Twenty minutes later we entered a curving uphill driveway to a front circle complete with an operating fountain. Crickets chirped in the dark. Tall pines rustled like the surf and flavored the night air with their sap. As one might expect, the massive Federal-style mini-mansion had been built with long-lasting Virginia brick.
A large brass fixture under the portico and lamps shining from within the house were all that illuminated your way inside; but when you got there, the first impression was a whopper. An urn of fresh flowers over two feet tall, walnut paneling to chair-rail height, paintings done by somebody with talent.
The driver assisted Frank in offloading the luggage and hauling it into the front hall. I did my own and got no objections.
“Daddy! Mommy!” shouted a girl of eleven as she ran to hug her parents. She was bouncy and round and had on an old-school uniform—white blouse, pleated plaid skirt in navy, burgundy and white, navy knee socks, laced leather shoes.
“Abby, sweetie, shouldn’t you be getting ready for bed?” Frank seemed both pleased and concerned.
“Dad-dy. It’s only eight o’clock. Lana told me I could stay up anyway.”
The girl was shoulder height to Frank, ear height to Marsha. Tortoise shell glasses slipped down her small nose, and even with braces on her teeth she was beautiful. Perfect skin, brown hair that glowed with red and gold highlights, blue eyes the shade of sapphires—just a little more weight than necessary. While she was waiting to become a knockout, she would be self-conscious.
When we were introduced, young Abby Roitman assessed me as if I were a horse she wasn’t sure she wanted to buy.
“What are you doing here?” she inquired as if she had the right to know, which maybe she did.
I glanced at her parents for a clue about how to answer.
Chantal jumped in. “She’s a guest, Abby. Mind your manners.” The expectant mother sank into a brocade chair. “You think Lana has anything for us to eat? I’m starved.”
It occurred to me to wonder why Chantal hadn’t gone her separate way like her brother. Maybe she was in no hurry to return to an empty house, a house without her husband.
With Abby skipping along behind we all wended our way through a formal dining room, an old-fashioned pantry, and into the kitchen.
I guesstimated that the house had been built sometime after Abraham Lincoln but before Rosie the Riveter, but the kitchen had been updated last week. The hood over the six-burner stainless-steel gas stove appeared capable of sucking the whole stove through the ceiling. White marble countertops, mullioned cherry cabinets, and a cook in a pale gray dress with a white bib apron. She looked disturbed by my presence, like a hostess who hadn’t set out enough plates.
“Svetlana, this is Lori Ruggles. She’ll be staying in the pool house tonight. Are the sheets fresh?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the cook/housekeeper replied. As expected, her accent sounded Russian. I would later learn that “Lana” had come to the United States from Belarus, that she was university educated, and that she had a sarcastic sense of humor.
What I saw just then was a woman of perhaps fifty with a sad, sagging face, thin, straight brunette hair laced with white strands and held off her face with combs. Her suspicious eyes bored pinholes into my skin.
I told her, “Hello.”
Chantal opened both sides of a French-door refrigerator. “What can we have, Lana? Help me out here.”
The evil eye blinked, and animation resumed. Frank shooed Abby off to a bath and her pajamas. Lana handed platters covered with plastic to Chantal, who arranged them on the vast island in the middle of the room. Marsha dug into drawers for utensils and napkins, unceremoniously foisted them on me, then waved at the rectangular table jutting out from the back window.
Everyday earthenware plates were set beside cold chicken, string-bean salad, fresh rolls, mayonnaise, German potato salad, and cherry pie. Frank supplied ice-water, or beer, or wine; and we all helped ourselves as if we’d done it a hundred times before. Go figure. The Roitmans appeared to be regular people.
While we ate Lana escaped to a room off the kitchen, and we could hear the theme of a familiar cop show set a low volume. When we finished, Marsha tapped on the door, and Lana emerged once again to tidy up our casual dinner.
“I’m sure you’ve had quite enough of the Roitmans,” Marsha hinted as the others said their good-nights and slipped away. “Chantal will settle you into the pool house. I’m sure you’ll be comfortable there.”
Chantal flipped a light switch beside the door at the back end of the house, and a rolling lawn came into view. Halfway down the hill lay a rectangular pool still wearing its taut green winter cover. To the left a small bungalow with a pitched roof snuggled in behind a clump of mature rhododendrons.
Both of us tired, my suitcase bumping along on brick pavers, Chantal and I took our time getting to the door.
“Just so you know. I’ll drive you home tomorrow,” she offered, reinforcing my suspicion that she was reluctant to return to her own home.
“Where do you live?” I inquired.
She said she and Toby had been living outside of the town where Roitman Industries was headquartered. It was indeed on the way to DC.
“We’d just bought another house though. More bedrooms. Nicer yard. I was able to get out of the agreement after Toby died, but I can’t stand being in the old place without him so I left it on the market. Keeping it ready to be shown is a total pain in the butt, so I’m staying here for a while.”
“Old bedroom?”
“Yep.”
“White furniture. Pink walls?
“Canopy bed. Lavender walls.”
I looked over her shoulder toward the mini-mansion. “Which one?”
“Back corner on the right.”
“Gotta be a good view.”
“Yes, it is.”
We both fell silent, and I thought the moment was finally right to ask. “Have you ever wondered whether your husband really committed suicide?”
“You mean the hint you dropped that day on the beach?” She said it without shock or any emotion at all. “I thought of it, sure.” She exhaled a puff of air as if she were laughing at herself. “But it was.”
I thought of the odd method Toby chose to die, Karen’s doubts, Mike’s doubts, the house purchase, the baby she was carrying; but I was far from ready to implicate anyone in her family. Not until I ruled out the possibility of other suspects. A visit to the hunting lodge might help with that.
We exchanged sad smiles, and she handed me the key to the bungalow.
“Want me to show you around?”
“I’ll manage.”
She gave my arm a grateful pat and said she’d see me in the morning.
The setting was splendid, the night air pleasantly cool on my face. I lingered in the doorway while Chantal plodded uphill toward the mini-mansion on the bumpy brick walk. She was looking at her feet though. She would be okay.
Then a gunshot sliced through the space between us, and she ran for the door like a hen fleeing the butcher.
Chapter 22
Contrary to what his wife thought, Frank loved being home. True, he wasn’t here much; but when he was, he loved it. Like now. Slippered feet extended on the bed, extra pillow behind his back, a short glass of bourbon neat within reach. And Marsha half undressed futzing around in the adjacent bathroom. Oh hell, yes, a news program was on the wall-mounted TV just across the room, but why not? He could keep an eye on that and Marsha, too.
“…the terrorist possibility now categorized as a ‘movie-plot’ threat, as opposed to what terrorists actually do…”
The comment caused Frank to swallow more bourbon, which failed to dissolve the knot in his belly. If not a terrorist, who or what were the investigators going to blame? His eyes drifted back to his wife.
Marsha pursed her lips in concentration as she removed the slender diamond tennis bracelet she’d worn on the flight home. He noticed she laid the bracelet on her dressing t
able with the reverence he reserved for cash.
“…speculating whether the engineer may have experienced something similar to road fatigue or highway hypnosis…” The man is dead, though, isn’t he? So we’ll never know.
Lifting both arms, Marsha busied herself undoing her hair. Each small motion caused her breasts, in profile from where Frank sat, to flex and jiggle in a way that slipped a smile across his lips. The woman certainly had good genes—good skin, good figure. Most days he would say he was a lucky man.
Of course there were times he considered strangling the breath out of his wife, but this was marriage, for god’s sake, what else did he expect?
“...many reports over time of a peculiar fishy smell originating from the Metro train’s brakes.” Oh, please!
Marsha watched her eyes in the mirror as she fingered hairpins out of her French twist. She knew the style was as old as earth, but it accentuated her jawline and neck. When the throat wrinkles became ugly grooves, she would consider a change, but not yet. No, not just yet. At random moments Frank kissed the nape of her neck, and she was nowhere near ready to give that up.
Like always, she felt the pull of Frank’s attention. She also knew she was sharing him with the news. Frank’s fascination with all things transportation irked her on an ordinary day, but coverage of the Metro crash and all its ramifications nearly pushed her over the edge. If she wasn’t already half asleep, she would run over there and swipe the remote right out of his hand.
Tonight she was too tired. After Frank confided his situation at work, she had packed in a helluva hurry, so of course their borrowed plane got delayed. She knew she shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth, but pushing and shoving through the sweaty hordes jamming Punta Cana airport then sitting in that tiny lounge with nothing to do for what felt like a week—who wouldn’t have bags under her eyes?
She needed her nightgown. As she rose to go get it, the dressing table chair slid to the left and the foot supporting her weight rolled. Catching herself before she fell, her arm swept the tennis bracelet off the dressing table onto the floor. To steady her balance, she staggered right/left while reaching behind her for the back of the chair.
She missed. The chair wobbled, and rather than fall, she sat. Something crunched. The chair leg had landed on the bracelet. Marsha’s manicured fingers flew to her mouth.
Afraid of what she might find, she bent down and scooped up last year’s birthday present as gently as if it were a baby chick. Half an inch of the narrow row of diamonds set in gold had been twisted and crushed.
Two of the small stones had even cracked in two. Holding the bracelet aloft, she turned to confront her husband.
He sensed her stare.
“What is this?” she demanded, emphasizing each word like a threat.
Frank Roitman always knew he’d married a formidable woman, but until this moment she had yet to frighten him. As sudden as a dog’s bite, the qualities he depended on his wife to possess were gone. In their place were all of the ones he never expected to see, the ones from other men’s horror stories, tales full of damning adjectives and demeaning laments. Intellectually, he knew a woman’s wrath could turn an honest man into a thief, cause him to hide inside alcohol, even prompt a primeval violence that would condemn him to prison for life. It had all seemed theoretical.
He saw now that it was not.
“I can explain,” he said.
“Then start.”
He stood. He stuffed his hands into his pockets. He walked a crooked path to where Marsha was seated. He raised his left palm as if to minimize what he’d done. Then he told her, “I needed some money off the books.”
“What for?” They stood face to face now, like two marionettes dangling on fragile strings.
Frank’s chin lifted. “If I wanted to tell you, I’d have told you before.”
Instinctively, Marsha left that statement alone. Instead, she asked, “How much?”
He answered.
She swore. “So is all my jewelry fake now?”
He reached for her hands.
She yanked them away.
“Are we broke? Tell me the truth, Frank, or. Or…”
“Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. I was protecting you from an unpleasant situation, that’s all. In business there are things that no one should know but me.”
“You could have trusted me, Frank. Why didn’t you?”
Because, my dear, baring my soul to you is not in my own best interest.
He deflected.
“It’s the legal system, Marsha. It just wasn’t—isn’t prudent—to tell you all my problems.”
“The legal system?” she scoffed.
Frank knew that Marsha would not be reassured by a more complete explanation. True, a wife could not be compelled to testify against her husband, but if she voluntarily told someone else, spousal privilege was broken and all bets were off.
Or, if they happened to divorce, nothing could protect him from her wrath—and these days divorce was a statistical coin toss. Yes, risk was certainly integral to most of his business accomplishments, but trial and error had educated him well. He had learned to recognize when accepting risk was prudent and when it was not.
He had just begun to offer his wife a reassuring hug when they both heard a shot.
Marsha startled and gasped.
Frank lurched toward the sound in time to see his daughter running, stumbling, and running toward the house, shrieking and flailing the air like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.
“Hand me the phone, Marsha,” he said. “I’m calling 9-1-1.”
Chapter 23
The shot came from the dark side of a long row of thick evergreens to my right. Thanks to the light by the pool-house door, I dumped my suitcase, grabbed bullets out of Karen’s jewelry case, and loaded the Glock inside of ninety seconds.
The rhododendrons to the left of the bungalow were huge. Sneaking between them and the wall proved to be impossible and rounding them would have left me too exposed. Instead, I wriggled past some naked bushes on the bungalow’s other end then on through a narrow gap in the evergreens. Sensing a barrier, I stopped to listen.
From the middle distance came the grumble of a car speeding away. There had to be a road or a lane out there, but no headlights showed in any direction, and soon the shooter was gone.
I’d come to a string of wire dotted with familiar white ceramic knobs—electric fencing surrounding a pasture. Not too excited about getting zapped, I turned right hoping to skirt the perimeter and eventually check into that road.
By now my night vision was fair, certainly not great. White-tipped fence posts helped me judge the terrain—up, down, even—but bushes and trees regularly blocked my path, and clumps of last-year’s overgrown grass often tripped me up.
In roughly five minutes I reached a stand of tall, dense arborvitae that appeared to mark the corner of the field. Thin light from something high up shone toward me from the other side.
I did not get that far.
“Freeze,” said a voice deep with authority.
Grasping the Glock with both hands, I pointed it toward the voice and inched the rest of the way around the evergreens.
Light spilled from a bulb attached to the underside of a barn’s roof. Silhouetted a dozen feet in front of me was a man using the exact stance as mine.
“Drop it,” he said.
“You first.”
“Not going to happen.”
I sighed. “Since you haven’t shot me yet, I’m guessing you work here.”
“I still could,” he informed me, “so lower your weapon and slowly lay it on the ground. Then back up till I tell you to stop.”
If I hadn’t heard a car without headlights leave, and if the vibes from this guy had felt more offensive than defensive, my response would have been different. As it was, I trusted my gut and followed orders.
While I backed up, the silhouette moved forward. When he arrived at my Glock, he lifted it by t
he barrel and gave it a good sniff.
“Okay, sweetie. Who the hell are you?”
“Sweetie? Really? That’s so…so yesterday.”
“Okay, idiot. What are you doing running around in the dark right after a gun was fired?”
“It wasn’t mine,” I argued, “but you already know that.”
“Huh,” he snorted. “You going to tell me who you are, or do I have to beat it out of you?”
“Does Scorsese know you’re using his material?”
“Who. Are. You?”
“An invited guest,” I said, crossing my fingers behind my back. “I’m staying in the pool house.”
“You better have a suitcase.”
“Of course I have a suitcase.”
“We’ll see.” He tucked my Glock in the front of his belt, grabbed my arm and propelled me over to some open lawn. From there the pool house and mini-mansion looked like toys sitting in pools of phosphorous.
My adrenaline high had crashed back at “Freeze,” and my sneakers were soggy with dew. The silhouette’s hand around my arm was the warmest thing in my universe, but I began to regret that I hadn’t had a chance to give his gun the sniff test. How embarrassing would it be to die just because of one little miscalculation? I started to shiver and couldn’t stop.
Whoever-he-was began to march me uphill. Rather than the strong stride I expected, his gait was the side-to-side wobble of a long-established limp. Still we made it to the bungalow in record time.
“There. You happy now?” I said gesturing toward my, correction—Karen’s—suitcase. The surrounding clothes resembled an after-photo of a Christmas morning involving small children, if one of them happened to wear size 32B.
Below the shadow cast by his baseball cap, the silhouette smirked.
Then he returned my Glock handgrip first, doffed his cap, and gave me my first look at his eyes.
The door light wasn’t kind, but the eyes were. They smiled from within deep creases that told of fifty-some years, many of them hard.
Guilt Trip Page 10