Crime of Privilege

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 glass 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 glasses, 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 hell out of here.”

“So you did that, went down the beach.”

“Yeah.” He drank and held out his glass to Toby, who sighed loudly but got up to pour. “That’s really all I remember.”

“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 glass. “I mean, Lea

“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 glass 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 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 Lea

“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 pla

“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.

4

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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 pla

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.”