DNA evidence would rule out Stephanie hiring someone to kill Legs, unless she hired someone who could be directly tied to her, like a member of her family. So it became that much more important that I get some solid information from Abrams as soon as possible.
I’d have to talk to Legs’ mother, too. I couldn’t imagine she’d have vital information. But you never know where the good stuff is going to come from, so you talk to everybody and rule out most of them.
I was off the Garden State Parkway by then and onto Rt. 27, driving into Midland Heights, when the phone rang. It wasn’t a number I recognized, so it was entirely possible it was someone who wasn’t furious with me at the moment. I picked up.
“Hello?” I said tentatively.
“Hi, Aaron, it’s Stephanie.”
“Hi, Steph. Are you in jail?”
She laughed, as if I hadn’t meant it. “No,” she teased. “I’m at my mother-in-law’s house.” Ah. So she was putting on a cheery exterior to deal with the old lady. “We were wondering if you might be able to do the interview now. Lester has a business appointment later.”
“Now?” I checked the dashboard clock—it was still three hours before the kids would come charging through the door.
“Is this a bad time?”
“No, I can do it now. But you’ll have to give me directions. The ones I wrote down last night are still in my office.”
She gave me the directions as I made a U-turn on Edison Avenue and risked the wrath of the Midland Heights Police Department, whose chief, already on the warpath, probably had added my scalp to his Ten Most Wanted list. “There’s just one thing,” she said when she was done.
“What’s that?” I always serve up the straight line.
“Lester is here, and he’s going to sit in with you two.”
“We’d already discussed that. What about talking to Lester?”
There was a hesitation in her voice. “Lester is not willing to talk to the press right now,” she said. “I’m sure you understand.”
“Sure I understand,” I replied. “You tell Lester that I’m not willing to have him sit in on his mother’s interview unless he agrees to do one himself. I’m sure he’ll understand.” Stephanie stuttered, which was extremely unusual for her. “B-b-b-but Aaron, you said. . .”
“I never said he could sit in, listen to everything I’m going to ask, then prepare his answers ahead of time and be ready for any possibility. I never said he could gain the advantage before I even enter the room. I never said I’d agree to any of this. All I said was that I’d write a story for Snapdragon, and I can do that with or without Lester and his mother. Their participation is entirely up to them. But my participation with them is entirely up to me. I don’t exist to act as their public relations manager.”
There was a long pause, and I got the impression Stephanie, hand over the mouthpiece, was talking to Lester and/or his mother. When she came back, her voice was different, small and obedient.
“Lester says okay,” she said.
“He’ll talk to me?”
“That’s what I said,” and she hung up.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Louise Gibson lived in a very nice little Victorian with a wraparound porch on a quiet, tree-lined street in Scotch Plains, a Union County town where the people who have money have real money, and the ones who don’t probably also have more than me. It was exactly the kind of place you’d expect a mother to live in, with real wood shutters and perfect clapboard siding, nothing plastic (or even aluminum) about it. Flowers were evident in the front garden. It lacked a porch swing, but you almost saw one there, anyway. A real Family Values house, straight out of Leave It to Beaver.
Inside was more of a scene from The Godfather. Louise sat in a chair with her back to me, looking out a window through the tiny crack of light between drawn room-darkening curtains. I resisted the impulse to kiss her ring, since I couldn’t actually see if she had a ring. She did move every once in a while, though, so I was assured it wasn’t Norman Bates’ mom sitting there with Stephanie throwing her voice from the next room. When you’re in the criminal investigation business, you have to watch out for ventriloquism, you know.
Lester, who up close looked even more like Legs, but smaller and smarmier (if such a thing was possible), was hovering to one side, smoking a cigarette like a Gestapo interrogator in a 1940s propaganda movie, holding it between his thumb and forefinger, palm up.
He wore a dark suit and tie, which I thought was a bit much. Of course, I was wearing a dark suit and no tie, which was about six steps above normal for me. Louise had opted not to sit in widow’s weeds, which I appreciated, but was in black. You got the impression she had been in black since Nixon resigned.
Stephanie introduced me, then left me alone with the two Gibsons. Her introduction was simple but flattering, as she called me a “wonderful reporter” who would “understand what you’re going through.” Personally, I didn’t much care what they were going through, but I did understand it. Intellectually.
I won’t comment on how wonderful a reporter I am. I think my record speaks for itself, damn it.
When I took the tape recorder out, Lester looked like he might faint, but Stephanie apparently had warned Louise, who nodded, not actually looking in my direction, but aware of every object in the room by radar, or that “eyes-in-the-back-of-the-head” thing your mother used to do to scare you into behaving.
I asked when the last time either of them had spoken to Le. . . uh, Louis had been.
“I spoke to him the night before he was killed,” said Lester, without so much as a blink when his mother winced at the word “killed.” “I was thinking of coming down to visit him and Stephanie that weekend, and spoke to him about the possibility of a White House tour.”
“Can’t you just go up and buy tickets the day you get there?” I asked.
“Not if you want to meet the President,” Lester sniffed. I made sure I looked properly impressed, and went on.
“How about you, Mrs. Gibson?”
“I spoke to Louis every day,” she said. “He was a good son, and he’d call me every single day to chat.” She almost managed not to punch the words “good son” in Lester’s presence, but she just couldn’t hold back.
“Do either of you know of any enemies who might have wanted to see Louis dead?”
There was considerable silence for a while, but since I was-n’t needed anywhere for another two and a half hours, it didn’t especially bother me. I counted the change in my pocket—a dollar in quarters, three dimes, four nickels. Pennies were in my back pocket, but I felt it would be rude to start sticking my hand back there.
“There are any number of political charlatans and left-wing extremists who would have wanted to silence Louis Gibson,” said Lester, his voice rising to a level that, in a normal man, would indicate he was ordering a cup of mocha java. “His was an important message that many on the other side didn’t want to reach the public.”
“Easy on the campaign rhetoric, Lester,” I said. “Your allegiances are showing.”
“I take it you did not share Louis’ point of view,” said his mother. “Is that correct, Mr. Tucker?”
“My political views are not relevant to this investigation, Mrs. Gibson,” I said. I regretted the word “relevant,” but otherwise felt I was on solid ground.
She actually turned to face me at that point. Louise Gibson might once have been beautiful, but decades of disapproval (dished out, not taken) had pointed her mouth downward in a permanent frown and clenched her eyebrows into a pucker. “I’m asking if you agreed or disagreed with my son’s work, Mr. Tucker.”
“And again, I’ll have to say that it has nothing to do with the investigation,” I tried again, eschewing “relevant.” Now I had to mentally deal with the word “eschewing,” but I smiled at her in a friendly, non-threatening way.
“You’re being evasive, Mr. Tucker,” she hissed. “I can tell what your point of view might
be. Your people are famous for their leftist leanings.”
You don’t often run into such obvious anti-Semitism in Central New Jersey, and it caught me off-guard. “My people?” I asked. “You mean short, overweight freelance writers?”
“I mean Jews,” she spat. “You know that. Like the Rosenbergs. Remember them?”
“Hitler,” I countered. “Remember him?”
Lester, of all people, ended this lovefest by putting his hand on his mother’s shoulders. “Now Mother,” he said. “There’s no reason for us to be uncooperative.”
“He’s one of them,” Louise said, not to be silenced. “He’s one of the enemy!”
“Your daughter-in-law is half enemy, Louise,” I helpfully pointed out. “That makes your grandchildren one-quarter enemy.”
I snapped up the tape recorder, hitting the “stop” button, turned on my heels, and headed for the door. “Thanks a lot,” I said to Louise. “I think I have enough background on Louis’ family. Lester, if you ever want to get in touch, Steph has the number.” With no better exit line, I walked out, Lester trailing closely behind.
Once in the hall, Stephanie appeared as if she’d been listening at the door. Her face was pale and her eyes wide. “Aaron,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m just glad I didn’t kiss her ring,” I said.
“What?”
Lester appeared behind me as if Steph had twitched her nose and made him appear. “Tucker,” he said. “There was no need for you to agitate her like that.”
“Agitate her! How, by being circumcised?” I was seeing, you should pardon the expression, red.
“My mother is of the old school,” he said, spreading his hands. “She’s of another generation.”
“The word is Reich.”
In his new role as peacemaker, he ignored that, “She’s been through a horrible ordeal. There’s nothing worse than burying your own child. Surely you can understand that,” Lester said.
I hated to admit it, but he had a point. “That doesn’t explain her out-and-out. . .”
“No,” said Stephanie. “It doesn’t. But that’s always been part of her, and she uses it as a weapon.” Lester looked—not appalled, not shocked—annoyed. Steph wasn’t following the script he’d written, and he didn’t appreciate it.
“Mr. Tucker, to answer your question, which is the one I assume you came to ask,” he went on, “my brother had many political enemies, but I can’t think of any who would resort to violence when there were other, nastier tricks to pull on him. I can only assume this was”—and he didn’t even glance in Stephanie’s direction—“a crime of passion.”
“So you don’t know of anyone to start with,” I said hoarsely.
“I’d start with the last bimbo and work my way back, if I were you,” he said. “You’re bound to hit pay dirt somewhere along the line.”
Without another word, he turned and walked back into his mother’s room. Stephanie waited until he was completely out of sight and behind the door, then she looked at me and rolled her eyes.
I chuckled. “Has it been this much fun the whole time, or did they decide to spice things up for the rabbinical student?” I asked.
“Well, the bigotry is a new wrinkle, but that’s pretty much been the atmosphere around here,” she said. “I’ve lived with it since Louis and I got married.”
“Well, look on the bright side. She only hates you half as much as she hates me.”
Stephanie laughed, and hugged me. It wasn’t a friendly hug, and I didn’t understand it. She was trying much too hard to make sure her breasts pressed against my chest.
“Hey, Steph,” I said. “Take it easy. I’m still married.”
She leaned back. “That’s you, Aaron. You’d never do anything wrong, would you?”
Maybe I could distract her. “You’re the second person this month who’s accused me of being incorruptible,” I told her.
“Who was the first?”
“Gail Rayburn.”
Stephanie smiled. “Gail Rayburn wore push-up bras.”
“Okay, now we’re in the area of way too much information.” I started to reach into my pocket for my car keys. “I’ve got to go pick up the kids,” I said.
“From what? It’s only twelve-thirty.”
“Half-day,” I lied. “Millard Fillmore’s birthday, or something.”
Stephanie put a hand over her mouth and giggled. “You’re running away from me, Aaron,” she said.
“Think of it as walking away in a brisk manner,” I tried.
“You’ll be back.”
“If this is a recurring dream, I sure will,” I said, and reached for the doorknob.
By the time I had reached the Midland Heights borough limits, I was relatively sure Stephanie had killed Legs Gibson. I just couldn’t figure out how she’d done it.
With all this information rattling around in my brain, I did the only thing a sane man could do: I printed out a copy of my freshly completed screenplay, and mailed it off to my agent. By the time I was back from the Post Office, it really was time for the kids to get home. I dealt with the homework soap opera of the day, listened to the stories, read the note from Wilma, Ethan’s aide (she has a separate notebook in which she reports to us on how his day really went), and actually wrote a 750-word piece for the Star-Ledger on the boating business “down the shore.”
When dinner preparation time rolled around, I had almost exorcised the weird events of the day. And then the phone rang.
“Aaron, I’m so sorry,” Stephanie was saying, even before I was sure it was Stephanie. “I don’t know what came over me— okay, I do know what came over me.”
“I know it wasn’t my animal ruggedness,” I said.
“Don’t discount yourself, but actually, it was the tranquilizers I’ve been taking since Louis. . . died,” she said. “I increased the dosage to deal with Lester and Louise, and it made me. . . I was-n’t myself.”
All right, maybe she hadn’t killed her husband.
“I don’t know who that woman was,” I told her, “but if I show up in a room with her again, I want to have an elephant gun with me.”
“Thanks a lot,” she said.
“You know what I mean,” I told her. Then, lowering my voice because the kids were in the next room, and listen only when I don’t want them to, I said, “I am married, and I intend to stay that way.”
At that very moment, the door swung open, and Abigail walked in. The kids swarmed around her, as they always do, and she smiled and kissed them and did everything she always does. But there was something different. The look in her eye.
“I have to go, Steph,” I said into the phone. “My wife is going to kill me now.”
“Don’t joke with me about things like that, Aaron,” Stephanie said. “It hits a little too close to home.”
“I’m not joking,” I said, and hung up.
I walked over to my wife, who was hanging up her coat, and reached over to kiss her. She ducked and walked away. I foresaw scintillating dinner conversation.
We ate, and glared, and didn’t talk. The kids noticed—okay, Leah noticed, and Ethan might have caught a loose vibe here or there through his prattle about The Simpsons—and ate quickly. They left us in the kitchen alone.
Abigail stood and started to clear the table. “I’ll do that,” I said, but she went on doing it. I stood up and got in her way on purpose.
“Okay. As boneheaded plays go, this was my best all-time. I was way off base, I never should have done it, I’m a complete idiot, and you should divorce me before the evening is over. Does that about cover it?” She walked around me and put the dishes in the sink. “Abby!”
“I’ve never been this mad at you before, Aaron, and you’re not going to be able to charm me out of it,” she said, not looking in my direction.
“I’m not trying to charm you out of it. I’m admitting that it was unconscionable. I was wrong, I’m apologizing, and promising that nothing even remotely like this wil
l ever happen again.” I took her hands, and she let me, although she wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“If anything had happened to you. . .” she began, and put her head on my shoulder.
“To me? Nothing was going to happen to me. I was there trying to make sure nothing would happen to you.”
She held me tight and started to tremble just a little. “You’re such a jerk,” she said.
“I think we’ve established that.”
“You go through your life thinking you’re the one in this marriage who loves the other one more.”
It took me a minute to navigate that sentence. “Well, I am. I love you more than you love me. It’s only natural.”
“Why? Why is it natural?” She stood back enough to look me in the eye. Hers were a little damp.
“Because you’re the more attractive person in the relationship.”
“So it all has to do with looks?”
“No, I mean attractive in the literal sense of the word. You attract people more than I do. I tend to irritate them. You’re the one everybody likes. You’re the one all the men follow with their eyes. . .”
“You want men to follow you with their eyes?”
I ignored that. “You are, in the case of this marriage, the ‘catch.’ You even make a lot more money than I do. And I had, as you know, a bit of trouble finding women who wanted to know me before we met.”
“I’ve heard the history.” She rolled her eyes a bit.
“So it’s natural that I should love you more. You are top-of-the-line Porsche, and I’m a used Pontiac. You saved me from the junk heap, and I adore everything about you. Don’t you think I see all the dents and dings I’ve accumulated, physically and emotionally, over the years? But you’re still a cream puff.” It was, without question, the analogy I have most regretted using in my life.
A Farewell to Legs Page 11