Murder Deja Vu

Kraus. Betsy Ferrar, nee Donagan. She graduated from Boston University the same year Reece went to prison. Now married, she lived in Storrs, Connecticut, with two college-age kids. Her husband taught at UConn. She’d be the first stop on Clarence’s journey, and the most important, which is why he told Reece to forget Kraus for the time being.
    He drove to Storrs without calling, sure if he did, she’d refuse to see him. His GPS took him right to her door. She answered, leaving the storm door closed and, Clarence presumed, locked. With a dish cloth clutched in her hand, she studied her visitor with a quizzical expression.
    “I don’t need whatever you’re selling,” she said through the glass door.
    “I’m selling a man’s life,” Clarence said. “Reece Daughtry’s .”
    Her rosy cheeks paled, and eyes that at first sparkled dimmed at the sound of Reece’s name.
    “I think you can help him, Mrs. Ferrar.”
    “I told everything I knew at the trial.”
    “Did you? I think not.”
    “Well, he’s done it again. Isn’t that proof enough?”
    “Not if he’s being framed, which he is. Please. I’ll only take a few minutes of your time.” Clarence saw the conflict in her body language. “Please.”
    Her hand reached for the door, then pulled back. “Who are you?”
    He pulled out a card. “I’m the investigator for Reece Daughtry’s attorney, Jeraldine De Bolt.”
    She hesitated, wiped her hands on the towel, which she’d been doing nervously the whole time. Then she opened the door. “Come in, but I don’t know how I can help.”
    She bypassed a neat living room—the kind used only for company or special occasions—and led Clarence into a comfortable but lived-in den. He smelled something baking—an apple pie, maybe, or a cobbler. A collection of Hummel figurines clustered under a framed landscape that looked as if the artist painted it with cotton candy. The requisite family photos shared space with other accessories on an overstuffed bookcase. He’d obviously interrupted her because a book lay open, spine up, on the sofa table. She gestured to a stiff-looking wingback chair. Clarence sat while she perched at the end of the sofa. He usually made small talk to put his subject as ease, but with time running out, he went straight to the reason he’d come.
    “You lied at the trial,” he said.
    Betsy Donagan Ferrar squared her shoulders and straightened. “If you’ve come here to accuse me of lying under oath when a man’s life hung on my testimony, I suggest you leave.”
    “I believe you thought you were telling the truth, but you weren’t.”
    “I was.”
    Her words said one thing but without the indignity Clarence expected from someone just called a liar. “The truth as you remembered it. But you didn’t remember everything from that night, did you?”
    “Of course I remembered everything.” She stood. “I want you to leave. If you don’t, I’ll call the police.”
    “Give me a minute, please. Let me back up. You said you were with Jordan Kraus that night, correct?”
    Hesitating, she lowered herself into her seat. “Yes, I was. Are you telling me I wasn’t? Is that what I’m lying about? Because there were other people who saw us together. You must know that.”
    “Yes, I do. You met Kraus at the bar and went to the Daughtry party with him. The two of you stayed awhile, then he invited you to an apartment he’d borrowed from a friend who was out of town. I guess to have a place to go if he scored.”
    Mrs. Ferrar’s face reddened. “Yes. In retrospect, I believe that was his plan.”
    “And you had a lot to drink, didn’t you?” Clarence noticed she hesitated before she answered.
    “I didn’t think I did, but apparently I drank more than I thought. I said that at the trial. It was embarrassing to do so, not only because of Jordan’s intentions, but because my parents were in the courtroom for moral support.”
    “But you didn’t mention you passed out. In fact, you said you remembered every minute of that night with Kraus. That’s not true, is it?”
    “I…I didn’t pass out. I couldn’t have. I would have remembered.”
    “Not if you were drugged.” Clarence couldn’t tell if she knew she’d passed out or if the idea had never occurred to her, but it didn’t seem like it had.
    “Who would drug me? And don’t you think I’d remember if I passed out?”
    “Not with certain drugs. And that’s what I think happened.”
    She turned from Clarence