Life Penalty by Joy Fielding Page B

down south, where they had occupied the same Palm Beach condominium for the last four years. Her mother constantly rearranged the furniture (Gail was never sure where anything was liable to be from one visit to the next) and contented herself with long walks on the beach. Her father, who still liked to sing and paint—although he had grown disillusioned with the world of inventions—was considered something of an eccentric by the other more conservative residents in the building. He had discovered the bliss of the Sony Walkman andnow tuned most of them out with one switch of a button, wearing his radio like a hearing aid whenever he decided to lie out by the pool. At first, his loud singing along with the music disturbed some of the other sun worshipers, but those who didn’t enjoy Dave Harrington’s impromptu concerts soon learned to sit at the other end of the pool; those who did, and their numbers increased over the years, formed their own little coterie around his chair. His groupies, Lila Harrington would laugh, referring to the mostly wealthy widows who were her husband’s most adoring fans.
    Carol had settled in New York after obtaining a degree in theater arts at Columbia, and had achieved a modicum of success in the theatrical worlds on and off Broadway. Her name often appeared on the backs of original cast albums if rarely out front on the theater marquee. She had never married, moving from one man to another at fairly regular two-year intervals.
    Even Mark Gallagher had developed into a different man in the years since his marriage to Julie-steady, successful, monogamous. Or so Gail had thought until Lieutenant Cole had called to tell her that her ex-husband had been eliminated as a suspect, that he had furnished the police with the name and address of a woman with whom he claimed to have spent the better part of the missing hour between his two appointments, and that this woman had verified his alibi. Gail wondered if Julie knew about the woman, and felt a keen sense of disappointment as she remembered the old hurts from her previous marriage.
    Gail had watched the passage of time and the changes the years had brought with a calm, even detached amusement. She had seen friends switch partners and ideals, exchange one cause for another, and complain bitterly about children who were exact duplicates of themselves.
    Somehow, despite the daily atrocities she read about in the newspapers, she had grown up with the idea that people living in the free world got as good as they gave, that ultimately one ended up with exactly what one deserved.
    In the days immediately following Cindy’s death, it was the first of her illusions to vanish.

SIX
    “W e’d like you to keep an eye out for any unfamiliar faces at the church, even at the cemetery,” Lieutenant Cole was saying.
    “What? What are you talking about?” Gail’s voice was unsteady, her fingers ice-cold as she twisted her hands one inside the other.
    The lieutenant reached over and took Gail’s hands in his, a gesture she was sure was nowhere in the police instruction manual, an instinctive act of compassion. The move was typical of Lieutenant Richard Cole, a man Gail had come to regard in the last seven days as more than just an investigating officer and something of a friend. He was in contact with Gail and her family every day, keeping them apprised of what the police were doing, of any leads they were following, of the crank confessions they had received and discarded, the standard debris of any murder investigation. On more than one occasion, he had dropped over on his way home from work just to talk. He had even sat with Gail and Jack as they pored over old photo albums, filled to overflowing with pictures of their dead child. He had listened to their memories, and even if Gail had recognized in the back of her mind that he was hoping to hear something that might provide him with much-needed clues to the killer’s identity, she was gratefulnonetheless