her home, sometimes just sipping wine by my side at a bar in our part of town, and I’d been blind to the resentment and rage that had been building in her. Was it because I was so caught up in my own saga, in my unrelenting drive to be on top again?

At the police station, I explained I needed to wait for my lawyer and was taken to a room by myself, with no idea where Alex was. I rummaged through my purse for a comb, blush, and lip-gloss and tried to make myself look less bedraggled. I still felt shell-shocked from what had happened, from everything I’d learned.

It was over an hour before the lawyer was ushered into the room. He was dressed in white pants and a navy blazer, looking as if he’d been interrupted mid-surf and turf at the yacht club.

“Butch Harrison, Robin,” he said, thrusting out his hand. “Alex has filled me in to some degree, but why don’t you take me through it.”

I did, including the backstory. “Ann’s going to deny the whole thing,” I said at the end. “She’ll say—”

“Don’t worry,” he said, raising his hand. “Alex saw her throw you in the pool. There’s security video, too. Alex spotted the camera on the roof.”

I closed my eyes, savoring the relief.

“Let’s get your statement out of the way now,” he said, “so you can go home.”

Two hours later, Alex and I were together again, headed toward the house in Sag Harbor where he was staying. While I’d been interviewed, one of the cops had driven him back to Ann’s to retrieve his car. Because of the high humidity, his clothes hadn’t fully dried yet. “You’re still squishy,” I said, half-smiling.

“I know,” he said. “I feel like a big sponge.”

“Thank you, Alex,” I said, overwhelmed with gratitude. “Thank you with every ounce of my being.”

When we stepped inside the clapboard house on a side street in town, a man jumped up sleepily from the couch. He was fortyish, slightly balding, dressed in sweat-clothes.

“This is my friend Dereck,” Alex said. “I’ve filled him in on the phone.”

“I’m just glad you’re both okay,” Dereck said. “How did Butch do?”

“Excellent,” I replied. “Alex said you were the one who convinced him to come to our aid. Thank you.”

“The guy owes me a favor. Julie finally went up to bed, by the way. Want me to rouse her?”

“Nah, we’ll fill her in at breakfast,” Alex said. “Thanks for everything, man.”

Alex said that he’d show me to my room and led me upstairs. I was exhausted, and my legs ached as I climbed each step. The bedroom was under the eaves, with a slanted ceiling, but that seemed comforting to me. Part of me wanted to crawl under the duvet and close my eyes; another part didn’t want to let Alex out of my sight.

“Do you need anything?” Alex asked. “Tell me what I can do.”

“Would you mind fixing me a cup of tea?” I asked. “I can’t seem to shake these chills.” They had started again on the drive from the station.

“You need something to sleep in, too,” he said. He rifled through a duffel bag on the floor and handed me a soft gray T-shirt. He also pulled out fresh clothes for himself.

“I guess I’ve co-opted your bedroom,” I said.

“That’s okay. They have a daybed on the screened-in porch, and it’s a great place to bunk down.”

After he left, I changed into the T-shirt and slid under the covers of the double bed, propping myself up against the headboard. Briefly, I was overwhelmed with the terrifying sense that I was sinking all over again.

Alex was back in ten minutes, wearing dry clothes and carrying a mug with steam rising from the top. He set it on the bedside table and lowered himself onto the bed. I could feel the warmth of his body through the covers.

“How do you know Dereck?” I asked.

“Law school. He was older, but we hit it off. Thankfully, his home number was listed with 411.”

I took a long sip of tea. Swallowing, I realized my throat was raw and sore. “I never asked you,” I said. “What made you come to Ann’s house?”

“Dereck, Julie, and I were eating nearby at someone’s house. You sounded a little freaked on the phone, and I didn’t like it. I knew you’d been worrying that someone at work had betrayed you, and I wondered suddenly if it was Ann. I just flew out of the dinner and swung by the house to check on you. I’ll be honest. I invited myself to Dereck’s this weekend because I was worried about you.”

“I still can’t believe it. If you hadn’t come, Alex, I would have drowned. She would have cut the belt off and dragged the chair out of the pool and then told the police the next morning that she’d gone to bed, leaving me sitting out there. I’d had a couple of glasses of wine, and it would have looked like I’d stupidly taken a swim and died. Or even that I’d drowned myself because of the mess my life was in.”

“Did you ever sense any animosity from her?”

“No, not really. A couple of times she’d seemed slightly annoyed with me, but I assumed it was because I was burdening her with so much.” I picked up the edge of the white duvet and ran my fingers along it. “From what she confessed tonight, though, she’d been seething underneath for a while. It was probably fine when I was out of work and needy—she seemed so supportive of me then—but once I got the show, her resentment built, and it finally ate through any good feelings she had for me.”

“She always looked so cool-headed.”

I nodded. “Little things are starting to bubble up,” I said. “Like the night of my book party, she had this kind of lame excuse why she could only pop in. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I’m wondering if it’s because she couldn’t bear seeing me as the center of attention that night.”

I tapped my hand to my mouth as another revelation hit me. “There’s something else. That quote in the
Times
piece about my ambition being as naked as a porn star? I wonder if she was the insider who said that. She wanted to help me with the piece, but she couldn’t stand that I was being profiled.

“And then once she found out about Carter,” I added, “I had to be stopped.”

Alex crossed his arms over his chest, thinking. His hair was still slightly damp, contrasting even more with that lovely luminescent skin of his.

“When I was in the police station,” he said, “I flashed on something that happened when I about ten years old. My family used to rent a place on Cape Cod for part of the summer, and one year my sister and I put on a talent show with a bunch of kids. She had a great voice, and with every rehearsal, it was evident she was going to steal the show. One day she was rehearsing on this low porch, and one of the other girls, who was standing on the ground below, took a bite out of her calf. It was crazy—she didn’t just draw blood, she left this whole row of teeth marks. A few adults came running over and kept trying to figure out if there’d been some kind of altercation, but even as a ten-year-old, I could see that this girl was consumed with jealousy of my sister. And you wouldn’t have had a clue until then.”

“I’ve felt jealous at times, like when I saw other women bag jobs I wanted. But nothing like that.”

“There’s one point I keep wondering about. How do you think Vicky found out that Ann had made the brownie?”

“I have a hunch she guessed it. Vicky apparently has an uncanny way of reading people. It’s like she smells their weakness, senses where the soft underbelly is. Vicky found out from the reporter that Ann had leaked that item saying I was the show’s real star. After that, Vicky knew Ann had something against me. When Vicky heard about the brownie, she knew
she
hadn’t done it. So she guessed Ann had and let her think she had proof.”

I felt my eyes grow heavy and closed them for a second.

“You need to sleep,” Alex said.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said. “Why did you leave the DA’s office?”

He cocked his head, puzzled. “What brings that up at this moment?”

“When I arrived at Ann’s, she made a comment about it. I think she wanted me to be suspicious of you so I wouldn’t be turning to you for help.”

“There was a case that shouldn’t have been tried. I was overruled, and it went to another ADA. The guy ended up with a ten-year sentence. After that, there was no way I could stay another day there. I left in a huff. I hated myself for not doing more to change the situation.”

“Is that partly why you wanted to help me?”

He smiled. “That,” he said, “and total infatuation.”

I smiled back and set down the mug of tea. I reached for his hand, brought it to my lips, and kissed it.

It was just before eight in the evening, a little later than when I’d arrived at the same spot two months ago. I was standing outside Bettina’s apartment, though this time there were no festive party sounds pulsating inside.

It was ironic, really, as I thought of it, me all decked out that night in my fuck-you shoes. I should have known a pair of booties that pinched my feet like a son of a bitch couldn’t be counted on for much.