by Lois Winston
Being in construction, Owens probably knew guys who knew guys, but he’d always maintained a squeaky-clean reputation. Would a man like that hire a hit man?
Mickey Rigato was a state assemblyman from Union County. He’d been in New Jersey politics for decades and had a reputation for getting things done—for the right price, if you believed the rumors. Then again, pay-to-play had always gone hand-in-hand with New Jersey politics. Knowing how to work the political system for your constituents didn’t mean you’d go to extreme lengths to cover up an old crime.
Quarterback Rodney Renquist had spent his entire adult life in football, playing first at Rutgers University, then several years for the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins before injuries forced him off the gridiron and into a career as a college coach back at Rutgers. He had established a charitable foundation that raised millions of dollars in scholarship money for inner-city kids. Everything I knew about the man placed him firmly in the “good guy” category. Was he making amends for a crime he committed half a century ago? If so, I didn’t see him compounding that crime by going after Lupe.
The fifth boy, Kirk Zysmerski, was apparently the one who died of a drug overdose shortly after graduating. I returned to my earlier thought when Detective Spader first told me of the overdose. Given the decade in which Zysmerski died, had he over-indulged in recreational drugs or had his drug use resulted from a need to deaden the memory of a certain event in which he’d taken part? Unfortunately, the answer would remain buried with the deceased.
“These men couldn’t possibly be responsible for what happened to Lupe, could they?” asked Andrew.
“Probably not, but I’d like to be absolutely certain, wouldn’t you?”
He turned back toward me and nodded. “Of course, and I’m sure if there is a connection, the police will find it.”
I hoped so. Whoever ran down Lupe and those other two women deserved to go to prison for the rest of his life.
Detective Spader claimed the four men all had alibis for the time of the hit-and-run. However, powerful men have ways of creating an impenetrable wall between them and their criminal acts. They rarely commit any physical crime themselves, instead relying on others to do their dirty work for them. By throwing enough money at the right person, a powerful man with connections (and what powerful man is without connections?) can buy his way out of any situation, no matter how compromising or criminal.
All of these men had much to lose from even a whiff of scandal. An accusation of rape stunk far greater than a mere whiff, even if the crime had occurred half a century ago.
Had one of them gone to extremes to keep the story firmly buried in the past? And if so, how had he discovered Lupe was investigating what had happened to her mother and Elena that night?
I pondered these questions as I drove home from the hospital. When Elena sat down with Lupe and me at the coffee house on Friday, she claimed she’d remained silent about the rape for the last fifty years. Given her refusal to divulge the names of the boys at the party, I was quite certain she hadn’t spoken to anyone else after she left us, especially since she now regretted telling us what had happened to her and Carmen that night.
Lupe had told Andrew, but he swore he hadn’t mentioned the incident to anyone. Had Lupe spoken to someone else besides her husband and me? Perhaps someone at Our Lady of Peace? Surely Lupe wouldn’t have been foolish enough to divulge her reason for wanting to view the yearbook. Or had her rage so consumed her that she lost all common sense and spit out accusations the moment she saw the yearbook photos?
Even though all four men had alibis for yesterday afternoon, one of them might have a relationship with someone who worked at the school, someone Lupe spoke with or who had overheard a conversation she had with someone else. If Lupe had mentioned the rape, that person might have placed a phone call afterwards—a phone call that led directly to the hit-and-run.
I certainly wasn’t about to go snooping around the school asking questions of someone who might have a connection to a rapist/murderer. Still, with Spader refusing to draw a line leading from the rape to the hit-and-run, I owed it to Lupe to make absolutely certain—beyond the smallest iota of doubt—that the two incidents were absolutely, positively, in no way on God’s green earth, connected. If I didn’t, my guilt would prevent me from getting a decent night’s sleep for the remainder of my life.
What I needed was a credible way to question a coach, a real estate developer, an attorney, and a state assemblyman without raising any suspicions or tipping off the wrong person. And even if I did come up with a way to speak with each of them, how could I steer the conversation to a party that had taken place fifty years ago that would connect one of them to yesterday’s hit-and-run without putting my own life in jeopardy?
That question plagued me throughout the night. Sometimes when I’m trying to solve a problem, the answer will often come to me in the middle of the night as I’m trying to fall asleep or while I’m in the shower. I’ve often used my finger to scrawl my thoughts on a steam-covered glass shower enclosure before I forget them. And I always keep a pad and paper on my bedside table because if I don’t immediately write down the answer that comes to me, it’s gone in the morning. I might remember I solved a problem the night before, but in dawn’s early light, that solution evaporates like an elusive dream.
~*~
Unfortunately, no such solution presented itself to me throughout the long sleepless night or while I showered the next morning. The pad beside my bed lay open to a pristine white page; no brilliant idea marred the steamy glass as a steady stream of hot water pounded my groggy body. I left for work tired, grumpy, and thoroughly annoyed by my lack of success.
When I arrived at work, I headed directly to the break room for a much-needed infusion of caffeine and a sugar rush. Cloris took one look at me, and asked, “What’s with the scowl? This morning’s selection of pastries not to your liking?”
“Huh?”
“You’ve been frowning at that box of mini croissants for a full minute. Either you can’t make up your mind between chocolate raspberry and almond peach, or you don’t care for either choice, which I seriously doubt. I’ve known you too long.”
I glanced at Cloris, then at the empty plate in my hand. Had I really been staring at the bakery box for an extended period of time? Or had I fallen asleep on my feet? Anything was possible.
I shook away the massive cobweb that had a stranglehold on my brain and filled a plate with one of each flavor. “It’s not the croissants. They look delicious.”
Cloris refilled her coffee cup and poured one for me. She then helped herself to a chocolate raspberry croissant. “Missing Zack?”
I added cream to my coffee before downing half the cup in one long swig. “Without question but that’s not my problem this morning.”
“Then what? I can’t figure out if you’re sleep deprived or angry over something. Or perhaps you’re angry over being sleep-deprived?”
“All of the above.”
“Spill.”
I glanced down at the half-cup of coffee in my hand. What was she talking about? I hadn’t spilled anything. Then I realized she’d spoken figuratively, not literally. Boy, was I out of it this morning!
As we headed to our cubicles, I caught Cloris up on the events that had transpired since we’d last spoken of Lupe. “I need to figure out a way to talk to these guys to prove whether or not one of them had anything to do with the hit-and-run.”
Cloris followed me into my cubicle and settled into my spare chair. I collapsed into my desk chair.
After popping the remainder of her chocolate raspberry croissant into her mouth, Cloris pointed to my computer screen. “The answer is staring you in the face, Sherlock.”
I turned to look at the screen, which displayed one of the layout pages for Lupe’s photo album. Great. I didn’t even remember stopping in my cubicle and turning on my computer this morning before heading to the break room, but I must have. I looked down and reali
zed I wasn’t wearing my coat. I spied it hanging on the hook beside the entrance to my cubicle. Had I been sleepwalking? I turned back to Cloris. “How do you figure?”
She sighed. “You need to go home and get some sleep because the Anastasia Pollack I know would have figured this out immediately.”
I took a bite of croissant and washed it down with a swig of coffee before speaking. “Okay, we’ve established I’m not operating on all cylinders this morning. So how about if you state the obvious solution that I’m obviously missing.”
“Why not interview them for your photo album article for the magazine?”
“And ask them what? Did you rape a classmate fifty years ago and try to kill her daughter the other day?”
“I’d be a bit more subtle.”
“You think?” However, her suggestion began to sound less absurd the more I mulled her words around in my foggy brain.
“These men will be celebrating their fiftieth class reunion this year. I could approach the interviews from that perspective, tying them into the importance of preserving family memories for their children, grandchildren, and generations to come.”
“Exactly. You’re a crafts editor, not an investigative reporter. This wouldn’t be a hardball interrogation that might raise suspicions, but you can pepper the interview with a few questions about regrets and youthful indiscretions, gauging their reactions.”
Cloris was an absolute genius. “Because sometimes body language and what’s left unsaid speaks volumes more than actual words. This could work.”
“You’ll have to interview more than the four men you suspect of the rape.”
“Of course.”
“Make the group a cross-section of seniors in their late sixties and older—white color, blue color, men, women. Perhaps set up the interviews to speak with husbands and wives together since it’s the wives who usually take care of preserving family photos and memorabilia.”
“Good idea.”
“And see if Naomi will allow you to take along our staff photographer. People love getting their picture in a national magazine, especially politicians.”
She held my gaze for a moment, her underlying subtext written across her face. The staff photographer shot my craft spreads in our studio on the first floor or on location shoots, but unless we needed a professional portrait for a celebrity, I’d always handled any shots of guest crafters and other mere mortals on my own. I didn’t need our six-foot-three burly photographer for his skills with a camera. I needed him for his muscle in case one of my subjects saw through me. “I doubt Naomi will agree to that.”
Cloris shrugged. “You never know unless you ask.”
The photographer notwithstanding, Cloris’s suggestion had perked me up like a shot of triple-strength espresso. I raised my coffee cup in a mock salute. “I’m in your debt.”
“Yes, you are.” She stood and took a bow. As she departed my cubicle, she stopped, glanced back over her shoulder, and offered me a catbird grin. “And you’re welcome.”
Once I finished my coffee, I made my way to Naomi’s office, only to meet up with her halfway down the corridor. Kim O’Hara, Naomi’s fifty-percent Irish, fifty-percent Chinese, one hundred-percent efficient assistant, followed at her heels. “Got a moment?” I asked, stopping in front of them.
Naomi glanced over at Kim. “How’s our time?”
Kim glanced down at her phone. “You’re three minutes early.”
Turning back to me, Naomi said, “I’m on my way to a meeting upstairs, but I can spare a minute or two.”
I quickly explained Cloris’s ingenious idea for expanding the craft spread on scrapbooking to include interviewing various seniors. Naomi struck a thoughtful pose, her index finger pressing against her chin as she mulled over my suggestion. “Yes, I like this idea.”
She turned back to Kim. “Make a note that we need to pull two additional editorial pages from one of the other sections for Anastasia.”
I held a virtual breath as I asked one more question. “Would it be okay if I take the staff photographer with me on the interviews?”
Naomi raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“To get some shots of the interviewees.”
“But why do you need a photographer?”
I didn’t. “Some of the people I have in mind to interview are local celebrities of a sort.”
She practically snorted. “Of a sort. But you’re not interviewing Hollywood prima donnas with demanding publicists. You’re more than capable of shooting a few candid photos of your subjects, Anastasia. You’ve done so countless times in the past. We don’t need to increase your budget for the issue to have the photographer accompany you.”
I had expected her answer. I was on my own with no backup muscle to protect me if I wanted to question these guys. I’d better not screw up.
I spent a huge chunk of the remainder of my workday on the phone, setting up interviews. At first, I thought I’d have a tough time getting the four men to agree to sit down with me, given who they were and the fact that I worked for a third-rate women’s magazine sold at supermarket checkout counters. I’d even devised a list of bullet points to employ if I needed to do a bit of verbal cajoling. To my surprise, though, none of them needed their egos stroked. All immediately agreed, eager for the national publicity.
Vanity, thy name is over-the-hill male baby boomers.
The hard part over, I lined up a few additional people to interview by contacting several seniors I’d met when I moonlighted last summer as the arts and crafts teacher at the Sunnyside of Westfield Assisted Living and Rehabilitation Center.
Fame is addictive, no matter how late in life it comes. Having already experienced a bit of celebrity from taking part in a recently published issue, the Sunnyside men and women were more than eager for an additional opportunity to extend their newfound status as kings and queens of their particular fiefdom.
Now all I needed to do was come up with a list of questions that might wheedle some useful information out of my four prime suspects without raising their suspicions.
I’d scheduled two of the men’s interviews for the next day and two for Friday, wanting to get them done as soon as possible before I lost my nerve. I would have preferred tackling them all in one day, but the distance between locations prevented so tight a schedule. I left the stress-free Sunnyside residents’ interviews for early next week.
Every time my phone rang throughout the day, I sent up two silent prayers: one, that Lupe had come out of the coma and showed no lasting complications and two, that Detective Spader had caught the hit-and-run creep and found absolutely no connection to any of the four men. I received seven calls but only two on my cell phone, both wrong numbers.
By quitting time each of my two prayers remained unanswered, but at least I ended the day having finally devised a series of non-confrontational, lightweight questions for the interviews. Would they work? I wouldn’t know until I asked them.
Of course, since I’d become the universe’s favorite punching bag, I wasn’t surprised to find myself stalled between exits in yet another traffic jam on Rt. 78. I grabbed my phone and sent Alex a text: Traffic mess on 78. ETA unknown. Dinner in fridge. Don’t wait.
He replied a few seconds later: Will wait. Text when ur off 78.
As I sat and sat and sat, only inching a few feet forward every ten minutes or so, a cold rain began to fall. Every so often my headlights picked up a snowflake mixed in with the icy raindrops. I flicked on my wipers and cranked up the heat.
I could have passed the time listening to music, meditating, or playing brain games to help ward off dementia in my old age. Instead, this worrywart spent the next ninety minutes imagining all that could go wrong during my interviews tomorrow. By the time I arrived back in Westfield, I’d woven myself into a complete basket case.
Then I turned into my driveway and burst into tears.
THIRTEEN
I’ve never been one to wax poetic over an automobile. I don’t underst
and the all-consuming passion men have for horsepower-filled shiny metal boxes. As far as I’m concerned, all a car needs is safety and reliability. However, seeing the silver Boxster parked in my driveway filled me with uncontrollable emotion.
Zack was back, signaling that all would eventually be right with my world. Plus, given the darkened apartment above my garage and my kitchen ablaze with lights, odds pointed to dinner waiting for me. I turned off the engine, wiped away my tears, and raced from my car through the icy rain to my back door.
He greeted me with a smile that silently announced he had missed me as much as I had missed him. I flew into his arms, unconcerned that my mother-in-law sat in full view of my passionate welcome home kiss. If we’d been alone, I’d have given him quite a bit more. Right there in the kitchen.
“About time you decided to grace us with your presence,” said Lucille. “Do you have any idea what time it is, Anastasia? I shouldn’t have to wait halfway to bedtime for dinner. But then again, thoughtfulness isn’t a trait with which you have even a passing acquaintance, is it?”
I breathed in the garlicky aroma of sautéing seafood, a far cry from the turkey burgers and string beans Lucille would have had to settle for had I arrived home on time, and bit back the comment sitting on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I chose to ignore her. No way would I let that acerbic communist curmudgeon spoil the mood for me.
“The ducks cooperated?” I asked Zack, my arms still encircling his neck.
“Not a camera-shy one among them. Turns out Madagascar Pochards are aware of their circumstances and want off the critically endangered list. You’d think they’d seen Sunset Boulevard because they immediately harnessed their inner Norma Desmond.”
“Ready, willing, and able for their close-ups?”
“Without a doubt. I have it on good authority the Ford Modeling Agency is preparing contracts as we speak.”