We'll Meet Again

93

“There’s Jenna’s car,” Fran Simmons said to Assistant Prosecutor Jacobs as they pulled into the driveway in front of Molly Lasch’s house. “We have to hurry-she’s in there with Molly!”

Jacobs had ridden in the squad car with Fran and two police officers. Even before the vehicle had come to a complete stop, Fran had the door on her side open. As she jumped out, she saw another car racing up the driveway behind them.

Unmindful of the steady throb of pain emanating from her ankle, she ran up the steps to the house and pressed her finger on the bell.

“Fran, what’s going on?”

Fran turned to see Philip Matthews racing up the steps. Was he afraid for Molly too? she wondered fleetingly.

Inside, she could hear chimes echoing through the house.

“Fran, did something happen to Molly?” Philip was beside her now, flanked by the police officers.

“Philip! It’s Jenna. It was her! It’s got to be. She was the other person here the night Gary Lasch was murdered. She doesn’t dare let Molly get her memory back. She knows Molly heard her running out of the house that night. She’s desperate. We’ve got to stop her! I know I’m right.”

“Break in the door,” Jacobs ordered the policemen.

The door, made of solid mahogany, took a precious full minute before their battering ram dislodged it from its hinges and crashed to the floor.

As they ran into the entrance hall, a new sound echoed through the house-Jenna’s hysterical screams for help.

***

They found her kneeling beside the couch in the study, where Molly was slumped over, her head partially covering a picture of her murdered husband, Gary Lasch. Molly’s eyes were open and staring. Her hand dangled limply over the side of the couch. A wineglass lay on the carpet, its contents soaking into the deep pile.

“I didn’t know what she was doing!” Jenna wailed. “Every time she left the room she must have been putting sleeping pills in the wine.” She threw her arms around Molly’s supine body, weeping as she rocked her. “Oh, Molly! Wake up, wake up…”

“Get away from her.” With abrupt force, Philip Matthews grabbed Jenna and shoved her aside. Roughly he pulled Molly up. “You can’t die, now! Not now!” he shouted. “I won’t let you die.”

Before anyone could move to assist him, he had lifted her in his arms. Moving swiftly he plunged through the door that led from the study into the downstairs guest bathroom. Jacobs and one of the officers followed him inside.

Within seconds Fran heard the sound of the shower running, followed moments later by the retching, gagging sound of Molly emptying her stomach of the wine that Jenna had laced with the sleeping pills.

Jacobs emerged from the bathroom. “Get the oxygen from the car!” he ordered one of the policemen. “Send for an ambulance,” he told the other.

“She kept saying over and over again that she wanted to die,” Jenna babbled. “She kept going into the kitchen and refilling her glass. She was imagining weird things. She said you were angry, that you wanted to kill her, Fran. She’s crazy. She’s out of her mind.”

“If Molly was ever crazy, Jenna, it was when she trusted you,” Fran said quietly.

“Yes, I was.” Molly, supported by Philip and one of the policemen, was being helped back into the room. She was soaking wet from the shower and still heavily sedated, but there was no mistaking the total condemnation in her eyes and voice.

“You killed my husband,” she said. “You tried to kill me. It was you I heard that night. Your heels running down the hall. I had locked the front door. I had pushed the bolt down. That was the sound I heard. The click of your heels in the hallway. You pushing up the bolt, unlocking the door.”

“Wally Barry saw you, Jenna,” Fran said. He saw a woman, she thought. He didn’t see Jenna’s face, but maybe she’ll believe me.

“Jenna,” Molly cried, “you let me spend five and a half years in prison for the crime you committed. You would have let me go back to prison. You wanted me to be convicted of Annamarie’s death. Why, Jenna?Tell me why.”

Jenna looked from one to the other, at first with almost pleading eyes. “Molly, you’re wrong,” she began.

Then she stopped, knowing it was useless. Knowing she was trapped.Knowing it was over.

“Why, Molly?” she asked. “Why?” Her voice began to rise. “WHY? Why did your family have money? Why did Gary and I need to marry what you and Cal could offer us? Why did I introduce Gary to you? Why all the foursomes? So that Gary and I could be together as much as possible, never mind all the times we were alone together over the years.”

“Mrs. Whitehall, you have the right to remain silent,” Jacobs began.

Jenna ignored him. “From the time we laid eyes on each other, we were in love. And then you told me that Sunday afternoon that Gary had been having an affair with that nurse and that she was pregnant.” She laughed bitterly.

“I was now the other other woman. I came here to have it out with Gary. I parked down the street so you wouldn’t see my car if you were early. He let me in. We quarreled. He kept trying to make me get out before you got home. Then he sat at his desk and turned his back to me and said, ‘I’m beginning to think that I didn’t do so badly marrying Molly. At least when she’s angry, she goes to Cape Cod and refuses to talk to me. Now go home and leave me in peace.’ ”

The anger left her voice. “And then it happened. I didn’t plan to do it. I didn’t mean to do it.”

The shriek of the approaching ambulance broke the silence that followed as Jenna’s voice trailed off. Fran turned to Jacobs and said, “For the love of God, don’t let that ambulance takeMolly to Lasch Hospital.”

94

“Ratings for last night’s show are great,” Gus Brandt said, six weeks later. “Congratulations. It’s the best True Crime episode we ever aired.”

“Well, you can thank yourself for setting it in motion,” Fran told him. “If you hadn’t assigned me to cover Molly’s release from prison, none of this would have happened, or if it had, it would have happened without me.”

“I especially like what Molly Lasch said in the wrap-up, the part about having faith in yourself and hanging in when you feel overwhelmed. She credits you with keeping her from committing suicide.”

“Jenna almost did that for her,” Fran said. “If her plan had worked, we would have all assumed that Molly really had killed herself. Still, I think I would have had my doubts. I don’t believe that when push came to shove, Molly would actually have taken those pills.”

“It would have been a loss-she is one beautiful woman,” Gus said.

Fran smiled. “Yes, and she always has been-on the inside as well as the outside. That’s much more important, don’t you think?”

Gus Brandt returned Fran’s smile, and he gradually shaped his expression into one of benevolence. “Yes, I do. And speaking of important, I think it’s time you gave yourself a little break. Go ahead, take a day off. How about Sunday?”

Fran laughed. “Is there a Nobel Prize for generosity?”

Hands in her pockets, her head down, in what her stepbrothers called “Franny’s thinking position,” she went back to her office.