Текст книги "Crime of Privilege"

Автор книги: Walter Walker

Соавторы: Walter Walker
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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

3

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SANCERRE. A PECULIAR CHOICE FOR A MAN LIVING IN BORDEAUX, since it was my understanding that it came from the Loire Valley, but it was chilled and it tasted good and so I was grateful.

“Ned and I were just friends,” he began. “We had been in Saint Anthony’s Hall at Trinity together, and of course everyone knew who he was. Thing that was so amazing about Ned was that he never put on airs. I mean, certainly Saint A’s was the elite fraternity at school, had its own part of the campus and everything, but Ned was friends with everyone. In the spring, just before exams every year, he’d have the whole frat up to his house for a party, and we had the run of the place. That’s where he learned I’d been sailing all my life on Long Island Sound, and so he invited me to join in the Figawi race. After we graduated, I became sort of a regular. I was single, living in New York, it was a fun thing to do.” He shrugged. He couldn’t help it. Being single, living in New York. Fun things happened. They followed him around.

Jason sat on the very edge of the couch, bent forward at the waist, giving himself quick access to his glass whenever he put it down on the marble table that separated us.

“I got to know the family pretty well, even the Senator, who was incredibly nice. Thing was, nobody ever asked what you were doing there or acted like you didn’t belong. Sometimes they didn’t even ask who you were. And the Senator’s house, the main house, it was like this seaside mansion where you could do whatever you want. The chairs, the couches, the dining room table, there wasn’t anyplace where you felt you couldn’t sit down in a bathing suit. And I don’t want to say it was chaos or anything, but there were always people running around, going in and out, so, yeah, basically it was an exciting place to be.”

It seemed important to him that I understand that.

“Can you tell me about meeting those girls? Leanne and Patty.”

Jason drank more wine. He finished his glass and poured again. “I might have been mixed up about my sexuality in those days,” he said.

I didn’t think it was necessary for me to comment.

“I mean, you’re hanging around with the Gregorys, so there’s a lot of macho stuff going on. And we’d had this race and we’re feeling pretty good and we’re at the big post-race thingamajig in Hyannis and this girl starts hitting on me. She probably wasn’t the kind of girl I would have chosen back in the day when I was into that kind of stuff, but she was good-enough-looking and, basically, she was doing all the work.”

Once again, he seemed to be trying to explain things that were of no consequence to me. What did I care how he happened to be picked up by Leanne Sullivan? I asked him about McFetridge.

“Paul was just there. It was like, we were in a tent at this big table, and I think people recognized the Gregorys. Well, I’m sure they did. And I remember there was a whole crowd of guys around Cory, and I think she got a little freaked out and wanted to leave, and Ned, well, he wanted to get back to the house anyway, so he and Cory took off. And all of a sudden it was just Paul and me and I’ve got this redhead all over me and she’s got a friend, kind of short and dark, I remember, and Paul said we should bring them back to the Gregorys’ and have a party there.”

Jason stared into his wine and thought about it, and then told me what he didn’t think. “I don’t think Paul had any particular interest in the other girl, but she was there, you know?”

“What was Peter Martin doing?”

“I don’t know.”

It was hard to believe a man staring so intently into his glass. It was even harder when he emptied the glass in one gulp and then almost immediately filled it again.

“Jason,” I said, “this is the part where you get to save your own life, your own future. I know Peter met Heidi Telford at the Bon Faire Market that evening and I know she ended up at the Gregory compound later that night. I have to assume they got together at the post-race party in Hyannis during the time in between.”

Jason shook his head.

I made things a little more difficult for him. “Heidi Telford was a wholesome-looking blonde girl with big breasts, wearing a blue dress with red rosettes.”

Jason looked to see if I had anything more to keep him from saying he didn’t remember.

“She was just twenty years old, Jason.”

He stopped looking.

“She came into the tent where you were sitting at the big table.” I was guessing now, playing his reactions. Even the smallest sign of acquiescence kept me going. “Peter saw her and jumped up.” Peter had excellent manners. At least in public. “It was only you and Paul McFetridge and Peter left from your group and now that Heidi was there you all had girls, so you took them home.”

“Jamie.”

“What?”

“Jamie Gregory was there.”

I had forgotten about Jamie. “Did he pick up a girl?”

Jason took his time answering. He placed his fingers on the base of his wineglass and then began moving the glass around in small circles, swirling the wine itself before he took another sip. Letting the wine go all the way down his throat before he answered. “No,” he said.

No. But he had mentioned Jamie’s name. There was something he wanted me to know.

“Did that cause a problem, Jason?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Then let me make things as clear as I can. Nine years have gone by, and as long as nobody talked, as long as nobody acknowledged Heidi was at the Gregorys’, everyone could just deny knowing anything about her death. Only now the story has cracked. You’re keeping a secret that not everyone else is keeping, Jason. At this point, I know she was there. I know she got hit over the head with a golf club and never made it home that night. And I know one more thing, Jason, and this is the biggest thing of all. I know the Gregorys will not take the blame, no matter what.”

I saw the color seep out of his face.

“First, they say it didn’t happen. If they have to, they go the next step and say if it did happen it wasn’t one of their people. Not the family, not the friends, not the hangers-on. Which one were you, Jason? Being a friend of Ned’s and all, coming up once a year to go sailing. What do you think happens when they have to go to the step after that, Jason? Who do you think gets sacrificed?”

Jason’s gaze suddenly went someplace behind me. His features twisted in surprise, alarm, possibly fear. I pictured big Toby standing in the doorway in his apron and shorts. I pictured him with a weapon in his hand: a cane, a hammer, a cricket bat. I debated whether I would look and decided nothing good would come of even acknowledging he was there.

“It’s not going to be one of the family, Jason, you know that. Which just leaves you, the two girls, and Paul McFetridge. They can’t blame it on the two girls, that just wouldn’t make sense. And between you and McFetridge, well, you’re the one who’s in hiding.”

“I’m not in hiding.”

“The Gregorys would certainly like people to think you are.”

Jason glanced past me again.

“If he’s supposed to be in hiding,” a deep voice asked, “how is it that you managed to find him?”

I had to answer this time, but I still did not look. “I’ve been searching for months. There are other people who supposedly have been searching for years. I believe, like me, they got misdirected.”

A silent message passed between the housemates.

“The misdirection isn’t quite so beneficial to you as you might think,” I told Jason. I was looking directly at him, compelling him to look at me. “What the Gregorys are doing is making us think you’ve run away. Let me ask you this. What would you expect to happen when we’re led to believe you’re someplace you’re really not?”

Jason lifted one hand and wiped his mouth. “Where do they say I am?”

“Costa Rica.”

“I’ve never even been there.”

“Pretty clever, then.”

Jason must have gotten some sort of sign from Toby, some sort of affirmation, because he said, “What is it you want from me?”

“Tell me what happened to Heidi Telford.”

“I don’t really know anything, because I was—”

“On the beach.”

Eyes to Toby. Eyes back to me. “I never so much as talked with her. So I don’t see how I could possibly have anything to say, even if I were put on the witness stand.”

I said nothing and Jason emptied his third glass of wine. He picked up the bottle and studied it. Then he looked at my glass with apprehension before pouring himself a fourth.

There was a big sigh behind me. Toby proceeded to walk past us, past me, through the room in which we were sitting and into the kitchen.

I was slouched in an armchair. I was holding my glass in both hands, holding it by the bowl because I wasn’t really interested in the Sancerre and didn’t care if it got warm.

“All I remember,” Jason said, “is that she came with us when we left. She was sitting in the front seat of Jamie’s Jeep while Pete and Paul and I were jammed in the back.” He squeezed his shoulders together, demonstrating.

“And the girls?”

“Had their own car. Met us there.”

“But there was no party, is that right?”

Jason drank. “Sometimes it was really kind of hard to say whether there was or not.” He seemed to be thinking about what he had just said. “I mean, the music was blasting out the windows and people were going in and out doors and the closest person to being in charge was Ned, who didn’t give a damn what anybody else was doing.” He glanced at me, did it quickly before going back to his wine.

“Because he was with the au pair,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows as if the fact another person had been present gave him new hope. Another possible suspect.

Ah, yes, I felt like saying. And her motive would be what? Jealousy? But I only asked if he was aware what Ned was doing.

Jason took a roundabout way of answering. “We get to the house and Paul and I wait for the girls to arrive, and when they do we take them inside. We’re walking around, showing them various things—you know the way you do—and we get to the kitchen and there’s Ned. He’s got his hair slicked back and he’s bare-chested beneath this silk robe he’s got on, and he’s getting champagne out of the refrigerator.”

Toby returned then, carrying another bottle of Sancerre and a glass for himself, both of which he carefully set down on the coffee table before dropping into an armchair of his own. “Do go on, Jason,” he said.

But he didn’t. I had to get him talking again.

“And you knew his wife wasn’t around.”

“She was up in Boston. Some charitable function.”

“So the answer is yes, you did know what he was doing.”

“It was pretty obvious. I mean, it wasn’t just the champagne. He had the silver ice bucket, two glasses, and he’s just standing there, like ‘Oh, oh.’ ”

“Was anything said?”

“Yeah. Paul said to the girls, ‘Hey, want to go see the beach?’ Which meant: Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“So you did that, went down the beach.”

“Yeah.” He drank and held out his glass to Toby, who sighed loudly but got up to pour. “That’s really all I remember.”

“Except you came back to the house eventually.”

“We were down the beach for a while. It was obvious what Paul was intending to do.”

Toby said, “Emmm,” but he was pouring when he said it and maybe he was commenting on something else.

The question as to what Jason himself intended hung over the marble coffee table.

He ran his fingers up and down the stem of his newly filled glass. “I mean, Leanne was willing enough, and the other two were pounding away and making all sorts of squishy noises, but she and I, well, we just sort of cuddled together. And that was all okay, but then, when they finally got done, Paul and the other girl, well, Paul wanted to switch partners and that was something I really didn’t want to do, so I acted all, ‘No, I really like Leanne, I’m really serious about her.’ ”

“And that’s when you brought her back to the house.”

“Yeah. All of us went back, because, like, with or without the switch, Paul was done with his.”

“And what did you see when you got there, Jason?”

He looked at his glass as if it had betrayed him.

“Was Heidi Telford still there, Jason?”

He looked at Toby for help.

I figured it was enough. “And what was she doing?” I asked.

“She was trying to break up a fight between Pete and Jamie.”

“A real fight?”

“It was real enough. They were pushing, shoving, slamming each other into walls. And there wasn’t much she could do other than yell at them to stop.”

“And you know what they were fighting about?”

Toby and Jason locked eyes. We were sitting in a triangle, with Toby’s and my chairs pointed at Jason on the couch. But suddenly there was no room for me. I had to turn and look at the big guy myself.

“Toby,” I said, “do you not want him to answer?”

“He’s a free man,” Toby said, but given the fact he was still looking directly at Jason, it was clear Jason was not completely free.

“Was it over Heidi, Jason?” I asked.

“The impression I had,” he said slowly, never taking his eyes off Toby, pausing at each word as if it were a stepping-stone to the next, “was that Jamie didn’t like the fact that he was the only one without a girl.”

“And so he tried to put the moves on Heidi?”

“Exactly.”

“And Peter didn’t appreciate that.”

Jason sat back, stopped looking at Toby, and offered me a chilly smile at the foolishness of Jamie’s and Peter’s behavior.

“You heard what was being said? In the fight, I mean.”

“It was stupid stuff, for the most part. Pete kept yelling he had met her first and she had only come there because of him. Jamie was calling him names and saying he was sick and tired of his bullshit.” Jason shrugged. “Pete, at least, had a point. Jamie was just being a brat.”

“So what happened?”

“What happened, what happened, what happened,” Jason repeated, looking around the room as though he might find something he could use to demonstrate. I could not imagine what it could be.

“What happened was I got rid of the girls,” he said. “Walked them to their car. That was all.”

“Except you didn’t completely get rid of them. You stayed in touch with Leanne.”

“I felt bad about what happened down the beach and asked for her number because I was thinking I wanted to make it up to her. I don’t know what she was thinking, but she gave it to me and then she and her friend took off, and that’s all I know.”

To punctuate the conclusion to his story, he pointed to the hallway. “Do you need help with your suitcase?” he asked, and made a motion to get to his feet.

I stopped him. “Except you must have returned to the house after they left, Jason. What was going on then?”

Jason stayed where he was, one hand on the arm of the couch, ready to push himself up. “Nothing, really. Jamie wasn’t there anymore. In fact, Paul told me to go find him.”

“And did you?”

“I tried, but I couldn’t.” Jason shrugged one shoulder, the one that wasn’t leading to the couch. “It’s a big place.”

“And the girl? Heidi?”

“She’d had enough. Said she was going home. I don’t think she was enjoying herself anymore.”

Heidi Telford, who had come in Jamie’s Jeep, was going home without Jamie being around. And Peter, who had a night of pleasure planned, was already angry.

“Did you see her leave?”

“I just went to bed. I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I was tired of the bullshit myself. It had been a long weekend and I was ready to go home.”

He was also, it was obvious, ready for me to go home. Or at least go to my room. Instead, I asked the prosecutor’s favorite question: “What happened next?”

Jason repeated himself. “Like I said, I went to bed.”

“All right, what’s the next thing you remember happening?”

“Going to bed.”

Toby cleared his throat pointedly. One of us was supposed to stop. I decided it would not be me.

“You don’t remember Peter waking you up about six or six-thirty in the morning to go play golf?”

“Is that what he said?”

“It’s what McFetridge told me. You went to the course for a seven o’clock tee time and you couldn’t get on because Heidi Telford’s body had been found on the back nine.”

I could hear Jason breathing. The room was not that big and we were not that far apart from each other, but I had not heard it before.

“I didn’t know it was Heidi’s body,” he said softly.

4

.

HE DIDN’T KNOW, BUT PETER DID. HE HAD TO. WHY ELSE WOULD he have gotten them out there so early to play golf if it wasn’t to see if the body had been discovered, if it was being handled by the police the way he had planned?

I asked Jason if he had brought his own clubs and he shook his head. He said the Gregorys had a garage filled with clubs.

“Actually,” he said, reflecting, “it was filled with more crap than you could possibly imagine. Jet Skis, sails, water skis … and the clubs were scattered all over the place. Not that there weren’t bags. There were. And they were all, what do you call it? Callaways. Like somebody went out and bought ten sets of Callaways so nobody could complain that anyone else’s clubs were better. Only it was like people took them out of the bags and never put them back, or put them back in the wrong bag. You’d be out on the course and you’d find three seven irons and no five.”

I put my glass down on the marble, where Jason eyed it enviously because there was still wine in it. “Peter offer you a particular bag?”

“They were just out in the driveway. One for each of us.”

“Three? Or four?”

“I don’t know. Three.”

“You, Peter, and Paul?”

“Pete said Jamie was still pissed off and wouldn’t play.”

“And were any clubs missing from any of the bags?”

“I wasn’t counting. It was early. I was tired, hungover, I didn’t want to do this in the first place.”

“How about when you got to the course? You look then?”

“No, because we didn’t get out.…” He waved his hand.

“Because Heidi’s body was on the course.” It was the second time I had said that and Jason no more wanted to hear it than he had the first time.

“I didn’t know whose body it was,” he insisted.

“What did you think when you learned that it was Heidi Telford?” I pushed.

Jason’s head flared as if I had hurt him. “I didn’t. I didn’t know anything. All I can tell you is that we went back to the house, packed our bags, and left, which is what I had been planning on doing in the first place.”

“But you found out eventually.”

Clearly, I had become an irritant. Jason looked at Toby, wanting him to do something. Toby said nothing. He reminded me of lawyers I had seen watching their clients be deposed, listening to each word, weighing each one, waiting to jump in when there was one word too many.

“I got a call from someone who works for the Gregorys. He told me, what he told me was that something terrible had happened. The girl had left the house on her own, after the fight, and never made it home. He asked if I knew anything about it and I said no, she was very much alive when I last saw her. And he said that was a problem for all of us who were there. No one knew what happened, but everyone was going to be blamed. Curse of the Gregorys, he said.”

“What did you tell him?”

Jason released his lifeline to Toby and returned to me. “I said, how can anyone blame me? I didn’t do anything. And he said, I’ll never forget this, he said, ‘How do you prove a negative?’ ”

“Did you take that as a threat?”

“No, I took it as what the Gregorys have to go through all the time.”

“You mean proving they didn’t do things?”

“What I understood, okay, what I understood he was telling me was that the Gregorys are always being accused of something and it’s not enough for them to say they didn’t do it. The key for them is not to say anything at all.”

“And you agreed to that.” I tried not to let any judgment enter my voice. It wouldn’t sound right coming from me. Not to my own ears.

Jason touched the hair at the back of his neck. The touch turned into a scratch. The scratch got harder, gave him an excuse to drop his head. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t much he was asking.”

“Just don’t volunteer information.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t make yourself available if you don’t have to.”

Jason’s head lifted. His expression asked how I knew so much.

“This guy, this caller, was it Chuck Larson?”

“No. It was a guy named O’Donald. He was a lawyer himself. Said he helps the family on cases like this.”

“Did he want you to do anything else?”

“Just, you know, if I thought I could get the girls on board, Leanne and her friend. Get them, you know, to understand that, really, it would be best if they not admit they had even been at the house.” Jason was having difficulty finding the right words. His hands were flailing.

“And you agreed to do that, too?”

“I thought I was helping Ned. I thought, people start investigating, it would be like opening Pandora’s box. So what I agreed to do was invite Leanne down to New York, show her around a little bit, then introduce her to Mr. O’Donald.”

“And were you there when he spoke to her?”

“All I know is, he asked her, okay, if she could go anywhere in the world, where would she want to go?”

“And she said Hawaii.”

Jason turned down his mouth in silent commentary.

“But you of course drove a much harder bargain,” intoned Toby.

Jason stared at him, but there was no rancor in the stare. “Lucky for you, I did.”

“And I’d be luckier still, dear boy, if you would be so kind as to get us another bottle of vin. And none of that treacly stuff we’ve been making our friend drink. Look.” He pointed disdainfully at my glass. “He won’t even finish it.”

Jason popped to his feet, happy to escape.

Toby waited until he left the room and then draped himself over the arm of his chair so he could capture all my attention. “He feels terrible about it, you know.” Toby’s eyes for some reason reminded me of moons. Big moons. Sad moons, like I used to see in cartoons. “All he was trying to do was protect his friend, his secret society friend from university days.”

It was, I thought, a rather interesting interpretation of what I had just been hearing. I said, “But he wasn’t. He was protecting his friend’s cousin, who had murdered a young girl.”

“I don’t think that’s ever been proven.”

This information was delivered solemnly to me by an Englishman in France, draped over a chair.

“Think about it, George. You don’t mind if I call you George, do you? We’re not the least bit stuffy here in Monflanquin. I think it’s what attracted me. I digress. Hear me out.”

Toby dropped his arms so that they dangled almost to the floor. Interesting combination, this Toby, of a brute and an aesthete.

“He doesn’t know how the girl died. The family, a famous family, a family who bring rewards just by having you in their presence, a family who have always been quite good to him, explain that she left, sallied forth from the garden gate or whatever, traipsed down the lane.” He illustrated with rolls of his big hands and swirls of his thick fingers. “Is he to argue? Would you? Would anyone?”

“He could have told what he knows.”

I said that. George Becket: voice of experience.

Toby stopped his display of theater and looked at me peculiarly.

Did he know? About me?

“He sees her, she leaves, he leaves. Is that enough for him to talk about? With a family so newsworthy as the Gregorys? Do you really think he should have sold his story to the tabloids? Tell them all about randy Ned, doing a little shilly-shally on the side? That would have sunk Ned’s career. Ended his marriage. And for what? It didn’t have anything to do with the murder. No. No! Better to say Heidi Telford was never there. Better to say you were never there. Better even than that, not to be around yourself when questioners come knocking on your door.”

“The same message this Mr. O’Donald gave Leanne.”

Toby straightened himself out, then kicked his chair around so he could face me without the drape and the dangle. “Well, yes and no. The fact is, Mr. O’Donald liked Jason, and he had a project for which he thought Jason would be just perfect.”

“Moving to France?”

“Not quite. As luck would have it, the family had a number of properties across the globe that needed checking on, make sure they were not being ripped off too basely. What the family needed was for someone to go to these properties, look them over, issue a small report that assured them, yes, this one’s still standing, still functioning, not overrun by monkeys or wild goats or Arab seamen. Do a service and see the world. It was exactly the sort of thing Jason would love to do.” Toby wanted me to appreciate Jason’s good fortune.

“And there was probably no hurry to complete the task, I’m guessing.”

“No hurry at all. Isn’t that right, dear boy?”

Jason had come back into the room. He was holding a single glass and an opened bottle of very dark red. He didn’t say anything.

“Is that what you’ve been doing for nine years, Jason?” I asked.

“Why, then he met me,” Toby answered, his voice rattling the windows in the old stone building. “Trekking in Nepal. And when he explained about his job, how he simply had to dash about, we decided we should move here. Set down our stakes. Isn’t that what they say in America?”

“Do you think, Jason,” I said, trying not to let Toby distract either one of us, “the Gregorys are going to support you forever?”

Jason had put bottle to glass, but he stopped in mid-pour. Droplets of wine dribbled off the mouth of the bottle and fell onto the marble table. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that after all this time, the search for the killer is still on. Whatever they may have done to try to hide you, it hasn’t worked, has it?”

Jason’s question lingered. I answered it another way. “I mean, I’m here, aren’t I?”

“And,” he said, handing the glass to his partner and then refilling his own, “I’ve told you I’ve got nothing to tell you.”

“I think you’ll have plenty to say if the Gregorys keep trying to make it seem that you’re the one who killed Heidi Telford.”

The pouring stopped again. “They’re not going to do that,” he said.

“Why not? You’re the perfect guy to take the fall. You don’t know anything about what happened that night other than Ned’s little tryst, so you’ve got nothing to say in your own defense. And where, exactly, have you been all these years? You haven’t been on the run, have you? I mean, suppose you get asked that. Do you have a record of your employment? No? Why do you suppose that is, Jason? Tell me, the money you get, it wouldn’t by any chance get transferred into your account from the Cayman Islands, would it?”

Jason continued to hold the wine bottle almost but not quite parallel to the floor. He looked stricken.

“So now that everything’s set up, what’s going to prevent them from making you the scapegoat?” I asked. “Leanne? When was the last time you had any contact with her? McFetridge? He’s known the Gregorys since birth. He’s the next thing to family, and you, Jason, who are you to them? A now distant college friend of Ned’s, and at this point nobody even cares that he was boning the babysitter a decade ago.”

“She cares.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘She cares.’ Her family cares. Her husband cares.”

I was missing something. I struggled to sit up while I replayed that last exchange in my mind. “The au pair? You know her?”

“I know her husband. I went to Eaglebrook with him.”

Eaglebrook, a pre-prep school. A boarding school you went to in order to get into a good boarding school. An institution for the country’s elite. A place from which someone might grow up to be sensitive about his wife having once had an affair with a married Gregory.

“Who is she?”

Jason glanced at Toby. Words were not spoken, but there was plenty of message in the glance.

I was struggling to unravel that message when Toby’s booming voice brought my thoughts to a halt. “I think, Mr. Becket,” he said, “you will concede that you have no jurisdiction in this country.”

“Yes, but—”

“And that it is highly unlikely you or anyone else would be able to obtain extradition from this country for Jason, because nothing gives the French more pleasure than to fuck with the American legal system.”

I didn’t need extradition. I needed information. And cooperation. I started to say that and was cut off.

“Those things being true, or at least unrefuted by you, I think you will agree that there is little reason for Jason to continue speaking to you on this subject.”

But there was. I was almost there, within an arm’s length of nailing Peter Gregory Martin for the murder of Heidi Telford. I needed only to reach a little bit farther.

But I was not going to get the chance, because Toby the protector was not done protecting.

“Which means, sir,” he said, “your time as a guest in our home is at an end.”

It is possible my mouth hung open.

“Chambre Quatre is at the top of the stairs. I suggest you find it now or you may discover that your time as a guest in any capacity in our establishment has ended as well.”

“Then you—”

“Au revoir, Monsieur Becket.”