Crime of Privilege: A Novel (40 page)

I swallowed.

“What is it, George?”

“How do you know it was the real Leanne?”

“Well,” she said, the word coming out slowly, lingering, “that’s kind of hard for
me to say, never having met or seen Leanne.”

I had to agree and was about to tell her that when she added, “But this much I do
know. The girl moved in with J. T. Bauer. He paid her in cash, never saw anything
with her name on it, came home one day and she was gone.”

“No note? No message, no forwarding address?”

“Nothing. And J.T. didn’t seem all that upset about it, tell you the truth. He says
that kind of thing happens down there sometimes. He said same thing used to happen
in Key West. People come in, shack up, move on.”

Barbara’s legs crossed again. The upper one began to bob up and down expectantly.
The woven sandal dangled from her foot. I had the feeling she was remembering something
that I didn’t. I tried to think what it could be.

“Key West is kind of a big sailing town, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

“This J.T., he didn’t happen to know Peter, did he?”

One eyebrow went up. Barbara looked at me approvingly. “Bingo, George. You win the
prize. What he didn’t know, what he couldn’t tell me, was whether the Leanne who worked
for him, moved in with him, had any connection with Peter.”

“Except they were both from Massachusetts.”

Barbara shrugged. “I’m not even sure about that. J.T. seemed to think the Leanne who
was there was from Rhode Island. And that at some point she had been a cop.”

It was making perfect sense. Go to another country, look for a man who isn’t there.
Get threatened by a woman who isn’t who you think she is. Heck of an effort, George.
Keep up the good work. Want a new office?

I
WAS BEING PLAYED BY PEOPLE WITH A LOT MORE RESOURCES THAN
I had. I asked myself if that was the message Barbara had come to deliver. Barbara
Blueblood Belbonnet. The game was between the Gregorys and Josh David Powell, and
you’re just getting batted back and forth across the net, George.

Except Barbara had cried, hadn’t she? And what was in it for her, protecting Peter,
running around the country, two countries, like she was? If, of course, she actually
had been doing that. I had no proof that she had. No proof that anything she said
was true.

I called Buzzy. It had been a long time since we had spoken and he seemed to jump
when he recognized my voice.

I told him I needed a favor.

“Anything for you, buddy.”

I had to choke back my first reaction.

“Georgie? You all right?”

“What can you tell me about Barbara Belbonnet?”

“Your dungeon-mate? Used to be Barbara Etheridge?”

“She told me she grew up with you.”

“Well, she did, sorta. I mean …” Buzzy wanted to be helpful; he was looking for ways
to do that. “I mean, she was one of the rich kids. Into sailing and all that shit,
and I wasn’t. She was like Hyannisport
Yacht Club and I was, like, the public golf course. She was also, I’ll tell you, about
the best-looking girl around, so I knew who she was and everything. But as far as
us hanging out together, no.”

He stopped then, thinking he had answered my question.

“But you did go to school with her, right?”

“Up to about, I don’t know, age fourteen, maybe. Then she went away to boarding school
and, like, next time I saw her, she was married to Tyler Belbonnet. Or at least living
with him.”

“Did that surprise you? Her and Tyler?”

“Okay, I gotta back up. When we were little, Tyler was, like, legendary. Like I said,
I wasn’t into sailing, but everyone knew who he was. His picture was always in the
paper, winning this or that race, and he was most definitely not a yacht-club kid.
His father was a sailor, and Ty had his own boat and he only competed in the open
races, but you’d hear people asking each other all the time, ‘How did you do compared
to Ty?’—that sort of thing. And then you’d see him at parties and it was always a
big deal for him just to be there. Of course, all of us watching him, admiring him,
wanting to be like him, weren’t thinking so much about the fact that he didn’t seem
to have any plans beyond sailing and partying. What we were thinking, back then, was
that he was the one who had all the girls.”

“Including Barbara?”

“Oh, yeah. Early, early on. In fact, I think that was why they sent her away. It was
pretty much common knowledge she was banging him.”

“Sent her away to prep school, you mean?”

“Yeah, Tabor, I think. Then four years to Sarah Lawrence or someplace like that. I’d
see her around in the summers and we’d say hi and stuff, but that was all. And then,
what I heard was that she was going to law school at B.U. and she ran into Ty again.
By this time he’d been all over the world, and once he starts telling her about Saint
Bart’s and the Greek islands and Tahiti, and it was like—fuck law school. That’s,
I guess, when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“She got knocked up. Preggers.”

“But Ty did marry her.” It was a question, really. I was trying to find out if anything
she said was true.

“I don’t know if it was that time or the next. What I can tell you is he signed on
to a crew that was competing for the America’s Cup and he was gone to Australia for
a year while she was here by herself. Then he returns and everything starts up all
over again. I think she and Ty were living in some dump down in Harwich while he was
working in a marine supply store, and she was back trying to go to law school at night
and you just knew that wasn’t going to last. She has the second kid and the kid turns
out to have Down syndrome and Ty sails off to the Azores.”

“Before or after they had Malcolm?”

“I don’t know, George. From what I understand, the syndrome is something you can find
out about during pregnancy, so they must have known. Or at least she must have.”

“You think it’s possible she didn’t tell him because she wanted to keep her hold on
him?”

“Jeez, I don’t know, George. I’d like to think she’s not that stupid. I mean, I know
she’s not stupid, but sometimes people do things … you know?”

“I know, Buz.”

“Look, I was shocked as hell when you told me she was working in your office. She
was, like, one of the great tragedies of my lifetime. My lifetime—what am I talking
about? Of the Cape … of … of … I don’t know, of all time. Here was this beautiful
girl, rich family, has everything going for her, and she lets her life get all fucked
up by the local cool guy who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything but himself.”

“I’ve heard about people like that.”

“I don’t know if I’ve talked to Tyler Belbonnet in twenty years, but I could sort
of understand his appeal back then. He had this romantic pirate image, but, Jesus,
you can’t let some guy like that ruin your life. Especially when he keeps going, doing
whatever he wants, and you’re left behind to pay the consequences. You know what I’m
saying?”

I told him I did.

“So I’m just sorry about the number he did on Barbara because she really could have
been somebody.” Buzzy caught himself. “Not that
being in the D.A.’s office isn’t being somebody. I mean, I’m obviously trying to do
it myself … so to speak.”

“Yeah.”

“You still with me on that, Georgie?”

“Yeah, Buz, just as much as I ever was.”

A
MESSED-UP LIFE. A LIFE AS MESSED UP AS MINE. MORE SO
, because she had responsibilities beyond herself. Were those responsibilities enough
for her to sacrifice me? Why not? If they led to a better job, better security, better
daycare.

Still, it made no sense. Fly to California, fly to Costa Rica. What for? I had already
been to those places. Why would she retrace my steps? Why would she go before I had
a chance to go back?

I decided I would call her. Ask her to come in again. Meet me someplace else if she
wanted.

SHE WAS WEARING A DARK
blue belted sheath top that dipped very slightly at the neck and slacks that were
more or less the color of oatmeal. Her purse, which was big enough to carry a notebook,
a change of clothes, and a frying pan, was in her lap. She had been glad to come in.
She had something to tell me and wanted to get through the preliminaries as quickly
as possible.

From my seat of power on the other side of the desk I waved her into whatever she
wanted to say.

“Tell me, George, of the people who were at the Gregorys’ that night, how many have
you actually interviewed?”

I held up two fingers. “Not counting the woman who may or may
not have been Leanne, only McFetridge and Cory.” Then I remembered and held up a third.
“Patty the pickup.”

“You’ve tried to find Jason, Peter, Leanne, I understand that. But why haven’t you
tried to find the rest?”

“Who’s left?” I said. “Jamie, who’s never done anything but follow Peter around, and
Ned, who had his own thing going on. Think either one of them is going to tell me
anything about cousin Peter’s adventures with his date that night?”

“First of all,” she said, her hands on her purse, her back straight, her words quick,
“what you’re describing is not the Jamie I know. The Jamie I grew up with was the
most conniving of the bunch. Maybe it was because of his size, I don’t know, but the
way he competed was to try to outsmart everyone else. And it’s certainly not the Jamie
I see these days, who’s probably the most popular of all the Gregorys of his generation
because he’s making everybody a fortune.” She paused. “You know about these mortgages
they’re giving away?”

“The Gregorys?”

She made a face. It wasn’t a bad face. It probably wouldn’t have been possible for
Barbara to make a bad face. “Not the Gregorys. The banks. Something about they figure
housing prices are going up so fast that as soon as people move in they’ve already
acquired some equity. And then apparently the banks sell off the mortgages to somebody
who bundles them all up, the good and the bad, and then offers them as a commodity
that other investors bid on. Which I guess is where Jamie comes in. I don’t understand
how it works, but that’s why Jamie was at my parents’ party that turned out to be
such a disaster for you.”

“I thought he was there to raise money for a film for that girlfriend of his.”

“Well, that was what was going on, yes. But Dad didn’t know that ahead of time. See,
that crowd, they’ve all been making money hand over fist through Jamie. So he shows
up at the party, everybody wants to talk to him anyhow because he’s been doing so
well for them, and he’s got this glamourous actress with him so he can let it drop
how he’s raising money for her next picture. He doesn’t have to ask, which you don’t
do at a gathering like that. But as soon as the party was over you can bet they were
all calling him, see if they could get in on it.”

“Including Pop-pop?”

“That’s what I call my father.”

“I know.”

Barbara’s shoulders lifted and fell as if she did not quite understand me. It was
a quick and graceful movement, and when it was over she was done with Jamie. She turned
to Ned, and asked why I hadn’t talked with him.

I explained about the eighteen-year-old au pair.

“Well, there was someone else who was there that night, too, George.”

“Ned’s children?”

“I’m talking about the gatekeeper. The guard.”

“The black kid.”

“Chris Warburton, that’s his name,” she said, chiding me. “Sound familiar?”

I shook my head, feeling more wary than excited that I was about to learn something
I had not figured out already.

“He’s the chef at The Captain Yarnell House in Brewster. You know it?”

Of course I knew it, a restaurant fashioned out of an old sea captain’s home off Route
6A. I just had never been to it because it cost about a hundred bucks a person to
eat there and because I had not had a dinner date since Marion left me.

“I’ve known Chris since he was about six years old. His father used to do my parents’
yardwork, and he’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. All his life he wanted
to cook, and the Gregorys gave him the chance. They sent him to culinary school. Then
they made sure he got jobs until he proved to be so talented he didn’t need them anymore.
I went to Chris, George.”

She went to Chris, who had spoken to Landry, and whom I had never even considered
interviewing. I looked over the head of Barbara Belbonnet at the walls I had yet to
decorate and wondered how long I would be here. In this room. In this office. On this
job. Probably 2.5 months. Till the election. George Becket, my letter of recommendation
would read, wonderful boy. Forgets to locate an occasional witness
from time to time, but that’s all right. He fit in just fine with Detective Iacupucci.

I looked across my desk at my former dungeon-mate and wondered not for the first time
how I had managed to share a room with her for so long without really knowing her.
Barbara Blueblood, with the pirate husband and the Down syndrome child and the daughter
who was already fourteen years old. Friend of the Gregorys, second circle, taking
a leave of absence from work so she could prove something to me. Was that possible?
Didn’t she need the job, the security, the life the Gregorys had provided for her
when she had screwed up everything else?

“Chris confirm that Heidi was there?” I asked, half hoping that was all she was going
to say.

“He remembered something about Jason Stockover, George. He remembered he wore a green
hat with a white
D
on it.”

Cory Gregory had remembered that, too. Dartmouth or Deerfield, she had said.

Now Barbara Belbonnet said the same thing. Such are the ways of people in a certain
class in a certain place. She didn’t think Drew, Drake, Drexel, Duquesne, DePaul,
Davidson, Dickinson, Denison.

“Chris said he thought Jason and Ned had been friends in college.”