“Ray Gorman. I’m a detective with the Monticello police department. We are investigating three cold cases involving Trudy Solomon, Ed Resnick, and Renee Carter.”
Dad added, “We’ve come to learn that these folks have various connections to the Roth family and—”
“Who?” Stanley glanced over at Rachel. “We don’t know any of those people.”
Dad kept his eyes trained on Stanley. “That’s odd, because when we spoke to Rachel in Florida, she had plenty to say about Trudy and Ed.”
Stanley leaned closer to Rachel, “What did you say to them?” But Rachel didn’t answer. She sat stone-cold still, her eyes glassy but tearless, staring straight ahead. Stanley twisted around to face Dad. “Well, I have no recollection of them.”
“Well, let me refresh your memory.” Dad licked his lips and rubbed his hands together like he was about to feast on an oversized turkey leg. I’m not a mind reader, but I would bet he was thinking: I’m going to nail these sons o’ bitches. “In 1978, Trudy Solomon—one of your coffee-shop waitresses—disappeared from the Monticello Hospital parking lot. Our investigation turned up bupkis, and it was shelved. But here’s where it gets interesting, Stanley. New evidence came to light this past September. And guess what? We found Trudy Solomon. Alive. Living in Massachusetts. And being the stickler I am for wanting to know what happened, we sought to find out if she was kidnapped or left the area of her own volition.”
“I don’t have to lishen to this bullshit. Rashel, get me outta here.”
Rachel stood up.
“Mother. Sit. Down.” Meryl reached out to grab her mother’s arm, but Rachel yanked it away.
“It’s here or the Monticello police department,” Dad said. “Take your pick.”
Rachel sat back down.
Dad continued: “Turns out Trudy ran off with Ed Resnick. Ed did some work for you, Stanley. Heating systems, I believe. Someone sympathetic to Trudy’s situation gave them five grand to start a new life, and they settled in Rochester. Trudy gave birth to twins in March 1979, then they moved to the Boston area and in 1990 they moved again to Waltham, Massachusetts. Fast-forward thirty years and Ed is murdered in his apartment and Trudy is committed to a mental hospital.”
“What does this have to do with me?” Stanley tugged at his hideous necktie making the knot smaller and smaller with each pull. His rising anger made his face redder and puffier.
“I thought we cleared up this matter back in Florida.” A bead of sweat appeared above Rachel’s upper lip; perhaps it was just the heat from the fireplace making its way from the parlor into the dining room, but no one else was sweating.
“We don’t think you were completely forthcoming,” I said to Rachel.
“Are you suggesting I was somehow involved in this murder? That’s ludicrous.”
Lori slammed down her glass, the water splashed out onto the platter of sandwiches. “Well if you weren’t involved, why were your fingerprints found in Ed and Trudy’s apartment?”
“My lord, Lori. Calm down. I already explained this to Susan. I was at Trudy’s apartment after the murder.” Rachel rolled back her shoulders and sat up a little bit taller. “I touched things. I helped Trudy pack.”
“The Waltham police lifted the prints the day of the murder,” I said. “Before you went to—”
“I was at the inn the day of the murder,” Rachel stated firmly.
“Were you, Mom?” Lori hissed. “You might want to rethink your alibi.”
“You are mistaken. I don’t know what they are telling you.” Rachel pointed her chin toward Ray and Dad. “I was at the inn.”
“Not according to Josh,” Lori countered. “He said you were out and about, gone for the entire day.”
“I . . . I . . . Josh is confused.” Rachel tightened her grip on her napkin. “I was at the inn all day. I’m sure I was. Ask Josh. He’ll tell you.”
“Jesus Christ!” Meryl jumped out of her chair. “Has it not yet dawned on you that Josh isn’t even in the room? Of course not, because you are so wrapped up in your own little world, trying to figure out how to weasel out of this. Josh despises you,” Meryl spat. “Despises!” she repeated slowly. “He arranged all this, y’know. But in the end he just couldn’t stand to be in the same room with you . . . to hear all this, and have to listen to more of your lies. Josh told us that Dad had his head in the toilet, sick to his stomach, on July twentieth, and you took off to Boston to meet a friend.”
“This is crazy. You’re all making this up to get back at me for . . . for . . . I don’t know what. For not being the perfect mother?”
“I would have settled for a mediocre mother,” Meryl muttered under her breath.
“Excuse me?” Rachel snarled. “Show some resp—”
“We believe that the day after Josh’s wedding, you went to see Ed and Trudy,” Dad interrupted. “To explain to them that the—how did you put it, Rachel?—that the gravy train had run out of gravy?”
“That’s ridiculous.” She bowed her head slightly, then suddenly jerked it back up. “Oh yes, now I remember. I went to visit an old friend. But not in Boston. She lived in Worcester.”
“Oh please.” Lori shook her head. “Like we’re to believe that.”
“I visited my friend Gloria.” Rachel asserted. “I’ve had enough of these unfounded accusations. Are you done yet?”
“Oh, we’re just getting started,” Dad said with bravado in his voice. He spent his whole life being pushed around by the likes of Stanley and Rachel, and he was warming up to give them their just desserts. “And here’s the real interesting part . . .” Dad leveled his gaze at Stanley. “Rachel told us that you went to see them.”
Like a listing ship, the attention tilted away from Rachel toward Stanley.
“What? I never went to see Ed and Trudy.” The spittle lodged between his lips went airborne. “Why would I have anything to do with those two?”
“So you do know them?” Dad asked.
Stanley grunted. “I have a vague memory of them.”
Lori pounded her fists on the table and rose suddenly, bending over the table toward Stanley. “A vague memory? You raped her!”
“Rape?” Rachel shrieked, sounding genuinely shocked, and the room listed back toward her. “That’s why they wanted money from you?” Her hands trembled as she brought them up to her cheeks. “You raped that girl? Ed wanted retribution?”
“It wasn’t rape,” Stanley huffed. “Who said it was rape? She was a willing participant.”
“What bullshit! You wouldn’t be giving them money if you simply had a consensual quickie. What an idiot I’ve been. I turned a blind eye as you chased every skirt that set foot on hotel grounds. I was willing to put up with your gallivanting, but rape?”
“Gallivanting? Well, that’s the pot calling the kettle black.” Stanley wagged his finger at Rachel. “Was there a male guest under thirty you didn’t screw?”
“Or a lifeguard? Or a waiter? Or a bellhop?” Lori seethed. “Did you ever think how embarrassing you made our lives?” Lori glanced in my direction. Perhaps she was remembering the time she and I saw her mother canoodling with a dining-room waiter in the kitchen. We went in to steal some pastries. When Lori spotted them she grabbed my arm and steered me back out, muttering “fuck her” under her breath, then storming off, later to laugh it off and tell me that I misunderstood the situation.
“What I did is nobody’s business. At least I didn’t rape anyone.” She turned to face Stanley. “My lovers were willing partners.”
“Maybe you didn’t rape anyone, Mother,” Meryl said, brandishing a fork in her mother’s direction. “But what you did was equally reprehensible, discarding a child like a piece of trash.”
“Child?” Stanley barked. “What child?”
Rachel glared directly at Meryl, her fury clearly overflowing. “I did no such thing. I mean, I did the right thing. I took care of the situation and no one got hurt. I did what was best for every—” The sentence came to
a screeching halt. Her eyes blinked furiously with the sudden realization she had slipped up, that she had vomited out a confession brought on by anger and exasperation.
“What child?” Stanley repeated, but Meryl and Rachel ignored him.
“What do you mean you took care of the situation?” Meryl shouted.
“I’m not feeling well.” She stood suddenly and her chair crashed behind her. “I’d like to leave now.”
“No one is going anywhere,” Ray said. He walked to the back of the room and lifted the poster board that was leaning against the wall.
“Are you planning to arresht us? I’ve had nuf of this. I want my lawyer.”
“We don’t have a lawyer, Stanley,” Rachel snarled, reaching down and righting her chair. “We barely have two nickels to rub together.”
“Please sit down, Rachel,” Dad said, striking a balance between civility and disdain.
Rachel looked squarely at my Dad, clearly attempting to reestablish control. But he stared back, rattling her. Her gaze darted to the poster in Ray’s hand. “More so-called evidence?” she scoffed.
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
Rachel sat back down with an audible moan, crossed her arms in defiance, and leaned back. Ray propped up the family-tree poster on the chair he'd occupied, then positioned himself against the wall facing Rachel. “Susan.”
I CLEARED my throat, then stood up and walked over to the poster. I trained my eyes on Rachel for a few seconds. She didn’t blink. I wasn’t going to let her unnerve me. I glanced over to Dad, who winked and nodded.
“A man named Salvatore Pandelo, known to his friends as Panda—who, by the way, kept a very helpful journal—was hired by someone with the initials DR to offer a lump sum cash payment to a woman named Renee Carter and threaten her with bodily harm if she didn't leave town. Only the situation got out of control and Panda killed her.”
“Killed her? That can’t—” Rachel bit her lower lip.
“You were about to say something?” I asked, giving her a few seconds to finish her sentence. “No? Okay, well, we know this because, in his journal Panda confesses to murdering Renee Carter.”
"So what dush this have to do with ush?” Stanley said brusquely.
“Good question. We asked ourselves that. We surmised that DR was David Roth from other references in Panda’s journals.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know everything my brother was up to back then.”
“Okay. But what about you, Rachel? Think you might be able to shed light on this?” I asked.
“What would I possibly know about it?” Rachel bristled.
“Oh, you know plenty, Mother,” Meryl said. “We know what you did and we have proof.”
Rachel pursed her lips. “Again with the proof. What proof? I didn’t do anything to that woman. Why would I. I’ve never even met her.”
“Mom, stop the charade.” Meryl’s gaze rested on her mother for a moment, spewing disdain and impatience at the same time. “I discovered your dirty little secret when I took up genealogy to look for long-lost relatives.” She shook her head. “I sure did find some. In fact, I came across a man who presented as a half brother.” Meryl let that sink in for a few seconds. “So given Dad’s well-known philandering ways, naturally we first thought that man was Dad’s biological son.”
Stanley thumped his open palms against the arms of his wheelchair. “What? That can't be. I was never with that woman.”
“Yes, we know that now,” Meryl said and nodded in my direction.
“We got a tip that a heavyset woman with a mole on her chin was seen hanging around with Renee Carter right before she supposedly ran off.” I watched the blood drain from Rachel’s face. Her brows knitted, her lips forming a frown. “And look who I found right here in your family tree,” I said, pointing at the picture of Diane Roth. “A heavyset woman with a mole on her chin. So we decided to pay her a visit.”
Rachel squinted. “She’s a lunatic. You can't believe a word she says.”
“Go on. I want to hear thish,” Stanley said.
“How much longer are you going to go on with this nonsense?” Rachel said, fanning herself with her napkin. “I’m not feeling well.”
“Like when you weren’t feeling well the winter of 1976?” Lori jeered. “When you needed a break from your family? You returned right before Passover in 1977. No one the wiser about your condition.” Lori air-quoted condition. “David told you about Renee's services and he arranged everything.”
“What in the goddamn world are you talking about!” Stanley barked.
Rachel suddenly wheezed and reached for her glass of iced tea.
Lori waited until she had Rachel’s full attention again, then continued, “Mother knows what I'm talking about. Right, Mom? Don’t bother answering because I’m pretty sure whatever comes out of your mouth will be a big, fat, fucking lie.”
“You have no right to talk to me that way. I did what I did to protect this family.”
“Oh that’s rich, coming from you,” Lori spat.
Stanley leaned forward and slammed his hands on the table with such force the plates and silverware rattled. “What the fuck is going on?” he roared, drawing everyone’s attention back on him, stunned expressions all around.
Then, as if on cue, everyone in the room turned to me, six pairs of eyes begging me to continue, to pull the Band-Aid off and get this over with. But this was no minor cut—this was more like sawing off a cast and revealing the milky, sore, atrophied skin underneath.
“As I was saying, we paid a visit to Diane Roth—who, by the way, is not exactly a fan of yours, Mrs. Roth.” A part of me wanted to repeat Diane’s nickname for Rachel, but even I felt that was crossing the line. “Seems she and Renee cooked up a scheme to extort money from you, threatening to expose a secret about you and David to Stanley and your kids.” I glanced over at Stanley, who appeared impatient, agitated, and confused. Meryl must have noticed this as well.
“For God’s sake,” Meryl shouted. She leaned over Rachel to face Stanley. “Just in case you didn’t get it yet, Dad . . . Mom and Uncle David had an affair, Mom got pregnant and arranged, through David, to sell the baby.” Meryl turned to Rachel, her pointer finger aimed at Rachel’s jugular. “Isn’t that right, Mother?”
“You had an affair with my brother?” Stanley was bouncing around in his chair, clearly frustrated at his inability to stand and, perhaps, squeeze his hands around Rachel’s throat. “You could have fucked anyone you wanted. Hey, you did fuck anyone you wanted. But my brother?”
To think this family was the object of my envy. The grass was not greener on their side. It was scorched and swampy and trampled on. Was it possible that when Lori could no longer hide her family’s grotesque dysfunction, she cut ties with me to save face? Maybe not consciously. But if I was embarrassed about bringing friends over to my house because my mother was out cold on the living-room couch, I can only imagine the lengths she would go to keep what was going on in her family out of public view.
“Rachel,” I began. “We spoke to Diane. We know what went down.”
Rachel turned toward me, completely ignoring Stanley’s outburst. “What do you think you know? David and I had a short-lived . . . relationship. So what?”
“Stop it, Mom. We know you parted your legs for everyone who’d give you the slightest bit of attention,” Meryl said, her voice now steady, cold and steely.
Rachel glanced at Lori, then Meryl. Perhaps realizing she’d been defeated, she took a deep breath before she spoke. “Fine, I’ll tell you what went down, as you so eloquently put it.” She looked at me with all the disdain she could muster, but unlike the past, she no longer made me feel unworthy of being in her queenly presence.
“By the time I figured out I was pregnant, I had no choice but to go full term. David told me he knew of this woman . . . some kind of baby broker. We paid Renee very handsomely to quietly make arrangements.” A single tear rolled down Rachel’s cheek. “I had no choice!
If Stanley found out about the affair and the child, he would have divorced me and I would have lost everything.” She flicked the tear from her face.
Rachel paused, perhaps waiting for Stanley to refute that last statement. But he said nothing.
“Whatever arrangement she made fell through and she was in the process of finding another couple. Then David, half in the bag, blabbed all this to Diane. David told me that Diane was so pissed off she initially wanted to expose the affair. She went to see Renee to convince her to go public, but Renee had a different idea. Demand more money and she’d split it with Diane. Diane liked the sound of that and told David to squeeze more money from me. I upped the offer and that’s the last I heard of it from anyone. David told me Renee accepted the payment and left town, Diane would keep quiet, and everything was hunky dory.”
“Hunky dory? Hunky fucking dory?” Lori seethed. “David sends his goons to threaten Renee, one of them kills her and gives away your baby, and you think this is all hunky dory?”
Meryl piled on. “Do you even care what happened to the child, or are you so twisted with vanity and selfishness you never gave it a moment’s thought?”
Rachel, breathing heavily now, turned her head to the side, pursed her lips, then let out a sigh. “Yes, I want to know. What happened to my . . . the boy?”
Rachel fussed with her wedding band as I told her about Jake Solomon. When I finished talking, the only sound I could hear was the whir of the wind against the windows. The few moments of silence were shattered by Stanley tapping on the armrest of his wheelchair.
“I knew I married a whore,” Stanley spat at Rachel. “But to shack up with David and sell—”
“You raped someone,” Rachel hurled. “You have zero moral high ground to say anything to me. I’m sick of this. You want to know what happened? What you forced me to do because you mismanaged my father’s money and squandered it away? I thought I could reason with Ed. That’s why I went to see him. I thought this was about a business arrangement in which you owed him money. He threatened me. He said nothing was going to stand in his way of getting the money he deserved. He charged at me,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I . . . I had no choice—”
The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon Page 28