Onyx Webb 10

by Diandra Archer

  “We’d appreciate it if you would tell us more,” Maggie said.

  “What do you want to know?” Emmeline asked.

  “Everything,” Newt said.

  “It was March, or maybe April, of 1955,” Emmeline began. “My best friend, Mary Ann, came to spend the night and—as young teenage girls are known to do—we snuck out after my parents had gone to sleep and took my father’s car into Milwaukee to see if we could get into one of the college bars. Neither of us were of drinking age, but things were fairly lax back then. Needless to say, we talked our way in and before we knew it, a couple of guys were, what is the term—?”

  “Hitting on you?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes, we were being hit on,” Emmeline said. “I may look like the old woman from the Titanic movie now, but back then I was quite the catch. So was Mary Ann. Anyway, there were two boys vying for our attention, buying us drinks and offering us cigarettes.

  “At one point, Mary Ann and I went off to the restroom to smoke a cigarette and draw straws to see which one of us was going to get first pick of the two boys. I won and picked Stuart. I had no idea he came from money, only that he had blue eyes that matched his sweater. Mary Ann ended up with the other guy, a weasel-faced jerk named Phil.”

  “Do you remember his last name?” Newt asked.

  “Yes, I do,” Emmeline said. “Spilatro. Phil Spilatro. He went by the nickname, Milwaukee Phil. He was from Chicago and claimed to be a mobster, which both Mary Ann and I thought was just big talk. Turned out to be true, though.”

  “You’ve got a good memory,” Maggie said.

  “Some things you never forget,” Emmeline said. “The events of that evening are seared in my memory.”

  “So what happened?” Newt asked.

  “What happened is that we both got pregnant—on the same night. Can you believe it?” Emmeline said. “Do either of you mind if I smoke?”

  Newt and Maggie shook their heads, and Emmeline opened a silver cigarette box sitting on the end table next to the sofa and lit a cigarette.

  “You were saying you both became pregnant?” Maggie prompted.

  “Yes,” Emmeline said, blowing a stream of smoke into the air. “Abortions weren’t the run-of-the-mill things they are today, and getting one was out of the question—especially for Mary Ann, who came from a very strict, religious German farm family. Anyway, Stuart stepped up and offered to marry me.”

  “And Phil Spilatro?” Newt asked.

  “He did what most guys would have done—he gave Mary Ann a fake phone number and disappeared,” Emmeline said.

  “So you each stayed and had the babies?” Maggie asked.

  “No, I’m the only one who stayed,” Emmeline said. “Mary Ann couldn’t bring herself to tell her parents the truth about what she’d done and having gotten pregnant. So one night she left a note telling them she was running away to be a dancer in Los Angeles, or New York, one or the other. In reality, Mary Ann had taken the midnight bus to Chicago to look for the father of her child.”

  Maggie and Newt remained silent.

  “I hope you have an appetite,” Emmeline said, stubbing out her cigarette. “I’ve arranged for finger sandwiches in the pool room.”

  Newt and Maggie sat at the edge of the indoor swimming pool, finishing the last of the egg salad and cucumber sandwiches, as Emmeline lit yet another cigarette.

  The indoor pool was covered in mosaic tiles inspired by a fifth-century mausoleum and surrounded by eight marble statues of Roman gods and goddesses. The ceiling was covered with blue and orange glass tiles, fused with gold inside that glittered constantly from the lights shining up through the water of the pool.

  Newt wiped his mouth with a linen napkin and gazed around the ornate setting. “When you suggested we’d be eating in the pool room, I assumed you meant billiards.”

  “Of course you did,” Emmeline said. “A full-sized replica of the Roman pool from the Hearst Castle is not something one expects to find in Mayville, Wisconsin.”

  “Did you and Mary Ann stay in touch after she left for Chicago?” Maggie asked.

  “Not initially,” Emmeline said. “But that was Mary Ann’s choice, not mine. I think she was afraid to tell me what was happening—how bad things were for her—because she was afraid I’d tell her parents the truth.”

  “Did they ask?” Maggie asked.

  Emmeline nodded.

  “How long after she left was it before you spoke with her?” Newt asked.

  Emmeline took a moment to think. “Probably two years or so,” she said. “She’d had Stan Lee and was working as a waitress, I believe. I could tell she was just hanging on. I offered her money, but she wouldn’t take it. She was too proud. After that, I lost touch with her, until one day, out of the blue, she called. She said she’d met someone—she wanted me to meet him.”

  Newt turned and looked at Maggie, hoping she’d keep the conversation going. “And did you? Meet him?” Maggie asked.

  Emmeline nodded and lit another cigarette. “Yes. But she didn’t want to come here to the house. We met at a place called the Shore Club in Lake Geneva.”

  “When was this?” Maggie asked.

  “1963,” Emmeline said. “I know because Mary Ann left in 1955, and Stan Lee was eight at the time.”

  “And the man she’d met, he was there with them?” Newt asked.

  “Yes, he was.”

  “And do you remember who the man was? His name?” Maggie asked.

  “Of course,” Emmeline said. “It was Declan Mulvaney.”

  Newt and Maggie shared another glance. “Are you sure?” Newt asked.

  “Yes, I’m quite sure,” Emmeline said, exhaling one last cloud of smoke before stubbing out her cigarette. “Men like that are hard to forget.”

  Newt and Maggie continued pressing Emmeline for every detail she could remember, bringing new revelations and filling in blank spaces neither of them knew existed.

  “So let me see if I have this straight,” Maggie said, looking at her notes. “You met Declan Mulvaney just the one time and never heard from Mary Ann after that.”

  “That is correct,” Emmeline said.

  “And the next time you heard anything about Mary Ann wasn’t until five years later?”

  “Yes, in 1968 when Stan Lee was discovered in that horrible place—Dunning, I believe it’s called,” Emmeline said. “It was quite a shock for Mary Ann’s parents, suddenly discovering their daughter had been murdered and they had a grandchild tucked away in an asylum without their knowledge.”

  “And then the accident happened?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes, the accident,” Emmeline said. “What a terrible state of affairs that was. The stress between Stuart and I became almost unbearable.”

  “How so?” Maggie asked.

  “I’m sorry, didn’t I say? American Harvester, my husband’s company, manufactured the defective window in the reaper. Being a businessman, my husband’s lawyers refused to admit guilt, forcing a courtroom battle for the ages—at least for a small town like Mayville. My husband’s company marched into court with an army of lawyers. Stan Lee’s grandparents hired a small-time local named Judd Coker, who ran his law practice out of an old farmhouse next to theirs. It was the classic David versus Goliath situation.”

  “And David won,” Newt said.

  “Yes, $2.3 million,” Emmeline said. “But not without a little help.”

  “What do you mean?” Maggie said.

  “I gave Judd Coker the information about the defective window bolts. Without that, my husband’s lawyers would have steamrolled them, and Stan Lee would have walked away with nothing—if he could have walked, that is.”

  “Is that why you arranged for the fake study at Marquette? So you could provide him with the prosthetics without your husband knowing?” Newt asked.

  “My, you have done your homework, haven’t you?” Emmeline said. “It seemed like the right thing to do, all things considered. Mary Ann was my friend, and I hated m
yself for not breaking my word and going to her parents with the truth. If I had…”

  “No one knows what to do in situations like that,” Maggie said. “I wouldn’t blame yourself.”

  “I’ve often thought about how unfair life can be,” Emmeline said, stubbing out her cigarette into the ashtray. “Two naïve girls sneak out in the middle of the night, and one of them ends up living in a castle, and the other one? Well, due to nothing other than chance, she got the short end of the stick.”

  Newt stood up and extended his hand. “We appreciate the time you’ve spent with us.”

  Emmeline stood and shook Newt’s hand and then Maggie’s. “It was no trouble at all. In fact, it was nice for an old woman to have visitors, if only for a few hours.”

  Emmeline walked Newt and Maggie to the front door. “Might I ask a question of the two of you?”

  “Certainly,” Maggie said.

  “Why did you come?”

  “As we said, to learn about Stan Lee,” Newt said.

  “Yes, I understand, but why?” Emmeline asked. “He must have done something to have attracted the attention of the FBI. No one comes to Mayville in the middle of winter without a good reason. Has he committed a crime?”

  “Yes,” Newt said. “We think he has.”

  ORLANDO, FLORIDA

  JANUARY 26, 2011 – 9:42 A.M.

  ROBYN WAS STANDING in the kitchen of the penthouse apartment rented by Mulvaney Properties International on the thirty-first floor of the 55 West building. Koda’s half-sister, Krissy, was sitting on the opposite side of the table drinking coffee.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sixteen-year-old girl who drinks as much coffee as you do,” Robyn said, sliding another pod of Starbucks French Roast into the Keurig machine.

  “That’s because of my mom,” Krissy said. “She got me started.”

  “Oh,” Robyn said, wishing she hadn’t gotten Krissy on the subject of her mother, Chloe.

  “What about wine?” Robyn said.

  “What about it?”

  “I thought maybe that, you know—growing up around the winery…?”

  “I took a sip of the good stuff every now and then,” Krissy said with a sly smile. “But only red. I hate white.”

  “A girl after my own heart,” Robyn said, holding her coffee cup out to Krissy, who raised her mug and clinked it against Robyn’s.

  “They say that in certain countries, like Greece and Italy, kids get introduced to wine at the age of ten,” Robyn said.

  “Huh,” Krissy said. “They start late.”

  Robyn and Krissy sat at the table in silence for a few minutes. Krissy flipped through a Teen Vogue magazine, while Robyn worked the last of a crossword puzzle from the previous Sunday New York Times.

  Robyn put her pen down when she heard Koda coming down the hall.

  “Hey,” Koda said as he turned the corner and entered the kitchen. “You two are up early.”

  “It’s almost ten,” Krissy said.

  “Yeah, like I said, it’s early,” Koda said.

  “I thought the smell of coffee might get you out of bed,” Robyn said.

  “Is there anything to eat in this place?” Koda said, opening the refrigerator.

  “Sorry, Mother Hubbard,” Robyn said. “The cupboard is bare.”

  “I know that poem,” Krissy said. “I had to memorize it for a class assignment. ‘Old Mother Hubbard, went to the cupboard, to give the poor doggy a bone. When she went there, the cupboard was bare, and so the poor dog had none.’ There’s a lot more that comes after that, but that’s as much as I can remember.”

  “Still, that’s pretty good,” Koda said.

  Robyn smiled but said nothing, glad that Krissy didn’t remember the next few lines. “She went to the baker, to buy him some bread. When she came back, the dog was dead.”

  “You know what we need,” Robyn said.

  “Yeah, we need to hop in the car and go to Keke’s for pancakes,” Koda said.

  “No, I mean in general,” Robyn said. “We need a dog.”

  “No way,” Koda said, shaking his head. “My father—I mean, our father—would flip if we brought a dog up here. When we get our own place, maybe, but not here. He hates dogs.”

  “That explains why he never came to the winery,” Krissy said. “We’ve got six of them running around.”

  “Wait. Are you saying you’ve never had a dog?” Robyn asked.

  Koda shrugged and shook his head.

  “He had a goldfish,” Krissy said. “That’s it.”

  “How do you know that?” Koda asked.

  “You mentioned it when we were locked in the panic room,” Krissy said.

  “Huh.”

  “My God,” Robyn said. “Every kid has to have a dog. It’s part of growing up normal.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” Robyn said.

  Koda and Krissy exchanged a glance, but neither one of them said anything.

  “Wow, that was a stupid thing for me to say,” Robyn said.

  “No, it’s okay,” Krissy said.

  “Listen, I think it’s time we all stop walking on eggshells around here,” Koda said. “Krissy’s mom was killed in a ghost attack. My mother’s body was found buried in the house next door to our mansion. Robyn’s sister-in-law is dying of cancer. For whatever reason, God decided to cater our little pity party, and he served up a tray of shit sandwiches. It’s just the way it is, and we’re all going to have to find our own way of getting over it.”

  The room fell into silence, and Krissy looked across the kitchen at Robyn. “Did the sexiest man in the world just say God was serving up shit sandwiches?”

  Robyn nodded. “Yes, he did indeed.”

  Krissy walked over and gave Koda a big hug. “And I thought you were cool before.”

  MAYVILLE, WISCONSIN

  JANUARY 27, 2011, 9:25 A.M. (CST)

  AFTER LEAVING THE home of Emmeline Fausil-McCabe the previous afternoon, Newt made the unilateral decision that he and Maggie would stay the night in Mayville.

  Now, sitting at breakfast in the Bob Evans on the outskirts of town, it was clear to Maggie there was something on Newt’s mind. “I hear the wheels turning in that head of yours,” Maggie said. “What are you thinking?”

  “Just tying up loose ends,” Newt said.

  “Let me get some more fruit, and we can talk it through.”

  “Okay, spit it out,” Maggie said as she stabbed a piece of cantaloupe and put it in her mouth. “What’s bothering you?”

  “I’m just trying to piece together the timeline,” Newt said. “We know Stanton Lee Mungehr was born in 1955. We think in Chicago, while his mother was looking for the guy who got her pregnant.”

  “Phil Spilatro,” Maggie said. “Go on.”

  “The next eight years are blank, other than Emmeline saying Mary Ann worked as a waitress and that she didn’t have much money,” Newt said. “Then, in 1963, she shows up in Wisconsin with Declan Mulvaney on her arm.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So why’d she bother?”

  “What? Bring him up there to meet Emmeline?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “God, Newt, for as smart as you are, your lack of understanding women really amazes me sometimes.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Mary Ann and Emmeline were best friends from a small farming community and relative equals. Then, overnight, everything changes. Emmeline gets married to a rich guy, while Mary Ann gets abandoned. Emmeline moves into a big house and drives a Mercedes, while Mary Ann can barely make ends meet. Then Declan Mulvaney comes along, and she’s finally got the opportunity to show her best friend that she did okay too.”

  “But Declan Mulvaney wasn’t rich then,” Newt said. “I know, I Googled it. He didn’t start making his money until a couple years later.”

  “It wasn’t about the money,” Maggie said. “It’s about the guy. We’re only famili
ar with Declan Mulvaney as an older man, but even in his eighties you could tell he was very handsome.”

  “Mary Ann was trying to make Emmeline jealous?”

  Maggie shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s what she intended, but it worked. You heard what Emmeline said. ‘A man like Declan Mulvaney is hard to forget.’ I’ll bet Emmeline never slept with her husband again without thinking about Declan Mulvaney at least for a moment or two.”

  “You’re right,” Newt said. “I clearly have no understanding of the female psyche.”

  “Is that it?”

  “No,” Newt said. “We’ve still got to find out how Stan Lee ended up in the asylum at Dunning for three years, and I want to find out how his mother died—and if Stan Lee witnessed it.”

  “Does that mean we’re going to Chicago?”

  “Yes, but first I want to drive past the farm where Stan Lee lost his legs.”

  It took longer to find the farm than Newt assumed it would, but with good reason. The farm was no longer there.

  “Well at least we got to see where the farm used to be,” Maggie said.

  Newt ignored her and made a U-turn.

  “What now? There’s nothing to see, Newt.”

  Newt drove about half a mile, past acres of flat snow-covered farmland, until he reached what looked more like a driveway than a road and turned in.

  “What’s in here?” Maggie asked. “And turn on the heater, will you?”

  “No, it fogs up the windows, and I can’t see,” Newt said.

  “There’s nothing to see,” Maggie said, reaching to turn on the heater.

  “There,” Newt said, pointing through the windshield at what appeared to be an abandoned farmhouse. “That’s what we’re looking for.”

  Newt pulled the rental car to a stop, a hundred feet short of the farmhouse and turned off the engine. “You’ve got your gun, right?”

  Maggie nodded. “Of course.”