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 their 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.