Seven years ago our lives were so different, Barbara Colbert thought as she watched the familiar landscape roll by. As he did each week, her chauffeur, Dan, was driving her from the apartment on Fifth Avenue to the Natasha Colbert Long-Term Care Residence on the grounds of Lasch Hospital in Greenwich. When they arrived in front of the residence, she sat for several minutes, bracing herself, knowing that for the next hour her heart would twist and break as she held Tasha’s hand and said words that Tasha probably didn’t hear and was no doubt beyond understanding.
A straight-backed, white-haired woman in her mid-seventies, Barbara Colbert knew that in the years since the accident, she seemed to have aged twenty. The Bible refers to cyclical events in terms of seven years of plenty, seven years of famine, she thought as she fastened the top button of her mink jacket. Cyclical events implied that something might change, but she knew that there was no change possible for Tasha, who was in the seventh year of unconscious life.
Tasha, who gave us so much joy, Barbara Colbert agonized-our beautiful, unexpected gift. Barbara had been forty-five, her husband, Charles, fifty, when she realized she was pregnant. With their sons in college, they had assumed they were done with raising a family.
Each time she reached this point, as she braced herself to get out of the car, the same memory always came to her. They were living in Greenwich then. Tasha, home from law school, had popped into the dining room. She was dressed in her running togs, her red hair twisted in a ponytail, her dark blue eyes warm and alive and intelligent. Her twenty-fourth birthday was only a week away. “See you guys,” she had said, and then she was gone.
Those were the last words they ever heard her utter.
An hour later they had gotten the call that sent them rushing to Lasch Hospital. There had been an accident, they were told, and that was where Tasha had been taken. Barbara remembered the short ride to the hospital and the terror she felt. She remembered the incoherent prayer she uttered over and over: “Please, dear God, please.”
Jonathan Lasch had been Barbara’s family doctor when the children were little, so she took some comfort in the thought that Gary Lasch, Jonathan’s son, would be taking care of Tasha. As soon as she saw him in the emergency room, however, she knew from the expression on Gary ’s face that something was terribly wrong.
He told them that, while she was running, Tasha had fallen and hit her head on the curb. The injury itself hadn’t been serious, but before reaching the hospital she’d developed a cardiac arrhythmia. “We’re doing everything we can,” he promised, but it soon became evident that there really was nothing they could do. A seizure had cut off the supply of oxygen to Tasha’s brain, destroying it. Except for the ability to breathe on her own, Tasha was, for all intents and purposes, gone.
All the money in the world, the most powerful newspaper family in the country, and still we couldn’t help our only daughter, Barbara thought as she nodded to Dan that she was ready to get out of the car.
Noticing how stiffly she moved today, he put his hand under her arm. “There may be a bit of ice, Mrs. Colbert,” he said. “Let me help you to the door.”
After she and her husband were finally resigned to the fact that there was no hope Tasha would ever recover, Gary Lasch had urged them to consider placing her eventually in the long-term nursing facility being built adjacent to the hospital.
He had shown them the plans for the modest structure, and it had proved to be a blessed diversion for them to call in the architect and to make the donation that totally changed and expanded the residence so that every room was bright and airy, with a private bath and comfortable homelike furniture and state-of-the-art medical equipment. Now all the residents, who, like Tasha, had had their lives unexpectedly, inexplicably shattered, were receiving whatever comfort money and care could provide.
A special, three-room apartment had been designed for Tasha, an exact replica of her suite at home. A nurse and an aide were in constant attendance. The classical music Tasha loved played softly day and night. She was moved every day from the bedroom to the sitting room, which faced a private garden.
Passive exercises and facials and massages and pedicures and manicures kept her body beautiful and supple. Her hair, still flame red, was washed and brushed daily and worn loose about her shoulders. She was dressed in silk pajamas and robes. The nurses were instructed to talk to her as if she could understand every word.
Barbara thought of the months when she and Charles had come to see Tasha almost every day. But the months soon became years. Worn out with emotional and physical exhaustion, they eventually reduced the number of visits to twice a week. When Charles died, she had, with great reluctance, heeded the advice of her sons and given up the house in Greenwich and set up permanent residence in the New York apartment. Now she made the trip only once each week.
Today as always, Barbara walked through the reception area and down the corridor to her daughter’s suite. The nurses had Tasha propped up on the couch in the sitting room. Barbara knew that under the coverlet there were safety straps that held her rigidly in place and kept her from slipping, a precaution against injury caused by the involuntary jerking movements Tasha’s muscles sometimes made.
With familiar pain, Barbara studied the calmly serene expression on Tasha’s face. Sometimes she thought she could detect eye movement, or perhaps hear a sigh, and would have the impossible, wild thought that maybe Tasha was not beyond hope after all.
She sat by the couch and took her daughter’s hand. For the next hour she talked to her about the family. “Amy is starting college, Tasha, can you believe that? She was only ten when you had the accident. She looks a lot like you. She could almost be your daughter, not just your niece. George Jr. is a bit homesick but otherwise enjoys prep school.”
At the end of the hour, weary but at peace, Barbara kissed Tasha on the forehead and signaled the nurse to come back into the room.
When she reached the reception area she found Dr. Peter Black waiting for her. When Gary Lasch had been murdered, the Colberts had debated moving Tasha to another facility, but Dr. Black had convinced them to leave her there.
“How did you find Tasha today, Mrs. Colbert?”
“The same, Doctor. It’s about the best I can expect, isn’t it?” Barbara Colbert knew that she was unreasonable in her ambiguous feelings about Peter Black. Gary Lasch had chosen him to be his partner, and she had no reason to feel that Tasha’s care was lacking in any way. Still, she just couldn’t warm to him. Maybe it was because of his close association with Calvin Whitehall, whom Charles had derisively dubbed a “would-be robber baron.” On those occasions when she got back to Greenwich and dined at the club with her friends, she often saw Black and Whitehall together there.
As she bid Peter Black good night and walked to the door, Barbara could not know that the doctor was staring intently at her, or that he was remembering the terrible moment when her daughter had been catastrophically damaged, and that he was remembering as well the words a traumatized Annamarie Scalli had screamed at Gary: “That girl came in here with nothing worse than a mild concussion.
Now the two of you have destroyed her!
”
For almost six years Philip Matthews had believed that he had done the best job a trial lawyer could to get Molly Lasch a light sentence. Five and a half years for the murder of a doctor with a thirty-five-year life expectancy was practically a free ride.
As Philip had often told Molly on his visits to her in prison, “When you get out, you can put all this behind you.”
But now Molly was out of prison and was doing exactly the opposite of that. It was clear that she did
not
think she had gotten off easily.
Philip knew that, more than anything else, he wanted to protect Molly from the people who inevitably would attempt to exploit her.
People such as that Fran Simmons.
Late on Friday afternoon, just as he was about to leave for the weekend, his secretary announced a call from Simmons.
Philip considered not taking the call, but then decided he might as well speak to her. His greeting, however, was cool.
Fran got right to the point: “Mr. Matthews, you must have a transcript of Molly Lasch’s trial. I’d like to have a copy of it as soon as possible.”
“Ms. Simmons, I understand you went to school with Molly. So as an old friend, I wish you would consider calling off this program. We both know it can only hurt Molly.”
“Would it be possible to have a copy of the transcript on Monday, Mr. Matthews?” Fran asked crisply, then added, “You must know that I am planning this program with Molly’s complete cooperation. In fact, it’s even at her request that I undertook it in the first place.”
Philip decided to try a different approach. “I can do better than Monday. I’ll have a copy run off and delivered to you tomorrow, but I’m going to ask you to consider something. I believe Molly is much more fragile than anyone realizes. If during the course of your investigation, you become convinced of her guilt, then I ask you to give her a break and cancel this program. Molly is not going to get the public vindication she wants. Don’t destroy her with a guilty-as-charged verdict just so you can get higher ratings from the mindless couch potatoes out there who want to see someone eviscerated.”
“Let me give you my address for your messenger,” Fran said, biting off her words, hoping she sounded as furious as she felt.
“I’ll put my secretary on. Good-bye, Ms. Simmons.”
Once Fran had replaced the receiver, she got up and walked to the window. She was due in makeup right now but knew she needed to take a moment to calm down first. Without having met him, she thoroughly disliked Philip Matthews, although she could not help feeling that he was passionately sincere in his desire to shield Molly.
She found herself wondering suddenly if anyone had ever considered searching for another explanation for Gary Lasch’s death. Molly’s parents and friends, Philip Matthews, the Greenwich police, and the state attorney who prosecuted her-all of them must have begun with the presumption of her guilt.
Which is exactly what I’ve been doing as well, Fran thought. Maybe it’s time to start with the opposite approach.
Molly Carpenter Lasch did
not
kill her husband, Gary Lasch
, she said to herself, considering the sound of it, and wondering where it would lead.
On Friday afternoon, Annamarie Scalli went straight home after taking care of her last patient. The weekend loomed ahead of her, and already she knew it was going to be a difficult one. Since Tuesday morning, when Molly Lasch’s release from prison had received so much television coverage, half of Annamarie’s patients had mentioned the case to her.
She understood that it was only coincidence, that they had no awareness of her connection to the case. Her patients were homebound, and they saw the same repetitious programs, mostly soap operas, all the time. Having a more-or-less-local crime like this was simply something new and different to mull over-a privileged young woman claiming that she didn’t believe she murdered her husband, even though she had plea-bargained to a lesser charge and had spent time in prison for his death.
The comments varied from crusty old Mrs. O’Brien saying that he got what any husband who cheated deserved, to Mr. Kunzman’s comment that if Molly Lasch had been black and poor, she’d be serving twenty years.
Gary Lasch wasn’t worth having her serve even one day in prison, Annamarie thought as she opened the door of her garden apartment. Too bad I was too much of a fool to realize it then.
Her kitchen was so tiny that she always said it made the galley of an airplane look roomy. But she had made the most of it by painting the ceiling a sky blue and sketching a lattice with flowers on the walls; as a result the meager space became her indoor garden.
This evening, however, it failed to raise her spirits. Having to revisit painful old memories had made her feel depressed and lonely, and she knew she had to get away. There was one place she could go that would help. Her older sister, Lucy, lived in Buffalo, in the home where they had been raised. Annamarie did not visit there regularly since her mother’s death, but this weekend she would make the trek. After she put away the last of the groceries she reached for the phone.
Forty-five minutes later she threw a hastily packed duffel bag in the backseat of her car and, with brightened spirits, turned on the ignition. It was a long trip, but she didn’t mind. Driving gave her a chance to think. Much of the time was spent regretting. Regretting not listening to her mother. Regretting being so foolish. Definitely despising herself for her affair with Gary Lasch. If only she could have willed herself into really loving Jack Morrow. If only she had realized how much she had begun to care for him.
She remembered with renewed shame the trust and love she had seen in his eyes. She had fooled Jack Morrow like everyone else, and he neither knew nor suspected that she was involved with Gary Lasch.
Even though it was past midnight when she arrived, her sister Lucy had heard the car when it drove up and was opening the door. With a rush of renewed joy, Annamarie reached into the back for her bag. A moment later she was hugging her sister, glad to be where, at least for the weekend, she would be able to force away the distressing thoughts of what might have been.
On Saturday morning, Edna Barry awoke with a nervous start. Today that reporter was coming to see her, and she had to make sure Wally wasn’t around when Fran Simmons got there. He had been moody for several days, and since seeing Molly on television had kept talking about wanting to visit her. Last night he’d announced that he wasn’t going to the club, where he usually spent Saturday mornings. The club, run by Fairfield County for outpatients like Wally, was usually one of his favorite places to go.
I’ll ask Marta to keep him at her place, Edna thought. Marta Gustafson Jones had been her neighbor for thirty years. They’d seen each other through illness and widowhood, and Marta doted on Wally. She was one of the few people who could handle him and calm him down when he became upset.
When Fran rang Edna’s bell at eleven o’clock, Wally was safely out of the way, and Edna was able to manage a reasonably pleasant greeting and even offered her coffee, which Fran accepted. “Why don’t we just sit in the kitchen?” she suggested, as she unbuttoned her coat.
“If you like.” Edna was justifiably proud of her spotless kitchen, with its brand-new maple dinette set she’d bought on sale.
At the table, Fran fished her recorder out of her shoulder bag. Casually she laid it on the tabletop. “You know, Mrs. Barry, I’m here because I want to help Molly, and I’m sure you do too. That’s why, with your permission, I need to record you. There may just be something that will come up that might prove to be helpful to Molly. I’m sure that she’s become more and more convinced she wasn’t the one responsible for her husband’s death. In fact, she’s beginning to remember things about that night, and one of them is that there was someone else in the house when she arrived home from the Cape. If that could be proven, it might mean her conviction would be overturned, or at least that the investigation would be reopened. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
Edna Barry was pouring water into the coffeemaker. “Yes, of course, it would,” she said. Then, “Oh, dear.”
Fran’s eyes narrowed as she saw that Mrs. Barry had splashed water on the counter. Her hand is trembling, Fran thought. There’s something about all this that’s bothering her. I could tell she was nervous the other day when I met her at Molly’s and she certainly was uptight when I talked to her on the phone to ask about coming here today.
As the aroma of coffee began to fill the room, Fran set about trying to get Edna Barry to relax and let down her guard. “I went to school with Molly at Cranden,” she said. “Did she tell you that?”
“Yes, she did.” Edna took cups and saucers from the cabinet and placed them on the table. She peered at Fran over her glasses for a moment before sitting down.
She’s thinking about the library-fund scandal, Fran thought, then brushed her concern aside and went ahead with her interview. “But I understand you’ve known her even longer than that?”
“Oh, yes. I worked for her parents from the time she was little. Then they moved to Florida right after she got married, and that’s when I started working for her.”
“Then you knew Dr. Lasch very well also?”
Edna Barry considered the question. “I guess the answer to that one has to be yes and no. I was there three mornings a week. The doctor was always gone off to work when I got there at nine and seldom home at one o’clock when I left. But if Molly was giving a dinner party-which she did fairly often-then she’d have me in to serve and clean up. That’s really the only time I saw the doctor and her together. When he was around, he was always very pleasant.”
Fran noticed that Edna Barry’s lips tightened into a straight line as though whatever she was thinking as she spoke was not very pleasant. “When you did see him and Molly together, did you get the feeling that they were happy?” she asked.
“Until that day I came in and Molly was so upset and packing to go to the Cape, I never saw even a hint of a quarrel. I will say that before that day, I had felt time hung a little heavy on her hands. She did a lot of volunteer work in town, and I know she’s a very good golfer, but sometimes she’d tell me that she missed having a job. And, of course, she had some tough breaks too. She was so anxious to start a family, and then, when she had that last miscarriage, she seemed different, very quiet, very withdrawn.”
Nothing Edna Barry was saying was really of any help to Molly, Fran thought, as a half-hour later she finished her second cup of coffee. She had only a few questions left to ask, and so far the woman hadn’t been very forthcoming. “Mrs. Barry, the security system wasn’t on when you got to work that Monday, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Did you check to see if there might have been an unlocked door that an intruder might have used?”
“There was
no unlocked door
.” Edna Barry’s voice turned suddenly antagonistic, and the pupils of her eyes widened.
I’ve hit a nerve, Fran thought, and there’s something she’s not telling me. “How many doors are there in the house?”
“Four,” she answered without pausing to think. “The front door. The kitchen door. They had the same key. A door from the family room to the patio. That only opened from the inside. A basement door that was always locked and bolted.”
“Did you check
all
of them yourself?”
“No, but the police did, Miss Simmons. Why don’t you talk to them?”
“Mrs. Barry, I’m not questioning what you told me,” Fran said, her tone conciliatory.
Seemingly mollified, Edna Barry said, “On that Friday afternoon, when I left, I checked all the doors to be sure that they were locked. Dr. Lasch always came in the front door. The floor bolt wasn’t fastened that Monday morning, so that means over the weekend someone used that door.”
“The floor bolt?”
“At night, Molly always put it on. The kitchen door was locked when I came in. I am positive about that.”
Edna Barry’s cheeks were flushed. Fran could see the woman was on the verge of tears. Is she afraid because she thinks she may have been careless and left the house unlocked? she wondered.
“Thank you for your help, Mrs. Barry, and your hospitality,” Fran said. “I’ve taken enough of your time for now, but I may want to ask you a few more questions later, and possibly we’ll ask you to be a guest on the program.”
“I don’t want to be a guest on the program.”
“Of course. As you wish.” Fran turned off the recorder and got up to leave. At the door she asked a final question: “Mrs. Barry, let’s just assume the possibility that there
was
someone else in the house the night Dr. Lasch died. Do you know if the locks on any of the doors were ever changed?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“I’m going to suggest to Molly that they should be changed. Otherwise she might be in danger from an intruder. Don’t you agree?”
Now the color drained from Edna Barry’s face. “Miss Simmons,” she said, “if you’d seen what I saw when I went upstairs-Molly lying in that bed, covered with crusted blood-you’d know that no intruder came into the house that night. Stop trying to make trouble for innocent people.”
“What innocent people am I trying to make trouble for, Mrs. Barry?” Fran demanded. “I thought I was trying to help a young woman, someone you’ve known for years and say you care for, to perhaps prove herself innocent of this crime!”
Mrs. Barry said nothing, her lips a grim, straight line as she opened the door for Fran to leave. “We’ll be talking again, Mrs. Barry,” Fran said, unsmiling. “I have a feeling I still have a lot of questions for you that need to be answered.”