Hazel shrugged. “I can’t tell you why he married anybody else,” she said. “I can’t even really tell you why he married me.” Another sip. It seemed there would be no reason for me to ply Hazel with alcohol; she was doing it herself.
“Well, what about Sheila McInerney? Did you meet her?”
Hazel shook her head. “I wasn’t really friendly with any of the others. I know Jenny LeBlanc likes to pretend there’s this club of the five of us, but I didn’t really keep up with any of them. Maybe they have meetings or something, but I’ve never gone.” She looked up and caught Tyler’s eye, pointed at her empty martini glass, and nodded when he acknowledged her order.
“So you are not a member of WOOL?”
Hazel sputtered a laugh that was part amusement, part surprise, and part disgust. “No,” she said firmly. “There’s no monthly newsletter or anything, you know. And it isn’t my nature to wallow in the past like that. I married Ollie, I divorced Ollie. Once the papers were signed, it was over. You move on.”
“What kind of settlement was included in your divorce?” I asked.
Hazel blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
I worried now that I had violated some social protocol. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Was that an inappropriate question?”
“Samuel, it’s considered rude to ask people about their finances, so yes, that was inappropriate.”
“My apologies.” How could I get the information if a direct question was not considered allowable? “I merely believed that you might have become wealthy if you now own part of OLimited.” This was calculated to estimate Hazel’s divorce agreement along with the viability of Oliver Lewis’s business.
She shook her head. “I’m not rich. I don’t think anybody got rich off Oliver Lewis.” She looked up as Tyler brought her second martini to the table. “Oh thank you,” she said. She took a sip and looked at me. “Can we talk about something else?”
I scanned my mind for alternative topics of conversation. “Did you know that the original title of ‘Yesterday’ was ‘Scrambled Eggs?’” I asked. I consider that fact to be common knowledge, so it gives me information when other people are unaware of it.
Unfortunately, I did not get a response because a young woman dressed in the same style as Tyler appeared from the kitchen carrying a tray with our dinners on top of it. She opened a collapsible stand for it, put the tray down, and placed our orders in front of us. She did not tell us her name, nor did she announce that she would be taking care of us today.
Hazel drank more from her martini before beginning to eat her dinner. I examined mine, determined that it was slightly undercooked, and beckoned to the young woman. I told her of my concern and she apologized (although I doubted the problem was at all her fault) and removed the plate, saying she would have an appropriate one back to me as soon as possible.
I noticed a closed, observant look on Hazel’s face when I returned my attention to her. “You’re very particular about some things,” she said. “A lot of men would have let that go.”
It was difficult to know what to say; I did not want to bring up the subject of an autism spectrum disorder at this moment. “There are some issues that are difficult for me to overlook,” I said. “Food is one of them.” That was true.
She nodded. “I understand. I can’t leave the house unless I’m wearing earrings.” I did not see the relevance of that statement, but apparently Hazel was trying to draw an analogy between my food preferences and her insistence on decorating her earlobes. It was probably best not to dwell on that.
The young woman returned with my order, and it was now satisfactorily prepared. I thanked her and she apologized again, although I still could not understand the need. There was an interval during which the conversation lagged as both Hazel and I satisfied our appetites. She was, I noticed, still paying a good deal of attention to the second martini. If she decided to order a third, I might consider calling Mike for a ride home for both of us if I could find a public phone; they are very difficult to locate in the age of the cellular telephone.
“The thing is,” Hazel said suddenly, “Oliver was not a real businessman.” She slurred the s in business slightly. “He was trying to get money from old people without giving them anything.”
Perhaps there was an advantage to this idea of plying with alcohol. “How did it work?” I asked her, trying to keep my voice impassive, which is the way some people believe I sound all the time.
“It was simple,” Hazel said after another sip. “Ollie would get names of people whose spouses had just died. They had to be over seventy for him to contact them. Then he’d call up and ask about their insurance. He’d convince them traditional life insurance wasn’t worth the money for someone of their age living alone. And he said the way to really provide for your children and grandchildren when you go is to make these really smart investments that his company OLimited would find for them.”
“It is not unusual for people to invest in mutual funds and corporate interests,” I said. “How did Mr. Lewis make money that way, more than any other investment counselor would do?”
Hazel pointed at me with her knife, which was momentarily alarming. “That’s the thing: there never were any investments. Ollie would get these people to sign contracts that basically said they were giving him all their money to do with as he pleased. It said if he wanted to invest the money, he could, but in any event, it was in his name. So he invested in Ollie Lewis, that’s what he invested in.”
“So you must have benefited, as his wife and then ex-wife, from the seemingly illegal and certainly misleading business he was conducting,” I suggested.
Hazel took a bite and chewed it while she spoke, which made me avert my gaze to my own food. It now seemed less appetizing than before I’d seen Hazel chewing.
“I never saw a dime of it,” she said. She took another sip; the glass was almost empty again. “The fact is, Ollie never really made much on the scheme. He underestimated the old people. Most of them aren’t that stupid—they read the contract and threw him out on his ear. It was only a few that bought in on this scheme, and they didn’t have all that much for him to glom onto, so he ended up with very little.”
I ignored the use of the word glom, which does not actually exist in the English language, and pressed on while the martinis were still loosening Hazel’s mind and lowering her verbal resistance.
“But he supposedly had millions. Was that his only source of income?”
Hazel’s lips vibrated and she made a sound I’ve heard referred to as a “raspberry,” despite it having no relationship to the fruit. “No,” she said. “Ollie always had a scheme. He just never had a good one.”
“What about Sheila McInerney and Terry Lambroux?” I was playing a hunch, which is not my habit. I do not approve of guesswork, but this question had left me with little of substance to use, so I provided a stimulus and waited for the response.
“I told you, there is no Terry Lambroux,” Hazel said. “I don’t know anything about Sheila.”
She was, I believe, about to add something to her statement when some movement outside the window next to our booth distracted her. “What’s that?” she said, and her shoulders seemed to tense.
“I did not see anything unusual,” I said.
“They’ve found me!” Hazel reached for her purse, which was on the seat next to her. “We have to go!”
“I don’t understand,” I told her, trying to hold her gaze and wondering what I should do about paying Tyler for the dinner, or whether Hazel and I should divide the check by two and pay half each. The fact was, Tyler had not yet given us the check, so for the moment the point was moot. “Who has found you, and why are you so upset? We have not finished—”
Hazel stood up, seemingly sober after one second. Her eyes were focused and intent on the restaurant entrance, where a young woman named Tasha (according to her na
metag) had opened the door and greeted us when we’d arrived. “There’s no time for it now, Samuel. We have to get out of here!”
I gestured toward Tyler, who had no doubt seen Hazel stand and was already approaching. He handed me the check and I paid it, adding a twenty percent tip because servers have a very difficult job. I would settle with Hazel about her half later, I decided, since she seemed very agitated about leaving immediately and was already walking toward the door.
A glance toward the table as I hurried after her revealed that her martini glass was now empty.
I did consider calling Mike, but there was no public telephone nearby and Hazel was a few strides ahead of me and obviously had no intention of stopping to wait for a taxicab. I noticed that the white skirt she was wearing was very attractive on her, but that did not seem important at the moment. Perhaps I should let her drive away and then find a way to get in touch with Mike or Ms. Washburn or Mother.
“Come on,” Hazel insisted, getting into the driver’s seat of her car. I increased my speed to show her I was serious about her insistence that we were in some sort of danger, but I stopped at the driver’s side window, which Hazel opened.
“Would you like me to drive?” I asked. “I do have a valid driver’s license.” I felt it was best not to mention that she had been drinking alcohol and might be violating New Jersey state law by operating a motor vehicle.
“Get in!” she shouted, not ceding the controls of the car.
It was a difficult decision, but with no other means of transportation home, I sat in the passenger seat and immediately fastened my shoulder harness.
Hazel engaged the car’s engine and backed out of the parking space at an alarming rate. I’m not sure I didn’t let out a yelp involuntarily. She headed for the exit very quickly.
“I believe you are exceeding the speed limit,” I noted.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” she answered. It took me a moment to untangle the double negative, but when I did, I felt my hand on my nose.
The car spun out of the parking lot and onto Centennial Avenue, but without the tires squealing and spinning as they often do during chase scenes on television and in films. I could see the speedometer from the passenger seat—it lit up in large numbers on the dashboard—and the message it gave was extremely unsettling.
I had to choke out words. I could feel my head shaking. “Why are we going so fast?” I asked.
Hazel actually took her eyes off the road (at this speed!) and regarded me with a withering look. “To keep them from catching us, of course,” she spat out.
I dared not turn around to see through the rear window, but I could barely force my eyes toward the passenger side mirror, expecting to see the black Ford Escape in hot pursuit. But there was no obvious pursuer behind us. The Escape was not there, and other vehicles were doing their very best to stay out of Hazel’s path.
“Who?” I asked when I could speak again. The speedometer had gained eight miles per hour.
“Them!” she shouted, as if that were an adequate answer.
She made a right turn onto Stelton Road, the opposite direction from the Questions Answered office, at a very high speed, and I held my breath for fear the car would turn over on its side and we would be injured or killed. But it did not do that, and Hazel seemed to take it as a signal that she should increase our speed further. I made a choking noise in the back of my throat.
“We have to get away!” Hazel insisted.
I forced my jaw open. “Please let me off here. I will find another ride home.”
“I can’t stop! They’ll catch us!”
There was no rescue in sight. I would have thought a Piscataway police cruiser would have stopped Hazel’s car by now, but there was none behind us. I had only myself to rely upon, and that was not comforting.
My hands were flapping, my brow was coated in sweat, my head was shaking at the neck, and my voice was out of control. I could hear myself vocalizing without making any conversational sounds. It sounded like, “uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhh … ”
“Cut that out,” Hazel said. “You’re helping them find us.”
There was no choice. Ms. Washburn was not here finding a way to refocus my thoughts. I had to do it myself. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the increasing whine of the engine as it accelerated.
“Hazel,” I said, “there is no one chasing us.”
She started as if shocked. “There isn’t?” she asked.
“No. I would see them if they were there. And no, there is no one so clever that I wouldn’t see them following this car if they were doing so, especially at the speed you are driving. Please. Believe what I am saying, and slow the car down.”
Hazel, eyes wide, looked into her rearview mirror, then the one on the driver’s side. She moved spastically, quick, darting movements of her head that made her look oddly like Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein, a classic film made in 1935. It also starred Colin Clive, Boris Karloff, and Ernest Thesiger. The film was directed by James Whale and distributed by Universal Pictures.
Mother says I sometimes offer too much information on a topic.
The car began to decelerate as Hazel’s face looked less frantic and more worried. “I was so sure,” she murmured as the speedometer showed a speed only slightly higher than the posted limit for this area.
Normally I would be concerned in a vehicle only slightly exceeding the legal limit. Now I felt positively relieved.
“Why did you think someone was following you?” I asked when Hazel appeared to be breathing normally again.
“Someone’s been following me for days,” she answered. “Two men in a black—”
“A black Ford Escape?” I asked.
She looked over at me, which caused my right hand to flutter a bit, but then she turned her attention back to the road. “How did you know that?”
“They followed Ms. Washburn and me as well. I believe they work for someone with an interest in Oliver Lewis’s business, perhaps Terry Lambroux.” I watched her face for any reaction at the name I’d mentioned, and I got one.
Hazel scoffed waving a hand. “I don’t think there’s such a person as Terry Lambroux,” she said. “You keep hearing about him, but nobody ever sees him.”
“Terry Lambroux is a man?”
Hazel shrugged. “Far as I know. Everybody always says ‘him’ when the name comes up. But I don’t think there is such a person.”
That was when I spied the black Ford Escape behind us, which opened a debate in my mind: Tell Hazel and have her drive wildly and dangerously again, or say nothing and risk putting both of us in danger?
Then I remembered the men in the Escape. So I said to Hazel, “Would you pull over at that parking lot, please? The excitement has me feeling a bit light-headed.”
Hazel pulled in her lips, but she did as I asked, and in forty-three seconds we were safely parked in the lot for a Dunkin’ Donuts. I told Hazel I wanted to get some air, and let myself out of the car.
The Escape pulled into the lot at the other end and parked, its lights turned off.
I bent over a bit, pretending to be gasping for air. Hazel opened the window on her side and asked if I was all right. I nodded, but said I’d like to walk around a little. She should stay there, I told her, I would be right back.
Still a little stooped, I did not wait for an answer and walked in a somewhat indirect path toward the Escape. At one point I walked to the door of the Dunkin’ Donuts, although I did not want to buy a doughnut. I stopped, pretended I had thought of something, and walked away from the door, approaching the Escape.
Once near the Ford, I waved my arm in a greeting and approached the driver in his seat. “Gentlemen,” I said. “We meet again.”
“Hoenig,” the taller man said. “What are you doing here?”
“He was at the Applebee’s with Montros
e,” the shorter one answered with a slightly annoyed tone. “Don’t you ever pay attention?”
“I wonder why you are now following Hazel Montrose if you are, as you said, not interested in the murder of Oliver Lewis,” I said, paying no attention to their bickering. “Could it be that you were not entirely truthful with me?”
That was sarcasm. It did not come to me naturally, but once I grasped the concept, I was able to utilize it almost immediately.
The smaller man exhaled, indicating this was more effort than he had anticipated or desired. “What do you want, Hoenig?” he asked.
“I want to know who asked you to follow Hazel Montrose and why.”
“And why should I tell you anything?”
“Because I will pester you until you do. This way you can avoid the aggravation easily. I have Asperger’s Syndrome, sir. Believe me, I can irritate you in ways you have not yet imagined.” I did not exactly know what that meant, but I was willing to bet the man in the Escape didn’t know, either.
Clearly, he did not. “All right. There’s no harm in it. First of all, there is absolutely no chance I’m going to tell you who hired us. But I was asked to see where Montrose went because someone thinks she might have had something to do with Oliver Lewis being, you know, dead.”
Beyond that, the man in the Escape told me very little. His employer, he said, was interested in what had happened to Oliver Lewis for “business reasons,” and if Hazel was involved in the murder, there was money to be made, he insinuated.
“She was the one of his wives who hated him the most, but she was also the one most closely tied to the scam,” he said.
“What do you know about Terry Lambroux?” I asked. The man looked at me without saying anything. Then before I could ask another question, he had raised the automatic window on his vehicle, engaged the engine, and driven away.
I walked back to Hazel’s car, where she was listening to a song I did not recognize on the radio. She turned off the music when I sat back in the passenger seat. “Are you feeling better?” she asked.
The Question of the Unfamiliar Husband Page 21