The Melody Lingers On (3 page)

“Mrs. Bennett, I am going to do the best I can to make your new home attractive and comfortable. Shall we go upstairs and I’ll point out the furniture I want to select for
you?” Glady asked.

“Yes, of course. What they deemed could only bring a few dollars in an estate sale was left for me. Isn’t that generous? Someone else stole that money. Isn’t that right,
Eric?”

“We will prove his innocence, Mother,” Eric Bennett said heartily. “Now, let’s go upstairs.”

Forty minutes later, Glady and Lane were on their way back to Manhattan. Then Glady observed, “It’s been almost two years since the scandal broke. That poor woman still looks as
though she’s reeling from shock. What did you think of that portrait of the big crook smiling so benevolently at the world? I understand the paint was barely dry on it before he
disappeared.”

“It’s a very good painting.”

“It should be. Stuart Cannon was the artist, and believe me, he doesn’t come cheap. But at the art auction nobody bid on it and they let her keep it.”

“Do you think that Parker Bennett was framed?”

“Nonsense.”

“But isn’t all of the five billion dollars absolutely unaccounted for?”

“Yes. God knows where Bennett managed to hide it. Not that it will do him any good. Certainly not if he’s dead.”

“If he is alive, do you think his wife or his son knows where he is?”

“I don’t have any idea. But you can bet that even if they have access to the money, they’ll never get to spend it. Every nickel they ever spend for the rest of their lives will
be watched like a hawk by the government.”

Lane did not answer. The traffic on the Merritt Parkway was getting heavier. She wanted Glady to think that she was concentrating on it.

She knew that Glady had been too busy saying good-bye to Anne Bennett to notice that Eric Bennett had asked her to have dinner with him.

T
he day after their visit to the Bennett mansion, Glady unveiled her decisions in her usual modus operandi. After making her regal pronouncements
about the selection of the furniture to take from the Bennett mansion, Glady left the everyday details for Lane to follow up on.

“We’ve seen the virtual inside of the town house in New Jersey,” she said crisply, “but I want you to go over there and get the feel of the place. As I’ve told you,
when I finished the decorating ten years ago, Anne Bennett said that her staff den was the most inviting room in the whole house. So placing that furniture into the den there will be comforting to
her. I’ve picked paint chips for all the rooms, but let me know if you think the colors work. We may have to do some mixing to get the shade I want.”

Amused, Lane thought that while Glady had been willing to make one trip to the Bennett mansion, she was not about to spend any more of her pricey time on this project, especially when she was
doing it on the house.

She also realized that working on the details of this project was going to be intensely interesting for her. Like everyone else, she had read every word in the media about Parker Bennett,
starting with the headline that announced that five billion dollars had vanished from the assets of the revered Bennett Investment Fund. In addition to his wealthy clients, he had targeted
investors who were mainly middle-class, hardworking small business people. That made the crime even more despicable. Elderly clients had been forced to sell their homes or retirement condos. Others
whose income from the fund had been their only asset had no choice but to move back in with their children, where resentment of each other had fostered breaks in formerly tightly knit families.
Four suicides had been linked to the financial disaster.

“What are you waiting for?” Glady demanded. “I need you to be back here by twelve o’clock. Countess Sylvie de la Marco called me last night. She used to be Sallie Chico
from Staten Island before she befuddled that poor old count into marrying her. He died about three years ago. I guess the mourning period is over if there ever was one. Now she wants to completely
redecorate her apartment. We’re due over there at twelve-thirty. It will be a long session. I’ll try to steer her away from what is her version of good taste. She reminded me that she
will have had an early lunch, meaning she doesn’t have any intention of feeding us. So on your way back, pick up a hamburger at the drive-through at a McDonald’s and eat in the
car.”

Glady looked down at the paperwork on her desk. Lane knew that was the sign that she was supposed to be on her way to New Jersey. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars, she thought
as she left Glady’s private office, remembering the instructions from her favorite childhood game, Monopoly. With rapid steps she walked through the still-darkened reception area and out into
the hallway. She was the only one on the elevator to the lobby but when she got off it, the ground floor was filled with people on their way to work.

The receptionist at their office, Vivian Hall, was the first person on line for the elevator. Sixty-two years old, she had worked for Glady for ten years, a record for any of the employees.
Perpetually planning to lose weight, she was a well-proportioned size fourteen with a cap of light brown hair.

She stepped aside to talk to Lane. “How’s the dragon lady?” she asked.

“In typical form.” Lane smiled. “I’m heading to New Jersey to look at Mrs. Bennett’s new digs. I have to be back in time to go with her to Countess de la
Marco’s duplex.”

“Good old Glady.” Vivian shook her head. “In eight hours getting a ten-hour day out of you. But you look as though you’re handling it just fine. Love that outfit. You
look great in that shade of blue.”

Ken had always liked to see her wear this color. A wave of sadness washed over Lane. His birthday would have been tomorrow. Thirty-six. It had been five years since a drunk driver had slammed
their car on the Henry Hudson Parkway. The car tumbled off the road, rolling over and over until it finally stopped. Ken died instantly, his neck broken. They had been married only a year and she
had been two months pregnant. Of course, the driver had no insurance.

Over and over again, when that sadness enveloped her, she thought of her four-year-old daughter, Katie, whom she might so easily have lost that terrible day.

These were her thoughts as she walked briskly to the parking garage.

Ten minutes later Lane was entering the Lincoln Tunnel on her way to New Jersey. Thirty minutes later she was driving into the town house complex in Montclair that was the future home of Anne
Bennett. Pretty area, she thought as she drove through the winding streets until she turned onto Cedar Drive. Following the street numbers, she parked in front of number twenty-one. It was part of
a cluster of similar facades. The exterior was gray stone and she noticed with approval the large front window. Glady had taken one of the keys to the unit yesterday and Lane fished it out of her
pocket.

Before she could open the door, a man suddenly stepped out of the next-door unit. “Hello,” he called as he walked rapidly past the shared driveway to where she was standing.
“Are you the new owner?” he asked. “Because if so, we’re going to be neighbors. I just bought here as well.” He extended his hand. “Anthony Russo, but better
known as Tony.”

“Lane Harmon.” As she acknowledged the greeting, Lane took in the appearance of this next-door neighbor. About six foot two, blue-green eyes, sandy hair and a warm smile. Even though
it was November he had the deep tan of an outdoorsman. She judged him to be in his midthirties.

“I’m not the new owner,” she told him. “I work for the interior designer who is decorating the house.”

He smiled. “I could probably use her.”

Not at her prices, unless you have big bucks, Lane thought.

“I won’t keep you,” he said. “Who
is
moving in here?”

“Our client’s name is Bennett,” Lane said. She had already turned the key in the lock. “I’d better get busy,” she said. “Nice to have met you.”
Without waiting for his reply, she pushed open the door and closed it firmly behind her. Without knowing why, she locked it.

She had seen the virtual inside of the unit but now, being physically there, she was pleased to see that it was flooded with sunlight. Further down the entrance hall, there was a staircase to
the second floor. The entrance to the kitchen and a breakfast room was on her right. Walking into the kitchen, she noticed that she could look directly across the driveway into the breakfast room
of Tony Russo’s apartment. He was standing there unpacking boxes that were stacked on the table.

Afraid that he might glance in her direction, she quickly looked away. The first thing we buy for this place is a shade for that window, she thought.

R
anger Cole sat at the bedside of his wife, Judy, holding her hand as she lay motionless, her eyes closed, oxygen tubes in her nostrils. He knew
that the second stroke would take her soon. Much too soon. Judy was sixty-six years old. They were only six months apart in age. She was older and he always joked that he had married an older woman
for her money.

They’d been married forty-six years. Kids of twenty so in love that when they went to Florida on a bus for their weeklong honeymoon it had felt like a limousine. They’d held hands
all the way down. Neither one of them had gone to college. She worked as a sales clerk in Macy’s and he had a job in construction.

Her mother didn’t want her to marry me, he thought. In school I’d always been in trouble for having fights with other kids. Too quick to turn my hands into fists. A nasty temper. Her
mother was right but Judy calmed me down. I never was mad at her, not for one single minute. If I started yelling, like about a driver who cut me off, she would order me to stop it. Tell me I was
acting like a child.

To both of their regret they never had been blessed with kids.

Ranger reached over and with a gentle stroke ran his calloused fingertips across his wife’s forehead. You were always smarter than me, he thought. You were the one who told me I’d be
better off getting a job with the city, that jobs in construction came and went. You were the reason I got to be a repairman on the Long Island Rail Road. I worked from one end of the island to the
other. You said it fitted my nickname. My father started calling me Ranger when I was a kid because I was always out of range of where I was supposed to be.

Judy always told him how handsome he was. That’s a joke, he thought. He was a short, bulky guy with big ears and bushy eyebrows, even though he tried to keep them trimmed.

Judy. Judy. Judy.

Anger welled up in the depths of Ranger’s being as he thought about why Judy had had the first stroke two years ago after they learned that the money they had invested in the Bennett Fund
had disappeared. Two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars that they were going to use to buy a condo in Florida. Money they had saved so carefully over the years. The condo they had seen was a real
buy. An old lady who owned it had died and her family wanted to get rid of it furnished.

Judy had loved the way it was decorated. “Much nicer than I would have figured out how to do it,” she said. “We’ll give away everything here in the apartment. It’s
not worth the expense of getting a U-Haul. Oh, Ranger, I’m so ready to give up my job and get down to Florida and be in the sun. What’s nice is with no mortgage to pay and having both
our pensions and social security, if we’re careful we won’t have to worry about money.”

And at just that time the money in the Bennett Fund had disappeared, and that was the end of buying the condo. A few weeks later Judy had the first stroke and he had watched her exhausting
herself trying to keep up with the exercises to try to strengthen her left arm and leg. She tried to keep him from hearing her crying at night but of course he heard her.

It was Parker Bennett’s fault that their lives had been destroyed. A lot of people didn’t believe that he’d committed suicide by taking a dive off that fancy sailboat of his.
Ranger didn’t believe that that jerk had jumped in the water. In one of the newspapers after Bennett disappeared, Ranger had seen his picture; he was sitting behind an antique, rich-guy desk
in his office. Bennett’s way of offing himself would be to sit behind that desk all dressed up like he is in that picture and get drunk on some single-malt scotch, then shoot himself, Ranger
thought.