Exposé: First of the Sally Harrington Mysteries (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 5)

by Laura Van Wormer

"Whatever you want. Look, Sal, it's Pete Sabatino."

  I feel like bursting into tears. "Oh, Buddy."

  "I'm serious, Sally," he says, giving my arm a shake. "And he wants to talk to you. He says he feels bad. He needs to tells us something, but he wants to tell you."

  I feel like I'm at the end of my energy. The absolute end. "All right. Whatever. Let's do it."

  Buddy takes me into the interrogation room and Pete looks glad to see me, but then sinks down in his chair, slowly falling forward to rest the side of his face on the table like a small child.

  "Hi," I say quietly, taking the seat next to him and putting a hand on his shoulder. "Pete, is it true? Do you really know something more about Daddy?"

  "I always did," he says quietly.

  "I remember you tried to tell me something."

  Slowly he sits up. He can't look at me. "I told you the Masons did it."

  I nod. "I remember.'"

  He looks away. When he turns back, he has tears in his eyes. "The man who did it needed money." He swallows. "He needed money because he'd been out of work for a long time. And he had a family, see? And a man said he'd give him a house, a job, a future. Respect." He struggles to swallow. "So he went out that night, the night of the floods. And he took his bag of tools. And then Mr. O'Hearn built us the house and gave Papa a job."

  I look at him in disbelief. "Pete, are you saying your fa­ther... ?" He nods, a big tear rolling down his cheek. "I think Papa did."

  In no time Buddy D'Amico has called a judge at home to ar­range a search warrant, and tears off with a group of police of­ficers to go through the Sabatino home.

  Spencer and Rob and I walk over to Dunkin' Donuts to get some coffee. We go back to the station and sit around, waiting. Waiting. Spencer goes out to get us some gum. We wait, not talking, just sitting there, the three of us, watching the desk sergeant go about his duties.

  Finally, Buddy returns. The police haven't found anything, except a deed to the house.

  Unlike normal people, the Sabatinos had not taken out a mortgage to buy their house. Evidently, as Crazy Pete said, it appears that Mr. O'Hearn built the house and gave it to Mr. Sa­batino. He never paid a dime.

  Not in money, anyway.

  Mr. Sabatino, we find out by midnight, has not been visiting his sister Rosa in Miami after all. Mr. Sabatino, it turns out, is long gone from the United States.

  48

  On Thursday night, Rob, Mother, Mack, Spencer and I are with Buddy at WSCT in New Haven where DBS News has set up special telephone lines and operators.

  Tonight DBS News Magazine is running a story called "Mur­der in Castleford." Will Rafferty produced the story and Alex­andra is the reporter. I must say, even though I thought I knew everything in the case, I am fascinated by how they unfold it. They have covered all angles: the police, the FBI, Johnny Boy, Mother, me and Rob, the fire chief, the coroner, the whole nine yards for over twenty-one years.

  Alexandra says more than once that the evidence against Phillip O'Hearn is only circumstantial. There is Pete Sabatino's testimony that his father, Frank, went out with a bag of demo­lition charges the night Dodge Harrington died—the same kind of demolition charges that the police believe were used to bring down the high-school gym wall that killed Harrington.

  There is the fact Frank Sabatino, three months later, received a new house from his new employer, Phillip O'Hearn. There is also the suspiciously quick demolition of the gymnasium by O'Hearn Construction and the carting away of the wreckage to a secret location. And then, too, Alexandra says, there is O'Hearn's inexplicable demolition of a profitable bowling alley he built the same year as the gymnasium; the mysterious explo­sion of Tranowsky's Auto Body a few weeks ago—also built by O'Hearn Construction in 1977; to say nothing of the recent gas leak and subsequent explosion of the Preston Roadhouse—­"You guessed it, also built by O'Hearn Construction in 1977."

  "But why would the man who would later become the eighth wealthiest man in New Haven County order the murder of the friend who gave him his professional start?" Alexandra asks on camera as she strolls in front of the high school. She gestures to the building. "Take a community-minded, passionately in­spired young architect, father of two, and show him a builder using substandard materials in a place like a school..."

  She explains that Hal Fields was the inspector who approved all the buildings O'Hearn Construction built that year: the gym­nasium, the bowling alley, the auto body shop and the road­house. She recounts how Fields became city engineer, was ar­rested on multiple counts of bribery—many connected to O'Hearn's growing empire, and yet not directly tied to him­—and went to prison for two years.

  Then Alexandra switches fo­cus to Tony Meyers, an O'Hearn employee who police believe saw the unmistakable signs of blasting in the gymnasium rub­ble he was instructed to cart away. Tony hid a damning piece of debris, the police believe, and blackmailed O'Hearn. Docu­ments show how O'Hearn set Tony up in a toxic-waste­ disposal business in Long Island and continued to help Tony even after it became clear Meyers was no businessman and a loose cannon to boot.

  Alexandra goes into great detail regarding the trouble Tony Meyers's company fell into. Not only was he under investiga­tion by the feds for illegal dumping, but he had bookkeeping discrepancies, federal tax subpoenas and a very tough compet­itor trying to cut in on his turf. He came to Castleford, his brother Johnny is shown saying, to put the muscle on O'Hearn to bail him out again. Someone alerted Frank Sabatino to "the problem," Alexandra says. Pete overheard his father talking on the telephone about "the cement problem," or "the concrete problem" or "that old flood problem" several times during the week of the murder.

  One night Pete—"who has a history of paranoia" as Alexandra phrased it—overheard his father actu­ally say to someone on the telephone that "Nobody knows any­thing about Dodge Harrington and nobody will, don't worry about it. I gave you my word and it's still good. Don't sweat it. I'll take care of it. Just send him to me."

  "Him," Alexandra says, "was presumably Phil O'Hearn's blackmailer, Tony Meyers."

  The next day was Pete Sabatino's once-a-week meeting at the Herald-American with reporter Sally Harrington, the daughter of the man killed twenty-one years ago. It was during that meet­ing Pete first blurted out to Sally he thought maybe somebody might have killed her father.

  Two days later, Tony Meyers arrived at the Sabatino home, where Pete overheard his father say he—Meyers—would get paid at Kaegle's Pond at noon. Pete tried to get a hold of Sally. When he couldn't, he left a message that Sally should be at Kae­gle's Pond at noon. So Sally went and found Tony Meyers, shot dead through the heart.

  Alexandra goes on to explain that Pete Sabatino went into hiding until the authorities came to believe that he had nothing to do with the murder. His father, Frank, left Castleford, telling friends and family he was worried about the trouble Pete and his conspiracy theories had gotten them into, and that he was going to his sister Rosa's in Florida for a while. Instead, he caught a hopper flight from Hartford to JFK, where he boarded a plane to Milan, Italy, and has not been heard of since, except through the lawyer who told Pete his father was selling the house.

  "And what about Phillip O'Hearn?" Alexandra asks, as they show a panoramic view of his estate from the air. "The impov­erished young man who got his first big break in business from Dodge Harrington, twenty-three years ago, is worth some forty-six million dollars today."

  They show Mr. O'Hearn sitting in a snappy blue blazer on an antique couch in his living room, holding hands with Mrs. O'Hearn. "There is not a word of truth to any of this," he says quietly.

  "Not one word?" Alexandra says.

  "Not one word," Mr. O'Hearn says.

  "You mean you did not build a house for Frank Sabatino and give it to him three months after Dodge Harrington died?"

  "No. He worked for me. He paid for the house in work."

  "He did fifty thousand dollars' worth of work for you? In ad­dition to his salary?"
>
  "Yes," Mr. O'Hearn says.

  "What kind of work was that?"

  "Some demolition, some stonework. He is a certified stone­mason."

  "Did Frank Sabatino do any of the demolition work on the gymnasium where Mr. Harrington was killed?"

  "Yes."

  She looks at him then, as much as to say, Did he by chance do a little demolition work just before Mr. Harrington died? but she doesn't have to voice the question.

  She moves on. "Why did you decide so suddenly last year to buy the bowling alley and then tear it down? It was a profitable business."

  "I wanted to build a more profitable business."

  "But you didn't build anything," Alexandra points out. "You tore a perfectly good bowling alley down and carted it away in­side of three days and then sold the land to Home Depot."

  "A very lucrative deal," he says.

  "But area financial experts estimate a loss of at least four hun­dred thousand dollars on this deal you say was so lucrative."

  "Then your area financial people should be fired," he says calmly, "because they don't know what they're talking about."

  They move on. "Mr. O'Hearn," Alexandra asks, "why would so many people be bringing this up if there wasn't some evi­dence, some grave doubts out there, about why you moved so quickly to destroy the gymnasium and take all the wreckage away—a massive amount of material, may I add—to a location no one in your entire firm can seem to remember?"

  "I have no idea," he says.

  "I do," Mrs. O'Hearn pipes up. "Because they're jealous. They always have been, that's Castleford. There are still a lot of people around here who can't stand it when a poor kid makes it. How many of those people," she says eagerly, moving for­ward in her seat, "those people who are saying all of these hor­rible lies, how many of those people, Ms. Waring, are rich peo­ple?"

  "Not many," Alexandra admits. "Actually, none. Not rich."

  "I rest my case," Mrs. O'Hearn says.

  "So that is the reason," Alexandra says, "that they're jealous of your husband's success? And so twenty-one years later they've all decided to—“

  "Of course they're jealous! My husband can buy and sell this town and they hate it. And after all my husband has done for them! Why, that Peter Sabatino, my husband tried to give him a job, but he couldn't do it. The man is very nice, I'm sure, but he's a stark raving lunatic, going on and on about Martians and George Bush—just ask anyone in Castleford!"

  "It's all right, Gisela," her husband says, patting her hand.

  "And the Harringtons?" Alexandra says. "Why, after all these years, would they suddenly turn on you? When it was Dodge Harrington who started your husband's career, and your families considered each other friends?"

  "I don't blame Belle," Mr. O'Hearn says quietly.

  "It's that Sally who's behind it," Mrs. O'Hearn says. "And what's Belle going to do after Sally's dug up all this nonsense? Why, Sally Harrington gave up her life to come home to nurse her dying mother—"

  At this, Mother visibly flinches beside me, and I hear her mutter something indistinguishable under her breath.

  "So what is Belle going to do? Of course she's listening to Sally—and we all know Sally's never been right since Dodge died. But that's not my husband's fault!"

  Rob elbows me like he used to when we were kids. "You is bad, girl," he whispers.

  At this point, the attention moves to the man in prison await­ing trial for the murder of Tony Meyers. His story, as given to us by a Russian translator, is that Tony Meyers was messing around with his wife and that's why he tracked him down and killed him. The only problem is, as DBS News Magazine has learned, the suspect's wife is still in Moscow. Clearly, this is a put-up job.

  "There is no statute of limitations on murder," Alexandra says, "but the same rules of evidence apply: if you don't have evidence, you don't have a case. And in the case of the murder of Dodge Harrington, there is motive, but no weapon, no evi­dence and no witnesses. And so as Phillip O'Hearn continues his life as a country gentleman and multimillionaire, Belle Har­rington in the valley below continues to live with the uncer­tainty of who, exactly, was responsible for the murder of her husband twenty-one years ago."

  At the conclusion of the piece, when the network cuts to a commercial, we all stand around a moment, feeling vaguely stunned by what we have seen and heard. Mother is the first to snap out of it. "Well if that doesn't stir the hornet's nest, nothing will."

  Twelve minutes later, one of the telephone operators is wav­ing frantically at us, and a call is put through the speaker sys­tem.

  "I think I know where the old Castleford High gymnasium is," a man calling from Durham, Connecticut, repeats over the monitor.

  "Where?" Buddy D'Amico asks.

  "Under my house," the man says. "I paid a local guy two thousand bucks to fill in the ravine and he brought in truck after truck of brick and cement for me in 1978."

  "What makes you think the debris was from the gym?" Buddy asks him.

  ''Cause my boy pulled a slab out that had Hall of Fame chis­eled on it. He put it on his bureau and put all his trophies on it."

  Buddy frowns. "That's it?"

  "Yeah, that's it. 'Cept my wife just went in there to look at the thing and she moved the trophies around and she says under­neath it, clear as day, it says Castleford High School. My boy covered up that part because he went to Durham High."

  There is another stunned silence. And then Mother bursts into tears.

  49

  “This is where Dad taught us how to swim," I say, pointing to the murky spot in the pond where there used to be a dock.

  "It needs to be dredged," Spencer says.

  "It sure does."

  He looks around. "And this all belongs to the Calhouns?"

  "Yes. They bought it from the estate."

  It is so very beautiful here. It's hard to believe Castleford is a city. There's nothing but trees and flowers and water and trails and mountains as far as we can see. I am particularly happy this morning because I've been freed of the neck brace.

  "Do you think they'll ever sell?"

  "Their kids will when they inherit it. They don't live around here anymore."

  He puts an arm around my shoulder as we walk along the path. We are coming into the pine grove that my grandfather planted some sixty-five years ago, when the Harringtons were rich. The pine needles are soft under our feet, the air smells de­licious and almost edges out the smell of the Cutter's we're wearing. "Do you think you could purchase an option on the property? For the day the kids do inherit it?"

  "No," I say. "One, I have no money. Two, I doubt the Cal­houns want to dwell on the fact their kids are never coming back to Castleford, and that they'd sell the land out from under them this minute, if only they could."

  "It's not an unusual story," Spencer says, bending to pick up a dead pine bough and move it off the trail "It's going on right now in my family. What will happen to the marina."

  "What will happen to it?"

  "I don't know. My sister's teaching out at Carnegie Mellon, I'm in New York, even my cousin's a lawyer down in Charles­ton. I mean, this higher education thing really backfired on my family—everybody's stuck in the books, nobody knows how to do anything practical anymore."

  "You chop wood, you fixed my desk, you seem pretty handy to me."

  He smiles. "Yeah. If anyone did anything, it would be me. I love the place. But it's not a part-time enterprise, not by any stretch of the imagination." He rubs his cheek. "But back to Maine, gosh." He shakes his head. "Some days it sounds good, others, unimaginable."

  "Well, if you ever did go back," I say, "you'd introduce steamed cheeseburgers and build another drive-in." He laughs, taking my hand and squeezing it. "Only if you come with me."

  "Speaking of money," I say.

  "Which we weren't."

  "Are you ever going back to work? Because I have to."

  He laughs. "Yeah, I do. I need to go back in tomorrow, actu­ally."
>
  We walk along. Spencer clears a few more branches from the path. "Mother really likes you," I finally say, watching him. "I find that scary."

  "Thanks a lot."

  "She's been yelling at me for years to grow up and then I meet a guy who makes me act like a kid half the time, not even an adolescent, and she thinks this is great. Go figure."

  He comes back to my side and puts his arm around me again. We have spent so much time together the last eight days it feels like his body is an extension of mine. "I've got something to ask you."

  "Whatever it is, we don't know each other well enough."

  "Hey—"

  "Okay, ask me the question."

  "Will you drive up to my parents' house next weekend? To meet them. Drive up on Saturday morning, early, spend the evening and stay overnight and then come home the next day." He pauses. "My mother wants to meet you. So does my dad. So does the marina."

  I glance up at him. "Do they know how long we've known each other?"

  He nods. "Uh-huh. And Dad told me to get you up there be­fore I blow it. He saw the DBS News Magazine piece and thinks you're hot stuff."

  "Oh, no," I groan.

  He gives my shoulder a squeeze. "But it's Trudy who really wants to meet you, my stepmother." "Really?"

  "Yeah."

  "Is that good?"

  "That's very good," he tells me. "She says she has a feeling about you."

  "Sally? Is that you?" Mother calls from the living room.

  "Yes," I say, sliding the glass door to the deck closed behind us.

  "Come in here, dear, I have something to show you!" She sounds very excited.

  We walk into the living room and find Mack and Rob sitting on either side of Mother, studying the letter Mother is holding. "Look!" she cries, handing it to me.

  Dear Mrs. Harrington,

  After a brief discussion at our executive committee meeting this week, we have unanimously voted to make a contribution to the Wilbur Kennett Harrington scholarship fund that has been in existence in Castleford since 1980.

  (Sally inwardly flinched, remembering quite well the es­tablishment of the Fund when they desperately needed money but her mother had been too proud to tell her friends they had needed help.)