As the three men sat tensely, hoping, there was a long pause, then Eleanor began to speak again.
“His fingers were cold. All his cards fell out and were on the floor. He was nervous. His hands were shaking. We both bent down to pick them up but he told me not to bother. But I was already bending down and we bumped heads.”
“What kind of cards did you see, Eleanor?”
“His driver’s license, his credit cards . . . then I picked up a card.”
“What card, Eleanor?”
“A driver’s license. It was sort of pink and his picture was on it.”
“His picture was on it?” Dr. Papetti asked quietly.
“Oh yes. His cousin’s card . . . England.”
“You saw his cousin’s picture, Eleanor?”
“It looked like him. He said it was his cousin.”
“Eleanor, did you see the name on the license?”
There was a long pause.
“Can’t remember. Can’t remember.”
Another long pause.
“George. I know it’s George.”
It was not possible for Eleanor to remember any further details of that day. She was clearly waking up. The session was over.
When she was fully awake, she said again, “His first name was George.”
“That’s right, Eleanor,” Dr. Papetti replied.
“But I couldn’t remember his last name.”
“Do you think you saw it on the license?” Papetti asked.
“Yes.”
Eleanor started to get up. As Frank rushed to help her from the chair, Sean and Rudy looked at each other. Rudy spoke first.
“Well, we now know what we’ve suspected for some time. The fraud started the day he opened that office. He was establishing another identity for himself. Eleanor told us the picture was of his English cousin. I believe it was a picture of Bennett in disguise. I bet that license is British, which narrows down the search to England, and maybe some other parts of the Commonwealth.”
Eleanor came over and began apologizing to everyone. She was crying again.
“If they don’t find Mr. Bennett, I’ll probably go to prison,” she sobbed.
“Eleanor, your mind is working for you right now,” Dr. Papetti said soothingly. “I want you to come back again next week. You are sure you saw the last name on that license?”
“Yes, I am. Very sure.”
“Then maybe the next time you come you will be able to retrieve it from your memory.” He patted her shoulder soothingly. “I can’t promise you that you will remember, but I have seen it happen many, many times. Have faith.”
42
After her lunch date with Pamela, Sylvie de la Marco had done considerable thinking. Her instinct told her that either Parker had somehow lost his money, or for some reason he couldn’t get his hands on a lot of money anymore. There was no mistaking the decidedly serious tone in his voice. On the other hand, that nervousness might easily have been because he thought the Feds were closing in on him.
Suppose they did catch him? Wouldn’t his first words be about her? For two years she had been pretty demanding.
Sylvie smiled. Very demanding. She had sometimes cut out ads from the Times. Tiffany almost always had an ad on page two for new jewelry. She described it to him and told him how much it cost. On the opposite side of the page Chanel advertised the dearest handbags, and she described them to him too. She had accounts with most of the haute couture designers, and she paid the bills with the money he wired to her.
And of course she was receiving a monthly allowance from both Parker and the de la Marco estate.
Parker had been generous until now, no doubt about that. He had also reminded her that if she ever considered turning him in, she would face twenty years in prison for aiding and abetting.
It’s been good up till now, Sylvie thought as she made her daily visit to every room in the apartment. She did realize that Glady’s interior design gave it a totally different look. Her friends who visited raved about it. One of them had gushed to Architectural Digest about how beautiful it was and they had made a date to do a photo spread when it was completed.
Sylvie grinned as she thought about that. She remembered that her mother had put flowered slipcovers on the living room furniture during the summer and changed the wool rug for a straw one. I really enjoyed those big flowers on the couch and chairs. So nice and bright, not understated elegance. Of course half the cost of the decorating now was in paintings and sculptures.
“What you are getting are the works of new and exciting painters and sculptors,” Glady had told her crisply. “Every one of these will be worth at least triple in ten years. Look up what a Picasso cost when he was a struggling artist.”
All well and good, Sylvie thought, but if Parker gets caught and turns me in, I go to prison too, and what good will they do me then? But there is a way out. I’ll go to Derek Landry. Everybody knows he’s the best lawyer for someone in my kind of situation. I’ll tell him that Parker threatened me. If I ever didn’t accept his gifts or stopped taking money, he would get a hit man and I’d be dead in twenty-four hours. I’ll tell him that I must have anonymity guaranteed by the Feds or I’ll never feel out of danger.
Meanwhile she was sure Barclay Cameron would call. Pamela had passed the word that she’d love to hear from him. To make sure she looked her best when they got together she had spent the morning at Salon Henri. Now her hair was newly blond, her skin glowing. She’d had a manicure and pedicure and her eyebrows had been threaded.
Yesterday she had bought a new Chanel suit, a winter-white shade. In other words, she was ready for Barclay’s call.
It came at three o’clock. Robert answered, of course, and hurried to tell her Mr. Barclay Cameron was calling. Trying not to grab the phone from him, Sylvie, in her most cultivated voice, said, “Barclay, how are you?”
“Sylvie, is it possible that you might be interested in dining with me?”
The well-bred voice had an excited note in it. Sylvie reminded herself that Barclay may be eighty-two but he had been interesting enough. She had had a brief fling with him, years ago, but then Parker came along and that was that with Barclay.
Parker—she had been in love with him and enjoyed their secret trysts for the last six years of Eduardo’s life. But then Eduardo died and Parker disappeared, and what was she supposed to do?
“Yes, Barclay, I would love to dine with you. It’s good to hear your voice.”
“And it’s good to hear yours. But I’d rather see and be with you.”
Sylvie had forgotten that Barclay always thought he was witty with his little plays on words. But who cared about that?
“That’s just what I’d like,” she answered, a smile in her voice. He had been a recent widower when they met, and childless. She had been a fool to let him go. And he had never remarried.
“Are you free for dinner early next week, Sylvie? Does Tuesday work?”
“Wonderful. How about a cocktail here first?”
“I would enjoy that very much. See you then.”
Sylvie replaced the receiver. It was definitely time to make a deal with the Feds, otherwise it might be too late.
She had met Derek Landry at a few big parties. She looked up his number, went into the library, and closed the door. She certainly wasn’t going to risk being overheard by the servants.
Seconds later she was speaking to the famous lawyer.
“Derek, I have a little problem,” she began.
43
The day before Thanksgiving Lane and Katie took the train to Washington.
Katie was thrilled to be seeing her grandmother. Lane had limited most of their visits to times when Dwight was away and she was uncomfortably aware that those visits were far too infrequent.
It had been August when she was last in Washington, and as usual Dwight had not been there.
But this year there was no refusing her mother’s invitation. She had said, “Lane, let’s get some
thing clear. No more excuses about why you can’t come home for Thanksgiving. If you’re worried that Dwight will say one word about Eric Bennett, you can be assured that his lips are sealed. He knows how hard it is for me that you don’t like him. It’s about time you realized that. I loved your father dearly and I mourned him for ten years before I remarried. I’m very happy with Dwight, but very sad that you always avoid him.”
All this was on Lane’s mind on the three-hour ride down from Penn Station to Washington. Katie had read a few of her books and then fallen asleep, her head on Lane’s lap. How will I feel if, in thirteen years, when Katie is seventeen, she rejects me for some reason?
Eric—Eric—Eric. She knew she should take it slowly but after three dates with him, Lane was very much looking forward to the next one.
Anne Bennett had been delighted to know that Eric and she were seeing each other. She had invited Katie and Lane to have Thanksgiving dinner with them at her town house.
“I’m having it catered,” she said. “I never want to go out for dinner on holidays. And I’d love to meet your Katie.”
It had been less awkward to say she was going to Washington to be with her mother than to outright refuse the invitation.
The train was slowing down. She had told her mother that it was easier for them to take a cab than for Alice to try to park near the station.
But there was another reason. She would have the driver pass the house they had lived in in Georgetown for the first seventeen years of her life. But it was the first seven years that she had been dreaming about lately.
It was always about her father. In the dream he was so vivid to her. The memories of sitting on his lap and reading together . . . the trips to the Smithsonian where he explained what they were seeing together . . . the times they went ice skating. He was a naturally good skater; she was just okay. The time when she was four years old and darted ahead of him into the street and was almost hit by a car. He had grabbed her by her sweater, yanked her back just in time. Then he had picked her up and hugged her so hard she could hardly breathe even while he sternly warned her to never, never do that again.
They walked through Union Station and easily got a cab, and Lane gave the driver the address. Twenty minutes later she felt tears sting her eyes as they turned down the street, which was only three blocks from Dwight’s larger home. “Just slow down a bit past that house,” she told the driver.
“Someone you know live there?” the driver asked.
Lane did not want Katie to talk about it to her mother. “Just a friend a long time ago.” It looks the same, she thought. I feel as though I could open the door and walk in.
It was exactly five o’clock when the cab stopped at Dwight’s home. It was built on a larger scale than the one where she had been raised and was an unmistakably impressive house.
Her mother was watching for them. She had the door open and was scooping up Katie before Lane had paid the driver. It was another reminder to Lane that Katie was missing something by not seeing more of her grandmother.
Alice put Katie down and turned to Lane slowly, as though afraid of rejection, then put her arms around her. Lane hugged her and planted a warm kiss on her cheek. “Hello, Mom. It’s good to be here.”
And it was.
“Dwight’s fixing a cocktail for us. I told him that you liked chardonnay. Is that all right?”
“I could use one,” Lane said, and then prayed that the words did not sound sarcastic.
They left their coats in the hall closet and Katie again ran ahead of them calling, “Poppa, Poppa,” the name they had decided on for her to call Dwight.
The library was to the right of the foyer. The living room was down the hall. Dwight was at the bar there setting out glasses. Lane watched as he picked Katie up, gave her a peck on the cheek, lifted her onto a stool, and said, “At your service, ma’am. Shirley Temple, lemonade, or Sprite?”
“Shirley Temple,” Katie answered promptly.
“ ‘Shirley Temple, please,’ ” Lane corrected.
As Katie dutifully repeated her request, adding “please,” Lane and Dwight looked at each other. Lane knew that in his Harvard days Dwight had been editor of the school newspaper, the Crimson, and a star debater. Now his biting editorials in the Washington Post had earned both intense friends and equally intense enemies. Dwight was a very attractive man, she admitted to herself. He was about six feet tall with a disciplined body, a head of sandy gray hair, and dark hazel eyes.
She knew about him but she didn’t know him, not really. She had never wanted to be close to him and now his ruthless comments about Eric had made it worse.
Their greetings to each other were tentative but his smile seemed to be genuine. “Lane, I’m so glad that you are able to make it this year, and may I add that you’re as pretty as your daughter.”
Katie was sipping the Shirley Temple. “Mom tells me I’m beautiful,” she said matter-of-factly.
Their shared laugh warmed up the temperature. Lane saw the relief on her mother’s face and felt guilty.
The weekend went very well. Dwight’s sister, Helen, and her husband, Gavin, came to dinner. They both worked on Capitol Hill. They seemed to enjoy Katie very much. Lane had seen little of them over the years and realized how truly interesting they were.
Helen clashed with her brother over politics several times during dinner. She told him, “Dwight, if you would only come down from your lofty peak and stop thinking you’re an oracle of wisdom, you’d be better off. You might even see someone else’s viewpoint.”
Then, laughing, she had turned to Lane. “He really is a nice guy, he just finds it hard to show it.”
On Saturday, Dwight suggested that they go to the Smithsonian and show Katie around.
Déjà vu all over again, Lane thought, remembering the afternoons there with her father.
Over the weekend not a word about Eric Bennett passed Dwight’s lips. A dozen times it was on the tip of Lane’s tongue to ask him why he was so vehement about Eric, but she simply didn’t want to risk getting into a confrontation with him.
On the way home on the train, Katie’s reluctance to say good-bye to Nana and Poppa kept ringing in her ears. It was a guilty reminder that by keeping her away from Dwight, she had also been keeping her away from her mother.
“Mommy, you look sad,” Katie commented.
“I’m not sad,” Lane assured her. “I’m just thinking.”
The fact that her mother and Dwight looked so happy and content together was a reminder of how terribly lonely she had been since Ken died. Of course she had dated in these five years, but no one had ever really interested her.
Until now. Anne Bennett had told her that Eric was in love with her. Could she allow herself to fall in love with him?
I don’t know, she thought. I just don’t know.
44
After discovering that Parker Bennett had made a ten-million-dollar donation to Magna Carta College at exactly the same time that Eric abruptly withdrew and transferred to Trinity College in Ireland, Joel Weber thought about what to do next. He looked up the students in the yearbook from the class that Eric would have graduated with had he stayed at Magna Carta. He wrote down the names of the students who had come from local areas and looked up their families’ phone numbers. The first ten names yielded nothing. The numbers were either disconnected or had “leave a message” recordings. Probably half the parents, if they’re still around, are in Florida, Joel thought, as he watched the snow falling outside his window.
On the tenth call Joel lucked out. A pleasant voice answered the call at the home of Carl Frazier.
Carefully, Joel explained his mission, skirting the truth without lying outright.
“I am with the Magna Carta College Library doing research. My name is Joel Weber. I am interested in speaking to students who went to Magna Carta at the time you were there.”
“Then you want to be talking to my son. I am Carl Frazier Senior.”
“Y
es, I guess I do, sir,” Joel said. “Can you tell me where to reach him?”
“He’s a professor at Dartmouth College,” his father responded.
“Can you give me his phone number?” Joel asked.
“Of course, just give me a moment.”
A minute later Carl Frazier Sr. was back on the line.
“I have five kids,” he explained. “They all have cell phones. I can’t keep all their numbers straight. Here’s Carl Jr.’s number. I know he will enjoy hearing from you. He loved his years at Magna Carta. It was a great experience for him.”
It certainly wasn’t a great experience for Eric Bennett, Joel thought as he wrote down the number.
When he dialed it, he listened to the usual annoying recording asking the caller to leave a message. What’s so bad about putting your name on an answering device, he thought? At least that way you would be sure you had reached the right person.
Dartmouth College was only one hour away. He hoped that Professor Frazier wasn’t away for the week. He decided to take a walk around the Magna Carta campus and look for the Bennett building. A student directed him to it. “Oh, they took the name off when it came out what a crook he was,” the student explained. The building was in a row of student housing. Joel noticed with amusement that what must have been the Bennett name chiseled over the door was now covered in plaster, just as the student had said. Why did he give so much money when his son was on the way out the door? he wondered.
He remembered the fact that a college he had read about had received donations from three different high-powered executives, all of whom had gone to prison. The nickname of that lane on the college grounds was now “Felony Row.” Not one of them was as bad as Bennett is, he thought. They did insider trading to enrich themselves, but they didn’t steal the life savings of hundreds of people.
Restless, Joel decided to drive to Dartmouth’s campus, rather than wait for Frazier’s call.
I don’t want to interview him by phone just to ask him about Eric Bennett. It might make him suspicious. I want to talk with him face-to-face, he thought as he got into his car and turned on the ignition.
The Melody Lingers On Page 13
