After she’d completed the telecast, Fran had gotten in her car, planning to head immediately back to the city, but Mrs. Barry had come running out of the house to get her. Once she was inside, a grim-faced and disapproving Philip Matthews had asked her to come into the study. She had entered the room to find Molly sitting on the sofa, her hands clasped together, her shoulders drooping. The immediate impression Fran had gotten was that the jeans and blue cable-knit sweater Molly was wearing suddenly had jumped a size-she seemed so small inside them.

“Molly assures me that as soon as I leave she is going to tell you everything she told me,” Matthews had said. “As her attorney, I can only advise her. Unfortunately, I can’t compel her to take my advice. I realize Molly considers you a friend, Fran, and I believe you do care about her, but the fact is that if it came to a subpoena you might be forced to answer questions we may not want answered. It is for that reason I have advised her not to tell you the events of last night. But again, I can only advise her.”

Fran had cautioned Molly that what Philip said was absolutely true, but Molly had insisted that she wanted Fran to know what happened anyway.

“Last night I met Annamarie. We spoke for fifteen or twenty minutes,” Molly had said. “She left ahead of me, and I came home. I did not see her in the parking lot. A car was pulling out as I left the diner, and I called, thinking it might be her. Whoever was in the car, however, either didn’t hear me call or didn’t want to hear.”

Fran had asked if it was possible that it had been Annamarie in that car, and suggested that perhaps she might have come back to the parking lot later, but Philip pointed out that Annamarie was found in her Jeep; Molly was sure that the vehicle she saw leaving the lot was a sedan.

Having heard about their leave-taking, Fran asked Molly what she and Annamarie had talked about. On that aspect of the meeting, Fran felt that Molly had been less forthcoming. Is there something she doesn’t want me to know? she thought. If so, what was it, and why was Molly being secretive? Was Molly trying to use her somehow?

As Fran steered her car onto the Cross County Parkway, which would lead her to the West Side Highway in Manhattan, she reviewed a few other unanswered questions she had regarding Molly Lasch, among them: why did Molly go back to bed after she’d showered and dressed this morning?

A shiver of doubt ran up Fran’s spine. Was I right in the first place? she asked herself. Did Molly really kill her husband?

And perhaps the biggest question of all: Who is Molly, and what kind of person is she?

It was the exact question Gus Brandt tossed at Fran when she got back to her office. “Fran, this looks like it’s gonna turn into another O.J. Simpson case, and you’ve got the inside track with Molly Lasch. If she keeps knocking people off, by the time you feature her on the series, we’ll need two episodes to tell the whole story.”

“You’re convinced that Molly stabbed Annamarie Scalli?” she asked.

“Fran, we’ve been looking at the tapes of the crime scene. The driver’s window of the Jeep was open. Figure it out. Scalli heard Lasch call her and rolled it down.”

“That would have to mean Molly went to that diner having planned it all out, including carrying a knife,” Fran said.

“Maybe she couldn’t find a sculpture that would fit in her purse,” he said with a shrug.

Fran walked back to her office, her hands shoved in the pockets of her slacks. It reminded her suddenly of how her stepbrothers used to tease her about the habit. “When Franny’s hands are quiet, her brain is working overtime,” they would say.

It’s going to be the same scenario as the last time, she thought. Even if they can’t find a single shred of hard evidence to tie Molly to Annamarie Scalli’s death, it won’t matter-she’s already been judged guilty of a second murder. Only yesterday I was thinking that six years ago nobody ever bothered to look for another explanation for Gary Lasch’s death. The exact same thing is happening now.

“Edna Barry,” she said aloud, as she entered her office.

“Edna Barry? What about her?”

Startled, Fran turned. Tim Mason was right behind her. “Tim, I just realized something. This morning, Molly Lasch’s housekeeper, Edna Barry, came running downstairs to tell Philip Matthews and me that Molly had gone back to bed. She said, ‘Dear God, it’s just like the last time.’ ”

“What do you mean, Fran?”

“There’s something that has been bothering me. More than what Edna Barry said, it was the way she said it, Tim, like she was glad to find Molly that way. Why in the name of God would it please that woman to see Molly duplicate her reaction to Gary Lasch’s death?”

41

“Molly’s not answering the phone. Take me directly to her place, Lou.”

Irritated and impatient that she had been unable to get away from her office due to a long-standing meeting scheduled for lunchtime, Jenna had caught the 2:10 train to Greenwich, where Lou Knox had been instructed to wait for her at the station.

Lou narrowed his eyes as he looked into the rearview mirror. Having noted her bad mood, he knew this was not the time to cross Jenna, but he had no choice. “Ms. Whitehall, your husband wants you to come directly home.”

“Well, that’s just too bad, Lou. My husband can wait. Take me over to Molly’s house and drop me off. If he needs the car, you can come back for me later, or I’ll call a cab.”

They were at the intersection. A right turn would take them to Molly’s house. Lou flicked on the left-turn indicator and got the reaction he’d expected.

“Lou, are you deaf?”

“Ms. Whitehall,” Lou said, hoping he sounded sufficiently obsequious, “you know I can’t cross Mr. Whitehall.” Only you can get away with that, he thought.

When Jenna entered the house, she slammed shut the front door with such force that the sound reverberated throughout the entire structure. She found her husband seated at the desk in his second-floor office. Tears of outrage in her eyes, her voice trembling with emotion at being treated so cavalierly, Jenna walked up to the desk and leaned on it with both hands. Looking directly down into her husband’s eyes, she said, “Since when do you have the absurd notion that toadying lackey of yours can tell me where I may or may not go?”

Calvin Whitehall looked at his wife, his eyes frosty. “That ‘toadying lackey,’ as you call Lou Knox, had no choice but to follow my orders. So your quarrel is with me, my dear, not him. I only wish that I could inspire the same devotion in all our help.”

Jenna sensed she had gone too far and backed off. “ Cal, I’m sorry. It’s just that my dearest friend is alone. Molly’s mother called me this morning. She’d heard about Annamarie Scalli, and she begged me to be with Molly. She doesn’t want Molly to know, but Molly’s dad had a slight stroke last week, and the doctors won’t hear of him traveling. Otherwise they would fly up to be with her through all this.”

The anger left Calvin Whitehall’s face as he stood and came around the desk. He put his arms around his wife and spoke softly into her ear. “We do seem to be at cross-purposes, don’t we, Jen? I didn’t want you to go to Molly’s now because an hour ago, I got a tip. The prosecutor’s office has secured a search warrant for her house and will also impound her car. So, you see, it would be no help to her, and it could be a disaster for the Remington merger if someone as prominent as Mrs. Calvin Whitehall were to be publicly connected to Molly while the search is underway. Later, I want you to be with her, of course. Okay?”

“A search warrant! Cal, why a search warrant?” Jenna pulled out of her husband’s embrace and turned to face him.