Mary Clark - I 've Heard That Song Before

Maybe. But then again, maybe not, he thought.

His anger rising with every step, Slater walked around the mansion, nodded curtly to the guard on duty, and went to the front door. For the first time in nearly thirty years, he pressed his finger on the doorbell and waited to be invited inside.

It was Slater,” Gary Barr told his wife as he entered the kitchen. “You can count on him being Johnny-on-the-spot. The clock chimes seven, and there he is, ringing the doorbell.”

“Why are you so mad at him? He’s always been nice to you.” Jane Barr was putting cheese puffs in the oven. She closed the oven door and turned to her husband. “You need to change your attitude, Gary, although it may be too late. I can tell Mrs. Carrington isn’t comfortable with you around. That’s why most nights she’s been telling us not to wait to serve dinner.”

“She was the one who got Slater on the phone to tell me to run that fool’s errand in New York. She was in on searching the house. She even had you answer the phone so she’d be sure you wouldn’t run over there for any reason.” Too late, Gary Barr realized that he had said too much. Jane knew nothing about Peter Carrington’s dress shirt, nor did she realize that their home had been searched.

“What are you talking about?” Jane demanded. “Who searched what? Why?”

The doorbell rang again. Saved by the bell, Gary Barr thought as he rushed to answer. This time it was Elaine Carrington and her son Richard.

“Good evening, Mrs. Carrington, Mr. Walker.”

Elaine ignored him and brushed by as she headed inside.

Walker paused: “I would suggest that, for your own good, you return what you took from my mother’s home. I know more about you than you think I know, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

Barbara Krause and Tom Moran had stayed in the office long after the rest of the prosecutor’s staff had said good night and scurried away for the weekend. After Barbara received the phone call, she told Moran to get out the Susan Althorp file so that they could review the statements Ambassador Althorp had made at the time of his daughter’s disappearance.

The ambassador had phoned Barbara, asked for the appointment, and said it was necessary to make it that late because his lawyer would be accompanying him.

“We always considered it possible that he was the one who did it,” Moran said, “although it seemed only remotely possible. But now that his wife is dead, maybe he needs to come clean. Otherwise, why would he bother to bring a lawyer with him?”

Promptly at eight o’clock, Althorp and his lawyer were escorted into the prosecutor’s office. Krause’s first impression of Althorp was that he looked sick. The ruddy complexion she had remembered when she last saw him was now pasty, and his face had become jowly.

He looks like a guy who just suffered a blow to the solar plexus, she thought.

“My wife has been buried,” Ambassador Althorp began abruptly. “I cannot protect her any longer. After the funeral, I told my sons something that I have kept secret for twenty-two years. In turn, one of them then told me something that Susan had confided to him the Christmas before her death, and this new information changes everything. I believe that there has been a terrible miscarriage of justice, and I share responsibility for it.”

Krause and Moran stared at him in stunned silence.

“Ambassador Althorp wishes to make a statement,” his lawyer said. “Are you prepared to take it?”

Elaine did not comment on the changes I had made in the living room, which I interpreted to mean that she was not pleased with them. She carried it off well, although I could understand how she must be feeling. Six months ago she knew nothing of my existence. She had lived in this house for the five years she was married to Peter’s father, and after his death had stayed on, running the place until Peter married Grace Meredith. Now it was mine.

“That was when things changed. Mrs. Elaine moved into the other house, and Peter invited us to come back,” Jane Barr had confided to me. “Mrs. Grace Carrington took the people on the staff that she especially liked and shifted them to the apartment. That’s where she really lived and did her entertaining, so even though there was a new mistress in the house, Mrs. Elaine pretty much had the run of the mansion, even though she didn’t actually live here anymore.”

In the years following Grace’s death, Elaine had become a kind of de facto lady of the house. Then I had come along to spoil it.

I was aware that without me in the picture, she was the closest thing to a relative that Peter had, and it would have been only natural for him to turn to her for comfort if he went to prison. And Peter was generous.

Vincent Slater was either acting very cool to me, or he was afraid of me. I wasn’t sure which it was. I couldn’t decide whether he felt I had betrayed Peter by hiring Nicholas Greco, or was afraid that Greco would find out something that would incriminate him. Greco had suggested the possibility of an “unholy alliance,” as he had put it, between Vince and Barr. I really hadn’t had time to give that possibility much thought.

I will say in Richard Walker’s behalf that he was the one who made the evening. He told anecdotes about the years he had spent working at Sotheby’s when he was in his early twenties, and told us about the elderly art connoisseur in London who had hired him now. “He’s quite a delightful guy,” Richard said, “and it’s a perfect time to make the move. I can get out of my lease for the gallery and even get a bonus in giving up the space. My apartment is in the hands of the broker, and we already have offers on it.”

For a little while we avoided talking about Peter, but then at dinner it became impossible to ignore the fact that we were here, dining in his home, while he was in a jail cell. “I did give him some good news,” I said. “I told him we were having a baby.”

“I guessed it!” Elaine said triumphantly. “I told Richard only a couple of hours ago that I was going to ask-I had my suspicions.”

Both Elaine and Richard gave me big, seemingly heartfelt hugs.

That left my other guest, Vincent Slater. Our eyes met, and I saw an expression in his that frightened me. I couldn’t read it, but for an instant the image of Peter’s other pregnant wife, floating in the pool, flashed through my mind.

By nine o’clock, we were having coffee in the library. By then we had run out of things to say to one another, and there was a kind of forced attitude of civility. I felt so much hostility in the room that I resolved I would never bring these people into Peter’s special space again. I could tell that all three of them despised Gary Barr. I knew Elaine suspected him of stealing Peter’s shirt. Greco had confirmed that Barr admitted to the theft, and we knew that Vincent had then found it and taken it himself.

I could not be sure if any of them, including Barr, had noticed the page from People magazine lying on the corner of Peter’s desk. I had placed it in such a way that it was hard to miss. I still didn’t understand how it could be important, but if it drew a reaction from one of my guests, then I might have a clue.

At nine thirty, they all got up to go. By then, the stress of the evening had begun to exhaust me. If any of these men was the one I heard being threatened by Susan Althorp all those years ago in the chapel, I was not going to find out about it tonight.

We stood by the front door for a few minutes as Vincent and I wished Richard all good luck in London. He told me that if possible, he would be back for Peter’s trial, to lend moral support. “I love that guy, Kay,” Richard said. “I always have. And I know he loves you.”