Crime of Privilege

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 pla

“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, Lea

“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 Lea

“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 Lea

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?”