Sullivan's Law

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “Dead men don’t have health insurance,” Madeline said. “Don’t worry, Charles, I have more than enough money. Once Eddie kills Metroix, I’ll meet Boyd and pay him half the agreed upon sum. Boyd will get the rest as soon as he kills Eddie. After that, it’s finished. I’ll get on the next plane to Boston.”

  Chapter 29

  Their first evening in Pasadena was uneventful. Isobel made fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and homemade biscuits. Afterward, Rebecca sprawled out on the floor in the living room while she watched one of Lucy’s DVDs.

  Daniel ate in his room on a tray. Carolyn joined him for dessert, a delicious key lime pie. She was surprised when she saw John poke his head in the doorway. “If you guys are talking, I can come—”

  “No,” Carolyn said, eager to see John, warming up to the man he’d previously resented. “I was about to go upstairs to make some phone calls.”

  She quietly closed the door behind her, feeling a rush of exhilaration. Perhaps good things did come when a person least expected them. Climbing the stairs to the master bedroom, she plugged her cell phone into an electrical outlet to keep the battery from going dead and dialed her brother’s number.

  “My show’s tomorrow night,” Neil said. “You’re going to pick up Mother, right?”

  “Don’t you ever read the newspaper?” Carolyn asked. “John was kidnapped yesterday. A police officer was shot.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Neil said. “Is John all right? Where are you now? I’ll come over.”

  “We’re not at the house,” Carolyn told him. “And I can’t tell you where we are, just that we’re safe.”

  “What do you mean you can’t tell me where you are?” Neil exclaimed. “I’m your brother, for Christ’s sake. The least you can do is tell me what happened.”

  Carolyn gave him a rundown of the events of the previous day. “Don’t worry,” she added. “They’ll catch Downly. Be cautious, though, Neil. If he figures out you’re my brother, he may come after you to get to me.”

  “Wow,” Neil said, “that really makes my day. What does this guy look like?”

  Carolyn described Fast Eddie. “I’ll call Mother and tell her you’ll pick her up at nine in the morning.” Before Neil could complain, she disconnected and called her mother.

  “Listen, Mom,” she said, “something serious has come up with my job. Neil’s going to pick you up at nine in the morning and spend the day with you. I won’t be able to come to his show.”

  “You’re not coming to your brother’s show!” Marie Sullivan said. “Surely the probation department can’t keep you from something this important. Your brother will be shattered. And what will people think?”

  Carolyn was thankful her mother didn’t subscribe to the Ventura newspapers. When she wasn’t socializing with her friends, she spent her time reading science magazines, watching educational programs, and working on chemistry projects in her basement. “You know I wouldn’t miss Neil’s show unless I had to, Mother. We’re going to be in and out, so don’t worry if you can’t reach us at the house. Until I tell you otherwise, call me on my cell phone. Oh, and don’t believe everything you hear.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Carolyn had hoped she could withhold the fact that her grandson had been kidnapped. Her mother was in good shape for her age, but she had a heart condition. She couldn’t take a chance that one of her friends would tell her. She explained the situation, insisting that they were safe and that she needn’t worry. “I’ll call you after Neil’s show, okay? He’s going to pick you up tomorrow morning at nine.”

  “This is terrible, Carolyn,” Marie Sullivan said. “I want you to quit that job. It’s too dangerous. Promise me. You and the children can live with me until you locate some other kind of work. I have three bedrooms and the schools here in Camarillo are excellent.”

  “I can’t quit my job, Mother,” Carolyn said. “In a few years, I’ll have my law degree. This was an isolated incident. It won’t happen again. Call Neil, so you can figure out what to do about tomorrow. I know he’s home because I just talked to him.”

  “When will I see you?”

  “I can’t say for sure,” Carolyn said. “Hopefully, we can get together next weekend. I love you, Mother. Have a nice time at the show tomorrow. I wish I could be with you.”

  Carolyn went downstairs, surprised that Daniel’s door was still closed. She found Isobel in the kitchen engrossed in a paperback novel. “I need to check the schedule for Daniel’s medications.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Isobel told her. “I’m right across the hall. I’ll take good care of him.”

  Carolyn took a seat at the table, seeing Isobel closing her book as she prepared to retire for the evening. “What was Paul’s wife like?” she asked. “You don’t have to answer. I’m just curious.”

  “Penelope,” Isobel said, scowling. “That woman thought she was a queen or something. She never thought about anyone other than herself, even little Lucy. Didn’t deserve a good man like Professor Leighton. This is her house, you know.”

  Carolyn was taken aback. “You mean she still lives here?”

  “Not anymore,” Isobel said, walking over and returning with a platter of brownies and a stack of napkins. “Help yourself,” she said, setting the plate down in the center of the table. “You’re a skinny little thing. Need some meat on your bones.”

  Carolyn patted her stomach. “The meal was delicious,” she told her. “Trust me, leave those brownies on the table, and my kids will make them disappear. You said this is Paul’s ex-wife’s house. I’m beginning to feel extremely uncomfortable, Isobel.”

  “Penelope hasn’t lived here in years,” the woman told her, taking a brownie and placing it on a napkin. “She inherited this house from one of her relatives. She grew up here in Pasadena. This was just a place for fancy friends to stay when they came to town. She lives in a mansion in Malibu now with her new husband, ugliest man you ever laid eyes on.”

  “Why did she marry him, then?”

  Isobel ate the brownie, then swept the crumbs off the table with her napkin. “Money, honey,” she said. “And the man’s a plastic surgeon. Keeps her tuned up like one of those Rolls Royce cars she drives. Last time I dropped Lucy over there, her face was so tight, she couldn’t even smile.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Carolyn said, bracing her head with her hand. “If she had money, why did she marry an ugly man? Certainly not just to have plastic surgery. She could have paid for that without getting married.”

  “Old money doesn’t last forever,” Isobel explained, a wise look in her eyes. “Half of the maids around here have more money in their savings accounts than the old fools who live in these big houses. People born into this kind of life don’t work. They consider it beneath them. We call them coupon clippers. Meaning, they live on whatever their mommies and daddies left them. Their houses are usually paid for, so all they got to do is pay the taxes and upkeep.”

  “Some of these houses are worth millions,” Carolyn said. “Why don’t they just sell them?”

  “The younger ones do, then they go through the money. These people spend like there’s no tomorrow. That’s how they were brought up, see.” Isobel paused, stretching her arms out on the table. “The older folks never sell. This town is their life. They’re born here and they die here. To sell and move away to another city would be like you packing your family off to Siberia.”

  “Speaking of family,” Carolyn said, having grown fond of the woman, “have you ever been married?”

  “Oh, I was married,” Isobel said, a slight catch in her voice. “My husband ran off after my son was born. Never heard from him again. That was it for me and men.”

  “Where’s your son?”

  She blinked several times before answering. “Otis is dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carolyn said, remembering Lucy saying something about visiting a cemetery. “What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

 
; “Murdered,” Isobel said, wiping a tear away. “I owned a nice little house in Los Angeles. I had myself a job working for the post office. You work for the government. You know those kind of jobs don’t come easy. A man broke into my house in the middle of the night. He shot Otis in the back while he was sleeping. I used to blame myself ’cause I let Otis move the TV set into his room.” She glanced down at the paperback book. “My parents didn’t have television. Momma said the only way we’d ever get ahead in life was to learn how to read. She was right, you know. That’s what helped me pass the civil service exam. Otis was all I had, so I spoiled him. You know what the sad part is?”

  Carolyn took a deep breath, but she didn’t speak.

  “If the TV hadn’t been in his room, my son might still be alive. That murdering thug shot my Otis for a lousy TV set. He shot him while he was sleeping to make certain he couldn’t identify him.”

  “How old was Otis when he died?”

  “Fourteen,” Isobel said. “This coming Sunday would have been his thirty-third birthday. After Otis was murdered, I quit my job and moved out of the city. I met Professor Leighton in the grocery store. I’ve been with him for eighteen years. He and Lucy are my family.”

  Carolyn wondered why Paul had placed Isobel in a situation where her life might be threatened. “Are you afraid? You know, because of what’s been going on with us?”

  “Listen, sugar,” Isobel said, her face shifting into hard lines. “Nothing scares me these days. You couldn’t have a better person looking after you. If a pin drops in this house at night, I hear it. Someone comes around looking for trouble, they’re going to be mighty sorry.”

  “Thanks,” Carolyn said, walking over and kissing her on the cheek. “Having you here makes me feel everything’s going to be all right.”

  “Of course it is,” Isobel told her, standing and stretching her back. “You’re with the right people now.”

  Before she headed upstairs, Carolyn went to the living room to peek in on Rebecca. “Don’t stay up too late,” she told the girl, walking over and kissing her on the top of the head.

  “Why not?” she asked. “We don’t have to go to school tomorrow.”

  “You brought your books, didn’t you?” her mother said. “You’ll just study the next chapter in every subject.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” the girl protested. “The teachers skip around. I might end up doing a bunch of work for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing,” Carolyn corrected her. “Anything you learn is of value. I know you’ve got a reading list for extra credit. I’ll send Isobel to the library.”

  John was seated in a recliner across from Daniel’s bed. “I was fooling around on the Internet,” he said. “In school, we’ve been studying the Columbia disaster. I never knew Richard Feynman was on the presidential committee that investigated the Challenger disaster. That kind of thing really wasn’t his speciality. You know, aerospace.”

  “He was one of the best physicists around,” Daniel told him, propping the pillows up behind his head, “even though he didn’t have any experience with the space program or the shuttle itself. At the time, he was battling cancer. Are you interested in hearing the story?”

  “Sure.”

  “Feynman was visiting a friend who was a car buff. The guy had a couple of carburetors on the table, and mentioned to Feynman that the carburetors leaked when it got cold. The two men then wondered if cold might have created a problem with the O-rings on the Challenger.”

  “The temperature dropped too low on the day of the launch,” John said. “NASA didn’t know the temperature was going to affect the O-rings. Anyway, that’s what I read.”

  “They weren’t completely unaware there was a problem with the temperature,” Daniel said. “They just didn’t know all the facts. This is where physics gave them their answer. Feynman proved his point during a session of the Challenger commission using nothing more than a glass of ice water.”

  “You’re kidding,” John said, completely enthralled.

  “All the generals and bigwigs were in the room, and they were passing around a cross section of the shuttle joint. Rather than just glance at it and pass it on like everyone else, Feynman took out his tools and dismantled it. He removed a piece of rubber from the O-ring, compressed it with clamps, and then dunked it into the glass of ice water. That’s why I said this afternoon that he was a colorful character. Most people wouldn’t have had the guts to start taking apart a piece of evidence, particularly not in that setting.”

  “My friends don’t understand anything about physics,” John said, impressed. “They think I’m some kind of weirdo, that all it amounts to is a bunch of stupid math.”

  “Physics is everything,” Daniel said, adjusting his bed linens. “Of course, that’s just one man’s opinion.”

  John stood, tilting his head and smiling. “You’re pretty cool,” he said. “I can see why my mother went to bat for you. I’d like to talk to you some more while we’re here, if you’re sure you don’t mind. I mean, you’re supposed to be getting well. I don’t want to bother you.”

  “You can talk to me anytime you want,” Daniel told him. “There weren’t many inmates at the prison who were interested in physics.”

  After the children went to bed, Carolyn jumped on the Internet in Paul’s office to see what she could find out about Madeline Harrison. She assumed the couple were married in Ventura, so she checked newspaper articles a few years before their son had been born.

  An article announcing their engagement popped up. She stared at the couple’s faces. Charles Harrison had been a nice-looking man, but his future wife had been gorgeous. The writeup said that Madeline’s parents were both doctors who practiced in Los Angeles, and that she’d graduated from Cornell University with a degree in anthropology. She wondered how a woman with her background had met and married a police officer. Love, she assumed. No wonder she’d seemed so sophisticated.

  If Madeline’s parents had been doctors, she might very well have money of her own. She’d have to call and tell Hank. It had seemed too far-fetched to believe Mrs. Harrison had hired someone to kill Daniel. They couldn’t rule her out as a suspect any longer.

  Carolyn became engrossed in the old newspaper articles. As she was scanning through the archives, she caught the name Madeline Milcher and quicky locked onto the article. Milcher had been Madeline’s maiden name. The article said the Cornell graduate had been arrested for shoplifting by the Ventura PD. The arresting officer was listed as Charles Harrison, and the charges were later dismissed as unfounded.

  She printed out the articles and left the room, calling Hank from the master bedroom. The line was busy, so she left a message on his voice mail for him to call her in the morning.

  Chapter 30

  Boredom arrived Friday night like a thunderstorm.

  Rebecca had watched every movie at least twice, John had surfed the net and talked physics until Carolyn and Isobel had to resort to pinning up visiting hours on the door to Daniel’s room. Even Isobel, who’d left the house several times to run errands and buy food, informed them that she was leaving Sunday morning to attend church and visit her son’s grave.

  “Why can’t we go out to the movies?” Rebecca argued, tossing pillows around in the living room. “We’ll wear disguises or something.”

  It was six-thirty and Carolyn was seated on the sofa. John was slouched next to her, changing the channels on the television. When Rebecca hit her mother in the face with a pillow, Carolyn exploded. “I won’t tolerate this kind of behavior, young lady. I told you when we came here that we’d have to stay in the house until the police apprehended the suspects. We haven’t even been here three days.”

  “No one’s trying to hurt us anymore,” her daughter said, facing her mother in defiance. “I feel like I’m being held for ransom. I want to go home, be with my friends, go back to my school.”

  John turned the TV off. “She’s right, Mother,” he said. “These people have
given up, don’t you see? They think Daniel left town. He’s always been the problem, not us. I’ll never get a scholarship if I don’t go back to school by next week. What do you expect us to do? Spend the rest of our lives here?”

  Carolyn placed her head in her hands. She’d known there would be problems, but she hadn’t expected them to surface this soon. “I talked to Detective Sawyer today,” she said wearily. “They may have a lead on Eddie Downly. A man identified him as a suspect in a crime committed in Los Angeles last night.”

  “See?” John said, tossing his hands in the air. “The guy’s moved on.”

  “Downly robbed a supermarket at gunpoint,” his mother said, cutting her eyes to him. “He even fired at a bystander. Luckily he missed.” Now that she had their full attention, she continued, “He’s just waiting, don’t you understand? What reassurance do we have that he won’t end up on our doorstep the moment we return to Ventura? This man is a killer. You spent time with him, John. Why don’t you tell your sister some of the things Downly told you? Do you want Rebecca to end up in the morgue? Or maybe he won’t kill her. There’re other things a man like Eddie Downly might want to do to a young girl like your sister, a girl just on the verge of becoming a woman.”

  John was appalled. “I can’t believe you’re talking about this kind of stuff in front of Rebecca.”

  Carolyn’s daughter was sitting perfectly still now, her arms limp at her sides.

  “She’s almost thirteen,” Carolyn told him. “She watches the news, movies, TV shows. She knows what goes on in the world.” She looked at Rebecca, rubbing her hands on her jeans. “I’m trying to explain why we have to stay here, honey. I would never frighten you for no reason. My responsibility as a parent is to protect you.” She got up and walked over to the girl, turning her arm over and revealing a circular scar located near her wrist. “Remember when you were seven? You decided to play with the oven. You didn’t just burn your arm. You also caught your hair on fire. You didn’t think that was dangerous either.”