Molly nodded and, like an obedient child, turned and started up the stairs.
Fran took off her coat and looked apprehensively out the window. She knew that as soon as the news was out that Molly had met Annamarie Scalli at the diner, the media would arrive like a pack of wolves.
Here comes the first one, she thought as a small red car turned in off the street. Fran was grateful when she saw Edna Barry behind the wheel. She hurried to the kitchen to meet her and noticed there was no sign that Molly had even made coffee. Ignoring the instant hostility that came over Barry’s face when she let herself in, Fran said, “Mrs. Barry, would you please put on a pot of coffee right away and fix whatever Molly usually has for breakfast.”
“Is anything wrong with—?”
The chimes of the front doorbell cut short the question.
“I’ll get it,” Fran said. Please, God, let it be Philip Matthews, she prayed.
She was relieved to find that it was Philip, although his worried expression told her even more forcibly than she already felt that there might easily be a rush to judgment.
He did not mince words: “Ms. Simmons, I appreciate your calling me, and I appreciate that you warned Molly not to talk to anyone until I got here. Nevertheless, this situation has to be grist for the mill for you and your program. I must warn you that I will not tolerate your questioning Molly or even being around when I talk to her.”
He looks just the way he did when he tried to stop Molly from talking to the press outside the prison last week, Fran thought. He may believe that she killed Gary Lasch, but he’s still the kind of lawyer Molly needs. He’ll slay dragons for her if he has to.
It was a comforting thought. Keep your perspective, Fran warned herself. “Mr. Matthews,” she said, “I’m familiar enough with the law to know that your conversations with Molly are privileged and mine are not. I think you still are convinced that Molly killed Dr. Lasch. I started out believing that, but in the past few days I have developed some mighty serious doubts about her guilt. At the very least, I have a lot of questions I want to get answered.”
Philip Matthews continued to look at her coldly.
“I suppose you think this is a media trick,” Fran snapped. “It isn’t. As someone who likes Molly very much and wants to help her, who wants to learn the truth, however hurtful that may be, I suggest you develop an open mind where Molly is concerned; otherwise you should get the hell out of her life.”
She turned her back on him. I need a cup of coffee as much as Molly does, she decided.
Matthews followed her into the kitchen. “Look Fran . . . It is Fran, isn’t it?” he asked. “I mean, that’s what your friends call you?”
“Yes.”
“I think we’d better get on a first-name basis. Obviously when I talk to Molly, you can’t be in the room, but it would be helpful if you would fill me in on anything you know that might help her.”
The antagonism was gone from his face. The protective way he said Molly’s name hit Fran. She’s a lot more to him than just a client, she decided. It was a tremendously reassuring thought. “Actually I’d like to go over a number of things with you,” she said.
Mrs. Barry had finished preparing a tray for Molly. “Coffee, juice, and toast or a muffin is all she ever has,” she explained.
Fran and Matthews helped themselves to coffee. Fran waited until Mrs. Barry had left to go upstairs with the tray before she asked, “Did you know that everyone at the hospital was surprised when they learned of Annamarie’s affair with Gary Lasch, because they thought she was romantically involved with Dr. Jack Morrow, who was also on the staff of Lasch Hospital? And that Jack Morrow just happened to be murdered in his office two weeks before Dr. Lasch died? Did you know that?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you ever meet Annamarie Scalli?”
“No, the case was resolved before she was scheduled to testify.”
“Do you remember if anything ever came up about a house key that was always kept hidden in the garden here?”
Matthews frowned. “Something may have come up, but it didn’t amount to anything. Quite frankly, my feeling was that, because of the circumstances of the murder and the way Molly was covered with Dr. Lasch’s blood, the investigation into his death began and ended with her.
“Fran, go upstairs and tell Molly I have to see her right away,” Matthews said. “I remember she has a sitting room in her suite. I’ll talk to her there before I let the police get near her. I’ll get Mrs. Barry to have them wait down here somewhere.”
Just then a distressed Mrs. Barry hurried into the kitchen. “When I went upstairs a moment ago with her breakfast, Molly was in bed, fully dressed and with her eyes closed.” She paused. “Dear God, it’s just like the last time!”
37
Dr. Peter Black invariably started his day with a quick check of the international stock market on one of the cable financial channels. He then ate a spartan breakfast—during which he insisted upon complete silence—and later listened to classical music on the car radio as he drove to work.
Sometimes when he reached the hospital grounds he would take a brisk stroll before settling down at his desk.
On Monday morning the sun was out. Overnight the temperature had risen almost twenty degrees, and Black decided a ten-minute walk this morning would clear his head.
It had been a troubled weekend. The visit to Molly Lasch on Saturday evening had been another failure, Cal Whitehall’s stupid, ill-conceived notion of the way to win the woman’s cooperation.
Peter Black frowned as he noticed a gum wrapper lying at the edge of the parking lot and made a mental note to have his secretary call the maintenance department and warn them about their sloppiness.
Molly’s stubborn insistence on pursuing this idea of her innocence in Gary’s death infuriated him. “I didn’t do it. The killer went thataway”—Who did she think she was kidding? He knew what she was doing, though. He thought of it as Molly-strategy: Tell a lie loud enough, emphatically enough, often enough, and eventually some people will believe you.
It will be all right, he reassured himself. The mergers will go through. After all, they had the inside track to absorb the other HMOs, and the process already was underway. This is where we miss Gary, Black thought. I just don’t have the patience for the endless socializing and glad-handing needed to keep key company executives on board with us. Cal can use business leverage to keep some of them in line, he told himself, but Cal’s kind of aggressive power plays don’t work with everyone. If we’re not careful, some might switch to other health plans.
Frowning now, his hands in his pockets, Peter Black continued his walk around the new wing of the hospital, thinking back to his early days there, and remembering with grim admiration how Gary Lasch used to seem to thrive on all the socializing. He could turn on the charm and, when necessary, his solicitous demeanor, that look of concern that he had perfected.
Gary knew what he was doing when he married Molly too, Black reflected. Molly was the perfect Martha Stewart–type hostess, with her looks and money and family connections. Important people were actually flattered to be invited to her dinner parties.
Everything had been going so smoothly, just like clockwork, Peter Black thought, until Gary was fool enough to get involved with that Annamarie Scalli. Of all the sexy-looking young women in the world, he had to go and pick a nurse who also happened to be smart.
Too smart.
He had reached the entrance to the colonial style brick building that housed the offices of Remington Health Management Organization. He debated briefly about continuing his walk, but then decided to go in. The day was ahead of him, and he would have to deal with it sooner or later.
At ten o’clock he received a call from a nearly hysterical Jenna. “Peter, have you heard the news? A woman who was murdered last night in the parking lot of a diner in Rowayton has been identified as Annamarie Scalli, and the police are questioning Molly. On the radio they just about c
ame out and called her a suspect.”
“Annamarie Scalli is dead?! Molly is a suspect?!” Peter Black proceeded to ask rapid-fire questions, pressing Jenna for details.
“Molly apparently met with Annamarie at the diner,” Jenna told him. “You’ll remember she said on Saturday that she wanted to see her. The waitress said Annamarie left the diner first, but that Molly followed her out less than a minute later. When the diner closed a little later still, apparently somebody noticed that a car had been in the lot for some time, and they checked it out because they’ve been having trouble with teenagers parking there and drinking. But what they found was Annamarie, stabbed to death.”
After Peter Black replaced the receiver, he leaned back, a contemplative look on his face. A moment later he smiled and heaved a great sigh, as though a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Reaching into one of the desk’s side drawers, he extracted a flask. Pouring himself a shot of whiskey, he lifted the small cup in a toast. “Thank you, Molly,” he said aloud, then drank.
38
On Monday afternoon, when Edna Barry arrived home from Molly’s house, her neighbor and close friend Marta came running over before she was even out of the car.
“It’s all over the news,” Marta said breathlessly. “They say Molly Lasch is being questioned by the police, and that she is a suspect in that nurse’s death.”
“Come in and have a cup of tea with me,” Edna said. “You just wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had!”
At the kitchen table, over tea and her homemade coffee cake, Edna described her shock at seeing Molly lying fully dressed under the quilt on the bed. “I thought my heart would stop. She was fast asleep, just like the last time. And when she opened her eyes, she looked all confused, and then she smiled. I tell you I got such a chill. It really was like six years ago—I almost expected to see blood on her.”
She explained how she had rushed downstairs to get that reporter, Fran Simmons, who’d shown up there first thing that morning, and Molly’s lawyer. They had made Molly sit up, then they walked her around her sitting room and made her drink several cups of coffee.
“After a while, Molly started to get some color in her cheeks, even though her eyes still had that funny vacant look in them. And then,” Edna Barry said, leaning closer to Marta, “Molly said, ‘Philip, I didn’t kill Annamarie Scalli, did I?’ ”
“No!” Marta gasped, her mouth a circle of amazement, her eyes wide behind her harlequin glasses.
“Well, let me tell you, the minute she said that, Fran Simmons took my arm and shoved me down the stairs so fast it would make your head spin. She didn’t want me to be able to report anything I might overhear to the police.”
Edna Barry did not add that Molly’s question had taken a great load of worry off her mind. Clearly Molly was mentally unstable. Nobody who wasn’t sick would kill two people and then not even know if they did it. All her secret worry about Wally had been for nothing.
Now, in the safety of her own kitchen, with her concerns about Wally removed, Edna freely dished up the events of the morning for her confidante. “We were no sooner downstairs than a couple of detectives showed up on the doorstep. They were from the state attorney’s office. Fran Simmons took them into the family room. She told them Molly was in consultation with her lawyer, but I knew he really was just trying to get her to talk some sense. They couldn’t have brought her out the way she was.”
Her mouth set in a straight line of disapproval, Edna reached across the table to the coffee cake and helped herself to a second slice. “It was a full half-hour before Molly’s lawyer came downstairs. He’s the same one who handled her trial.”
“Then what happened?” Marta asked eagerly.
“Mr. Matthews—that’s the lawyer—said that he was going to make a statement on behalf of his client. He said that Molly had met Annamarie Scalli in the diner the night before because she wished to bring closure to the terrible tragedy of her husband’s death. They were together for fifteen or twenty minutes. Annamarie Scalli left the diner while Molly paid the check. Molly went directly to her car and came home. She learned of Ms. Scalli’s death on the news and extends her sympathy to the family. Beyond that, she has no knowledge of what might have happened.”
“Edna, did you see Molly after that?”
“She came down the minute the police left. She must have been listening from the upstairs hallway.”
“How did she act?”
For the first time in this exchange, Edna showed a hint of sympathy for her employer. “Well, Molly’s always quiet, but this morning was different. She seemed almost like she wasn’t in touch with what was going on. I mean, it was like the way she wandered around after Dr. Lasch died, as though she wasn’t quite sure where she was or what had happened.
“The first thing she said to Mr. Matthews was, ‘They believe I killed her, don’t they?’ Then that Fran Simmons said to me that she’d like to talk to me in the kitchen, which was just a way of not letting me hear what they were planning.”
“So you don’t know what they talked about?” Marta asked.
“No, but I can guess. The police want to know if Molly killed that nurse.”
“Mom, is somebody being mean to Molly?”
Startled, Edna and Marta looked up to see Wally standing in the doorway.
“No, Wally, not at all,” Edna said soothingly. “Don’t you worry yourself. They’re just asking her some questions.”
“I want to see her. She was always nice to me. Dr. Lasch was mean to me.”
“Now, Wally, we don’t talk about that,” Edna said nervously, hoping that Marta would not read any significance into the anger in Wally’s voice, or notice the terrible scowl that distorted his features.
Wally walked over to the counter and turned his back on them. “He stopped over to see me yesterday,” Marta whispered. “He was talking about wanting to visit with Molly Lasch. Maybe you should take him over to say hello to her. It might satisfy him.”
Edna was no longer listening. Her full attention was focused on her son. She realized that Wally was fishing in her pocketbook. “What are you doing, Wally?” she asked sharply, her voice thin and high.
He turned to her and held up a key ring. “I’m just going to get Molly’s key, Mom. I promise, this time I’ll put it back.”
39
On Monday afternoon, waitress Gladys Fluegel willingly accompanied Detective Ed Green to the courthouse in Stamford, where she related what she had observed of the meeting between Annamarie Scalli and Molly Carpenter Lasch.
Trying to contain her pleasure at the level of deferential treatment accorded her, Gladys allowed herself to be led into the courthouse by Detective Green. There they were met by another youngish man who introduced himself as Assistant State Attorney Victor Packwell. He led them to a room with a conference table and asked Gladys if she’d like coffee or a soda or water.
“Please don’t be nervous, Ms. Fluegel. You can be a great help to us,” he assured her.
“That’s why I’m here,” Gladys responded with a smile. “Soda. Diet.”
Fifty-eight-year-old Gladys had a face that was creased with wrinkles, the result of forty years of heavy smoking. Her bright red hair showed gray roots. Thanks to her slavish devotion to on-line shopping, she was always in debt. She had never married, never had a serious boyfriend, and she lived with her contentious elderly parents.
As her thirties had yielded to her forties, and then her forties blended almost unnoticeably into her fifties, Gladys Fluegel found her outlook on life souring. Eventualities no longer seemed to hold even possibilities. She was no longer sure that someday something wonderful would happen to her. She had waited patiently for excitement to enter her life, but it never had. Until now.
She genuinely enjoyed waitressing, but over the years she had become impatient and abrupt with customers, at least on occasion. It hurt her to see couples linking hands across tables, or to watch parents having a festive night out with th
eir kids, knowing that she had missed that kind of life.
As her resentful attitude had deepened, it had cost her a number of jobs, until finally Gladys had become a fixture at the Sea Lamp, where the food was poor and the patronage sparse. The place seemed to fit her personality.
On Sunday evening she had felt particularly edgy, due to the fact that the other regular waitress had called in sick and Gladys had been forced to cover for her.
“A woman came in sometime around 7:30,” she explained to the detectives, enjoying the feeling of importance it gave her to have these policemen pay such close attention, not to mention the clerk, who was taking down her every word.
“Describe her, please, Ms. Fluegel.” Ed Green, the young detective who had driven her to Stamford, was being very polite.
I wonder if his parents are divorced, Gladys thought. If they are, I wouldn’t mind meeting his father. “Why don’t you just call me Gladys? Everybody does.”
“If that’s what you prefer, Gladys.”
Gladys smiled, then touched her hand to her mouth as though she were thinking, trying to remember. “The woman who came in first . . . Let’s see . . .” Gladys pursed her lips. She wasn’t going to tell them that she’d been irritated at that woman because she’d insisted on a booth way in the back. “She looked like she was somewhere around thirty, she had short, dark hair, was maybe a size 14. It was hard to tell for sure. She was wearing slacks and a parka.”
She realized that they certainly knew what that woman looked like and that her name was Annamarie Scalli, but she understood also that, step by step, they needed to nail down the facts. Besides, she was enjoying all this attention.
She told them that Ms. Scalli had ordered only coffee, not even so much as a roll or a piece of cake, which of course meant that the tip wouldn’t be enough for Gladys to buy a stick of gum.
We'll Meet Again Page 14