...And Never Let HerGo

and would call to say good night when he got home about nine.”
    “What were you doing that evening?”
    “I was going to a swimming meet at the Arden Swim Club. I was director of the summer program at the time, and Tatnall’s swimming team was swimming against Arden. I often went to the swimming meets as support, [and] both of my children were swimming in the meet.”
    Debby explained that her son, Steve, didn’t drive but that Victoria had driven in her own car and joined them at the meet. Afterward, she gave her children money to pick up take-out food at T.G.I. Friday’s. They all ate together in the kitchen at home.
    “What did you do for the remainder of the evening?”
    “I was sitting in the kitchen reading the paper, finishing a glass of wine—by myself—and my children had gone to other parts of the house.” Debby said she had cleaned the kitchen, locked the doors, checked on her children in their rooms, and then gone to her own room on the second floor, at about ten-thirty.
    “Did you make any telephone calls that evening?” Wharton asked.
    “. . . at approximately ten-thirty, I called Tom Capano . . . at his house at Grant Avenue.”
    “Did you speak to him?”
    “No.”
    “Did you leave a message?”
    “Just saying I was home and, ‘If you don’t get in too late, I’d love to hear from you. If not, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Good night.’ ”
    Debby said she got ready for bed then, and was in bed watching
ER.
“I was watching it as I left the message and recall seeing a close-up shot of the black doctor on the show—I think his name is Eriq La Salle.”
    “ER
is on from when to when?”
    “Ten to eleven.”
    Debby said she had dozed off with the television on when she was awakened by a phone call from Tom. She glanced at the screen and saw David Letterman, who seemed to be in the middle of his opening monologue.
    “What was the nature of that call?” Wharton asked. “What happened in that phone conversation?”
    “I said, ‘Hello,’ ” Debby replied, “and he said, ‘Don’t you
ever
leave a message on my voice mail.’ I was puzzled because I had done that many times before. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t leave a message on his machine. . . . He was very irritated.”
    “Tell us about the rest of his conversation.”
    “I talked about what I had done and the swimming meet, and he asked me if I could help him do something tomorrow morning . . . I told him that I had to go to Tatnall. The next day was payday, and that I had to distribute the paychecks.”
    “What was his reaction to that?” Wharton asked.
    “He got angry. Tatnall School is kind of a hot button with us. At the time I was working these two jobs that required more than enough of my time, and he felt very clearly that I was being taken advantage of by the school, and so whenever we talked about Tatnall, he would get very agitated.”
    Debby testified that the call had ended badly. “I was upset by the tone of the conversation. He wanted to cut the call off and I didn’t want to hang up when I was upset. [The conversation ended] rather abruptly.”
    Disturbed, Debby had tried to go to sleep but had only tossed and turned for about forty-five minutes. She called Tom back but the phone rang four times with no answer. She didn’t want to leave a message and make him angrier, so she hung up.
    “What happened then?” Wharton asked.
    “Very shortly—within a minute—the phone rang back one long ring [the ring of a *69 callback] and I picked up the phone and said, ‘Hello,’ and heard nothing. Then it rang within seconds—a normal ring—and I picked up the phone and said, ‘Hello,’ and he said, ‘Hello.’ He said, ‘I *69’d you. Why did you hang up on me?’ ”
    This conversation with Tom was much friendlier than the last. It was past midnight. The longtime lovers chatted easily, and Tom asked Debby again for her help the next day. She said she would go in to Tatnall very early and try to get the paychecks handed out so that she could help him. She had no idea what he wanted her to do.
    F ERRIS W HARTON believed that in all likelihood, Tom had just killed Anne Marie, or perhaps was in the process of doing so when Debby left the message on his voice mail at ten-thirty. The shrill ring of the phone would have frightened him. At that point, Tom couldn’t have known that Gerry would help him dispose of her body. Was it possible he expected Debby to do that? Was that why he needed her