by Andrew Lanh
“Maybe she was scared.”
“Or maybe she did tell someone.”
“Who?”
“Maybe she told her sister Molly.” I tapped the table. “That makes sense, the two conspiratorial sisters.”
“Which meant Molly had to die, too.”
“But,” I added, “if that’s the case, why didn’t Molly tell the police—or even me—when I talked to her after Mary’s death? If she knew something involving Mary’s murder, why would she keep silent?”
“Maybe she didn’t believe Mary.”
I remembered the flicker of an eye in Molly’s eye when I first spoke to her, “Or maybe she was too scared.”
“And then she was dead,” Liz spoke softly.
“And she took that fear with her.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Hank and I sat in my living room reviewing my note cards, juxtaposing one family member against another. He looked up. “Mary knew something that scared her. Okay? And she must have told Molly. She didn’t tell the kids or Benny. And Molly didn’t tell Larry. She was scared of something—or someone.”
I nodded. “And when Mary got killed, Molly did have an idea what happened.”
“But,” Hank went on, “maybe Molly didn’t think the matter a big deal until Mary died. Then she got scared.”
“But even then she wasn’t scared enough to tell anyone, least of all the cops. She went to that square looking for something.”
“The same thing that Mary was looking for.”
Hank and I looked at each other. “What’s there?” I wondered. “You go there for drugs.”
“But that’s impossible.” Hank pursed his brow. “The two sisters weren’t buying drugs.”
“Then they were looking for a person who had an answer they could only find there.”
“The kids?”
“Which kid?” I asked.
“One or more of the kids may have an answer.”
“Why not the husbands?”
“True,” said Hank. “But that’s farfetched.”
“So where are we?”
“Well, the murders are tied into the family. That’s why Molly wouldn’t speak up.”
“What about Danny?”
“He’s family, of sorts.”
“Family, but still an outsider.”
He nodded. “But an outsider with a secret life. That apartment in Frog Hollow.”
I sighed. “Maybe it was only a secret to us. Maybe it was the most natural thing in the world for him to want his own space.”
“Still, it’s unusual.” Hank flipped the cards as if he were dealing a game of poker.
“But Molly didn’t like him. If Danny was involved, wouldn’t Molly have spoken up after Mary talked to her? She had no reason to protect Danny. Larry liked him. She didn’t.”
“Or maybe Danny was connected to one of her kids. Like Kristen,” Hank said.
I breathed in, sat back, closing my eyes for a moment. “A lot of this hinges on what Mary said to Molly. That must have been some visit.”
“Or phone call. I’m calling Benny now.”
“Hank, it’s late.”
Hank dialed the phone, sitting on the edge of the chair. I got the extension from my bedroom. Hank spoke in rapid-pace Vietnamese. I understood most of what he said, but my Vietnamese was slipping. Certain phrases, sentences, words flew by me, unknown.
Benny Vu wasn’t happy, but he agreed to talk. And to me, too, because I spoke into the phone, letting him know I was on the line.
“Uncle Benny,” Hank began, differentially, “did Mary tell Molly anything out of the ordinary on the day before she died?”
“They talked all the time, Hank.”
“But were you around—did you ever hear her say anything unusual in their conversations?”
A pause. “They talked of family, mostly. Let me think. They talked mainly of how they feel, the children, a charity Molly had put Mary on.”
“How did Mary feel about that?”
“Mary just wanted to stay home. She wasn’t a public lady, you know.”
“But Molly insisted?”
“Yes, Mary told me she did it because Molly wanted her to, but her heart wasn’t in it. She didn’t like the company of strange women.”
“But she did it.”
“Of course. Family. The only thing important to Mary was family. You know that.”
Hank took a breath. “Then could family be a reason she was murdered?”
A long silence. “I thought about that.” Benny’s high-pitched Vietnamese was gravelly and raw. “But why? These are simple families, ours.”
“Did you know that Aunt Mary tried to reach a detective a few days before she died. She called Detective Smolski.”
He was surprised. “Smolski? From years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She didn’t say. But he’s retired and she hung up.”
The news surprised him. I could hear his breathing getting heavier, shorter. “She didn’t tell me.”
“No idea what she wanted to ask him?” Hank asked.
“Or tell him,” I interrupted.
Again, the contemplative thinking. Finally, slowly, “No. This bothers me. We had no secrets, the two of us.”
“Maybe she was afraid to tell you something.”
Hank added, “Maybe something happened to—well, maybe Molly told her something.”
Benny’s voice was getting raspy, agitated. This was not going well. But finally he remembered something. “Mary did say Molly was a little different lately.”
“Like what?”
I could almost hear him shrugging. “I didn’t pay attention. Molly always unloaded her troubles on Mary. The hard life of the rich. After a while, I couldn’t listen. Mary said Molly was depressed about Kristen, who was doing nothing with her life. But they’d had that conversation before, I know. Over and over. Molly complained about Kristen lately—and how Larry indulged the vain and silly girl.”
“So this wasn’t something new?”
There was a long, long silence. Then Benny recalled scraps of overheard talk. “They had one conversation that left Mary depressed. I know she started to talk about it, but I didn’t like hearing about Molly’s world because Molly world’s was always more important than anyone else’s. And Mary usually felt the same way. I mean, she’d listen to Molly’s whining—or bragging and celebrating something—and then, when she put down the phone, she’d forget about it. Sort of like—oh that Molly! But there was one time recently Mary did want to talk about it, and I shut her out.” A pause. “That was a mistake.”
“So you don’t have any idea what Molly said?”
“Oh, but I do. It had to do with Kristen again. It was always Kristen lately.”
“What this time?” Hank asked.
“Drugs.” Benny’s voice got low. “Molly got it into her head that Kristen was experimenting with drugs. But I thought it was just Molly’s—well, craziness.”
“My God,” I said into the phone. “That’s probably why Mary tried to reach Detective Smolski.”
Hank added, “The detective who arrested Tommy.”
Benny interrupted. “Mary would not intrude on Molly’s life that way. Molly would be furious.”
“But what if Molly asked her to?”
“What? Arrest Kristen?”
“No, maybe get information. Mary didn’t know—and Molly, too—where to turn to. Mary saw Smolski as a help line. He’d been a decent guy way back when.”
“But wouldn’t she tell me she was calling him?” Benny asked.
He’d just admitted to closing Mary out, refusing to hear yet another Molly complaint, but I kept my mouth shut.
“So it comes back to drugs,” Hank said.
<
br /> I asked Benny, “Do you remember why Molly thought Kristen was on drugs?”
No answer. Then, “I never asked.” He sighed. “I turned away from her.”
Hank spoke to me. “Nobody pays attention to Kristen because she’s dumb.”
“Except Daddy, who treats her like a little girl.”
“Which,” Hank concluded, “could be why no one noticed anything about her.”
“Except Molly.”
“Who then told Mary.”
“And Mary,” I went on, “had a special hatred of drugs, given what happened to Tommy. As did Molly—her worst fear.”
“So,” Hank ended, “if this is true, you have two women who didn’t understand what was happening, trying to solve a problem they couldn’t fathom.”
Benny’s voice came over the line, tinny now, sad. “And maybe that’s why they’re now dead.”
Quietly, he hung up the phone.
Chapter Twenty-five
Drugs, I thought. She thought. Molly thought.
Drugs and Kristen. But not Kristen alone. I couldn’t imagine her maneuvering the mean streets of Hartford to cop a nickel bag. Not in a hundred years. But, admittedly long ago, that had not been a problem for one of the children.
I knocked on Tommy’s door, surprising him. It was midmorning, but he was waking up. One of his roommates, a scraggly man in his late twenties, was leaving for work. Dressed in baggy shorts, no shirt, and flip-flops.
“Are you a lifeguard?” I asked him.
“No,” he mumbled, “I work at a carnival.”
He walked out, nodding at Tommy who was sitting in boxer shorts that had seen better days, a bottle of Pepsi in his hand. His punk hairdo—that careful construction of Mohawk and fade—hadn’t yet met his morning mirror. He looked like a hayfield after a hailstorm.
“Now what?” The departing roommate had let me in, unceremoniously.
“I’m bothering you.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever.”
“I’m still trying to help find your mom’s killer.” A beat. “You interested in that?”
“I don’t think talking to me is gonna do the trick.”
“Yeah, but you might have some answers to some questions.”
“Hey, I doubt it.” He pulled his legs up under him, inclined his body. He sipped from the soda bottle, smacked his lips noisily, and frowned at me.
“Can I be the judge of that?” I said.
“Well, you’re the detective. So detect.”
“I just have a couple of questions.”
He cleared his throat and ran his fingers over his nose, back and forth, like he was trying to stop a sneeze. “Shoot.”
“Did you know that your Aunt Molly was concerned that Kristen was into drugs?”
He stared at me, wide eyed, and then burst out laughing, almost rolling off the sofa. I waited, but he laughed and laughed. “That’s a good one. Real rich.”
“What’s so funny?”
“Where did Molly get that idea?”
“I’m asking you.”
“Look.” He sat up, angry now. “Just because I had that bum probation shit over a couple of joints doesn’t make me the family authority on drug use among the rich and stupid.”
“She’s your cousin.”
“Who lives in another world from me.”
“So you don’t think it’s true?”
“I mean, maybe Kristen tokes a joint or two at some party now and then—for Christ’s sake it’s pot, not crack or heroin—but do you know how little contact I have with Kristen and Jon? Almost nothing. Now and then, some family function that nobody wants to be at. Viet Cong New Year’s or something. The Tet Really Offensive. But now that the beautiful Le sisters are no more, maybe that will finally stop.”
“You don’t miss your mother?”
A bit of a pause. “What do you think? Of course I do. Every day. Mom was, well, my Mom.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s just that, well, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it now.”
“You can help me by giving me information.”
Tommy stood up, pulling up his sagging shorts, and walked to look out the front window. He looked back at me. “If I could, I would.” I could see he was sweating, but then so was I. The tight, close room was baking.
“That’s why I asked you about Kristen, Tommy. I’m not trying to harp on your past. As far as I’m concerned, that was nothing but a teenage moment. But I thought you might know something.”
He sat back down. “I’ll tell you something, Rick.” His tone now was confidential, almost intimate. “Yeah, Kristen smoked a little dope back in prep school, but if she does it now it ain’t much. You know. Recreational. You mean to tell me you never smoked?” He waited.
“Yes, I did, back in college.”
He feigned a hopped-up gesture. “But you didn’t go on to become a frenzied heroic addict, did you? Reefer madman.”
“Something I did with friends in a dorm room. Now and then.”
“Still do it?”
“No.”
He looked at me. “Well, if you wanna know, I’ll tell you something. I still smoke. Recreational use. But that doesn’t make me a druggie, for Christ’s sake. And it certainly has nothing to do with Mom’s death. That just makes no sense.”
“You didn’t stop after prep school arrest?”
“Yeah, for a year or so. But, you know, you hang out with friends—they smoke. But they’re cool. But never with Kristen and Jon. Jon? That uptight asshole. Kristen, well, I think the only thing she puts in her mouth these days is diet soda.”
“You sure?”
“No, I’m not. All I’m saying is that this drug shit is just that—a lot of noise about nothing. So I don’t know where you’re going with this. You know, we get a bag of good chronic every month or so. That’s all.”
“We?” I asked. “Cindy?”
He laughed. “No, she’s happy in her dance club with Ecstasy. Who knew?”
“But you said ‘we.’”
He hesitated. “Danny and me.”
“Danny?”
“We go in for halves on an ounce of real good stuff every so often. Hey, we don’t sell, and we’re careful. I told you, it’s for recreation.”
“Who buys it?”
“Danny gets it from a guy he knows. I give him the money and he gives me half. It ain’t a big deal. Some good weed he knows where to find. That’s all.”
“You smoke with Danny?”
“No, I buy it from him. It’s cool.”
“He sells?”
“Christ, man, you ain’t listening. Danny has a real job, a real life. He just picks some up for partying, and I’m in on it. I trust him and he trusts me. You can’t be too careful.”
“You think Danny gives Kristen any drugs?”
“How would I know?”
“Are they sleeping together?”
He laughed. “Nothing would surprise me with Danny. But who cares?”
“But Molly suspected Kristen of using drugs…”
“I didn’t think it had anything to do with Kristen.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought it all started with Mom.”
“I’m not following you, Tommy.”
He chose his words carefully. “You know how Mom felt about drugs. If I had to hear one more time about the cousin who died of opium in Vietnam and how his wife suffered and the kids starved…Man alive. After I got arrested, she spent years asking me, over and over, ‘Are you on drugs?’ It got to be almost a dumb joke between us. I told her over and over that I was clean, but sometimes she looked at me weird. You know, given the way I choose to look, haircut and all. But I didn’t want her to know. To worry. Because she didn’t understand drug
s. A single joint late at night listening to garage bands—or Danny lighting up for a night of sex, since he told me he loves pot for sex alone—couldn’t be explained to Mom. Or to Molly. Drugs was, you know, some freak screaming on TV. And commercials about this-is-your-brain-on-drugs. Addicts.”
“So big an issue?”
“It was their big fear. Christ, I grew up with stories of the beloved cousin who became a raving lunatic on opium back in Saigon—destroyed his life, his family. It’s one of our childhood fairy tales. So, yeah, drugs—any drugs. A hint of drugs would send Mom and Molly into orbit. So I couldn’t sit down and say, ‘Hey Mom, pot’s recreational. Like a glass of wine you have.’”
“I’m still not following what you’re saying.”
“Well, lately Mom was watching me more closely. One time I caught her fiddling with my phone, for Christ’s sake, but she only fucked it up. Another time when Danny stopped in, she caught us going out back. He was giving me the stuff. She didn’t see, but, you know, mother eye and all…”
“I still don’t understand why Danny would risk his job at the bank.”
“Risk what? The man likes a puff now and then. If every banker in America stopped lighting up, you’d have a lot of grumpy souls in expensive suits.”
“So your mother worried you were back on drugs?”
“Yeah.”
“But Molly, I guess, suspected Kristen was on drugs.”
“Mom never mentioned that, but she did tell me Molly had told her drug use was on the rise—like it was a news flash that just hit her. I mean, she was on this antidrug charity or something. So, I guess, yeah, if she thought Kristen was using, she’d think it was Danny. Or me. Especially me. She’d call Mom about me and whine.”
“What would Molly say?”
He smiled. “Keep an eye on Tommy and Danny.” He paused, seemed to be thinking about something. “You know, that’s what she did, in fact. Kept an eye on me, mainly. I saw Mom watching me real close. Mom told me Molly was on her high horse. But Mom never mentioned Kristen.”
“You told me you rarely saw Danny anymore.”
He grinned. “I lied. Well, not really. I don’t see him. He ain’t a friend. It’s just because we go way back. In this matter I trust him, and he trusts me.”