He took my hand. I remember thinking it was not the shake of a sailor. "I went to school in Ma.s.sachusetts," he said.
"Yes, I know." I did not release my grip.
"Oh, did Toby tell you?" The inquiry was friendly enough. There was no subterfuge to it. He did not even try to pull his hand away.
I said, "No. I know because I"ve come all the way here looking for you."
"Me?" He smiled, as though I might be a talent scout.
"I"m George Becket, from the Cape and Islands district attorney"s office."
The handshake, minimal before, now went as soft as pudding.
"Oh, s.h.i.t," he said, and the words came out partly in dejection, partly in alarm. He tried to step back, but I would not let go of his hand. I wondered if he would call for Toby. If the big man would come charging up the stairs. If I would end up grappling with both of them, tumbling around the second floor. Georgie Becket, punching his way across the Western Hemisphere. You see this scar? Tamarindo, Costa Rica. This one? Monflanquin, France.
But Jason did not call for Toby and he did not keep up the struggle. He left his hand, his arm, hanging in my grip as if I were a doctor taking his pulse. "What did I do?" he said.
"If you want me to guess," I told him, "I"d say you really didn"t do anything. But there are those who would like me to think you did."
He did not respond. He just looked at me with eyes that contained none of the confidence of the youth in the yearbook photo.
"You are Jason Stockover, aren"t you?"
There was an instant when I did not know what he was going to say or what I was going to do if he denied it, but then he nodded and I was so relieved I almost hugged him. I opted for dropping his hand, which immediately went into his front pocket. Both his hands went into both his front pockets. Because he was wearing jeans, and because they were fairly tight, he got only his fingers in.
"What do you want?"
"To talk. To ask you some questions. To get some answers."
He looked wistfully back into his apartment, no doubt wishing he had never come out. "About?"
"You know what it"s about, Jason. It"s about the night a young girl named Heidi Telford went to the Gregorys" compound on Cape Cod to visit Peter Martin and ended up dead."
I spoke brutally on purpose, letting Jason know there was no escape.
He made an attempt anyway. "I don"t know anything about that."
"Let me help you, then. You sailed the Figawi race. You partied in Hyannis. You and Paul McFetridge picked up two girls and brought them back to the Gregorys. Once you got there you took them out to the beach-"
He glanced quickly down the stairs. From below came a deep voice. "I know all about your sordid past, Jason. Don"t hold anything back on my account."
Jason looked at me as if it was really my opinion that concerned him. I tried to make sure my expression did not change one iota.
"You want to come in and have a gla.s.s of wine?" he asked.
SANCERRE. A PECULIAR CHOICE FOR A MAN LIVING IN BORDEAUX, since it was my understanding that it came from the Loire Valley, but it was chilled and it tasted good and so I was grateful.
"Ned and I were just friends," he began. "We had been in Saint Anthony"s Hall at Trinity together, and of course everyone knew who he was. Thing that was so amazing about Ned was that he never put on airs. I mean, certainly Saint A"s was the elite fraternity at school, had its own part of the campus and everything, but Ned was friends with everyone. In the spring, just before exams every year, he"d have the whole frat up to his house for a party, and we had the run of the place. That"s where he learned I"d been sailing all my life on Long Island Sound, and so he invited me to join in the Figawi race. After we graduated, I became sort of a regular. I was single, living in New York, it was a fun thing to do." He shrugged. He couldn"t help it. Being single, living in New York. Fun things happened. They followed him around.
Jason sat on the very edge of the couch, bent forward at the waist, giving himself quick access to his gla.s.s whenever he put it down on the marble table that separated us.
"I got to know the family pretty well, even the Senator, who was incredibly nice. Thing was, n.o.body ever asked what you were doing there or acted like you didn"t belong. Sometimes they didn"t even ask who you were. And the Senator"s house, the main house, it was like this seaside mansion where you could do whatever you want. The chairs, the couches, the dining room table, there wasn"t anyplace where you felt you couldn"t sit down in a bathing suit. And I don"t want to say it was chaos or anything, but there were always people running around, going in and out, so, yeah, basically it was an exciting place to be."
It seemed important to him that I understand that.
"Can you tell me about meeting those girls? Leanne and Patty."
Jason drank more wine. He finished his gla.s.s and poured again. "I might have been mixed up about my s.e.xuality in those days," he said.
I didn"t think it was necessary for me to comment.
"I mean, you"re hanging around with the Gregorys, so there"s a lot of macho stuff going on. And we"d had this race and we"re feeling pretty good and we"re at the big post-race thingamajig in Hyannis and this girl starts. .h.i.tting on me. She probably wasn"t the kind of girl I would have chosen back in the day when I was into that kind of stuff, but she was good-enough-looking and, basically, she was doing all the work."
Once again, he seemed to be trying to explain things that were of no consequence to me. What did I care how he happened to be picked up by Leanne Sullivan? I asked him about McFetridge.
"Paul was just there. It was like, we were in a tent at this big table, and I think people recognized the Gregorys. Well, I"m sure they did. And I remember there was a whole crowd of guys around Cory, and I think she got a little freaked out and wanted to leave, and Ned, well, he wanted to get back to the house anyway, so he and Cory took off. And all of a sudden it was just Paul and me and I"ve got this redhead all over me and she"s got a friend, kind of short and dark, I remember, and Paul said we should bring them back to the Gregorys" and have a party there."
Jason stared into his wine and thought about it, and then told me what he didn"t think. "I don"t think Paul had any particular interest in the other girl, but she was there, you know?"
"What was Peter Martin doing?"
"I don"t know."
It was hard to believe a man staring so intently into his gla.s.s. It was even harder when he emptied the gla.s.s in one gulp and then almost immediately filled it again.
"Jason," I said, "this is the part where you get to save your own life, your own future. I know Peter met Heidi Telford at the Bon Faire Market that evening and I know she ended up at the Gregory compound later that night. I have to a.s.sume they got together at the post-race party in Hyannis during the time in between."
Jason shook his head.
I made things a little more difficult for him. "Heidi Telford was a wholesome-looking blonde girl with big b.r.e.a.s.t.s, wearing a blue dress with red rosettes."
Jason looked to see if I had anything more to keep him from saying he didn"t remember.
"She was just twenty years old, Jason."
He stopped looking.
"She came into the tent where you were sitting at the big table." I was guessing now, playing his reactions. Even the smallest sign of acquiescence kept me going. "Peter saw her and jumped up." Peter had excellent manners. At least in public. "It was only you and Paul McFetridge and Peter left from your group and now that Heidi was there you all had girls, so you took them home."
"Jamie."
"What?"
"Jamie Gregory was there."
I had forgotten about Jamie. "Did he pick up a girl?"
Jason took his time answering. He placed his fingers on the base of his winegla.s.s and then began moving the gla.s.s around in small circles, swirling the wine itself before he took another sip. Letting the wine go all the way down his throat before he answered. "No," he said.
No. But he had mentioned Jamie"s name. There was something he wanted me to know.
"Did that cause a problem, Jason?"
"I"m not sure what you mean."
"Then let me make things as clear as I can. Nine years have gone by, and as long as n.o.body talked, as long as n.o.body acknowledged Heidi was at the Gregorys", everyone could just deny knowing anything about her death. Only now the story has cracked. You"re keeping a secret that not everyone else is keeping, Jason. At this point, I know she was there. I know she got hit over the head with a golf club and never made it home that night. And I know one more thing, Jason, and this is the biggest thing of all. I know the Gregorys will not take the blame, no matter what."
I saw the color seep out of his face.
"First, they say it didn"t happen. If they have to, they go the next step and say if it did happen it wasn"t one of their people. Not the family, not the friends, not the hangers-on. Which one were you, Jason? Being a friend of Ned"s and all, coming up once a year to go sailing. What do you think happens when they have to go to the step after that, Jason? Who do you think gets sacrificed?"
Jason"s gaze suddenly went someplace behind me. His features twisted in surprise, alarm, possibly fear. I pictured big Toby standing in the doorway in his ap.r.o.n and shorts. I pictured him with a weapon in his hand: a cane, a hammer, a cricket bat. I debated whether I would look and decided nothing good would come of even acknowledging he was there.
"It"s not going to be one of the family, Jason, you know that. Which just leaves you, the two girls, and Paul McFetridge. They can"t blame it on the two girls, that just wouldn"t make sense. And between you and McFetridge, well, you"re the one who"s in hiding."
"I"m not in hiding."
"The Gregorys would certainly like people to think you are."
Jason glanced past me again.
"If he"s supposed to be in hiding," a deep voice asked, "how is it that you managed to find him?"
I had to answer this time, but I still did not look. "I"ve been searching for months. There are other people who supposedly have been searching for years. I believe, like me, they got misdirected."
A silent message pa.s.sed between the housemates.
"The misdirection isn"t quite so beneficial to you as you might think," I told Jason. I was looking directly at him, compelling him to look at me. "What the Gregorys are doing is making us think you"ve run away. Let me ask you this. What would you expect to happen when we"re led to believe you"re someplace you"re really not?"
Jason lifted one hand and wiped his mouth. "Where do they say I am?"
"Costa Rica."
"I"ve never even been there."
"Pretty clever, then."
Jason must have gotten some sort of sign from Toby, some sort of affirmation, because he said, "What is it you want from me?"
"Tell me what happened to Heidi Telford."
"I don"t really know anything, because I was-"
"On the beach."
Eyes to Toby. Eyes back to me. "I never so much as talked with her. So I don"t see how I could possibly have anything to say, even if I were put on the witness stand."
I said nothing and Jason emptied his third gla.s.s of wine. He picked up the bottle and studied it. Then he looked at my gla.s.s with apprehension before pouring himself a fourth.
There was a big sigh behind me. Toby proceeded to walk past us, past me, through the room in which we were sitting and into the kitchen.
I was slouched in an armchair. I was holding my gla.s.s in both hands, holding it by the bowl because I wasn"t really interested in the Sancerre and didn"t care if it got warm.
"All I remember," Jason said, "is that she came with us when we left. She was sitting in the front seat of Jamie"s Jeep while Pete and Paul and I were jammed in the back." He squeezed his shoulders together, demonstrating.
"And the girls?"
"Had their own car. Met us there."
"But there was no party, is that right?"
Jason drank. "Sometimes it was really kind of hard to say whether there was or not." He seemed to be thinking about what he had just said. "I mean, the music was blasting out the windows and people were going in and out doors and the closest person to being in charge was Ned, who didn"t give a d.a.m.n what anybody else was doing." He glanced at me, did it quickly before going back to his wine.
"Because he was with the au pair," I said.
He raised his eyebrows as if the fact another person had been present gave him new hope. Another possible suspect.
Ah, yes, I felt like saying. And her motive would be what? Jealousy? But I only asked if he was aware what Ned was doing.
Jason took a roundabout way of answering. "We get to the house and Paul and I wait for the girls to arrive, and when they do we take them inside. We"re walking around, showing them various things-you know the way you do-and we get to the kitchen and there"s Ned. He"s got his hair slicked back and he"s bare-chested beneath this silk robe he"s got on, and he"s getting champagne out of the refrigerator."
Toby returned then, carrying another bottle of Sancerre and a gla.s.s for himself, both of which he carefully set down on the coffee table before dropping into an armchair of his own. "Do go on, Jason," he said.
But he didn"t. I had to get him talking again.
"And you knew his wife wasn"t around."
"She was up in Boston. Some charitable function."
"So the answer is yes, you did know what he was doing."
"It was pretty obvious. I mean, it wasn"t just the champagne. He had the silver ice bucket, two gla.s.ses, and he"s just standing there, like "Oh, oh." "
"Was anything said?"
"Yeah. Paul said to the girls, "Hey, want to go see the beach?" Which meant: Let"s get the h.e.l.l out of here."
"So you did that, went down the beach."
"Yeah." He drank and held out his gla.s.s to Toby, who sighed loudly but got up to pour. "That"s really all I remember."