by Ray Flynt
I now understood why Rachel sounded so judgmental about her aunt’s male companion.
15
“Uh, Sharon, this is Zack,” Kay said when they’d finally come up for air, adding, “My boyfriend.”
She’d got the boy part right; he was at least half her age.
Zack barely looked at me, but waved and said, “Hey.”
I didn’t need a detective’s license to figure out that he was ready for round two of tickle my tonsils, but Kay pushed him back and said, “Give us ten more minutes.” With a seductive grin she told him, “I’ll see you inside.”
Zack straightened up, scowled in my direction, adjusted a visible bulge in his pants and slunk back into the house.
Kay flashed a smile like a sorority sister seeking affirmation that she’d picked a winner.
I couldn’t go there.
Figured I had nine and a half more minutes to get answers, and vowed to make the most of it.
“Did you ever meet Maggie’s neighbors?”
“No. Oh wait,” she corrected herself. “I met him. Once. I stopped by in the middle of the day and he was there. Her sink had stopped up and he’d come to fix it, according to Maggie. She said his name, but I don’t remember it.”
I felt like I might sneeze, before I asked, “Herb?”
Kay perked up. “I think that’s right.”
“Middle-aged, overweight, wheezes a bit?”
“Hey, watch it with the middle-aged,” she cracked.
“Sorry.”
“Not the guy I saw,” she continued. “He was a hunk. This was a long time ago, and I’d just separated from my second husband. Maggie laughed when she saw me give the guy the once over; said he lived next door. Already taken.”
Hard for me to picture the guy I saw as a hunk, but shit happens.
“You never met Herb’s wife, the woman Maggie called a bitch?”
Kay shook her head.
I shifted gears, asking, “Were you around when your sister first met Martin?”
“I lived here—with my first husband—and she was in New Jersey. We were always close and talked by phone a couple times a week. I was worried when she started dating Martin.”
I cocked an eyebrow in Kay’s direction and she continued.
“Of course, I hadn’t met him at that point. My concern was how quickly she’d latched on to him after breaking up with Sammy, a boy she’d been dating since high school. He was the reason she joined the Army.”
“Because Sammy had joined up?”
Kay nodded. “She called me one Saturday night distraught because Sammy had broken up with her. I did my best to console her—long distance—and I called her every day after that to check on her. By the following Tuesday all she talked about was Marty. Marty this, Marty that.”
I heard three loud raps against the wall from inside.
“Hold your horses, Zack!” Kay shouted, then flashed a demure smile.
“What was Sammy’s last name?” I asked.
“Jankowski.”
I copied the name into my notebook after clarifying the spelling.
“Might he have been jealous of Martin?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, Sammy broke up with her. They stayed friends from what she told me. They were all in the same unit. The guys worked as mechanics and Maggie in the motor pool’s parts department.”
Kay explained that she and Maggie had grown up in Allentown, PA, and she’d heard that Sammy had returned to the Allentown area when he got out of the service. I was weighing whether a trip to visit Sammy might be worth it, when Mr. Raging Hormones pounded on the wall again.
“Zack, stop it,” Kay yelled, sounding irritated.
As if there’d never been an interruption, I asked, “How did they end up in Manayunk?”
“Martin grew up not far from there in Germantown. After he got the job with GE, the Manayunk location made sense.”
I stood. “I should get going.”
Nodding toward the inside door, Kay said, “Don’t let Zack run you off.”
She didn’t know me very well. “Don’t worry, he isn’t. If I should have any other questions, may I call you?”
“Sure.”
As I climbed into my car I chuckled at the thought of how much worse Kay’s hair would look after the two of them finished jousting in the bedroom.
While driving back to Bryn Mawr I reflected on my session with Kay. Her comments about why Maggie hadn’t taken the insurance money and run were interesting. But they were easily countered by the fact that Maggie had sunk roots into the community, had a nine-year-old daughter in school, and family members nearby. A palm-tree-lined beach might sound enticing, but family considerations would have had a stronger pull.
My phone chirped and I answered it using the car’s speaker phone.
“Sharon Porter?” a deep voice asked.
“Yes.”
“This is Assistant Superintendent Griffith at FCI Beckley following up on your request to visit Hugo Pancavetti.”
I hadn’t expected a response this soon. “Yes, thanks for calling me back.”
“We can arrange a visit for you at 9:30 a.m. this coming Monday.”
My mind ran through the logistics of getting to Beckley, West Virginia. I knew Brad would be okay with me booking a flight, but I doubted there was commercial service directly into Beckley. God knows where I’d have to make connections. Pittsburgh? Nashville?
Factor in having to arrive at the Philly airport two hours in advance, and it would be just as easy for me to drive; which meant leaving on Sunday.
As I was about to agree to the proposed meeting time, the assistant superintendent asked, “Have you met Mr. Pancavetti?”
“No.”
“I wondered,” Griffith said. “He shrugged when I told him you wanted to visit.”
I summarized the case I was working and my reasons for wanting to chat with Pancavetti.
“Like I said,” Griffith explained, “He was noncommittal. We’ll have a meeting room for you, but he doesn’t have to see you. Or, he could lay eyes on you and ask to be taken back to his cell. We can’t compel him to talk.”
Or ensure that what he might say is the truth.
“I figured as much,” I said. “I’ll take my chances.”
I arrived at Oliver’s one-bedroom apartment in West Chester, PA shortly before 6 p.m.
Situated above a consignment shop that specialized in upscale women’s clothing, his place was three blocks from the juvenile probation office where he worked. Oliver managed, with the aid of his walking stick, to maneuver to and from work, run nearby errands, and visit the gym. A friend of his from college days also lived in West Chester and drove him to the grocery store once a week.
The landlord had furnished the place with a mix of Goodwill Industries’ hand-me-downs and IKEA. Of course, Oliver didn’t mind that nothing matched and that the walls were bare, but the lack of design sense took me aback when I first saw his place. I keep telling him, “You need a decorator,” but Oliver just laughs.
As I climbed the squeaky wooden stairs to his apartment I knew he’d be alerted to my arrival, and was about to knock when he called out, “It’s unlocked.”
I entered, shouted “Hi,” and resisted chastising him that he needed to keep his door locked. I spotted him in the galley kitchen dumping a bag of salad into a bowl. Steam rose from a boiling pot behind him.
“Grab a seat, dinner’s almost ready.”
“Something smells good.”
Oliver stopped what he was doing. “Your voice sounds a little gravelly. You okay?”
“I feel okay,” I said. “Just been fighting a cold.”
“Mmmm. I love germs after dinner.”
I laughed.
Dusk fell early in November, and I turned on a lamp in the combination living/dining area. I headed toward the table and noticed a basket of crusty rolls and two place settings of the only china I knew he had. I stopped short when I heard soft music and spo
tted his iPod in a new docking station. Familiar with his playlist from times we’d listened to it in my car, I didn’t recognize this song.
“Wha’chalookin’ at?” Oliver hollered from the kitchen.
I flinched.
With Oliver’s enhanced sense of hearing, he knew I’d stopped en route to the table and wondered what had diverted my attention. When I was a kid I thought my mother had eyes in the back of her head, but Oliver seemed clairvoyant.
This particular skill of his unnerved me. I wouldn’t think anything of it if a “sighted” boyfriend saw me staring into space and wondered what I was looking at. My issue. I had to resolve it.
“I don’t recognize that song,” I said, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.
Oliver carried an over-sized bowl of spaghetti and meatballs from the kitchen. This was home turf and he negotiated it effortlessly.
“You don’t like the music?” Oliver quizzed when he’d set the dish on the table.
Shit.
“No… No, I do like it.” I tried to sound nonchalant. “Who is it?”
“It’s Idle Afternoons by Mike Kennedy.”
I recognized the name of the jazz guitarist. We’d talked about going to one of his group’s concerts.
“You sit,” I told him. “I’ll bring in the salad.”
I first had to snap on the overhead light in the kitchen—Oliver didn’t need to use it—before grabbing two bottles of salad dressing from the refrigerator. I got Italian for me and blue cheese which I knew he liked, and brought them to the table along with the wooden salad bowl.
“Oh, I forgot the cheese,” Oliver said, poised to jump up.
“I got it,” I said, and went back to the kitchen.
By the time I returned, grated parmesan in hand, Oliver had already filled my plate and served my salad.
“Would you mind turning off the lights,” Oliver asked as he lit three candles on the table.
I glanced at him, opened my mouth to speak, and before I could say anything, he said, “I heard you turn them on.”
Of course he did.
I flipped off the lights as he requested and came back to sit at the table, pulling a napkin on to my lap. “Dinner by candlelight. You’re going to spoil me.”
“That’s the idea.” Oliver beamed. He looked so cute when he smiled.
“Merlot?” he asked.
I bobbed my head until I realized I needed to verbalize. “Yes, please.”
Oliver’s left hand seemed to know exactly where to find my glass. He tipped the neck of the bottle to the edge of the glass and began to pour. I was ready to alert him to an overflow when he stopped. Unsettling how he does that.
“Thanks.” I sipped the wine and gazed at Oliver, still trying to wrap my head around the discomfort I felt with his blindness.
I decided to perform an experiment. I closed my eyes, groped for my fork at the edge of the plate, and tried to twirl spaghetti with it. I brought the bite of food to my lips, hoping I hadn’t dribbled sauce all over my blouse. Next I hunted for a meatball, stabbing the plate with my fork until I found one. Just like locating an aircraft carrier in the game of Battleship, minus the sound effects. I speared a piece and brought it to my mouth.
“Are you upset with me?”
My eyes fluttered open at the sound of Oliver’s voice. “No. Why?”
“You’re quieter than usual. It seems like you’re upset about something.”
Like I said, clairvoyant!
But I wasn’t ready to confide my fears to him. So I wimped out and lied. “Sorry if I seem distracted, it’s this case I’m working on.”
“I’m all ears if you want to talk about it,” Oliver said.
What could I do? I didn’t want to discuss the issue that was really on my mind. So I summarized the case, starting with Rachel’s first visit to Frame’s office that past Monday, my meeting Alfred Miles’ brother at the nursing home, and jousting with Nick Argostino on the details from seventeen years earlier. I continued by describing my tour of the Tetlow home and the fatal accident scene in Manayunk, told him of my visit with Rachel’s Aunt Kay, and plans to meet with Hugo Pancavetti.
“You think Pancavetti might confess?”
“He didn’t do it himself, but I think there’s a good chance one of his henchmen did. Oh, I forgot to mention, another juror was killed during the course of that trial. In a drive-by shooting on the sidewalk in front of his house.”
“Wow.” Oliver stared at me.
Even though he was blind, his defect from birth only affected the optic nerve, so his eyes looked normal. But since he’d never learned to focus, friends were treated to a perpetual gaze. I found it unnerving.
“What are you thinking?” I finally asked.
“Seems like overkill—pun intended.”
I nodded, realized my mistake and muttered, “But Pancavetti was out on bail, a free man as long as they couldn’t convict him.”
“True, but why resort to killing jurors?”
“Short of getting better lawyers what could he do?”
Oliver laughed. “I’m taking a criminal law course, and the professor is a former assistant federal prosecutor. One night after class a few of us went out for coffee with him. I forget how it came up, but he told us about a case of jury intimidation he’d dealt with. At least two members of the jury were subtly threatened, they voted for acquittal, and the trial resulted in a hung jury.”
“Why didn’t they kick them off the jury?”
“The threats weren’t known at the time. Months afterward, a juror reported that she’d been threatened but that hadn’t prevented her from voting for conviction. She suspected the two holdouts had been threatened. They were then questioned by prosecutors and the truth came out.”
“Hmmm,” I said, recalling the story Rachel’s Mom told her about a man’s menacing comment to her husband. “According to Rachel, they’d already tried that when a stranger rode down the elevator with Martin as he went on a smoke break, and said, ‘I hope Rachel sleeps well tonight.’”
“Whoa!”
I took another sip of wine.
Finally, Oliver said, “Wonder why they didn’t let the intimidation work? And what other jurors might have been similarly threatened?”
“Yeah.” He’d made a good point. “I’ll ask Pancavetti during my meeting.” If he’ll even speak with me. “But you can tell, I’m stymied on this one.”
Oliver cut a meatball in two with his fork. “If it’s not Pancavetti, who’s your next suspect?”
“Yeah, well…” I felt like a sneeze was imminent, but it never happened. “We told Rachel it would be tough looking back at a seventeen-year-old case.”
Lit only by candlelight, we ate in silence for a few minutes before Oliver bellowed, “Show me the money!” like Tom Cruise’s character in Jerry Maguire.
I laughed.
Oliver looked wounded at my frivolity. “No. Seriously. Who stood to gain from Martin Tetlow’s death? You told me Rachel’s Aunt Kay mentioned a sizable insurance policy.”
Unless it had been used to pay a hit man, I didn’t think money was the motivation for Martin’s murder. Whatever Maggie Tetlow inherited seems to have been used to put Rachel through school and permit her to live in modest circumstances for all those years.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled through a mouth full of spaghetti. “I saw the Tetlow’s house; it’s even less charming than your place.”
Oliver cracked a smile. He’d gotten used to me taking digs at his décor. “What about that crazy neighbor?”
“You mean Herb?”
“Yeah, isn’t it a little suspicious that he was at the scene of the fatal accident?”
I appreciated having Oliver as a sounding board to process the case. It was the kind of thing I would have been doing with Brad if he weren’t tied up in a courtroom. Oliver brought a fresh perspective; his questions and my recounting of events prompted a few new ideas. As far as the Tetlow’s neighbor, I thought
Oliver was wrong and told him so. “Herb went there as part of his job, driving an ambulance.”
I finished eating, and deposited my silverware on the plate.
“You want more?” Oliver asked.
Uncanny how Oliver responds to sounds.
“I’m done,” I announced. “Besides, I’ve been saving room for dessert.”
He looked crestfallen, and stood to begin clearing the table. “Ah, would you like coffee?”
I knew he hadn’t made dessert, and that his reference to it earlier in the day was a euphemism for bedroom fun, but that didn’t stop me from kidding him. As he placed the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, I teased, “It depends on what kind of goodies you made. If you baked a cake, I’ll probably want coffee. But if it’s gooey like a peanut butter hot fudge sundae, then probably not.”
I smiled to myself as I saw a reflection of light from the refrigerator door opening, and imagined Oliver hunting for ice cream.
Oliver called out, “You like Cool Whip?”
“Sure.” I heard nothing back. An eerie quiet descended over his apartment long enough that I began to feel uncomfortable.
Finally, I said, “Is everything okay?”
I started as I felt his hand on my shoulder.
Oliver leaned over and blew out the candles on the table, plunging the room into darkness except for the glow of a street lamp through the front window. I felt his fingertips move along my shoulder blades and down my arms. When they reached the bare skin near my elbows I shivered.
His fingers returned to massage my neck, and I found myself audibly moaning as he caressed my hair and then drew his fingers gently over my ears and touched my face. Next he moved his hands along my spine, and I found myself leaning forward until his palms pressed gently into the small of my back.
He kissed me, first on the cheek, then our lips met. All the while his fingers kept doing wonders.
“I have a confession to make,” Oliver said, when he’d come up for air. “There’s no dessert.”
Like I cared.
“Yes, there is.” I flung my arms around his neck and pulled his lips towards mine.