“Just one last question,” I said. “What line of work did he do around here?”
“Ed was a heating and air-conditioning maintenance guy. Did work for a few of the hotels in the area. There, I answered all your questions.”
As Lenny turned to go back into his trailer, Dad said, “Thing is, Lenny, I think there are some things you’re still not telling us.”
“My brain might be a little fried, ex-Detective William Ford, but I just told you everything I know about Trudy Solomon and Ed Resnick.” Lenny spun around and flicked the butt of his cigarette over the railing. “Now leave me the fuck alone.”
“YOUR THOUGHTS?” Dad asked when I started the engine. Cold air blasted from the vents.
“I think you’re right what you said back there. I think he’s still holding something back. But he did give us some info we can follow up on. Looks like Trudy and Ed headed to Ed’s mom in Rochester. I can do a search for an M. Resnick in that area. See what I can find out about her. Might have to add Rochester to our travel itinerary.”
“After your mom’s father died, I never thought I would set foot in Rochester again. He used to drag me there on business trips. Back then, him and his brothers would get together and party ’til dawn. Your grandfather was the only one of the four brothers that left the area. Your mom was eleven at the time.”
“Funny, I don’t recall Grandpa being much of a party animal.” I clearly remembered him scolding my mother about drinking too much.
“About the time you were a toddler, he got himself cleaned up. His younger brother died in a drunk driving accident. The oldest brother died from liver disease.” Dad sighed. “That will take the wind out of your sails.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over us, brought on by this detoured conversation about my mother’s uncles. After a few minutes of solemnity, I intruded on the quiet. “I don’t think we are looking at a kidnapping case, Dad. It sounds like Trudy and Ed planned to leave, and someone helped finance it—Ed’s mother, a relative, a girlfriend of Trudy’s, perhaps. Someone who can easily part with five grand.”
“So what’s our next move?”
“I would love to have a chat with Scott. Find out why he was visiting Trudy and Ed in oh-seven. Problem is, I don’t think Eldridge is going to fund a little side trip to Florida.”
“I’ve got some money socked away,” Dad said. “And I can’t think of a better way to spend it.”
“When the twins turn eighteen and need tuition for college, I'll remind them that their great-granddad tapped into their college fund because hunting down the Roths in Florida was more important than their educational future.”
Dad laughed. “Those boys are going to Harvard on a full scholarship. They won’t be needing any of my hard-earned dough.”
WE HAD a couple of hours to kill, so I headed to the police station. Dad wanted to bring Eldridge up to speed on the case and I wanted to see if Marty was able to get in touch with Mordecai Little about the surveillance camera. We had scheduled calls with the ex-cocktail waitress and the hotel guest for later in the afternoon. Both preferred audio over visual, so no faces for Dad to read. And in the evening, Dad was primed to chat with Clara Cole about Trudy’s missed doctor’s appointment. We also planned to hit up Trudy’s old neighbor, Eleanor Campbell, tomorrow—unless the predicted snowstorm held us hostage in our homes. Luckily, she still lived in Monticello so we didn’t have to go far. And the Facebook list grew by one person overnight—an ex-bartender named Carlos Rodriguez. Claimed he overheard an argument between Stanley Roth and Trudy a few weeks before she went missing. He thought it might have relevance to the case.
“Dad, why don’t you head in? I’ve got a few calls to make. I’ll catch up with you in a few.”
I actually didn’t have any calls to make but my leg was aching and I didn’t want him worrying when he saw me limp toward the front door. I sat in the car, the heat blasting and Bruce Springsteen blaring. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. I wiped my sweaty hands on my coat, adjusted my hat, pulled on my gloves, and stepped out of the car. There were about three inches of snow on the ground.
Dad was in Eldridge’s office, filling him in on our conversation with Brian the Lifeguard and our second chat with Lenny Berman. I planted myself at my desk and fired up my computer. An email from Carlos Rodriguez was sandwiched between a New York Times news story about climate change and a CVS ExtraCare coupon for household cleaning products. Said he could FaceTime on Monday morning at ten o’clock. A PS at the end of the email: I remember you and Lori Roth ordering Shirley Temples with extra cherries. I remembered drinking those sweet concoctions at the bar. But I had no recollection of a bartender named Carlos. I googled him. He was a renowned “urban artist,” living in SoHo, who painted murals for city beautification projects. His commissioned work was on display in all five boroughs, as well as in cities across the United States and Europe. I clicked over to his website, BlightToBeauty.com. A cool animation erupted on the screen—a shadowy figure spray-painting a funky, graffiti-style Blight to Beauty logo onto the side of a building. Rodriguez’s bio revealed that he lived with his husband, George, and two tabby cats, April and Leslie.
Marty tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to follow him to Eldridge’s office. He closed the door behind me and motioned for me to sit in one of the two chairs in front of Eldridge’s desk. Dad stood to leave, but I let him know that he was welcome to stay. He sat back down.
“I got in touch with Mordecai Little,” Marty said. He paused, perhaps waiting for some kind of signal to keep talking, but Eldridge didn’t move.
“Yeah? And?” I said impatiently.
“The camera was installed a year ago, so it was there and I missed it during the investigation. Granted, the thing is the size and color of a cue ball and camouflaged under the white eave, but—”
Eldridge cut him off. “There’s enough blame to go around, let’s just continue.”
“He said sometimes it’s on and sometimes it’s off. All depends on whether or not he remembers to activate it. He also said he rarely checks it, only if he suspects something has been stolen from his warehouse. The good news—it’s a wireless webcam and whatever is recorded he saves on his computer.”
“So he might have footage from that night,” Eldridge said to me.
“Except he won’t give us the log-in info,” Marty added. “He wants to be present when we look at the footage. And he wasn’t planning on coming back to the area until spring.”
“Can I talk to him? Explain the situation . . . the urgency,” I said.
“We explained the situation to him,” Eldridge said. “He said he’ll call us tomorrow. See what he can do about coming up sooner. But with the storm coming, we might be looking at next week.”
“Not sure what you’re hoping to find, Susan. It’s just footage from outside the warehouse,” Marty said. “What we really need is footage from inside.”
“It’s something,” I seethed. “Which is better than the whole lot of nothin’ I have now.”
THE PHONE lay flat on my kitchen counter as I tapped out the number. The ex-cocktail waitress, Rita Mayer, answered with a singsong hello.
“Hello Rita. We got you on speaker phone. I’m here with retired Detective William Ford.”
After some chitchat about the inclement weather, now forecast to be an ice storm, I asked her about Trudy.
“I really hope I’m not wasting your time, but your Facebook post got me reminiscing about those days, and well, I have a story to share that might shed some light on what was going on with Trudy and Ben at that time.”
“Rest assured you are not wasting our time,” Dad said. “We’ve spoken to several people who thought the same thing. And they really helped us.”
“Okay, well, can I give you some history first? Put my story in context?”
“Sure,” I said.
“When I first started working summers at the hotel, I was a cocktail waitress. That was 1974. I was eighteen,
on my own for the first time. I was starting college that fall and thought this would be a fun way to make money. Trudy and I roomed together that summer in the staff quarters. She was five years older than me. I thought of her like a big sister. I remember singing silly songs with her. She could be quite funny.”
“Did she confide in you about what was going on in her life?” I asked as I retrieved a pitcher of iced tea from the refrigerator.
“Yeah. I could tell her stuff and she could tell stuff to me. She didn’t have many friends, pretty much stayed in most evenings. It wasn’t that she was shy, she just wasn’t super social, if you know what I mean. Introverted.”
“So she wasn’t seeing anyone at the time?” I asked, then turned to Dad. “Want some?” I mouthed, holding up the pitcher. He nodded. I grabbed two glasses from the cabinet.
“Actually, she was. That’s when I first met Ben. She was dating him—they had met the year before. He was a local guy, supervised the housekeepers and porters. When I came back the following summer, they were married. Which surprised me. He wasn’t a very nice guy. I’d say rough around the edges. Not too attractive neither. He looked like that troll in the Three Billy Goats Gruff book.”
“I’ve looked over all my old notes and for some reason neither my partner nor I interviewed you in 1978,” Dad said, then took a sip of iced tea. “Oooh, that's good," he mouthed to me.
“I worked summers there until 1977, the year before Trudy disappeared. I had no clue about it until I saw your Facebook post.”
“So you didn’t keep in touch with her?” Dad asked.
“By 1977, we weren’t close anymore. She’d stopped confiding in me. Ben was a control freak and a bit of a goon. It was like she was prohibited from socializing with the girls from the hotel. I never heard him threaten her, but he had a threatening presence, if that makes any sense. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she ran away and tried to hide from him.”
“We think Trudy ran off with another man,” I said. “Earlier today I emailed you a sketch and a newspaper clipping of a guy named Ed Resnick. Does he look familiar to you? Did Trudy ever mention him?”
“I have it open on my screen now. Sorry. He doesn’t look familiar. And I’m pretty sure I never heard the name Ed Resnick.”
“Do you think if Ben found out who Trudy ran away with that he would harm that person?” Dad asked.
“I think he had the temper for it. That last summer I was there, I snuck into the housekeeper’s hut to get extra towels one time and I saw him shove his sister to the floor. She was holding a baby in her arms. Ben yelled at her to get off the property, and said something like ‘I told you never to bring that kid up here. Get out before you’re seen.’ He was a bully. I confronted him and thought he was going to hit me, but he just stomped away. Then I asked his sister if she was okay. She said yes and left in a hurry. But I could tell she was frightened of him.”
“His sister? You sure?” Dad asked.
“Yeah. I didn’t know it at the time, but when I told Trudy about it, she said it was Ben’s sister. I think her name was Joy . . . no, Joyce. She was about ten years older than Ben. Single mom. Lived in Middletown. Trudy told me the baby was adopted and Ben helped out with expenses. Trudy was miffed at that, because money was tight for them all the time.”
When we ran out of questions, I thanked Rita and disengaged the speaker.
“Man, o’ fucking mighty,” Dad said, shaking his head. “So Ben has a sister. That was news to me.”
“Yeah. News to me too. I’m surprised that a single woman could adopt a baby back then. Especially a woman that doesn’t have the means to support one. Did that strike you as odd?”
“I guess.” Dad let out a slow, long breath. “Time to have another chat with Ben.”
“Do you think it’s worth chatting with his sister too . . . if she’s still alive?”
“Hell ya. I’ll chase that down. Who’s up next?”
“Michael Coleman, a hotel guest who was friends with Scott. We got about twenty minutes.”
“You got beer?” Dad asked. “That iced tea was nice, but I’m in the mood for a brewsky.”
“Help yourself. If you don’t like what’s in the fridge, there are some craft beers in the cooler downstairs. Ray’s doing some beer-of-the-month-club thing and it’s pretty hit or miss.”
Dad stared at his choices in the refrigerator, then retreated to the basement. He came back with an IPA from a Vermont brewery and sat down at the dining-room table.
“Let’s get through this next call and then run down all the shit we still need to do.” Dad took a sip of beer, then examined the label. “Pretty good.”
Michael said he would call us. I was hoping the guy could shed some sunshine on what Scott was up to that summer. I whiled away the time by updating the Trudy time line and rearranging the white board. I moved Ed Resnick from the Suspect column to the Victim column. We were fairly confident Ed did not coerce Trudy—she seemed a willing participant in the plan to leave the area. If she was scared and he was protecting her, who was he protecting her from? And why? And did that have something to do with his murder thirty years later?
It was already ten past three. Ten minutes past the time Michael was supposed to call. Dad stood up, paced the room a couple of times. He walked out to the living room. A few minutes later he was back in the dining room. He pulled out a chair. I thought he was going to sit down, but he pushed it back in and walked into the kitchen. A few minutes later he came back into the dining room with a can of peanuts.
“Want some?” Dad placed the peanut tin on the dining room table.
“If Michael doesn’t call within the next fifteen minutes, I’ll email him, reschedule, okay?” I grabbed a handful of peanuts.
“I need to be back at five o’clock. That’s when I’m meeting with the nurse . . . Clara Cole. And I got that poker game with the guys at—” My phone rang. “Finally.”
I swiped to answer. Before I had a chance to say hello, I got bombarded with a slew of breathless apologies.
“No worries, totally understand,” I replied. “Hold on while I put you on speaker phone.”
“Michael, hey, this is retired Detective William Ford. Thanks for speaking with us today.”
“Sorry for being late. A meeting ran long, then my wife called. Crazy day.”
“Well, we’ll try to keep it short,” I said. “You mentioned a conversation you had with Scott Roth that you think may have a bearing on this case?”
“Yeah. I actually saw that newspaper article about finding Trudy Solomon before I saw your post on Facebook. It reminded me of something Scott told me about a week after her disappearance. Scott and I, and a few other guys, went to a local bar and he got pretty drunk, well, we both got drunk. Anyway, we were all coming up with theories about Trudy’s disappearance. Scott was pretty quiet at first, but then he turned to us, and very seriously said, ‘She was probably murdered. And I’m pretty sure my father has something to do with it.’”
“Did you believe him?” Dad asked, his eyes wide, his mouth hung open.
“Stanley was a mean SOB, but this sounded like the ramblings of a drunk teenager pissed at his dad.”
“Did Scott say anything after that?” I asked.
“He laughed and said something to the effect that he was just messing with us. But later that night, as we stumbled home, he said he wasn’t kidding, that he had reason to believe his father was involved in her disappearance. So it was hard to know what to believe. I told him he should say something to the police. He said he would. And that I should just stay out of it.”
“Well, he never gave a statement,” Dad told him. “In fact, he was shipped off to his aunt’s house, maybe with a stern warning to keep his mouth shut.”
“Man, he swore to me he would. Otherwise, I might have . . . well, I might have said something. I bet Scott was relieved to learn Trudy was alive this whole time. That his father didn’t murder her, like he thought.”
“Well,
he knew a while ago,” Dad said. “We recently discovered that Scott knew she was alive back in 2007. So the question is, why did Scott think his father killed Trudy in 1978?”
“That I can’t help you with. I left the hotel a couple of weeks after Scott departed. That was my last summer there before college, and I never went back.”
“How well did you know Scott?” I asked.
“Pretty well. My parents started going to the Cuttman when I was thirteen years old, and that’s when I first met Scott. We would stay there for four weeks, usually all of August. Scott and I would hang out together. He said he preferred hanging out with the guests, not the staff. It was clear he hated the whole hotel scene.”
“Did you keep in touch with Scott after that summer?” I asked.
“No. He was what I would call a summer friend. But I ran into him in November of 2001. I remember because it was soon after 9/11 and we chatted about it. He knew someone. I knew someone. Anyway, we bumped into each other on a beach in Florida. Told me his parents sold the hotel in ’ninety-five and were swimming in dough. I asked him if he got a piece of the action and he said he wanted nothing to do with his father or the hotel. But he was pretty successful by then—owned a few car dealerships along the Florida coast—so it wasn’t like he was hard up for money. I do keep in touch with his sister, Meryl, through Facebook. She’s told me about his failed marriages and his kids. But he’s not on Facebook, and the few times I’ve emailed him, I’ve gotten no replies. If he’s shunning the past, he’s doing a bang-up job of it.”
No sooner than we hung up on Michael, my phone rang. Eldridge flashed on the screen. I let it go to voice mail. I was in no mood to chat about Calvin Barnes. When the voice-mail message registered, I hit play. “Hey Susan. I just heard from John Minot. He just ID’d the bones. Call me ASAP.”
THE SNOW was falling at a pretty good clip. Six inches on the ground. Supposedly four more to go until this changed over to sleet and ice. Eldridge offered to discuss the Jane Doe case over the phone, but I told him we could stop at the precinct en route to Horizon Meadows. We still had enough time to meet with Eldridge before Dad’s chat with Clara Cole.
The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon Page 10