The Nutting Girl

by Fred DeVecca

  “You had the best view of anybody. And you were watching it all through a telescopic lens. What do you think happened?”

  “You know, when I’m working, I’m working. You don’t really see anything. I was just snapping away. All I know is what those pictures tell me.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I sent them to you—a detective.”

  “Retired detective.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Bullshit. I can see it in your face. You’re not retired. Not from this job anyway.”

  I sipped my bitter root beer. He sipped his martini.

  “Lorenzo,” I said, “I presume you’ve got those pictures on your computer?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “So you can blow them up bigger, right? So we can look at details?”

  “Sure. They’re real high res. You can blow them up monster big.”

  Lorenzo was staying at a bed and breakfast on Church Street. We finished up our drinks and took the quick walk over the bridge and to the house.

  The proprietor was playing her cello in the living room when we walked in and Lorenzo led me upstairs to his room. We could hear the Vivaldi from her cello as Lorenzo turned on his laptop and found the pictures from that day. She—appropriately, just as if we were in a movie—was providing us with a soundtrack behind which we could say our lines.

  I had him pull up the third picture, the Zapruder one, the last one where Julie’s face was visible.

  He expanded it until Julie’s face filled the screen. The quality was superb. It didn’t get grainy or out of focus. He zoomed in on her mouth, where the lips were upturned and there was a glow about her face.

  There was no doubt about it. Our Nutting Girl was smiling seconds before she hit the river—an angelic, beatific, but subtle smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Nutting Girl’s Smile

  She was smiling, but I had no idea what that meant. Lorenzo printed out an 8½ x 11 copy of the big smile and gave it to me. Unlike the photo of Edith, I didn’t want to fold this one, but he had large envelopes and some stiff cardboard, so he packed it up securely for me. I would take it home and tack it to the wall above my couch with the others in my gallery.

  I was ready to leave but wanted to see that grin again. Grin was the wrong word, but none of the synonyms for smile fit either. In fact, smile was not quite right. It was something else.

  I took the picture out of the envelope and studied it. It wasn’t a smile of happiness or joy or excitement. It was an expression of determination, of resolve, mixed with peace and contentment.

  Lorenzo looked at it too. Then he wordlessly held up his index finger in a silent plea to “wait a minute.” He dashed downstairs and returned a few minutes later with something in a fancy stemmed glass that looked like a martini and a bottle of ginger beer. He handed the ginger beer to me and sipped the martini.

  “Don’t go yet,” he said. We both stared at the close-up of our Nutting Girl’s mouth. “We have more to talk about. What does that picture tell you?”

  “Not a damn thing,” I answered.

  We looked at it some more.

  Then we stopped looking. I had hardly even tasted the ginger beer. Lorenzo had finished his martini and gone downstairs for a second one. Now he sat on the edge of the bed while I sat on a stiff wooden chair. Vivaldi on the cello filled the room.

  “Who are you, Lorenzo?” I finally said.

  “I’m just a guy who’s always liked movies. I’ve been around them all my life. My father produced some films you’ve probably even heard of, and I worked for him since I was eleven. I did just about everything you can do on movies. I started as a production assistant, ran for coffee, made copies, shit like that. When I got bigger, I did grip work, gaffer stuff, assistant camera. And I worked in the office for my dad. I studied photography, and he wanted me to be a cinematographer. But I found out I preferred pictures that don’t move. I like to do the moving and have the pictures stay still. And I like the fun of sneaking around. It’s like the excitement of being a thief without having to steal anything and get arrested.”

  “Except their souls, right? Some people think by taking their pictures you’re stealing their souls.”

  “Only when I’m doing it right.”

  We sipped our drinks.

  “You know the business,” I finally said. “How does this all work?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what happens now? This movie is dead, right? What happens to Mooney and all the elaborate stuff he set up here? Where does he go? What does he do?”

  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a flying fuck,” Lorenzo replied.

  I laughed at the Gone With the Wind reference, but Lorenzo looked serious.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t give a flying fuck what happens to Mooney. I never liked that guy.”

  “You know him?”

  “No, I don’t really know him, but I’ve been around his movies before and I hear all the scuttlebutt. He’s a total sleazeball.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean VelCro’s dead and Mooney’s better off than he ever was. He’s got the money to make a dozen films now.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just looked at Lorenzo and he knew I needed more.

  “You don’t know how this works, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “When you got somebody like VelCro in your film, you have to insure it up the wazoo. With her history? She’s a major risk factor. It’s real expensive, but no one will let you shoot without it. With her gone, it pays off big time.”

  “So he actually made money on this.”

  “Yeah, a lot. And he didn’t even have to make a movie. More even than if this was a hit. Unless it was the biggest fucking hit ever.”

  “Well, this film was not going to be a hit. I read the script.”

  “It sucked. Or so I heard.”

  “It sucked. I read it.” I thought all this over.

  “Did anybody on this film get paid?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Everybody got paid for whatever little work they’d already done on it. But they only shot one day. Not even. Just a couple hours. So it didn’t add up to much. Except for VelCro, of course.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A star like her gets paid up front. She already got her fifteen mil, or whatever it was.”

  “So Mooney and VelCro both get monster paydays and everybody else gets nothing?”

  “That’s about it. It’s fucked up.”

  I asked Lorenzo if he had any idea what happened to Mooney since the shoot ended.

  “I don’t know. I guess he’s back out west. Probably planning to make a real movie this time. The guy has talent. He’s got great stuff in him.”

  “But he doesn’t have VelCro this time.”

  “No, but he’s got his other dozen hot redheaded girlfriends. Maybe he can make one of them a star. The next VelCro.”

  I had no idea what Lorenzo was talking about.

  “You know. All those girls? All those redheads?”

  I looked at him stupidly.

  “The ‘A’ girls? At the girls’ dorm?” Lorenzo laughed and said, “Dude’s got them lined up. Waiting.”

  Then he showed some mercy to this uncomprehending old man.

  “They’re all over town,” he said. “Don’t you see them?”

  I did not respond.

  He said, “For a smart guy, you don’t know much, do you?”

  I allowed as how I didn’t.

  “Well, they’re everywhere. He had a million girlfriends, that guy. Women love him. But then really, deep down, he only had one. You know what I mean?”

  I took a wild guess. “VelCro?”

  “Bingo. He loved her. Even with all these other babes around, she was the only one he really wanted.”

  “I never saw that,” I said, feeling stupid.

  He laughed. He actua
lly laughed. Then he said, “I mean … duh! What are you, fucking blind?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  To Paradise

  I see a lot, but there is much I do not see too.

  I knew Mooney was sleeping with Julie. Hell, it seemed like half the men and maybe a quarter of the women in Hollywood were having sex with her.

  Yeah, I knew it. I just couldn’t admit it. Not till now, when it was shoved in my face.

  It didn’t sit well with me to have it spelled out explicitly. It added another dimension, and I didn’t need more dimensions. Could Mooney have set up Frack to kill his star and pocket the insurance? Would the possibility that he was sleeping with her make that more, or less, likely? Romance gone bad, maybe? That causes more nasty things to happen in this world than just about anything. Frack and Mooney were both missing. Julie too, actually, though the longer she was gone, the more dead she seemed.

  I had a lot of questions and almost no answers. But I also had one more thing in my life relating to the whole Nutting Girl case, and that was something I had been ignoring while I accumulated all this new data. Sarah.

  She had become sullen and basically paralyzed. I wasn’t sure what she was doing each day but it didn’t seem to be much of anything. She stayed in her room a lot. Maybe she was online, or reading, or meditating, or praying, or thinking. Maybe she was crying. Most likely she was just sitting there.

  Clara was concerned. But hell, Sarah was a teenage girl and not inclined to pay much attention to what Mom had to say—even less inclined to pay attention to what a boring old dude who was hanging out with her mom, and possibly even having sex with her, had to say.

  One June night, I decided to talk to the girl. I had enjoyed a calm and quiet dinner with Clara. Sarah had come into the room, silently picked off a couple of carrot and celery sticks, and retreated back to her sanctuary. I nodded at Clara and went over and knocked at her door.

  She was lying on her bed with her computer in front of her. “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey back. How’re you doing?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  I was standing off to the side. She tilted her computer screen toward me. Julie’s face filled it. Sarah pushed a button for the slideshow to begin and a series of pictures of Julie taken from the web began to parade across the screen. Publicity stills, candid shots, headshots, body shots, each one lovelier than the last. None of the nudes or semi-nudes that were all over the web. Just pretty, heartbreaking shots of an unearthly beauty.

  Sarah pushed a button to stop the slideshow.

  “That’s how I’m doing,” she said.

  “It takes a long time to get over something like this,” I told her.

  “I’ll never get over it,” she said. Then she looked right at me, or through me, and continued, “And neither will you. Look at your face. You look just like me.”

  There was no denying it.

  So, despite my better instincts, I proceeded to relate everything I had recently learned—from Harvey’s observation, to the pictures on my wall, to Frick’s report, to Lorenzo’s story.

  Her reaction was curious. I saw no hint of the excitement of the hunt, or of renewed hope of getting answers, or of anger or dejection or any of the emotions I had considered possible.

  Instead, I saw an unchanged, blank expression.

  She closed the lid of her laptop.

  “Frankie,” she said. “I wish you had told me all that before.”

  “I wanted to deal with this myself.”

  “I’m involved too. She was my friend.”

  “I know. But what more could you do?”

  “Jesus, Frankie! Well, first of all I can look at those pictures. I can’t believe you didn’t bring them right to me. Second of all, I pretty much knew all that crap anyway. What do you think I’ve been doing on this computer? Besides looking at her pictures, I mean. All that stuff about the insurance is all over the web … if you dig deep enough, anyway. And I do. Mooney is making out like a bandit on this fiasco. Third … him fucking her? Tell me something I don’t know. Anybody with eyes could see that. Fourth … Frack is in New Orleans. I already figured that out too. You and me are going to go visit him. Fifth … nobody knows where Mooney is. He’s missing too. He’s not in Hollywood. He’s collected the insurance money and he’s in parts unknown now. My money’s on New Orleans, with Frack. Sixth … smiling when she went into the river? Hell, I knew that. I was right next to her, looking into her eyes. And it was more than a smile, Frankie. It was the kind of look I think terrorists get when they know they’ve sacrificed themselves for God and they’re on their way to paradise. If I didn’t know her so well, I’d think it was scary. And seven … you march me up that fucking Hill of Tears right now and show me those damn pictures.”

  I didn’t tell her not to swear. I marched her up the fucking hill.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Shattered Glass

  Sarah didn’t have much to say about the photos. She looked at them carefully, but she said little.

  Then she said, “Frankie, you have a cousin in New Orleans, right?”

  “Right.”

  “How big is his house?”

  “Not very big. He’s got a wife and kid.”

  “Room enough for some visitors?”

  “He’s got a guest room and an office. And a couch. Sure.”

  “How much do flights cost?”

  “I don’t know. A couple hundred bucks. Maybe three. Maybe four.”

  “How soon can we be on a plane?”

  I held up my hands, palms out. “Come on. Slow down, Sarah. We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  “I know what I’m looking for.”

  “I know what you’re looking for—your friend Julie. She’s not in New Orleans.”

  “Isn’t she?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know, Frankie? At least it’s a place. At least it’s something. Some place to go. Something to do. I want to do something. I have to do something.”

  “I’ll grant you that there’s a good chance Frack is there. And I’d love to talk to him. But I don’t think that’s compelling enough to make me—and you—dash off halfway across the country. I don’t have a lot of money, Sarah. And you don’t have any, as far as I know.”

  “Well, what do you want to do?”

  I thought this over. “I want to talk to Mooney,” I said.

  “So do I,” said Sarah. “He’s probably there too. I’m feeling pulled there.”

  I don’t usually quarrel with people when they say they’re pulled somewhere or somehow. I was feeling pulled there too.

  I called my cousin, Tommy. He had room for us. I went online and checked into tickets. They were fairly inexpensive and available. We could be basking in the New Orleans heat real quick, if basking was what we wanted. But asking is more what we wanted to do. We wanted to ask that son of a bitch Mooney what the hell was going on, not only with Julie but with Edith.

  New Orleans is a big town. I had no idea how we could go about locating Mooney or Frack there. Shelburne Falls was one thing. I know everything about this burg and I know how to find anyone or anything here. New Orleans was a different story.

  Tommy could be a big help. He’d lived there forty years playing in bars and painting houses, so he knew the place inside out. But still, it was a crapshoot, a needle in a haystack.

  I needed to think it over more before I committed to going. I convinced Sarah to sleep on it. We would decide tomorrow.

  I wanted to go for a walk. Alone. Or alone with a dog. Night had settled in and the neighborhood was quiet. I put Marlowe on his leash and headed out. Instead of going into town, we headed the other way—up the Hill of Tears, a direction I didn’t often go in.

  Just a short way beyond my house, the paved road ends and turns into a dirt road and the houses get farther and farther apart. Very quickly you are no longer in a village but in the country, seemingly d
eep in the woods. It gets dark and lonely and completely still.

  We heard some bird songs I stopped to record. A Northern Mockingbird serenaded, or mocked, us with an endless string of chew chews. No cars passed by and we were lit up only by the sliver of the moon shining through the veil of the birches above our heads.

  Marlowe was distracted by a rabbit and gave the leash a pleading tug. The rabbit passed and he tugged no more. There was no one around, so I let him off the leash and he dashed about happily, sniffing and picking up sticks. I tossed a few for him.

  All I could think of was Mooney. I had never really been able to get a real grasp on the guy. Alcoholics can do that to you. We know how to keep a distance, how to reveal a little but never too much, never enough.

  Was he capable of killing a young girl, his lover, to collect insurance money? Could he be that much of a monster? Could anybody?

  And what the hell was up with this whole Edith Marie Pasternak thing? These two gone girls were related somehow.

  Mooney was key. Once I found him, I could then move on to finding the Nutting Girl, if indeed there was anything left of her to find.

  Edith was a throw-in. I knew Julie. I had been hired to protect her and I had failed, so making amends meant everything to me. I never knew Edith, so that intense personal connection was not there. But now I had been hired to find her too, and when I am hired to do something, I do it, so finding Edith meant a lot to me too.

  Close to the peak of the Hill of Tears, Marlowe and I approached the old Snyder property—a sprawling estate with a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse at its center with more recently built spokes extending out from there. It had long since been converted to a mini artist’s colony. The spokes had been filled with dorm-like rooms and studio space, and a barn out back converted to a performance center. The old place was just on the verge of crumbling, but it still appeared to be salvageable. It was in need of a buyer and a little loving care.

  The now faded “For Sale” sign had fallen off its post and was leaning against the mailbox. It had been on the market for years—a magnificent place on a magnificent spot, but too costly for anyone around here to afford. Eight hundred thousand. It had sat vacant for a long time.