“Molly, I’m on the air tonight, so I have to go and get prepared. Please don’t get rid of anything here.” Fran glanced down at the couch. The photographs were spread out, and she could see that Gary Lasch seemed to be in just about all of them.

Molly noticed Fran looking at the old photos. “Jenna and I were reminiscing before you came. The four of us did have some good times, or at least I thought we did. God knows what my loving husband was thinking back then. Probably something like, ‘Oh boy, another night out with the Stepford wife.’ ”

“Molly, stop it! Stop hurting yourself,” Fran begged.

“Hurting myself? Now why would I need to do that? The whole world is already in on that act. They don’t need any help from me. Fran, you’ve got to get back to New York, so go on. Don’t worry about me. Oh, wait-one quick question. Do you have any use for these old magazines? I glanced at them, but they just contain medical articles Gary was reading. I thought I’d try to read them, but I’m fresh out of intellectual curiosity.”

“Did he write any of the articles?”

“No. He just marked the ones that interested him.”

What interested Gary Lasch as a doctor sure interests me, Fran thought. “Let me take the magazines with me, Molly. I’ll glance at them, then get rid of them for you.” She bent down and picked up the heavy stack from the floor.

Molly held the front door open for her. Fran stood for a moment, torn between the need to be on her way and her reluctance to leave Molly in her obviously despondent frame of mind. “Molly, any memory breakthroughs?”

“I thought I was having some, but like everything else, they seem to be sound and fury, signifying nothing. My brave talk about memory certainly was a mistake, wouldn’t you say? It looks as though on Monday it’s going to buy me four and a half years more of free room and board, and that’s separate from when they convict and sentence me for Annamarie’s murder.”

“Molly, don’t give up!”

Molly, don’t give up. It was a refrain that ran through Fran’s head, as with frequent worried glances at the clock on the dashboard, she drove through the heavier than usual traffic on her way back to New York.

74

“Mom, I don’t want to go to California.” Wally Barry’s tone had become increasingly belligerent throughout the day.

“Wally, we’re simply not going to talk about it anymore,” his mother responded firmly.

Edna watched helplessly as her son slammed out of the kitchen and stomped up the stairs. All day he had absolutely refused to take his medicine, and she was getting concerned.

I’ve got to get him away from here, she thought. I’ll put some of his medicine in a glass of warm milk when he goes to bed. That will help him to sleep and calm him down.

She looked at Wally’s untouched dinner plate. Wally’s appetite was usually very good, and tonight in an effort to appease him, she had prepared a favorite meal-veal chops, asparagus, and mashed potatoes. But instead of eating, he’d sat at the table, muttering to himself, his attitude surly. The voices inside his head were talking to him tonight. Edna could tell, and it worried her.

The phone rang. She was sure that it was Marta; she had to make a quick decision. It would have been nice to have a quiet cup of tea with Marta, but it wasn’t a good idea tonight. If Wally started talking again about the key, and about the night Dr. Lasch died, Marta might start taking him seriously.

It’s probably all just his imagination, Edna told herself, an assurance she had made every time Wally mentioned the night of the murder. And if it isn’t “just his imagination”? she wondered fleetingly, then dismissed the thought. Even if he was there, what happened that night surely wasn’t his fault. The phone was ringing for the fourth time, so she finally picked it up.

It had been a struggle for Marta Jones to dial Edna’s number. She had decided that she’d better warn Edna about her telling Wally that it was okay for him to say good-bye to Molly Lasch. She was going to suggest that maybe tomorrow morning on the way out of town, Edna could drop by Molly’s house and let Wally speak to her. That would satisfy him, Marta was sure.

When Edna answered the phone, she said, “I just thought I’d run over and say good-bye to you and Wally, if that’s all right.”

Edna had her answer prepared. “Marta, to tell you the truth I’m so far behind on getting packed and organized that I’d better not even let you in the door right now. The minute I take a break and sit down, I know I’ll be useless to do anything more tonight. How about coming over in the morning and having some breakfast with us?”

Well, I can’t force myself on her, Marta thought, and she does sound tired. I do hate to upset her. “Sounds good,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “Is Wally helping you, I hope?”

“Wally’s already upstairs in his room, watching television,” Edna said. “He’s had one of his difficult days, so I’m going to put an extra dose of his medicine in warm milk and take it up to him now.”

“Oh, then he’ll be sure to get some rest,” Marta agreed. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She hung up, relieved to think that Wally was safely in his own room and would soon be asleep. I guess he gave up on the notion of seeing Molly tonight, Marta decided. One less thing for her to worry about.

75

Among the lead stories for that night’s evening news was the death of Natasha Colbert after six years in an irreversible coma, followed by the death, less than twenty-four hours later, of her mother, socialite and philanthropist Barbara Canon Colbert.

Fran sat at her desk in the studio and watched with somber eyes as the pictures flashed on the screen-Tasha, radiant and alive, with flaming red hair; her handsome, elegant mother. Peter Black killed both of you, Fran thought, although realistically, I may never be able to prove it.

She had spoken to Philip Matthews and heard his grim prediction that Molly almost certainly would be back in prison by Monday afternoon. “I spoke to her shortly after you left, Fran,” Philip said. “Then I called Dr. Daniels. He’s going over to see her this evening; he agrees that if she’s taken into custody at the parole board meeting on Monday, she’ll probably have a complete collapse. I’ll be with her, of course, and he wants to be there as well, just to be on the safe side.”

This is one time I hate my job, Fran thought as she received the signal that she was on air: “The Connecticut parole board has called an emergency session for Monday afternoon, suggesting the strong probability that Molly Carpenter Lasch will be returned to prison to finish serving the time left on her original ten-year sentence in the death of her husband, Dr. Gary Lasch.”

She ended her report by saying, “In the past year in this country, three convicted killers have been exonerated of the crimes for which they were imprisoned, because of either new evidence or the confession of the real culprit. Molly Lasch’s attorney has vowed a ceaseless fight to overturn or vacate her plea, as well as to prove that she is innocent of the charge of murder filed against her in the death of Annamarie Scalli.”

With a sigh of relief, Fran unhooked her microphone and got up. She had reached the station barely in time to go into makeup and put on a fresh jacket. She hadn’t had time to do more than wave to Tim as she rushed onto the set. A commercial was running between their spots, and he called out to her, “Fran, wait for me. I want to talk to you.”

On her way into the studio she had dropped the magazines Molly gave her on her desk, and she hadn’t done more than merely glimpse at the material on Lasch and Whitehall that she’d requested from the research department. Now, while she waited for Tim, she reached for it, eager to get started.