The Melody Lingers On

by Mary Higgins Clark

  “I think he could too,” Cunningham agreed. “I’m going to talk to him every day and see as much of him as I can. Denial and anger are the first steps in the grieving process. He’s certainly in both stages right now.”

  “And what is the next step?”

  “Depression. And finally, acceptance.”

  Together the men turned and looked directly at Ranger Cole. Stone-faced, he had begun to walk away from the friends who had tried to comfort him. Realizing it was useless, no one tried to stop him but watched as, hugging the urn to his body, he turned the corner and disappeared from their sight.

  Acceptance? Sean Cunningham knew that there was no chance that that would happen to Ranger Cole. But where would he vent his anger?

  Sean could not know that Ranger was seeking an answer to that question. His tears blinded him as he stumbled down the street. My Judy died before her time. A phrase from the Bible unexpectedly came into his mind. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

  He knew what he was going to do.

  10

  FBI agent Jonathan Pierce, alias Tony Russo, had hired a moving van to deliver the furniture he had ordered for his new town house. He did not want the logo of the company from which he was renting the furniture to be seen by his new neighbors. As far as they know I’m newly divorced, no kids, about to open a new brasserie here in Montclair, he thought. That will give me an excuse to be in and out regularly.

  And an opportunity to keep Anne and, to a lesser degree, Eric Bennett under scrutiny.

  There was no doubt in Jon’s mind that Eric Bennett was in on the fraud. How else would Parker Bennet have gotten away with it? Someone had to have been working with him.

  In a final effort before the case went cold they had been granted warrants for court-authorized wiretaps for the phones and residences of Eric and Anne Bennett, as well as listening devices to record conversations outside their homes.

  Jon had been placed by Rudy Schell as the next-door neighbor to Anne Bennett.

  “It’s possible they’ll say something to each other that will give us an indication if the father’s alive or if they’re in on it. My guess is that Eric Bennett may be smart enough to have his mother’s town house swept for bugs before she moves in next week. Wait a week or so and then go in and do a little bugging of your own.”

  11

  On Saturday evening Katie sat cross-legged on Lane’s bed as Lane dressed for her dinner with Eric.

  “You look pretty, Mommy,” she observed. “I like it when you wear that dress.”

  Lane had planned to wear a black pantsuit but at the last moment had changed into a dark green wool dress that she knew brought out the highlights in her auburn hair. She had bought it on sale in Bergdorf Goodman. Even on sale it had been pricey but she knew that it had the unmistakable combination of beautiful fabric and couture design.

  Katie’s comment made her pause as she snapped on the small diamond and emerald earrings that had been left to her by her grandmother. Why am I wearing this dress? she asked herself. It’s just a casual dinner date.

  Eric Bennett’s image flashed in her mind. She liked the hint of gray in his hair, the hint of irony in his expression, the hint of sadness in his voice when he talked about his father.

  Katie’s voice broke into her reverie. “I like those earrings too, Mommy.”

  Lane laughed. “Thank you, Katie.” Daddy used to buy me play jewelry when I was Katie’s age, she thought. I loved to wear it and I shared it with my dolls. He would sing that song to me . . . “Rings on her fingers . . . Bells on her toes . . . She shall have music wherever she goes . . .”

  Katie is growing up without one single memory of her father.

  The buzz of the intercom from the lobby meant that Eric Bennett had arrived. “Send him up, please,” she directed the doorman.

  “Who is it?” Katie asked as she scrambled off the bed.

  “A friend of Mommy’s. His name is Mr. Bennett.”

  Eighty-year-old Wilma Potters, who lived in the building, was Katie’s favorite babysitter, as active and alert as someone half her age. She and Katie planned to make chocolate-chip cookies and read a book until Katie’s bedtime. Wilma had gotten up to answer the door when Lane came into the living room.

  “I’ll get it, Wilma,” Lane said.

  The elevator was directly across from the apartment. She heard it whir to a stop but waited until the bell rang before she opened the door.

  Her first impression was that Eric Bennett was taller than she had realized. Not much but a little. Fleetingly she remembered that the boots she had been wearing that day had higher heels than she liked. They had been an impulse buy.

  At first glance his expression seemed grave, but then his smile was warm. Their greetings of “Hello, Eric,” and “Hello, Lane,” were said simultaneously as he stepped into the apartment.

  Katie had run up to stand by Lane. “I’m Katie Kurner,” she announced.

  “And I’m Eric Bennett.”

  “Hello, Eric. It’s nice to meet you,” Katie began.

  “Katie, what did I tell you?” Lane admonished her.

  “That I must call big people by their last names. I forgot.” She turned and pointed to Wilma Potters. “And this is my babysitter, Mrs. Potters. We’re going to bake cookies now.”

  “Will you save one for me when I bring Mommy home after dinner?”

  “I’ll save you two,” Katie promised.

  After a kiss from Katie and an agreement that she would go to bed at eight thirty, they left the apartment. Three minutes later they were on the street and Eric was signaling for a cab. It was five minutes before an empty one came by. “In the old days a car would have been waiting for us,” he said as he opened the door for her.

  “I can assure you that growing up I was not used to a chauffeur-driven car.” But you were, she thought, as Eric gave an address on Fifty-Sixth Street.

  “Have you been to Il Tinello?” he asked her.

  “Yes, I have,” Lane said quietly.

  “Then you know that it’s quiet and the northern Italian cuisine is delicious.”

  “Yes I do.”

  Why that place? Lane wondered. It had been where she and Ken went regularly during their courtship and in the brief year after they married.

  “Your Katie is delightful,” Eric was saying, “and she’s such a pretty little girl.”

  They were on safe territory. “Well, of course to me she’s the most glorious child in the world.”

  Eric paused. “I understand that Katie’s father died before she was born.”

  “Yes he did.” Of course Eric Googled me, Lane thought. I Googled everything about him and his family. Especially his daddy dearest.

  She knew that Parker Bennett had been born Joseph Bennett but at twenty-one had legally changed his first name to Parker. She knew that he had gone to the City College of New York for two years and from there had received a scholarship to Harvard, then gotten an MBA from Yale. She knew that his rise in a Wall Street brokerage firm had been steady and swift. By the time he married Anne Nelson, a twenty-two-year-old secretary in the firm, he was, at twenty-seven, well on his way up the corporate ladder.

  When they reached the restaurant, Mario, the owner, said, “Welcome home,” his usual warm greeting to longtime customers. But then, smiling at Lane, he added, “Mrs. Kurner, it has been too long.”

  “I know it has, Mario,” Lane said, “and I’m happy to be here again.”

  Mario escorted them to a table. When they were seated Eric said, “He called you Mrs. Kurner. I would guess that you used to come here with your husband.”

  “Yes I did. But that was over five years ago. Harmon is my maiden name. I kept it for business.”

  The waiter was approaching their table. “Would you like a drink or do you prefer wine?” Eric asked.

  “Wine.”

  “White or red?”

  “Red if that’s all right with you.”

  “It’s exa
ctly right.”

  Lane watched as Eric examined the wine list. When he ordered she knew it was one of the most expensive vintages on the list. Her stepfather was a wine connoisseur. When she was in Washington and went out to dinner with him and her mother, he always ordered one of the fine wines.

  So much for everything being clawed back, she thought.

  As though he could read her mind Eric said, “Considering my situation, I’d like to get something out of the way. I never worked for or with my father. He wanted me to make it on my own, just as he did. Maybe he intentionally kept me away from his firm because he knew how things were going to end. Looking back, if he did steal that money, he didn’t want any suggestion that I was involved.” He looked directly across the table. “I wasn’t,” he said. “I hope that you can believe that.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if I thought you were involved in that situation,” Lane said.

  Over dinner they talked the way people who are beginning to know each other converse. Lane told him that she had gone to Sacred Heart Academy in Washington from kindergarten through high school and then to NYU. “The minute I started living in New York I knew that this is where I wanted to be,” she explained, “but then when I graduated I realized that I didn’t want to be a teacher.”

  “And you went to the Fashion Institute,” Eric said.

  “You did Google me thoroughly.”

  “Yes, I did. I hope you don’t mind but I wanted to know more about you.”

  Lane turned the implied compliment away with a laugh. “Fortunately, I have nothing to hide.” Realizing the implication of her words, she wanted to bite her tongue.

  “And fortunately, despite the general perception, neither do I,” Eric replied with a smile. Then he changed the subject. “What’s it like working for Glady? When she was working on the Greenwich house, I thought she was the most impossible bully I’d ever met. The poor workmen cringed when she walked into the room.”

  She is an impossible bully, Lane thought, but I’m not going to admit it to you. “I love working for Glady,” she said honestly. “I know what you mean, but believe it or not, she does have the proverbial heart of gold.”

  “I know she does, at least on some levels. She is redecorating my mother’s town house in Montclair without charge.”

  “See what I mean?”

  Over dessert Eric talked about his father. ‘It would be impossible to describe a better dad,” he said. “Busy as he was, my mother and I were his first priority. He never missed a school event that I was involved in. When I joined the Boy Scouts I got it in my head that I wanted to go camping. He told me he’d go with me. He bought all the gear, learned how to pitch a tent, and found a camping ground in the Adirondacks. We made a fire and cooked over it. Everything we cooked got burned. When we went to bed, we were both cold. We couldn’t get to sleep. Finally at about eleven o’clock he said, ‘Eric, do you think as I do that this is a ridiculous situation?’ When I fervently agreed, he said, ‘Then let’s bag it. We’ll just leave all this paraphernalia here. I’ll call the office of this place and tell them it’s theirs. They can raffle it off or give it away.’ ”

  “So I guess you never made it to Eagle Scout,” Lane said.

  “Actually I did. I didn’t want to be a quitter.”

  He took a sip of coffee. “Lane, although I lost a lot of clients because of my father, I’m still a good trader, and I’m rebuilding. But I gave every nickel I had saved or invested to the government to help pay back the people who lost their money.”

  “Do people know that?”

  “No. I requested that it be kept quiet. I knew what the response would be, that I was just trying to look good.”

  “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” Lane suggested.

  “I would say so.”

  This time they caught a cab immediately after leaving the restaurant. At the apartment building Lane started to say good night but Eric said, “I’ll see you to your door.”

  When they got off the elevator, he asked, “I promise you that I won’t delay, but is it possible to see if Katie left me those two cookies?”

  “I know she did. Come on in.”

  The cookies were on a paper plate on the coffee table. Katie had drawn a smiley face on the plate.

  Eric reached down, picked up one of them, and took a bite out of it. “Delicious,” he pronounced. “Thank Katie for me. Tell her I love it with lots of chocolate chips, just the way she made them.” He picked up the plate and said, “I’ll eat this one on my way down in the elevator. Lane, I’ve enjoyed this evening very much. And now, as promised, I’m out of here.”

  Less than a minute later Lane heard the whine of the elevator going down. Then Wilma Potters came down the hall. After Katie was in bed Wilma had made it a habit to sit on the comfortable chair in the small den at the end of the hall and watch television.

  “Katie went to bed promptly at eight thirty,” she volunteered. “Did you have a nice time?”

  Lane hesitated, then answered, “I had a very nice time, Mrs. Potters. I really did.”

  12

  Marge O’Brian sat nervously in the anteroom waiting to be called into Rudy Schell’s office. What did I do wrong? she asked herself. Why would the FBI want to talk to me? It had been only yesterday that she had gone to New Jersey following the moving van that had brought the contents that had been selected from the Bennett mansion for Anne Bennett’s new home in Montclair, New Jersey.

  With the help of Lane Harmon and two workmen Lane brought with her, she had unpacked boxes of china and books and clothing so that when Mrs. Bennett arrived the next day the town house would not be cluttered. Lane had told her that the spread and drapes and vanity skirt would be in next week and she would be there to see that everything was exactly right.

  She’s such a nice person, Marge thought, and the town house is so pretty. The furniture fit in like it was made for those rooms. And it’s so cozy. When Mr. Bennett was around he filled the mansion with his presence. But poor Mrs. Bennett rattling around there alone was kind of pathetic.

  Why did the FBI call her again last night? She already talked to them two years ago. What did they mean when they said they just wanted to ask her a few questions? They didn’t think she was in on the money disappearing, did they? No, of course not. All they have to do is take a look at my bank account, she thought.

  I’m going to miss Mrs. Bennett and Eric, she thought. They were always so nice to me. Mr. Bennett was too, she added defensively, but I was kind of scared of him. When he got mad, wow! His rages came on suddenly. Like the morning his new Bentley had a stain on the cushion of the front seat because the chauffeur had spilled coffee when he was waiting for him in front of the house. He had fired the chauffeur on the spot but then came into the house and started shouting at Roger, the butler, who had found him.

  “The next time I hire one of your slob friends and have a problem it’s your neck too,” he had said.

  When Mrs. Bennett said, “Parker, all Roger did was call the agency and they recommended the driver,” he had turned on her too. “Anne, can you ever get over treating the help as your dear friends?” he had snapped. “It’s too bad you never could understand that you’re not helping out in your father’s delicatessen anymore.”

  But that was only one part of him. The next day he rehired the chauffeur, apologized to the butler, and bought Mrs. Bennett a gorgeous diamond pin. I saw the note he had put on it. It read, “To my long-suffering darling.”

  “Mrs. O’Brian, Mr. Schell will see you now.”

  With lagging steps Marge followed the man into Rudy Schell’s austere office. But the moment she walked in the door it was a relief when the man behind the desk stood up and with a welcoming smile greeted her and invited her to sit down. He can’t be going to arrest me or something, she thought.

  She quickly found out that that was the last thing on Agent Schell’s mind. “Mrs. O’Brian, it’s been almost two years since you spoke to one of our a
gents. Now that Mrs. Bennett is moving to New Jersey, are you planning to continue to work for her?”

  “I’m sorry to say that I’m not,” Marge said. “I always went home at night. There’s no way I can make the trip from Connecticut to New Jersey five days a week, and even if she wanted me to live in, there’s no way I’d want to be that far from my grandkids. They’re always over at my house.”

  Rudy Schell nodded. “I can understand that. Please don’t think I’m asking you to be disloyal, but as you must know Parker Bennett has ruined many lives. People who trusted in him have lost their homes, their retirement funds, and their ability to help their families. But I am asking you to think. Was there ever a time when you overheard either Mrs. Bennett or her son indicate that they knew whether or not Parker Bennett is alive?”

  Marge sat quietly. There was one time. Only two weeks ago. It was the night Mrs. Bennett shouted at Eric. But it wouldn’t be fair to repeat that. Unless it was just the stress of her life causing it, Mrs. Bennett was slipping into early dementia. She repeated herself a lot. Anyhow, what she said sounded crazy.

  “Mrs. O’Brian”—Rudy Schell’s voice was encouraging—“just looking at your expression, I have a feeling that you are trying to decide whether or not to tell me something. Please remember that if Eric Bennett and his mother are innocent of any knowledge of Parker Bennett’s crime, we stand ready to publicly clear their names. As it is there is plenty of suspicion that both of them were in on it. But if you heard anything that might help us to recover that money you really must share it with us.”

  Hesitantly Marge began, “Less than a week ago after dinner I couldn’t help but hear Mrs. Bennett scream at Eric.”

  Rudy Schell did not let a flicker of emotion show in his eyes or manner. “What was she saying when she screamed at him?”