Crime of Privilege: A Novel (43 page)

“Toby,” I said, “do you not want him to answer?”

“He’s a free man,” Toby said, but given the fact he was still looking directly at
Jason, it was clear Jason was not completely free.

“Was it over Heidi, Jason?” I asked.

“The impression I had,” he said slowly, never taking his eyes off Toby, pausing at
each word as if it were a stepping-stone to the next, “was that Jamie didn’t like
the fact that he was the only one without a girl.”

“And so he tried to put the moves on Heidi?”

“Exactly.”

“And Peter didn’t appreciate that.”

Jason sat back, stopped looking at Toby, and offered me a chilly smile at the foolishness
of Jamie’s and Peter’s behavior.

“You heard what was being said? In the fight, I mean.”

“It was stupid stuff, for the most part. Pete kept yelling he had met her first and
she had only come there because of him. Jamie was calling him names and saying he
was sick and tired of his bullshit.” Jason shrugged. “Pete, at least, had a point.
Jamie was just being a brat.”

“So what happened?”

“What happened, what happened, what happened,” Jason repeated, looking around the
room as though he might find something he could use to demonstrate. I could not imagine
what it could be.

“What happened was I got rid of the girls,” he said. “Walked them to their car. That
was all.”

“Except you didn’t completely get rid of them. You stayed in touch with Leanne.”

“I felt bad about what happened down the beach and asked for her number because I
was thinking I wanted to make it up to her. I don’t know what she was thinking, but
she gave it to me and then she and her friend took off, and that’s all I know.”

To punctuate the conclusion to his story, he pointed to the hallway. “Do you need
help with your suitcase?” he asked, and made a motion to get to his feet.

I stopped him. “Except you must have returned to the house after they left, Jason.
What was going on then?”

Jason stayed where he was, one hand on the arm of the couch, ready to push himself
up. “Nothing, really. Jamie wasn’t there anymore. In fact, Paul told me to go find
him.”

“And did you?”

“I tried, but I couldn’t.” Jason shrugged one shoulder, the one that wasn’t leading
to the couch. “It’s a big place.”

“And the girl? Heidi?”

“She’d had enough. Said she was going home. I don’t think she was enjoying herself
anymore.”

Heidi Telford, who had come in Jamie’s Jeep, was going home without Jamie being around.
And Peter, who had a night of pleasure planned, was already angry.

“Did you see her leave?”

“I just went to bed. I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I was tired of the bullshit
myself. It had been a long weekend and I was ready to go home.”

He was also, it was obvious, ready for me to go home. Or at least go to my room. Instead,
I asked the prosecutor’s favorite question: “What happened next?”

Jason repeated himself. “Like I said, I went to bed.”

“All right, what’s the next thing you remember happening?”

“Going to bed.”

Toby cleared his throat pointedly. One of us was supposed to stop. I decided it would
not be me.

“You don’t remember Peter waking you up about six or six-thirty in the morning to
go play golf?”

“Is that what he said?”

“It’s what McFetridge told me. You went to the course for a seven o’clock tee time
and you couldn’t get on because Heidi Telford’s body had been found on the back nine.”

I could hear Jason breathing. The room was not that big and we were not that far apart
from each other, but I had not heard it before.

“I didn’t know it was Heidi’s body,” he said softly.

H
E DIDN
’
T KNOW, BUT PETER DID. HE HAD TO. WHY ELSE WOULD
he have gotten them out there so early to play golf if it wasn’t to see if the body
had been discovered, if it was being handled by the police the way he had planned?

I asked Jason if he had brought his own clubs and he shook his head. He said the Gregorys
had a garage filled with clubs.

“Actually,” he said, reflecting, “it was filled with more crap than you could possibly
imagine. Jet Skis, sails, water skis … and the clubs were scattered all over the place.
Not that there weren’t bags. There were. And they were all, what do you call it? Callaways.
Like somebody went out and bought ten sets of Callaways so nobody could complain that
anyone else’s clubs were better. Only it was like people took them out of the bags
and never put them back, or put them back in the wrong bag. You’d be out on the course
and you’d find three seven irons and no five.”

I put my glass down on the marble, where Jason eyed it enviously because there was
still wine in it. “Peter offer you a particular bag?”

“They were just out in the driveway. One for each of us.”

“Three? Or four?”

“I don’t know. Three.”

“You, Peter, and Paul?”

“Pete said Jamie was still pissed off and wouldn’t play.”

“And were any clubs missing from any of the bags?”

“I wasn’t counting. It was early. I was tired, hungover, I didn’t want to do this
in the first place.”

“How about when you got to the course? You look then?”

“No, because we didn’t get out.…” He waved his hand.

“Because Heidi’s body was on the course.” It was the second time I had said that and
Jason no more wanted to hear it than he had the first time.

“I didn’t know whose body it was,” he insisted.

“What did you think when you learned that it was Heidi Telford?” I pushed.

Jason’s head flared as if I had hurt him. “I didn’t. I didn’t know anything. All I
can tell you is that we went back to the house, packed our bags, and left, which is
what I had been planning on doing in the first place.”

“But you found out eventually.”

Clearly, I had become an irritant. Jason looked at Toby, wanting him to do something.
Toby said nothing. He reminded me of lawyers I had seen watching their clients be
deposed, listening to each word, weighing each one, waiting to jump in when there
was one word too many.

“I got a call from someone who works for the Gregorys. He told me, what he told me
was that something terrible had happened. The girl had left the house on her own,
after the fight, and never made it home. He asked if I knew anything about it and
I said no, she was very much alive when I last saw her. And he said that was a problem
for all of us who were there. No one knew what happened, but everyone was going to
be blamed. Curse of the Gregorys, he said.”

“What did you tell him?”

Jason released his lifeline to Toby and returned to me. “I said, how can anyone blame
me? I didn’t do anything. And he said, I’ll never forget this, he said, ‘How do you
prove a negative?’ ”

“Did you take that as a threat?”

“No, I took it as what the Gregorys have to go through all the time.”

“You mean proving they didn’t do things?”

“What I understood, okay, what I understood he was telling me was that the Gregorys
are always being accused of something and it’s not enough for them to say they didn’t
do it. The key for them is not to say anything at all.”

“And you agreed to that.” I tried not to let any judgment enter my voice. It wouldn’t
sound right coming from me. Not to my own ears.

Jason touched the hair at the back of his neck. The touch turned into a scratch. The
scratch got harder, gave him an excuse to drop his head. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t much
he was asking.”

“Just don’t volunteer information.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t make yourself available if you don’t have to.”

Jason’s head lifted. His expression asked how I knew so much.

“This guy, this caller, was it Chuck Larson?”

“No. It was a guy named O’Donald. He was a lawyer himself. Said he helps the family
on cases like this.”

“Did he want you to do anything else?”

“Just, you know, if I thought I could get the girls on board, Leanne and her friend.
Get them, you know, to understand that, really, it would be best if they not admit
they had even been at the house.” Jason was having difficulty finding the right words.
His hands were flailing.

“And you agreed to do that, too?”

“I thought I was helping Ned. I thought, people start investigating, it would be like
opening Pandora’s box. So what I agreed to do was invite Leanne down to New York,
show her around a little bit, then introduce her to Mr. O’Donald.”

“And were you there when he spoke to her?”

“All I know is, he asked her, okay, if she could go anywhere in the world, where would
she want to go?”

“And she said Hawaii.”

Jason turned down his mouth in silent commentary.

“But you of course drove a much harder bargain,” intoned Toby.

Jason stared at him, but there was no rancor in the stare. “Lucky for you, I did.”

“And I’d be luckier still, dear boy, if you would be so kind as to get us another
bottle of
vin
. And none of that treacly stuff we’ve been
making our friend drink. Look.” He pointed disdainfully at my glass. “He won’t even
finish it.”

Jason popped to his feet, happy to escape.

Toby waited until he left the room and then draped himself over the arm of his chair
so he could capture all my attention. “He feels terrible about it, you know.” Toby’s
eyes for some reason reminded me of moons. Big moons. Sad moons, like I used to see
in cartoons. “All he was trying to do was protect his friend, his secret society friend
from university days.”

It was, I thought, a rather interesting interpretation of what I had just been hearing.
I said, “But he wasn’t. He was protecting his friend’s cousin, who had murdered a
young girl.”

“I don’t think that’s ever been proven.”

This information was delivered solemnly to me by an Englishman in France, draped over
a chair.

“Think about it, George. You don’t mind if I call you George, do you? We’re not the
least bit stuffy here in Monflanquin. I think it’s what attracted me. I digress. Hear
me out.”

Toby dropped his arms so that they dangled almost to the floor. Interesting combination,
this Toby, of a brute and an aesthete.

“He doesn’t know how the girl died. The family, a famous family, a family who bring
rewards just by having you in their presence, a family who have always been quite
good to him, explain that she left, sallied forth from the garden gate or whatever,
traipsed down the lane.” He illustrated with rolls of his big hands and swirls of
his thick fingers. “Is he to argue? Would you? Would anyone?”

“He could have told what he knows.”

I said that. George Becket: voice of experience.

Toby stopped his display of theater and looked at me peculiarly.

Did he know? About me?

“He sees her, she leaves, he leaves. Is that enough for him to talk about? With a
family so newsworthy as the Gregorys? Do you really think he should have sold his
story to the tabloids? Tell them all about randy Ned, doing a little shilly-shally
on the side? That would have sunk Ned’s career. Ended his marriage. And for what?
It didn’t have anything to do with the murder. No. No! Better to say Heidi Telford
was never there. Better to say you were never there. Better even than that, not to
be around yourself when questioners come knocking on your door.”

“The same message this Mr. O’Donald gave Leanne.”

Toby straightened himself out, then kicked his chair around so he could face me without
the drape and the dangle. “Well, yes and no. The fact is, Mr. O’Donald liked Jason,
and he had a project for which he thought Jason would be just perfect.”

“Moving to France?”

“Not quite. As luck would have it, the family had a number of properties across the
globe that needed checking on, make sure they were not being ripped off too basely.
What the family needed was for someone to go to these properties, look them over,
issue a small report that assured them, yes, this one’s still standing, still functioning,
not overrun by monkeys or wild goats or Arab seamen. Do a service and see the world.
It was exactly the sort of thing Jason would love to do.” Toby wanted me to appreciate
Jason’s good fortune.

“And there was probably no hurry to complete the task, I’m guessing.”

“No hurry at all. Isn’t that right, dear boy?”

Jason had come back into the room. He was holding a single glass and an opened bottle
of very dark red. He didn’t say anything.

“Is that what you’ve been doing for nine years, Jason?” I asked.

“Why, then he met me,” Toby answered, his voice rattling the windows in the old stone
building. “Trekking in Nepal. And when he explained about his job, how he simply had
to dash about, we decided we should move here. Set down our stakes. Isn’t that what
they say in America?”

“Do you think, Jason,” I said, trying not to let Toby distract either one of us, “the
Gregorys are going to support you forever?”

Jason had put bottle to glass, but he stopped in mid-pour. Droplets of wine dribbled
off the mouth of the bottle and fell onto the marble table. “What’s that supposed
to mean?”

“It means that after all this time, the search for the killer is still on. Whatever
they may have done to try to hide you, it hasn’t worked, has it?”

Jason’s question lingered. I answered it another way. “I mean, I’m here, aren’t I?”

“And,” he said, handing the glass to his partner and then refilling his own, “I’ve
told you I’ve got nothing to tell you.”

“I think you’ll have plenty to say if the Gregorys keep trying to make it seem that
you’re the one who killed Heidi Telford.”

The pouring stopped again. “They’re not going to do that,” he said.

“Why not? You’re the perfect guy to take the fall. You don’t know anything about what
happened that night other than Ned’s little tryst, so you’ve got nothing to say in
your own defense. And where, exactly, have you been all these years? You haven’t been
on the run, have you? I mean, suppose you get asked that. Do you have a record of
your employment? No? Why do you suppose that is, Jason? Tell me, the money you get,
it wouldn’t by any chance get transferred into your account from the Cayman Islands,
would it?”