I've Got You Under My Skin (15 page)

39

B
runo woke on Tuesday morning at six, aware that he was getting closer and closer to the moment of glory when he could take his final revenge.

He turned on the television as he prepared his spartan breakfast. He was allowed to keep a small refrigerator in his room. He plugged in the coffeemaker, then poured yogurt and cereal into a bowl.

After the hard news and a dozen commercials, he heard what he had been waiting to hear. “The pilot for the
Under Suspicion
series is presently being filmed at the estate of Robert Powell. Twenty years after the Graduation Gala the four honorees have gathered to appear on a television program to protest their innocence in the death of beautiful socialite Betsy Bonner Powell.”

Bruno laughed aloud, a raspy, mirthless sound. Yesterday he had spoken with one of the surprisingly talkative television crew. He had said that they would be filming today and tomorrow. Tonight the graduates would stay overnight. They would be on camera, seated in the den as they had been twenty years ago. Then tomorrow morning they would be filmed at a farewell breakfast.

And while they were having breakfast, Bruno would emerge from the pool house with his rifle and take aim at her.

Bruno thought of that day long ago when, as a kid in Brooklyn, he had hung around the guys he knew were in the mob. He had a job as a busboy in the diner where some of them had breakfast every morning.

He heard a couple of them bragging about how they could shoot the apple off the head of William Tell’s kid, but with a rifle, not an arrow. That was when Bruno bought a rifle and a pistol secondhand and started practicing.

Six months later, when he was clearing the table, he told the two guys who had been boasting that he’d like to show them how good a shot he was. They laughed at him, but one of them said, “You know, kid, I don’t like people wasting my time with bragging. If you want to show off, I’ll give you a try.”

And that was how he was hired by the mob.

Bruno could take out Laurie Moran anytime, but he wanted to be sure the cameras would be rolling when she slumped over.

He slurped his coffee in anticipation of that moment.

The policeman in that squad car on the back road would come rushing over the fence and run toward the dining room. The television crew, too. When they were all past the pool house Bruno would leave by the back door and be over the fence in seconds.

It would take him only four minutes to jog to the public parking lot at the train station. The lot was only a block from the room he was sitting in right now.

He had chosen the car he would steal, a Lexus station wagon whose owner parked it at seven every morning to get on the seven-fifteen train to Manhattan.

Bruno would be driving away before they had even figured out where the shot had come from.

The owner wouldn’t report the car missing until Thursday evening.

Bruno was so busy going over his plan that he did not even realize his coffee cup was empty.

What were the possibilities of failure?

Of course there were a few. A policeman might not be able to scale the fence. In that case he’d be sure to challenge me, Bruno thought. I don’t want to have to shoot him. The noise would bring the other cop back. But if I used the butt of the rifle, I’d have all the time I need . . .

The element of surprise, the confusion over Laurie slumping over, blood beginning to pour from her head—all of this would work in his favor.

I might be caught, Bruno admitted to himself, and that would permanently end any hope of eliminating Timmy. But if I get away with it, I’ll take care of him fast. My luck won’t hold out forever.

By hacking into Leo Farley’s computer, Bruno knew that Timmy was at camp, and even knew which tent he was in and every detail of its layout. But even if he could get into the camp during the night and kidnap Timmy, Laurie would be notified in minutes, and he’d never be able to get near her. Timmy had to come second.

Bruno shrugged. He was sure that old lady had heard his threat, “Your mother’s next, then it’s your turn.” He’d have to stick to that plan.

He hadn’t checked Leo’s phone since yesterday, not that Leo had much to say to anyone.

Bruno listened to the recording of Leo’s call to the police chief last night.
Leo Farley was in Mount Sinai Hospital in intensive care.

Bruno began to consider the possibilities this suggested.

Then he began to smile.

Of course, of course, it would work. It would have to work. He could pull it off.

When Laurie was at the farewell breakfast, Bruno would come out of the pool house holding Timmy’s hand—and pointing a gun at his head.

40

R
egina’s hands were trembling so violently that she could hardly pull the T-shirt over her head. Laurie Moran had told them to dress simply. She had had replicas made of the outfits they had been wearing when the police arrived after Betsy’s body was found. They had handed over their pajamas for evidence and been asked to wait in the den until they could be questioned.

Regina had been wearing a long-sleeved red T-shirt and jeans. The thought of wearing a similar outfit now was upsetting. She felt as if all the protective layers she had built around herself over twenty years were being peeled away.

Just thinking about that outfit made her remember how they had all sat huddled together, not allowed to go into the kitchen even to get a cup of coffee or a piece of toast. Jane, too, had been in the den with them, despite pleading to be allowed to go in the ambulance with Mr. Powell to the hospital.

Who had taken her father’s suicide note from her pocketbook? And what would that person do with it?

If the police found it, they could arrest her for taking the letter from her father’s body. She knew they always suspected that if he’d written a note, she’d taken it. She had lied over and over to them when they were investigating his death. Whoever had the note now
could provide the police with everything they needed to indict her for Betsy’s murder.

Regina’s eyes filled with tears.

Her nineteen-year-old son, Zach, had had the brains to destroy the copy she made of the note and had tried to find the original, then begged her not to carry it with her.

What would it do to his life if she were arrested and indicted for Betsy’s death?

She thought of the little boy who would come to the real estate office after school when he didn’t have practice for one of his sports and want to help her by folding and mailing ads for the agency to the local communities. He was always thrilled when one of the ads resulted in a listing. They’d always been close. She knew how lucky she was on that count.

When Regina’s breakfast arrived, she tried to drink the coffee and eat a bite of the croissant, but it stuck in her throat.

You’ve got to get a grip on yourself, she thought. If you look too nervous when that lawyer, Alex Buckley, interviews you, you’ll only make things worse.

Please, God, she thought, let me be able to pull it off. The phone rang. The car was here to take her to the Powell estate.

“I’ll be right down,” she said, unable to conceal the quiver in her voice.

41

A
lison did not go back to sleep after the sleepwalking incident. Rod felt her tossing and turning in bed and finally put his arm around her and drew her close to him.

“Alie, you’ve got to keep reminding yourself that you were sleepwalking that night. Even if you believe you were in Betsy’s room, it doesn’t mean that memory is accurate.”

“I was there. She kept a low night-light on. I even remember seeing the earring sparkling on the floor. Rod, if I had picked it up, my fingerprints would have been on it.”

“But you
didn’t
pick it up,” Rod said soothingly. “Alie, you’ve got to stop thinking like that. When you’re in front of the camera, you’ve got to just tell what you know—which is nothing. You heard Jane scream and rushed to the bedroom with the others. Like the others, you were shocked. When you’re interviewed, just keep saying ‘the others’ and you’ll be all right. And remind yourself that the reason you’re doing this program is because you want to have the money to go to medical school. What is it I’ve been telling you since you got the chance to go back to school?”

“That one day you’ll be calling me the new Madame Curie,” Alison whispered.

“Correct. Now go back to sleep.”

But even though she stopped twisting and turning, Alison did not go back to sleep. When the alarm went off at seven o’clock, she was already showered and dressed in the slacks and polo shirt that she would soon be exchanging for the T-shirt and jeans she had worn the morning after Betsy Powell’s murder.

42

L
aurie, Jerry, and Grace arrived at the Powell estate a few minutes after the crew, which included a hairdresser, makeup artist, and wardrobe assistant this morning. Two new vans were on the set for their use—one to serve as a dressing room, the other for hair and makeup for those who would be on camera.

Laurie had worked well with all three crew members before. “The first scene we’re shooting will be of the four graduates and the housekeeper in the clothes they put on after the body was discovered. The makeup should be light, because they wouldn’t have had the time or inclination to put any on. We have a picture taken that morning by the police. Study it, then try to make them look the way they looked twenty years ago. Obviously they don’t have the long hair, but they’ve all aged very well.”

Meg Miller, the makeup artist, walked over to the window of the van to get a better look at the photograph. “I can tell you this, Laurie: they all look scared to death.”

“I agree,” Laurie said. “My job is to find out why. Of course you’d expect that they would look shocked and grief-stricken, but why do they all look so fearful? If Betsy was killed by an intruder, then what are they afraid of?”

The scene would be shot in the den, where the police had directed the girls to wait that morning. Incredibly, none of the furniture or draperies had been changed, so the room bore an eerie sameness to the way it had looked twenty years ago.

On the other hand, Laurie reasoned, my guess is that only Robert Powell has ever used that room in all these years. According to Jane Novak, the living room and dining room are where he does his entertaining when he has guests. From what she says, when he’s alone after dinner he either goes to the den and watches television or reads, or else he goes up to his suite.

With only him living here and the way Jane keeps this place up, it’s no wonder there was no need to change the interior decorating.

Or, she wondered, did Powell
want
to keep his home frozen in time, just as his wife had left it? She had heard of people like that.

She shivered as she walked quickly back to the den and entered by the patio door. The crew was setting up the cameras. There was no sign of Robert Powell. Jane had told them that he was in his office and would be there all morning.

From the beginning Powell had told her there was no need for him to equally compensate Jane. “I think I speak for her when I say we would both like a conclusion to this terrible business. Jane has always regretted the fact that after she locked all the doors for the night, the girls opened the one from the den, then when they came back in from smoking on the patio, they left it unlocked. If that had not happened, an intruder might not have been able to get in.”

Maybe Powell and Jane are right, Laurie thought. After checking the cameras and the lighting, she went back out onto the patio and saw Alex Buckley getting out of his car.

Today he was wearing a sport shirt and khakis in place of the dark
blue suit, shirt, and tie he had been wearing yesterday. The top of his convertible was down, and the breeze had ruffled his dark brown hair. She watched as with what was probably an instinctive gesture he smoothed his hair back and walked toward her.

“You’re an early bird,” he said with an easy smile.

“Not really. You should be around when we start shooting a program at daybreak.”

“No thanks. I’ll wait until I can push a button and see it on TV.”

As he had in his office, he suddenly became businesslike. “Is the agenda still that we begin with me speaking to the graduates after you film them sitting in the den?”

“Yes. I’m doing this out of sequence because I have a strong hunch that they have all rehearsed what they’re going to say to you. By starting with them all together, it may put them off guard.

“And don’t be surprised at the way they’re dressed. They’re wearing replicas of the clothes they wore after Betsy’s body was found, and then they were told to change into street wear.”

Alex Buckley seldom allowed his face to register surprise, but this time he was so startled that he could not conceal it.

“You’re having them wear replicas of what they wore twenty years ago?”

“Yes, for two scenes. The one in the den where they were herded with Jane as soon as the police arrived. And then one wearing gowns that are identical to the ones they wore to the Gala.

“We’ll photograph the graduates against the background of films of them individually and together at the Gala. For example, when Robert Powell is toasting them, we’ll have a picture of the four of them looking at him.”

Alex Buckley’s reply was interrupted by the limousines with the graduates arriving almost simultaneously. It was Laurie’s turn to be astonished when Muriel Craig stepped out of the backseat of the
second limo while her daughter, Nina, stepped out of the front passenger door. Muriel wasn’t supposed to come today, she thought. Powell either called her or she’s come on her own.

Either way, she’s bound to make Nina edgy and angry.

Which might be good when Nina is being questioned.