Crime Of Privilege: A Novel Part 36

"Except you came back to the house eventually."

"We were down the beach for a while. It was obvious what Paul was intending to do."

Toby said, "Emmm," but he was pouring when he said it and maybe he was commenting on something else.

The question as to what Jason himself intended hung over the marble coffee table.

He ran his fingers up and down the stem of his newly filled gla.s.s. "I mean, Leanne was willing enough, and the other two were pounding away and making all sorts of squishy noises, but she and I, well, we just sort of cuddled together. And that was all okay, but then, when they finally got done, Paul and the other girl, well, Paul wanted to switch partners and that was something I really didn't want to do, so I acted all, 'No, I really like Leanne, I'm really serious about her.' "

"And that's when you brought her back to the house."

"Yeah. All of us went back, because, like, with or without the switch, Paul was done with his."

"And what did you see when you got there, Jason?"

He looked at his gla.s.s as if it had betrayed him.

"Was Heidi Telford still there, Jason?"

He looked at Toby for help.

I figured it was enough. "And what was she doing?" I asked.

"She was trying to break up a fight between Pete and Jamie."

"A real fight?"

"It was real enough. They were pushing, shoving, slamming each other into walls. And there wasn't much she could do other than yell at them to stop."

"And you know what they were fighting about?"

Toby and Jason locked eyes. We were sitting in a triangle, with Toby's and my chairs pointed at Jason on the couch. But suddenly there was no room for me. I had to turn and look at the big guy myself.

"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 bulls.h.i.t." 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 bulls.h.i.t 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.

HE 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 c.r.a.p 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 n.o.body 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 gla.s.s 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 p.i.s.sed 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."