She got there at 7:30, looking every bit as beautiful as Molly had expected. “I’m late,” she wailed. “I was at the Hodges’. They’re clients of the firm. All the big guns came from New York, so I just couldn’t get away any faster.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere,” Molly said quietly.

Jenna stood back and looked at her. “Molly, you look terrific. Molly, you’re wonderful!”

Molly shrugged. “I don’t know about that. Hey, does your husband expect us to get blotto? When dinner arrived, it was accompanied by three bottles of that great wine he brought the other night.”

Jenna laughed. “That’s Cal. If one bottle would be a pleasant remembrance, three bottles will remind you what an important guy he is. Not the worst trait, I’d say.”

“Not at all,” Molly agreed.

“Let’s test it,” Jenna suggested. “Let’s get a buzz on. Let’s pretend that we’re still the girls who set the tone for this town.”

“We did, didn’t we?” Molly thought. I’m glad I got dressed up. It may be my last hurrah, but it will be fun, I know what I have to do tonight. No more will I be the prisoner in the dock. Fran had a nerve to come in here and make me feel guilty. What does she know about it? She remembered Fran’s words: “I am angry at my father… I’m furious… Believe in Philip. It may not even be important to you, but that guy loves you…”

They stood at the bar built into an alcove in the hallway that ran between the kitchen and family room. Jenna rummaged in the drawer, found the corkscrew, and opened a bottle of the wine. She scanned the shelves and selected two delicate crystal glasses. “My grandmother had these glasses as well,” she said. “Remember how our grandmother’s wills read? You got this house and God knows what else. I got six glasses. That’s about what Gran was down to when she departed this earth.”

Jenna poured the wine, handed one glass to Molly and said, “Bottoms up.”

As they clinked glasses, Molly had the disturbing sensation that she was seeing something in Jenna’s eyes that she didn’t quite understand, something new and entirely unexpected.

She couldn’t imagine what it meant.

86

Lou should have been back by 9:30. As he did with everything, Calvin Whitehall had calculated the precise amount of time it would take for his henchman to go to West Redding, take care of business, and return. As he watched the clock in his library with intense awareness, he acknowledged to himself that unless Lou returned soon, something must have gone terribly wrong.

Too bad, because this was an all-or-nothing game. There was no such thing as cutting his losses if he failed.

By ten o’clock he had begun to consider how quickly he could distance himself from his aide-de-camp, Lou Knox.

At ten minutes after ten the front doorbell rang. He had told the housekeeper to take the night off, something he frequently did. It annoyed him to have household help around all the time. Cal understood that, of course, this feeling was the product of his origins. In most cases, no matter how much you achieve in life, humble beginnings trigger humble responses, he thought.

He headed down the hall toward the door, catching his reflection in a mirror along the way. What he saw was a barrel-chested man with a ruddy complexion and thinning hair. For some reason a remark he had heard about himself when he was fresh out of Yale flashed into his mind. The mother of one of his Yale friends had whispered, “ Cal does not look comfortable in his Brooks Brothers suit.”

He was not surprised to find not one but four people at the door. The spokesman said, “Mr. Whitehall, I’m Detective Burroughs from the prosecutor’s office. You are under arrest for conspiracy to murder Frances Simmons and Dr. Adrian Lowe.”

Conspiracy to murder, he thought, letting the phrase echo in his mind.

It was worse than he expected.

Cal stared at Detective Burroughs, who cheerfully returned his gaze. “Mr. Whitehall, for your information, your coconspirator, Lou Knox, is singing like a bird from his hospital bed. And another piece of good news-Dr. Adrian Lowe is making a statement at the police station right now. It seems he can’t praise you enough for all you did to make his criminal research possible.”

87

At seven o’clock, Philip Matthews was parked in front of the Hilmers’ house, hoping that perhaps they’d get home early.

However, it was ten minutes past nine when they pulled into their driveway. “I’m so terribly sorry,” Arthur Hilmer said. “We knew there was a good chance that someone would be waiting for us here, but our granddaughter was in a play, and… well, you know how that is.”

Philip smiled. A nice man, he thought.

“Of course you don’t know how it is,” Hilmer corrected himself. “Our son is forty-four. You’re probably about that yourself, I’d say.”

Philip smiled. “Do you read tea leaves?” He then introduced himself, explaining briefly about Molly’s being in danger of having to return to prison, and how they could be important to him in defending her case.

They went into the house. Jane Hilmer, an attractive, well-preserved woman in her mid-sixties, offered Philip a soft drink, a glass of wine, or coffee, all of which he refused.

Arthur Hilmer obviously understood that he needed to get down to business. “We talked to Bobby Burke at the Sea Lamp today,” he said. “You could have bowled the two of us over when we heard what had happened there that Sunday night. We’d caught a movie at the mall and then gone to the diner for a sandwich.”

“We left first thing the next morning to visit our son in Toronto,” Jane Hilmer volunteered. “We only just got back last night. Today, we stopped at the diner for lunch on our way to Janie’s play, and that’s when we heard.” She looked at her husband.

“As I said, we were bowled over. We told Bobby that of course we wanted to help in any way we could. Bobby probably told you that we got a pretty good look at the guy in the sedan in the parking lot.”

“Yes, he did,” Philip confirmed. “I’m going to ask you to make a statement to the prosecutor’s office tomorrow morning, and then I want you both to get together with the police artist. A sketch of the man you saw in that sedan would be very helpful.”

“Glad to do that,” Arthur Hilmer said. “But I can be even more help to you, I think. You see, we paid particular attention to both of the women when they left. We’d seen the first woman go by our table, and it was obvious that she was upset. Then that classy-looking blond lady, who I now understand is Molly Lasch, left. She was crying. I heard her call out, ‘Annamarie!’ ”

Philip tensed. Don’t give me bad news, he silently begged.

“It was obvious the other woman didn’t hear her,” Arthur Hilmer said flatly. “There’s a little oval window over the cashier’s desk. From where I was sitting I could see out clearly into the parking lot, or at least to the part closest to the diner. The first woman must have crossed the lot over to the darker side-I couldn’t see her. But I’m certain I saw that second lady-I mean Molly Lasch-go straight to her car and take off. I can swear there’s no way in heaven or hell she could have walked across the parking lot to that Jeep and plunged a knife into the other woman, not in the time between when I saw her walk out the diner and when she drove away in her car.”

Philip didn’t know that his eyes had moistened until he brushed them with the back of his hand in a reflex gesture. “I can’t begin to find words,” he said, then stopped. He sprang up. “I’ll try to find the right words to thank you tomorrow,” he said. “Right now, I’ve got to get to Greenwich.”