Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery

by Tatiana Boncompagni

  He stopped chewing for a second. I waited as he finished his bite and figured out how he was going to respond. “You know you can’t use any of what I’m about to tell you.”

  “Panda, it’s me you’re talking to.”

  “I got a soft spot for you Shaw, but I can’t afford to get screwed over on this one. This ain’t slap-on-the-wrist territory.”

  “For you and me both,” I countered, leaning forward on my elbows. “So tell me. What do the cops know about Olivia’s visitor?”

  “You ever try the knishes here?” he asked, attempting to change the subject. “The spinach ones are pretty tasty.”

  “Panda, the woman. I take it she’s a person of interest?”

  He nodded, wiped some of the grease off his chin with a napkin. “Her name’s Rachel Rockwell. Name ring any bells?” Panda put his sandwich down.

  “Should it?” It wasn’t a lie, but the truth was that I knew who Rachel Rockwell was and why she’d been in Olivia’s apartment Friday night. I knew, but I couldn’t tell anyone. I’d made that promise to Olivia, and I wasn’t about to go back on my word. Especially now.

  He shrugged. “They’re getting a divorce. He filed. Husband’s a lawyer at one of those swanky firms. They live in Greenwich. Drive nice cars. Kids attend private schools.”

  Ten to one, the police were at that very moment trying to ascertain if Olivia and Rachel’s husband were sleeping together. Then Rachel would have a motive for bludgeoning Olivia to death with a crystal vase. Detectives loved nothing more than tying everything together into a nice, neat love triangle. I knew better. This was no triangle.

  “How’d you ID Rachel Rockwell?” I asked.

  “Her fingerprint was on a wine glass. It matched one in the system.”

  I raised an eyebrow. A criminal past?

  “She was arrested for a DUI last spring.”

  “Booze or drugs?”

  “The first one.”

  We’d be able to look that up, get her mug shot. Plus, drunks tend to make spectacles of themselves in public places and Greenwich was an insular community. I’d be willing to lay down another bet that she had a reputation for stirring up trouble. “What other evidence do you have?” I asked. “So far all I’m hearing is circumstantial.”

  His face darkened. “There may be more.”

  “What is it?”

  “The medical examiner found something under Olivia’s fingernails.”

  “Tissue matter?”

  “You know you can’t report this.”

  “You think it’s Rachel’s?”

  “We don’t know, and won’t for a while. You know how long these tests take. Her husband’s lawyer is refusing our request for a sample, so getting the judge to grant the subpoena will add on some time.”

  “He’s lawyered up already?”

  That made me suspicious. Either Rachel’s husband knew enough about how these things worked to stay ahead of the game, or he had something to hide.

  “And of course they had to get a big shot,” Panda added, referring to the Rockwells’ lawyer.

  “Who?”

  “Uffizo.”

  Oh crap. Frank Uffizo was a big-dog defense attorney who couldn’t resist the spotlight. He’d been on our show more times than any of us could remember and had a decent relationship with Georgia. But the guy was slick. If I called him directly, he’d go behind my back and create a bidding war between us and every other network in the business. He didn’t want money—he had plenty of that, and besides, we’d never pay for an interview like this. What he wanted was control. Uffizo liked to hash out the questions beforehand. It wasn’t fair, or ethical, but sometimes we had no choice but to play by his rules—and follow his script. You can imagine how Georgia felt about that.

  “What does the PD know about Rachel Rockwell so far, besides how much her husband had in the bank?” I asked.

  Panda bit into his half-sour. “She’s a mother of two. Good looking. Long, dark hair and big eyes. Part Native American.”

  “Where’s she from originally?”

  “Birth certificate says South Dakota. Pine Ridge Reservation.”

  “That’s a long way from Greenwich,” I commented. All of this was new information to me. I’d be able to use it to work around what I knew and report this instead. I went into producer mode again, thinking about how we could most efficiently locate a gaggle of Rachel’s neighbors and friends to talk about her on air. She had to be well-known in her community. She wore purple fur and stilettos, drank too much, and came from the wrong side of the tracks by about 3,000 miles. I made a mental note to get someone out to Connecticut to start canvassing her neighborhood for sources ASAP.

  “She won scholarships doing beauty pageants. Almost made it all the way to the Miss America pageant. From there, law school,” Panda summarized.

  “So she’s smart.” For some reason, that worried me.

  “Except after she graduated, she opted out, as you ladies like to call it these days. Married Rockwell right out of law school. Spent the rest of her days running the carpool and playing tennis at the country club. Model citizen except for the DUI.”

  “Think she’ll turn herself in?”

  “She better.”

  “You know I’m going to have to put her picture on air.”

  This stuff had a formula. First piece is the photo. Maybe her mug shot or a shot of her competing in a beauty contest. Best case I find a shot of her in a bathing suit for our male viewership. Then, for the women, we put a neighbor on air talking about what a great mom she was, how pretty and energetic and what a great baker/tennis player/homemaker she was. Then we get her parents, Ma and Pa straight from South Dakota. And then, if we have luck on our side and can get around Uffizo, we get the husband. It wasn’t rocket science. That’s why everything came down to finding an inside track. Time is what it’s all about. Getting ahead. Booking the guest before anyone else knows to even call them. Because if you get the guest, you get the ratings. I didn’t care about any of that, but I did want to find Rachel. She was either responsible for my friend’s death or she knew who was.

  Panda hunched his shoulders. “Give us another few hours. Let us bring her in first.”

  I didn’t like it. I leaned forward across the table. “And if she disappears? What then?”

  “Four hours, Shaw. She’s got kids. She’s not a flight risk.”

  I begrudgingly agreed. The truth was it would be tough to get all this new info worked into the package we already had in the works for the three o’clock broadcast. Time was tight enough as it was. I looked at my watch. “It’s one now. That means we go live at five.”

  He balled up his napkin. “Better you than someone else.”

  “Any other evidence?” I asked. If the cops weren’t sure that the tissue under Olivia’s nails was Rachel’s they wouldn’t be able to rule out other suspects—unless they had additional reasons to think she’d done it.

  “Neighbors heard yelling after the women returned home.”

  I digested what he said for a moment. “They heard yelling? Fighting or calls for help?”

  “An argument, between two women, they said. Very loud, very serious.” Panda drained the last of his soda.

  Witnesses played an important role in a criminal prosecution. If the detectives could nail Rachel with DNA evidence and witness testimony, she was toast. Case closed, media circus averted. But I knew something the police didn’t, and I wasn’t so sure things were going to turn out that way.

  I took the last bite of my pastrami. I’d eaten the whole thing and barely tasted it. I could feel it in my stomach though, sitting there like a greasy tennis ball. Better full than famished—I didn’t know when I’d get to eat again, between the scheduled live shots and preparing for Alex’s recap of the day’s events for Topical Tonight.

  Panda nodded at my empty basket. “Good. At least now I know you won’t be fainting from hunger.” He took a last sip of his root beer before standing up with some diff
iculty.

  I helped him up.

  “My knees are gone,” he said, shaking his head. “They say they’re the first thing to go.”

  “For women it’s the eyes.”

  He gave me a quizzical look.

  I pointed to the crinkled skin at the outside corners of my eyes.

  “You got nothing to worry about. Which reminds me, you dating anyone I should know about?” Panda regularly ran background checks on my suitors. I always protested and accused him of invading my privacy, but secretly I liked the idea that he was looking out for me.

  “I haven’t had a date in months.”

  “What happened to the economist?”

  He was referring to Pinstripe Joe. We’d been dating for a couple of months when he left his razor and special shaving cream in my bathroom. I packed everything up in a small bag and dropped it off at his apartment when I knew he wouldn’t be there, with a note saying You must have forgotten this. Before him, I’d dated a bankruptcy lawyer, before that a museum finance director. All of them were setups by Olivia; all of them were nice guys. The museum guy said he’d tired of my boundary issues and the banker said he’d found someone more “emotionally available” to take my place. The economist blamed our breakup on my job, or my so-called unwillingness to put anything else before it. It had been six weeks since my last outing with Joe. I was lonely sometimes, but most of the time I was too busy with work to worry about my lack of a personal life. “We broke up. It was for the best.”

  Panda opened the door and stepped down to the sidewalk. “This the truth?”

  “Afraid so. It wouldn’t have worked.”

  “Plenty ’o fish.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’ve got the wife and kids.”

  “If only you’d take the silver spoon out of your ass, I’d introduce you to one of our boys in blue.”

  It was true about the silver spoon, but it wasn’t something I advertised. In my experience, as soon as someone knew you were born into money, they jumped to the conclusion that you’ve had everything handed to you, you’ve never had to work a day in your life, and people have given you opportunities because of who you are and who you know—not because you deserve it. The word sacrifice is not in your vocabulary, nor is hardship or struggle. You are entitled, spoiled, immoral, and lazy. I liked to think that none of these things applied to me.

  Nor should they; I’m a Shaw in name only.

  My mother’s family, farmers looking for a better way of life, came to the United States from England in the early 1800s. They settled in Boston, made their money first in trade, then in oil and gas and railroads, and along the way had a lot of children. My forebears were a fertile bunch, and so over time, from generation to generation, the riches were spread thin between the various family branches. Some of my relatives did a good job, investing wisely and managing to add to their inheritances with their own fortunes. As you might have guessed, my immediate ancestors did not. They lived fast and died young; a real go-big-or-go-home crowd. My mother—her given name was Charlotte, but everyone called her Tipsy—was the last in a long line of unapologetic dilettantes.

  Shaw was her surname, passed on to me. According to my father, Tipsy wanted me to inherit the one remaining piece of my birthright she thought was still worth something. In her New York, the right last name could open doors and clear paths and, given the option, she wanted her daughter to be in possession of one. Little did she know I would, years later, find it more of a liability than anything else.

  My father, James, grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood in suburban Philadelphia. His father was a mechanic and his mother a receptionist at an insurance agency. He defied the local odds and won a scholarship to Columbia, which was where he met my mother. Although I wasn’t privy to all the details of their courtship, I did know that it was brief and romantic, and that my grandparents, all four, hadn’t been thrilled about the match. My father’s parents would have preferred their son marry a good Catholic, while my mother’s parents wanted their daughter to marry one of their own—someone moneyed and pedigreed, for whom social status was a given, never an aspiration. The Shaws were not strivers.

  Love prevailed, however, and my parents—James Callaghan and Tipsy Shaw—married in a quiet civil service at City Hall. I’m told I arrived nine months later. It may have been less. What I do remember of my early childhood is that we lived in a beautiful apartment in a brown-brick building on Park Avenue and enjoyed a lifestyle made possible by the generosity of my maternal grandparents and my father’s Wall Street career. Life was an endless parade of niceties—chauffeured cars, fresh cut flowers, pressed linens that smelled of lavender and sunshine. I wore clothes my mother bought for me in Europe—leather sandals purchased in Rome, cashmere from London, smocked dresses and lace-trimmed socks from France—and my bedroom was a little girl’s dream, with walls painted ballet-slipper pink, a canopied bed draped in rose taffeta and my very own crystal chandelier. I had a nanny, a sunny Swedish girl who kept her coat pockets filled with black licorice and red candy fish. Another woman was employed to do the cooking, cleaning, and ironing.

  But then one day, everything changed. My father lost his job working for a big buyout firm under circumstances never explained to me. Without his salary, we couldn’t afford the mortgage, to say nothing of the cars and vacations, clothing allowances and charity outlays. My mother appealed to my grandparents for additional help, but they refused to assist us with anything other than my school tuition, drawing back, even, on their former munificence. I imagine it was their way of saying I told you so to my mother.

  I was six when we moved into a much smaller condominium overlooking a small concrete courtyard filled with old bicycles and unloved vegetation. Neither pre-war nor modern, the building was blessed with the advantages of neither. The ceiling in my bedroom was too low to accommodate the canopy on my bed, so that was disposed of or sold off, along with the chandelier, Mom’s party dresses and furs, and the BMW Dad had kept in a garage for weekend jaunts to Locust Valley, where my grandparents kept a Tudor-style mansion, pool, and clay tennis court hidden behind eight-foot hedges.

  My nanny and the housekeeper were let go; and my clothing no longer came adorned with seed pearls and lace, or wrapped in crinkly tissue paper that smelled of talcum powder and faraway places. The only aspect of my life to remain unchanged was my enrollment in the Livingston School for Girls, one of the city’s more exclusive schools, one of those places where the kids are dropped off in chauffeur-driven Town Cars or SUVs and can trace their lineage back to either the Mayflower, the Forbes 500, or both.

  “I know it’s been a tough summer,” she’d told me the following September, squeezing my hand as we made the ten-block walk to school, to my first day of kindergarten. “But don’t worry about your tuition. We can still afford to keep you at Livingston.”

  She’d allowed herself to go downhill since we’d moved to the new place, favoring jeans and old sweatshirts and forgoing makeup and sometimes a hairbrush. But that day my mother had worn a fresh-pressed white blouse, flannel kilt, and dark brown boots. Her dark hair was combed into a neat chignon, exposing the pair of gold shells clipped at her earlobes. Her hand felt rough, though, no longer the texture of rose petals.

  I wrenched my hand away from hers, furious. Was it too much for her to use a hand cream? It was the first day of school. I wanted everything to be back to normal. I resented her hangnails, our heavy mood, my ratty old backpack. As soon as we arrived at the school gates, I charged up the stairs without her.

  But I was all bluff. At the top of the stairs I turned around, repentant. “See you later!” I called to her across the spiked tips of the wrought-iron gate.

  She waved, her small white teeth bared in a brave smile, before turning to walk back down the block.

  I dialed Georgia’s cell as soon as Panda left my side. She took the call despite being in the middle of a session with her trainer. “I need an assistant producer to help me pull together the B-ro
ll for my next package,” I explained.

  “Hang on a sec.” I could hear the sound of weights clinking in the background as Georgia hunted for a private place to speak. “Now girl, how in the hell did we lose that first one to GSBC?”

  She was talking about Penny’s scoop. “I had it, Georgia. She beat us to air.”

  “All right,” she said. “So we move on. You remember what I always say on cases like this?”

  “It’s a marathon, not a dash.”

  “And right now we’re in fucking last place, Clyde. Find me something to dig my teeth into. You say you can do this, then do it.”

  I’d been on the receiving end of Georgia’s tough love enough times to know not to take her words personally. All she wanted was for me to do my best work and perform to my highest potential, and sometimes I needed a kick in the pants to do that. Not that day, though. I was already miles ahead.

  “An inside PD source says the cops have identified the woman who was in Olivia’s apartment Friday night. Her name is Rachel Rockwell. Lives in Greenwich. The PD is calling her a person of interest. She’s wanted for questioning but hasn’t turned herself in yet. I promised my source to keep her name and picture off the air until five o’clock. They want to bring her in first.”

  “They establish probable cause?”

  I turned off Lexington Avenue onto a quieter side street. “They’re getting warrants to search her house, computers, and car.”

  “How sure are you that this won’t leak sooner? Greenwich police. Her family and friends. There’s any number of ways this could get out.”

  Georgia had a point, but I’d given my word to Panda. “I can’t go back on a promise.”

  She sighed. “OK, so we hold till five. In the meantime, do the research on Rockwell. Do we know what her connection to the victim is?”

  “The source didn’t reveal anything.” It wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t the truth either. I couldn’t tell her that without breaking my promise to Olivia. “The husband already hired Frank Uffizo.”