7
“Well, have you made up your mind if you’re going?”
That was the question Nina Craig heard as she pushed open the door of her condo in West Hollywood. Oh God, she’s in one of those moods, Nina thought, and bit her lip to keep from making a sharp reply to her sixty-two-year-old mother. It was five-thirty, and it was clear to her that Muriel Craig had started her private cocktail hour well before her usual five o’clock with a pitcher of apple martinis or a bottle of wine.
Muriel was still in her nightgown and robe, which meant that whatever time she had woken up, it was in the cloud of depression that so often enveloped her. It’s going to be a long night, Nina thought resentfully.
“No response from the Academy Award winner?” her mother asked sarcastically as she refilled her glass from the almost empty bottle.
Ten years ago Nina had given up the hope of becoming a successful actress one day and had joined the guild for extras, the background people who worked on a day-by-day basis. Arriving at 5 A.M., she’d spent all day on the set of a film about a revolution and had been one of the hundreds of extras who held up banners. The set was in the desert near Palm Springs, and it had been mercilessly hot.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Mom,” Nina said, trying to keep her tone even.
“Why not go? Three hundred thousand dollars is pretty good money. I’ll go with you. I wouldn’t mind getting an in-person look at good old Robert Nicholas Powell again.”
Nina looked at her mother. The hair that, like her own, had once been a natural deep red was now dyed a bright fire-engine shade and looked harsh against Muriel’s face. Years of smoking had left deep lines around her lips and cheeks, and her skin was mottled with brown spots. Her shoulders slumped as she leaned forward on the couch, her two hands encircling the glass.
It was hard to visualize the beautiful woman who at one time had been one of those rarities, an actress who worked steadily. She had talent, Nina thought bitterly, not like me. And now look at her!
Don’t you go into all that again, Nina warned herself. It’s the end of the day, and you’re hot and fed up with everything. “Mom, I’m going to shower and get into something comfortable,” she said. “I’ll join you for a glass of wine when I get dressed.”
“Take the three hundred thousand.” Her mother spat the words out at her. “Use it to buy me my own condo. You don’t want me living with you any more than I want to be here.”
Muriel had followed Nina to California after the acting jobs became fewer and fewer in New York. A year earlier, she had barely escaped being burned to death when her carelessly dropped cigarette had ignited the carpet in the living room of her apartment in a two-family house in Los Angeles. The people who owned the house where she had rented had refused to let her return after the damage to the apartment was repaired. “The same thing could happen in the middle of the night,” the owner told Nina. “I’m not taking any more chances.”
Her mother had been living with Nina for almost a year now. Now she, too, worked as an extra, but too often did not feel up to responding to a potential job.
I can’t take it much longer, Nina thought as she closed and locked the door of her bedroom. In her mother’s present frame of mind, it would not be unusual for her to follow Nina in to continue the discussion about the letter from the producer.
The room was cool and inviting. White walls, polished floors with white throw rugs on either side of the bed, narrow apple-green draperies at the windows. The white bedspread was accentuated by apple-green and white pillows. The four-poster bed and matching dresser were left over from her ten-year marriage to a mildly successful actor who had turned out to be a serial cheat. It was better that they had not had any children.
They’d been divorced for three years. I’m ready to find someone else, Nina thought. But I can’t while I’m stuck with my mother. Who knows? I still look good. If I go on that program I might be able to parlay it into getting back into real acting, or even one of those reality shows. I can be a mad housewife with the best of them.
What would it be like to see Claire and Regina and Alison again? We were such kids, Nina thought. We were all so scared. The cops kept twisting what we were saying. Mom gave the performance of the year when she was asked if it was true that she had been seriously dating Powell before he met Betsy. “I was dating at least three people at that time,” she said. “He was one of them.”
That’s not the way I heard it, Nina thought grimly. Her mother blamed her for introducing Betsy to Powell. She blamed me, and blamed me, and blamed me, Nina thought. It was all I ever heard from her. I ruined her life.
Muriel had turned down the part that would have made her a star because Powell didn’t want her to be locked into a contract when they got married. Those were the exact words he used: “When we get married.”
She’d thrown them at Nina often enough over the years.
Nina felt the white-hot anger that those memories evoked wash over her. She thought of the night of the Graduation Gala. Her mother had refused to come to the party. “I should be living in that house,” she had said.
Betsy had made a point of seeking Nina out. “Where is your mother?” she had asked. “Or is she still a sore loser about Rob?”
I’m glad no one heard her ask me that question that night, Nina thought. It wouldn’t have looked good when Robert Powell discovered his wife’s body the next morning. But at that moment, if I had had that pillow, I would gladly have held it over her face.
I had much too much to drink that night. I don’t even remember going to bed. I don’t think I showed it, because no one mentioned it, including that nosy housekeeper who said that she thought Alison was drunk.
When she and the others got there Powell was collapsed on the floor, and the housekeeper pulled the pillow from Betsy’s face.
Her mother was turning the handle of the door. “I want to talk to you,” she called. “I want you to go on that program.”
With a supreme effort Nina managed not to show how angry she was as she called back, “Mom, I’m stepping into the shower. It’s all right. I am going to accept that offer. I’ll be able to get you your own place.”
Before I kill you, she added silently. And then wondered again what else she hadn’t remembered about the night Betsy Powell was suffocated.
8
The agreements to participate in the reenactment of the events of the Graduation Gala had trickled in to Laurie’s office one by one. The last of them had taken nearly two weeks, and it was from Nina Craig. The letter stated that she had consulted a lawyer and there were additional conditions she felt were appropriate. Robert Powell should put in escrow two hundred fifty thousand dollars for each of the four graduates, and it should be a net sum to each of them. Fisher Blake Studios must also offer fifty thousand net to the graduates. “Both Mr. Powell and Fisher Blake can well afford to compensate us fairly,” Nina had written. “And now that I have contacted my longtime childhood friends, I realize that we have all suffered emotional damage from being in the Powell home the night Betsy Bonner Powell lost her life. I believe by once again exposing ourselves to the glare of publicity, we are surrendering our hard-earned anonymity, for which we should receive appropriate compensation.”
Dismayed, Laurie reread the letter. “To net them that much money will mean we’d just about have to double what we’re paying them,” she said.
“I don’t think Brett will go for it.” Jerry Klein’s flat tone did not match the disappointment that came over his face. He had signed for the certified letter from Ms. Nina Craig and carried it into Laurie’s office.
“He’s got to go along with it,” Laurie said. “And I think he will. He’s been talking the series up, and he won’t want to pull back now.”
“Well he won’t be happy about it.” The worried expression on Jerry’s face deepened. “Laurie, I hope you haven’t pu
t yourself out on a limb with this Under Suspicion idea.”
“I hope not, too.” Laurie looked out the window toward the Rockefeller Center skating rink. It was a warm day for early April, and there were few skaters on the ice. Soon the rink would be gone, and the area it covered would be filled with tables and chairs for outside dining.
Once in a while Greg and I used to have dinner out there, she thought as a wave of longing for him swept over her. She knew why it had come at this moment. The show was about closure. Even though she had no intention of revealing her concern to either Jerry or Grace, she knew Jerry was right. After becoming openly enthusiastic about the project, her boss, Brett Young, would probably rather double the price he had agreed to pay the participants than back out.
“What about Robert Powell?” Jerry was asking. “Do you think he’ll pony up and pay the taxes so they clear the two hundred and fifty grand?”
“I can only ask,” Laurie said. “And I think I’d better do it in person. I’ll call and ask if he can see me today.”
“Shouldn’t you check with Brett first?” Jerry suggested.
“No. There’s no use in getting him going if it’s a lost cause. If Powell doesn’t agree to pay, our next move has to be for me to fly to Los Angeles and see if Nina Craig can be persuaded to accept our offer. The others all agreed to the original terms, but it’s obvious she got them stirred up.”
“What will you tell her?” Jerry asked.
“The truth. If necessary we’ll do it without her, and that wouldn’t look good for her. And don’t forget that Betsy Bonner Powell was forty-two years old when she died. She’d be only sixty-two or sixty-three now. Today many people live well into their eighties. Betsy was robbed of half of the life she might have enjoyed if someone hadn’t held a pillow over her face that night. The person who did that has woken up every morning since then and been able to enjoy a brand-new day while Betsy’s body is in a casket in a cemetery.”
Laurie knew her voice had become heated and angry and that it wasn’t just about Betsy Bonner Powell. It was about Greg and the fact that his killer was a free man. Not only free, but a living, breathing threat to her and Timmy. Then she said, “Sorry, Jerry. I know that I have to be careful not to make this sound like a personal crusade.”
She picked up the phone. “Time to make another appointment with Robert Nicholas Powell.”
9
Rob Powell was on the three-hole golf course on the back lawn of his estate. The warm April day was conducive to getting out his clubs and practicing his swing before he joined a foursome at the Winged Foot Golf Club. Not bad, he thought as a well-struck putt rolled to the bottom of the cup.
Concentrating on his golf game had given him the opportunity to put aside the fact that he had not yet heard from the doctor. The chemo three years ago had seemed to take care of the nodules on his lungs, but he knew there was always a chance they would come back. He had had his semiannual checkup earlier in the week.
“Par for the course,” he said aloud as he made his way back to the house, swinging his golf club.
Fifteen minutes until his guest arrived. What did Laurie Moran want? he asked himself. She’d sounded concerned. Is she going to tell me that one of them won’t take part in the program? Rob frowned. I need to have them all here, he thought. No matter what it takes.
Even if Moran’s report was favorable, Rob had a sense of time going by too swiftly. He needed closure, and when Laurie Moran had come to see him in March and proposed her concept of reenacting the night of the Graduation Gala, it had been the answer to a prayer. Except, Rob thought, I’ve never been much of one to pray. I left all that to Betsy.
At that thought he laughed, a mirthless sound that came out more like a bark, and was followed by a fit of coughing.
Why hadn’t the doctor called with the results?
His housekeeper, Jane Novak, was opening the sliding glass door as he stepped from the cobblestone walk onto the patio. “Hole in one, Mr. Robert?” she asked cheerfully.
“Not quite, but not bad, Jane,” Rob said, trying not to be annoyed that Jane always asked that after he had been on the greens. If there was one thing about Jane he wished he could change, it was her total lack of any sense of humor. She meant that question to be a joke.
Jane, a solidly built woman with steel-gray hair and matching eyes, had come to work for him shortly after he married Betsy. He had understood why Betsy was not comfortable with the previous housekeeper, who had been hired by his first wife and who had stayed with him after her death. “Rob, that woman resents me,” Betsy had said. “I can feel it. Tell her it’s not working out and give her a healthy severance check. I know just who I want in her place.”
The person Betsy wanted was Jane Novak, who had worked backstage when Betsy was ushering in the theatre. “She’s a marvelous organizer. She actually keeps the dressing rooms neat. And she’s a good cook,” Betsy had raved.
Jane was all of that. After entering the country on a green card from Hungary, she was overwhelmed with joy to be put in charge of the mansion, and, as Betsy had promised, she was fully up to the job. Exactly Betsy’s age, Jane was now sixty-two. If she had any close friends or family, Rob had never seen them. Her very comfortable apartment was located behind the kitchen, and even on her days off, from what he could see, she seldom left it. Unless he was out of town, he knew that at seven-thirty every morning she would be in the kitchen ready to prepare his breakfast.
Over the years Rob had learned to see the slight nuances in Jane’s placid expression that signaled any kind of distress. As he stepped inside the house, he realized he was seeing them now. “You said that Ms. Moran was coming, Mr. Rob,” Jane said. “I hope you don’t mind if I ask, but does that mean that the program is going to happen?”
“I don’t mind you asking, but the answer is I don’t know,” Rob said. Even as he spoke, he realized that he did mind Jane asking, because there was a note of disapproval in her question.
He had just enough time to change into a long-sleeved sport shirt and go back downstairs before the doorbell chimed.
It was exactly four o’clock. He wondered if she had timed her arrival so precisely or if she had arrived a little early and waited in her car before coming up to the house.
It was the kind of totally irrelevant speculation that Rob Powell had found himself indulging in lately. “Woolgathering” is what they used to call it, he thought. He had even gone to the trouble of looking up the word in the dictionary. The definition was “indulging in idle fancies and daydreaming; absentmindedness.”
Rob thought to himself, Snap out of it! and got to his feet. He had asked Jane to bring Laurie Moran into the library instead of his office. Betsy had liked the English custom of four o’clock tea. After her death he had gotten away from it, but today it suddenly seemed appropriate.
More woolgathering, he acknowledged as Jane came into the room, followed by Laurie Moran.
He had considered Moran to be an attractive woman when she came to the house last month, but now as she hesitated for a moment and stood framed in the doorway, he realized that she was beautiful. Her hair, a soft honey shade, was loose on her shoulders, and in place of the pin-striped suit she was wearing a long-sleeved print blouse and black-belted skirt that accentuated her small waist. Her black patent leather heels did not have the ridiculous stilts that were the fashion nowadays.
Once again, the seventy-eight-year-old appreciated her lovely looks.
“Come in, Ms. Moran, come in,” he said heartily. “I won’t bite you.”
“I wasn’t afraid of that, Mr. Powell,” Laurie said, smiling as she crossed the room and sat on the couch opposite the roomy leather armchair where he was settling himself.
“I’ve asked Jane to prepare tea,” he said. “You may serve it now, Jane, thank you.”
“How kind of you.”
It was kind of
him, Laurie thought.
She drew a deep breath. Now that she was here, with so much at stake, it was difficult to appear calm. The four women, the stars of the Graduation Gala, would cost this man nearly two million dollars, instead of half that amount, to appear on the program.
Laurie marshaled her pitch to him, but before she started she waited for Jane’s somewhat forbidding figure to turn and leave the room.
“I’m going to make this easy for you,” Robert Powell said unexpectedly. “A problem has come up. I don’t have to be particularly astute or a deep thinker to guess that it’s about money. One of the four girls—women now—doesn’t think we’re paying enough to coax them to expose themselves to public scrutiny.”
Laurie hesitated for the length of a few seconds, then said, “That’s right.”
Powell smiled. “Let me guess which one. It wouldn’t be Claire. She has refused to let me help her since Betsy died. When she learns I have left her a substantial amount of money in my will it will not impress her. When the time comes, she might even give the money to charity.
“We were very close, but Claire was very close to her mother, too. The fact that Betsy died was overwhelming for Claire. Somehow it became my fault, not that she thought I had killed her mother, mind you. Angry as she was, she knew that was impossible, but I think that in her mind, she was begrudging me the time I had alone with Betsy.” For a long moment he looked past Laurie.
“My guess,” he added slowly, “is that Nina Craig is the one holding us up for more money. In that way she’s very much like her mother. I actually dated Muriel Craig for a time. A very attractive woman, but with a touch of ruthlessness in her character. I didn’t stop seeing her only because I’d met Betsy. It would have happened anyhow. It was just a coincidence that it happened at approximately the same time.”
I've Got You Under My Skin Page 4