“I don’t know where he lives,” I told him. “That’s why I had to go find him at the bar.”
“That is something Lieutenant McElone might be able to clear up for us,” Paul said. His right hand moved toward his chin, but—no.
Talking to McElone again wasn’t my favorite plan but it was far from a deal breaker. “What else?” I asked. I can prompt with the best of them.
“Ah. There’s Vanessa’s mother, Claudia Rabinowitz, and her half brother, Jeremy Bensinger. We have almost no information about either of them, so we can’t include or exclude them from a list of possible suspects. We should contact them very soon, as well. Your plan to go to Marlboro today is a good one. Find Jeremy and ask about his mother, among other things.”
No goatee stroking yet. I went back into the kitchen to get the urn of hot water, which is lighter because it’s empty when I bring it into the den, then fill it with water from a pitcher.
I hardly grunted at all carrying this urn. Why didn’t I put coffee in the pitcher and then fill that urn the same way? Sometimes I scared myself with my own inability to see the obvious. To cover, I chided Paul. “I love how whenever you say, ‘We should contact them,’ or ‘We need to interview him,’ you mean that I should do it.”
Paul has perfected his dry look and sent it now in my direction. “I have certain drawbacks which prevent me from doing the legwork,” he said. “I don’t think you’d like to change places with me.”
“No, but going out to talk to murder suspects might just increase the possibility that I could be joining you sooner, and that’s not something I’m crazy about.”
“Neither am I. So let’s make sure we take precautions.” That usually meant bringing someone with me to serve as security/backup, and since Maxie is the ghost who can move around outside my property line, she is the one who usually fills that role. Spending a day with Maxie might also increase my chances of dying sooner but I’m not prone to suicidal thoughts. “Meet him outdoors where there are people around. You won’t need backup on a first meeting.”
“Yes, chief. What else is on the agenda?”
Paul stopped, meaning his drifting slowed to an almost imperceptible rate and he appeared to be “standing” still. “You might want to talk to this Sammi woman about Bill Mastrovy. Angry lovers make excellent sources of information.”
“You’re not giving me any assignments I actually want to do,” I said.
“Do I ever?” The wry sense of humor surfaced again. How endearing it would be if only it were funny.
I went into the kitchen for the large pitcher of water for the tea urn. I started to fill it in the sink. “That’s a riot, truly, but is it possible Maxie might chip in here with some Internet research? Something that can fill in the holes while I’m out asking a bunch of strangers whether they killed Vance McTiernan’s daughter?”
“That is one thing you need to do,” Paul said. “You have to train yourself to stop thinking of Vanessa as Vance McTiernan’s daughter.”
“Um . . . she was Vance McTiernan’s daughter.”
“No, she was Vanessa McTiernan. She was an adult who had a life that might have been taken from her. You are her advocate. You can’t think about her only in relation to him. Are you only Jack Kerby’s daughter?”
Now, that was hitting below the belt. “No, but Vanessa had a famous father, and it’s inevitable that people would think of her that way, especially since she used his name.”
“And how do you think she felt about that?”
“What am I, her therapist?” I picked up the full pitcher to take into the den and remembered why I didn’t do this with the coffee urn, too—it wasn’t that much easier. A cart. That’s what I needed. “How do I know how she felt about it?’
“That’s exactly my point,” Paul said with his annoyingly calm tone. “You don’t know how she felt about it, so limiting your thinking to one segment of her life, one that might have been relatively unimportant, inhibits your ability to see the whole picture. That can be a hindrance to this investigation.”
“So what am I missing?” I asked Paul. “Don’t the facts remain facts, no matter if Vanessa was Vance’s daughter or Bill’s girlfriend or Jeremy Bensinger’s half sister?” Paul was big on facts, so this was my way of showing him I had indeed paid attention when we’d talked in the past.
“Yes, but you might be missing a connection when you limit your perspective.”
“This thing’s heavy,” I said, grunting as I lifted the last pitcher to fill the urn. That’s when it hit me: It wasn’t a cart I needed. It was a way to get Paul to carry the pitchers from now on.
Nothing. Not even a goatee stroke.
“The point I’m making—”
“I understand the point you’re making,” I told Paul. “You don’t seem to understand the point I’m making—these pitchers and the urns are heavy. I could use some help in the mornings.”
“Why not get a cart?” Melissa, awake uncharacteristically early for a Sunday, had appeared while I was dealing with the water. “You could just roll it out in the morning after the urns were ready and then roll it back when we’re done with the coffee and tea in the morning.”
She started pouring herself what we’ve decided to call a latte—about two-thirds milk to one-third coffee. I decided to look for an inexpensive cart in town after I visited Jeremy Bensinger today.
Sometimes you just can’t fight the tide.
* * *
“Nessa was my sister,” Jeremy Bensinger said. “There wasn’t anything ‘half’ about it.”
We were standing in one of the parking lots in Jeremy’s apartment complex, which had seven “villages” (the names were so cute, too; he lived in “Londontown,” which looked exactly like “Villa Paris,” “Chalet Moritz” and “Piazza Tuscanne”), each of which was simply a quad of garden apartment buildings. Finding Jeremy had been a stroke of luck—I hadn’t been able to find his number before I came but had located the unit with his name on the door, which he’d been coincidentally walking out of when I’d arrived. I’d asked if he knew Jeremy Bensinger (since I had no idea what the man looked like) and he’d confessed to being one and the same.
Since I wasn’t going to walk into his apartment, discovering him outside was even better, and there were, as Paul had anticipated, people around.
I’d told Jeremy that I was investigating his sister’s death on behalf of an insurance company representing the apartment complex where she died. It didn’t make any sense, but people tend not to question that much when you show them a license.
Jeremy wasn’t averse to talking about Vanessa McTiernan, but he was going out for the day—I didn’t ask to where because it felt like prying (yes, we’ve established that I’m a bad detective)—and had only a little time. We talked by his car, a current model Hyundai Sonata.
“You had different fathers,” I pointed out. “And different last names.” I don’t know what significance that last fact was supposed to have, but it was important, Paul always said, to have areas of conversation and see where the subject went with them.
In this case, Jeremy went with a light scowl. He wasn’t an unpleasant guy, in his mid-thirties and in shape although not ostentatiously so, but he clearly didn’t like the suggestion that his connection to Vanessa was anything less than a full sibling relationship. Which was fine with me, as it kept him talking.
“We had different fathers,” he said. “So do lots of brothers and sisters. There isn’t just one definition of a family anymore, you know.”
I knew. My ex-husband lives in Southern California. Somewhere. It’s hard to keep track.
“As for our last names,” Jeremy went on, “Mine is from my father. Nessa had Mom’s, but then changed it for professional reasons. I guess ‘Vanessa Rabinowitz’ didn’t sound like a rock star to her.”
“She was serious about her music,” I s
aid. It was a question in statement form. I wouldn’t be a great contestant on Jeopardy!
“Music was her whole life,” he said, breaking eye contact with me. He seemed to be staring off into space so he could look especially contemplative, and it was working fairly well. “She thought it was in her genes or something. Maybe she felt it was a way to connect to her father, but as far as I know she only heard from him every couple of years or so.”
That statement, at least, was becoming consistent. Vance had not been a fabulous, hands-on type of dad. Yes, he’d usually been thousands of miles away and yes, his daughter would have preferred more contact with her father, but . . . were we talking about Vance’s daughter or my own?
“Was she any good?” I asked Jeremy. Lots of people can play a little and many try to make it a career, but quite often they persist because no one has the heart to point out that they’re not especially talented.
“Of course,” Jeremy said. “I had just made her a deal with Vinyl Records to release her first album and it was gathering steam. The album’s still coming out in about six months, so people will hear what a great talent was lost.”
“You made the deal?” I said, as if I hadn’t heard this before. “You acted as her agent?”
Jeremy nodded. “I cowrote seven of the songs and produced the album, too. I can’t play an instrument or sing, but I do know music. The people at Vinyl were going to give it a big push. Vanessa would’ve been on her way.”
“They must have really heard something in those tracks,” I said.
“Hang on.” He opened his car door, sat down and started the engine. This was a very unusual way to flee an interrogation. I did notice, though, that the interior of the car was immaculate. There were even little squares of carpet on the floor, green shag. Hideous, but they didn’t have any mud on them at all.
Instead of peeling away in his getaway car, Jeremy pulled a CD out of a door pocket and slid it into his dashboard player. Music began playing almost immediately. “This is Vanessa.”
It was lovely, hypnotic and dreamy. Not the sort of music I would have expected from Vance McTiernan’s daughter, so maybe Paul was right about not pigeonholing her. Her voice was smoky and calm, engaged with expressing, not manufacturing, the emotions her music conveyed. The melody was unexpected, nontraditional. The arrangement was understated but definitely in sync with the songwriter’s intentions. It was like sitting in on a late-night session at a blues club after the civilians have all left and the players are just amusing themselves and each other. It was almost too intimate, but never uncomfortable.
“Wow,” I heard myself say.
“That’s right.” Jeremy stood up out of the driver’s seat and met my eyes. “‘Wow’ is right. Now you tell me if you think she was any good.”
“She was amazing,” I said honestly. “You wrote the music with her?”
He tilted his head. “Not all the time. She also worked with her boyfriend, Bill, on a couple of things, but he basically just added a hook or a suggestion.”
Bill Mastrovy? The plot thickens. I listened to more of the music, and Jeremy watched for my reaction. I’m sure the one he got was the one he’d hoped for. “That was terrific,” I said when the song ended.
“Thank you. Nessa wanted to just release it herself, you know. Bypass the record companies. She didn’t think she was good enough for wide release. But I convinced her.”
“What do you know about the day she died?” I asked Jeremy.
He looked at his shoes and brushed flecks of the carpet off them. “I wasn’t there,” he said. “They told me she might have done it intentionally. I don’t believe it.”
“Why not?” The music continued to play, a new song that was more upbeat and pop-ish. I liked it, but it wasn’t connecting the same way the first one did.
“Because Nessa wasn’t depressed. She was about to sign a great record contract, what she’d wanted all her life. She wasn’t crazy about her love life at the moment, over forty and thinking about kids, maybe, but she wasn’t terribly down about it. I think it was just an awful accident. She ate the wrong thing and didn’t know it.”
I didn’t think not to say it; it just came out of me. “She accidentally drank straight soy sauce?”
Jeremy looked at me, confused. “Soy sauce? That’s what did it? She would have known better than that. Where did you hear that?”
“The medical examiner’s report. You didn’t see it?”
Jeremy’s mouth twitched. “I didn’t want to talk to the police anytime I didn’t have to; I don’t like the police. When it first happened, the word from the detective . . . what was her name?”
“McElone.”
He snapped his fingers. “Yes! You’re very good. Detective McElone said it was an allergic reaction. I didn’t ask anything more than that.” He stared off again.
After a moment, I had to press on. “Can you tell me how to get in touch with your mother?” I asked. Jeremy just shook his head negatively. I pushed on. “Could anyone have wanted to hurt your sister?”
Jeremy looked surprised. “I can’t imagine anybody being that mad at Nessa. I’ve been trying to make sense of it for months. But the thing is, it doesn’t make sense. There was no reason to want her dead. It doesn’t benefit anybody. She didn’t leave a will; she had no money. She wasn’t cheating on Bill, so he had no reason to be jealous.”
Except maybe I knew something he didn’t. “She was still dating Bill Mastrovy when she died?” I asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Because his current girlfriend didn’t know that.”
Jeremy looked at me again, his head turning at a faster rate of speed than thirty-three and a third revolutions per minute, to be sure. “Bill has a new girlfriend?”
“That’s right. And when I saw her yesterday, she was surprised that he’d been in touch with Vanessa at all.” Paul would hear this interview from my voice recorder, but he’d want me to describe Jeremy’s facial expression when he heard that news.
It was one of astonishment.
“Who is she?” he rasped.
“I don’t think I should tell you that,” I said. “I don’t want to create suspicions until I’m certain of my facts.” But perhaps it was a little too late for that. This whole selected-information-for-selected-people thing was complicated.
Jeremy seemed to think that over, his eyes unfocused as he muddled. Finally, he nodded, once. “That’s fair,” he said, “but when you do have your facts straight, I’d like you to tell me what you know.”
“I promise I will.” Time to try again, with a new tack. “Maybe your mother can shed a little light on some of this. Sure you can’t give me an address or phone number where I can find her?”
It was becoming a pattern; Jeremy stopped looking me in the face again. “I haven’t been in touch with my mother for years,” he said. “She and I argued about my line of work. I wanted to be involved in music and she hated it because of Nessa’s dad. She didn’t want Nessa in music, either, but knew it was a lost cause. I ended up working at Ace Equipment Rentals and I hate it to this day but I need the money. We had words five years ago. Both of us said things we can’t take back. She quit the business two years ago and ended up in the Midwest somewhere without saying a word to us for six months. She didn’t even show up for Nessa’s funeral. So I don’t talk to her anymore.”
“Does she try to get in touch?” I asked. The third song on Vanessa’s CD was playing, and it was more in line with the first, but up-tempo. It could have been a swing song from the 1940s, complete with brass section.
“Once in a while. She got my cell number somehow, and she’ll call when she needs something. Last time was probably a year ago, complaining about some tax problems, expecting me to bail her out. I didn’t, she screamed at me, and I don’t even keep her number in my phone anymore. She calls when she calls, but I don’t ans
wer.”
“Well, if she calls you again, just write down her number and give it to me,” I said, handing him one of the investigator cards I had made because I like business cards. “You don’t have to talk to her to do that.”
Jeremy took the card. “I’ll do that,” he said. “But I wouldn’t count on it happening anytime soon.”
“When the album comes out, are you planning on leaving Ace Equipment Rentals?” It would go a ways toward clearing Jeremy—his success hinging on his sister’s would mean he’d have no reason to want her dead.
“That was the plan,” he admitted. “Don’t know if it’ll be possible with no follow-up album, though.”
“I understand,” I said. “Thanks. One last thing.”
“You want a copy of Nessa’s songs?” He grinned.
“How did you know?”
“Everybody who hears it wants them. She was going to be a big star.”
Fifteen
I listened to the CD of Vanessa McTiernan that Jeremy Bensinger gave me all the way home, which admittedly wasn’t that long. Vanessa didn’t have a great voice, but she had a supremely interesting one, a voice that should have been allowed to flourish and grow. Yes, she was forty when she died, but she still should have had a lot of creative years ahead of her. Someone had taken those away and now I wanted to find that person and see them punished.
The detective thing gets to you after a while.
I reported back to Paul after dealing with a couple of guest issues (Tessa wanted a good bakery, and that was easy; Roberta Levine needed a replacement contact lens, which was a little more complicated, but doable) and talking my mother, who had been staying with Liss, into letting me order dinner in that night before the movie. It had taken some doing, given that Mom is virtually a walking food truck, but I wanted her to be fresh for the debut of the movie room and I thought pizza was a better food for the cinema, anyway. In a burst of magnanimity (and okay, maybe bribery), I’d told all the guests that the guesthouse would provide free pizza to tonight’s movie viewers.
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