Nick was doubtful. “It’s a local television show, you know. It has had some syndication—”
“—all over the Northeast—”
“—all over the Northeast,” Nick agreed cheerfully, “yes, but I don’t think it’s that big a deal. Not as big a deal as a third of fifteen million dollars. Not as big a deal as Caroline thinks it ought to be.”
“Caroline always thinks she’s owed. That’s what we’re going to put on her tombstone. ‘I was owed.’ I suppose it ought to be ‘I was robbed.’ More to the point. Do you think I could get away with my sapphire earrings?”
“Not to a funeral home.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
Alyssa put down her lipstick brush—it was a useless exercise anyway; every time she got her lips red she felt the urge for another chocolate cream and every time she ate another chocolate cream her lipstick came off. If she had to choose between lipstick and chocolate, she knew which one she would have to have. She got her jewelry box off the vanity ledge.
“Five million dollars,” she said. “Is there going to be a lot of that left after taxes?”
“A few million or so,” Nick said.
“And I’ve got my trust fund too. Not that we’ll be as rich as some of those women I do charity work with. Still.”
“You’ll be completely independent unless you want to get stupid.”
“I’m never stupid about money, Nicholas, you know that. Can we go on a vacation when all this is over? You know, after the police business and all that, but before the trial. It’ll probably be months before they actually go to trial.”
“I think a vacation sounds fine.”
“Good. I’m really beginning to feel claustrophobic around here. I—oh, for God’s sake.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Look at this.” Alyssa got up and brought her jewelry case across to the chair where Nicholas was sitting, the Sunday paper in his lap. She handed the case over to him and said, “I know it’s a mess in there, but just look for yourself. I’ve lost one of my pearl stud earrings.”
Four
1
AS IT TURNED OUT, Gregor Demarkian had been able to accomplish one or two things on Sunday. He had talked to Fred Scherrer on the phone. Talking to Fred Scherrer was like talking to any lawyer, only worse. It was impossible to find out anything you really wanted to know in a straightforward way at the same time that it was impossible to avoid revelations you had no interest in exploding under your feet like land mines. Gregor learned all about Fred Scherrer’s last two wives, about the arrangements Candida DeWitt had made with the men who kept her, about Fred Scherrer’s admiration for Candida as an intelligent businesswoman. He did not learn anything at all about the murder that he did not already know. Fred Scherrer had no alibi because Fred Scherrer was staying at Candida DeWitt’s house. At two o’clock on Saturday afternoon Scherrer had decided that he would not be able to live without two dozen Bavarian creme doughnuts from Dunkin’ Donuts in the kitchen. He had driven off to the center of Bryn Mawr and with one thing and another—traffic, stopping to buy a disposable razor, deciding to get two dozen jelly doughnuts in addition to the Bavarian cremes—hadn’t made it back until four-thirty. Then he had parked Candida’s car in Candida’s detached garage, walked into Candida’s living room, and found the body lying right where he then left it. He was too good and too experienced a lawyer to have touched anything. At least, he was if he wasn’t also the murderer. Gregor was aware of that. The problem was that there was nothing in Fred Scherrer’s story that could actually eliminate the lawyer as a suspect. Bob Cheswicki and Russell Donahue and his people were working very hard to place Fred Scherrer in all the places he claimed he’d been on Saturday afternoon. In the end, even if they succeeded it would make no difference. Determining the time of death was hardly an exact science. There was nothing to say Fred couldn’t have killed Candida before he left the house to buy doughnuts or after he got back.
The other thing of a productive nature Gregor did on Sunday was to talk to Russell Donahue and Bob Cheswicki. They came to Cavanaugh Street carrying computer printouts and cross-section drawings and anything else they had been able to get their hands on that related to the two deaths this weekend but wasn’t required to be locked up in an evidence cage or on file with the medical examiner’s office. Then the three of them sat down to exactly the kind of busywork that made Gregor’s head ache. Check. Double-check. Triple-check. Check again. By the time it was over, Gregor could have reproduced the wound drawings in his sleep. He was glad that Hannah Krekorian was no longer the prime suspect in this case, but if one more person had said The Sentence one more time, Gregor would have gone after the perpetrator with a two-by-four. The Sentence was: “Now that we have a time of death for Candida DeWitt’s murder, we know somebody was with Hannah Krekorian for practically every second of the relevant period, so she’s out of it.” One of the problems with The Sentence was that it was so grammatically and syntactically messy. Gregor kept wanting to edit it.