“Pen?” I say, taking a step onto the fluffy green rug. “It’s me. Um—Charlie.” I sit down beside her and pull the daisies over my head, too. The two of us are in a tented world of our own. In the hazy fabric-baffled light, I can see her red nose and tear-matted eyelashes.
“Flo,” she says. “And Eddy.” Her wisp of a voice, morose and melancholy, pronounces their names as if from a roll call of fallen heroes. “Got white.”
I tuck my arm through her elbow and stare with her at the gauzy underside of the bedspread. “Poor fish,” I say. “You loved them, didn’t you? They were good fish. And we will miss them.”
We sit in silence for a moment. Penny makes no move to pull away. I hear a little snuffle. She uses one sleeve of her ruffly pink T-shirt to wipe her nose.
“Should we talk about them?” I ask softly. “What’s your favorite story about Flo and Eddy?”
“They were cute fish,” Penny replies after a moment. “They would swim after each other. And they liked when I gave them food. And they were pretty in the sun. Like gold.”
“Like little treasures, right? And they loved you, too, don’t you think?”
I hear Penny breathing, sniffing a few times, as if she’s considering. “Yes,” she says. “They did.”
“Creatures like goldfish, they aren’t like us humans,” I say. “They live a long time for fish, you know, sweetheart? But it doesn’t always seem like a long time to us.” I pause. “So, we will miss them. But we were glad to know them.”
Penny pulls her feet back under the spread, wraps her arms around her legs, then plunks her chin onto her knees. “I knew it would happen,” she says, still staring into the flowered cotton. “Everybody I love … goes.”
I don’t know how to be a mother. I don’t know how to deal with a little girl who feels as if the rug has been yanked out from under her still-uncertain little legs. Who thought she knew what she could rely on and how her world works until suddenly, through no fault of her own, it doesn’t anymore. Penny’s bereavement isn’t only about fish. And this isn’t the first time today I’ve been faced with this.
“You know, Pen,” I begin. “I was talking to someone else today, who’s missing someone. Someone she loves very much. And you’ll never, ever guess what she does. Want to hear?”
A sniff from beside me, then the back of her hand unabashedly wipes her runny nose. “I guess,” she says. “Was she missing her fish?”
“Nope,” I reply. I edit the story a bit. “She was missing her best friend.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But they had a secret signal, you know? And she showed it to me.” I look down at Penny, who’s turned her face up to mine, inquiring. I nod, as if I have some profoundly valuable information. “It’s very powerful. And it means—it means no matter what, you’re a team. And it means no one is going to leave. Even if you’re far apart, you’re together.”
“What is it?” Penny whispers. Her brown eyes are wide, leftover tears still clinging to her lashes, but she’s turned toward me and she’s put one little hand on my knee. “Can you tell me it?”
I nod, closing my eyes briefly to emphasize the gravity of the moment. “I think we should take off the quilt, okay? The secret signal is better in the light.”
With a careful hand, Penny deliberately peels back the quilt. Her thin brown hair clings to the fabric as she curls out from underneath. I lift up my end, too, and turn to the little girl who’s looking so expectantly at me.
I slowly hold up two fingers. “Do like this,” I instruct.
Staring intently at my example, she carefully arranges her right hand in the peace sign. She holds it up and a watery smile begins to form.
“Like this?” she asks.
“Perfect,” I say. “Now. Any time you give me that sign? I know you’re on my team. It means the two of us. And you know what? Do you think we should go show it to your Dad? Let him in on the secret sign?”
A glimmer of anticipation begins to erase her sorrow. She carefully reties the drawstring of her baggy purple cotton pants and pushes her pearlized white plastic headband back from where it’s fallen down her forehead. “Think Dad will get it?” she asks. “That it’s like, the two of us? Me and Dad? And we’ll only know it?”
“Just you two.” I nod solemnly.
“Yay,” Penny says. She practices the sign again, then scampers toward the bedroom door. As she enters the hall, she turns around, a smile—almost a smile—on her face. “And, um, you’ll know it, too.”
And she’s gone.
* * *
The patterns on the ceiling are different in Josh’s bedroom. My apartment is third floor, too high for the lights of traffic. When I snap off my night-table lamp, it’s dark. Here in Josh’s bed, I can watch the shadows flicker on the white walls, the headlights from passing cars rising and falling, crosshatches of shadow floating by through the window blinds, appearing then disappearing.
“You’re good with Penny,” Josh murmurs. He spoons closer and nestles one arm over me. He tucks his hand around me.
“Ah, well, she’s adorable,” I say, snuggling in. “And, you know, it’s kind of a journey for us both.” I breathe in the scent of Josh’s arm, wondering, as always, how he can unfailingly make me feel so female. “Life is unexplored territory, you know? For a little kid?”
I think about my mom. How she taught me about putting the peanut butter on first, how to ride on the El, how to make a new friend. She comforted me when I failed the driver’s test and when I didn’t get invited to the prom. Even though she keeps telling me not to come visit, maybe, now, it’s my turn to comfort her. She just won’t say it. I smile into my pillow. Seems like thinking about being a stepmother is forcing me to think about being a daughter. Maybe I need some exploration there, too.
“And I kind of feel, well, Penny and I are exploring together,” I continue out loud. “Each other’s worlds. And what we mean to each other. Must be hard for her.
“Josh?” I say softly. I can feel his breath on my skin, even the touch of his eyelashes. For a while tonight, there was no thought of anyone or anything except the two of us. No sounds that could be translated into actual words. Our private passion was all that mattered. If he’s still in that world, I don’t want to interrupt. I love it there, too.
But my eyes are wide open and my mind is racing ahead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bars are creepy in the morning. At night—with the lights and the crowds, and the haze of perfume and hairspray, and the reflections of glasses and earrings and whitened teeth in the requisite room-long mirror—you don’t notice that there are no windows. So as I step through the thick wooden doorway into The Reefs, the blazing July sunlight is snuffed out, and I’m dumped into dank timelessness. I know it’s morning, but it could be any time. What’s making The Reefs even creepier, this is the last place Ray Sweeney was seen alive by anyone except Gaylen. And maybe whoever killed him.
I plop my folder and my second latte of the morning on one of the chest-high round tables—high tops, they call them. Draping my black linen suit jacket over the back of a long-legged wooden chair, I wait for Del DeCenzo to finish his phone conversation.
Waiting seems to be the developing theme of my day. This morning I waited outside Kevin’s office, drinking latte number one and watching CNN with no sound. Kevin eventually came out, and told me he’d gotten some nuclear-level threatening letter from Oscar Ortega, reiterating his continued opposition to our “political motivation” and “ratings lust.” Which I thought was a bit over-dramatic. Kevin then reminded me the station was counting on our story to win the July book. Which I thought was a bit over-confident.
Then I waited while the tech support guys unhooked every single wire from my computer and installed a new hard drive. Which prevented me from checking my email and printing out my story notes for an indescribably long time.
But good things did come, as they are proverbially supposed to, after I waited. There in my mail box
was the long-awaited info from Tek Mattheissen listing the witnesses who identified Dorinda in the bar. I’m here trying to understand why those witnesses got it wrong.
Del’s still talking. Back to me, for privacy I suppose. The bar owner is leaning one elbow against the wall, while his other arm gestures animatedly. His voice is too low for me to hear what he’s saying, but his body language telegraphs a battle in progress. I open my overstuffed folder, my bible for the investigation. Might as well look at the list again.
Tommy Bresnahan. The number-one name on Tek’s witness roster. Tek neglected to indicate Bresnahan was the bartender—thanks for nothing—but now I can see if DeCenzo confirms it. And then, maybe he’ll help me find his former employee. I shake my head, picturing the bar on the night of the murder three years ago. If Bresnahan identified the person in the bar as Dorinda, that’s just bull. It was Gaylen, I know that now. She remembers Bresnahan served her margaritas and her father tequila shots. And a twenty-one-year-old is not a forty-year-old. To the liquored-up strangers minding their own business in a dingy bar, maybe. But Bresnahan? That’s hard to believe. Either he’s got serious vision problems or an ulterior motive. Or the police were so convinced it was Dorinda he figured he should just agree.
And then, after all, she confessed. So it didn’t matter if the cops strong-armed anyone.
I hear DeCenzo click his cordless back into the wall-mounted holder. As I look up, he’s coming toward me, taking a long slug from a tall thin can of some energy drink. I’m wondering if he also owns tanning salons, since every inch of visible skin is baked an unlikely copper. He towers intimidatingly over the bar, brush-cut graying hair and military bearing, his Reefs T-shirt straining across a hypermuscled chest, a white canvas apron tied around his waist. Maybe owns a couple of gyms, too. Probably serves as his own bouncer.
“Assholes,” he says. He crushes the can and tosses it into a wastebasket, then gestures to the phone. “They’re raising the price of ice, now. Ice. It’s just some damn cold water, for cripes’ sake. How much can ice cost? This place is a frickin’ Alcatraz around my neck.” Del grabs a thin white towel and wipes it across the bar, back and forth, apparently contemplating the escalating price of ice. Franklin described this guy perfectly. A real poet.
“So, young lady,” he says, tucking the damp towel into the waistband of his apron. He hands me an envelope. “This what you want? I thought I was done with you TV types. Talked to your—” he shrugs “—conductor?”
“Producer,” I say, keeping a straight face. I shift position on my too-high chair and fight a losing battle with my suddenly too-short black skirt. “Thanks so much for digging this out. It’s his job application, right? The one for the bartender who worked here the night of the murder.…” I pause, hoping he’ll fill in the name.
“Jerk,” he says. DeCenzo leans back against the stainless steel sink, crossing his arms over his T-shirt. He’s wearing more jewelry than I ever would, a couple of shiny necklaces, one dangling a massively curlicued D. A rock of a diamond ring flashes on one hand and a chunky gold ID bracelet glints on the other wrist.
“Jerk Bresnahan.” He shakes his head. “I move to town from Detroit, what, three years ago? I must have hired, what, a million guys to tend bar? How hard can it be? But no, this guy’s spooked because someone who was in the bar dies, for cripes’ sake. Ray Frickin’ Sweeney. Who had it coming, if you’re asking me.” He pauses, narrowing his eyes. “Don’t mean anything by that,” he says. “Don’t write that down. Anyway, like I told your…”
“Producer,” I say.
“… I gotta keep records,” he finishes. “That’s how I know this guy didn’t even pick up his last paycheck.”
I open the white envelope, which has a coffee stain on one end. I pull out a copy of a prefab employment application. Place of birth: Salt Lake City. And then, there’s the brass ring. Tommy Bresnahan’s social security number. Which someone has circled. Bingo. Now I can find him.
DeCenzo is still talking. “Came all the way from someplace like Wyoming, he’s telling me. Utah. He’s all about how he’s born out there, skis, bartends all the resorts. I say, fine, one margarita’s pretty much like another. Police arrive. He bolts.”
“And you haven’t heard from him since then?”
“Rains it pours,” DeCenzo says. “You call, and he calls. Couple days ago. Said he might ‘stop by.’ Get his paycheck. You kidding me? Not in this lifetime, I told him. Nobody does that to—”
“Did he leave a number?” I interrupt. Things are looking up. “Say when he would stop by? Where he was?”
“Negatory,” DeCenzo says.
Things are looking down. I open my folder on the bar and pull out the list of witness names. “How about the other witnesses that night? Do you know a—” I glance at the list. “Joe Perry?”
“The guy in Aerosmith?”
“Was the guy in Aerosmith here that night?”
“No.”
“Then, no,” I say, forcing a smile. “How about a George Kindell?”
“It was summer,” DeCenzo says. “Tourists out the wazoo. Coulda been anyone.”
“One more question, maybe two,” I say. I measure his bulked-up arms and daunting chest. I remember how Ray “Frickin’” Sweeney was launched down the basement stairs. And I wonder how I can casually ask a muscle-bound monolith where he was the night of a murder without getting launched someplace unpleasant myself. Maybe I’ll just find that out later.
I flip through my folder for the copies of the photo lineup pictures. “How many photographs did the cops show witnesses that morning?”
“How many?” he says. He pushes his lips to one side, then the other, his face straining with the effort to remember. Or maybe with the effort to count. “They didn’t show them to me. Like I said, I wasn’t here the night it happened. Anyway, what’s this about? She confessed.”
I select the photo of Dorinda and turn my folder around so DeCenzo can see it. “This person look familiar to you? Is this a photo they showed?”
“Like I said, I didn’t—” The bar owner pauses, puts his hands on his hips. “What are you trying to pull here?” His voice is suddenly stony, suspicious. “You trying to pull the wood over my eyes or something?”
“Pull?” I’m baffled and look down at my open folder. Paper-clipped pages of my notes are tucked into one clear plastic pocket. The other research we’ve collected is spread out underneath. The eight-by-ten of Dorinda is facing him, but that’s not what DeCenzo is looking at. He plops one tanned finger on the prom photo, the one of Queen Dorinda and her court, the image Dr. Garth morphed into middle age. “That’s who was here that night,” he says.
I get it now. “Oh right, I know,” I say. “But that’s just a computer-altered photo of her.” I tuck the computer illustration away and tap the picture from the police files. “But this is a real photo. Do you remember if this was the one they showed witnesses?”
“What I remember? Is nothing. But, hey. She confessed.” He nods, as if he’s making a momentous decision. “You find Jerk Bresnahan? You say I’m not giving him his paycheck, even if he does show back up. We done?”
“We done,” I say. I put the photos away and close my folder, trying to keep my face pleasant and pokerfaced. It’s a little tough, because a new theory is now quickly coalescing. This one features Del DeCenzo as murderer. He’s a thuggish pitbull who hated Ray. He wasn’t in the bar that night. That’s motive and opportunity. And as a result, Del would be delighted for Dorinda to stay right where she is. I hand him my business card, standard reporter practice, and smile politely as I back out of the bar. “We done.”
* * *
The view from the window in Tek Mattheissen’s thirtieth-floor outer office is spectacular. A flotilla of sailboats navigates the Charles River, all sun and white sails against the redbrick facades of MIT across the water in Cambridge. I’ve been waiting, theme of the day, for the chief of staff about twenty minutes now, and I’ll bet it’s time dow
n the drain. A fool’s errand, Mom would say. And she may be right. Either Tek Mattheissen is a conniving, manipulative and violent criminal who’s trying to corrupt the justice system to make his boss a big shot or he’s a hapless dupe who’s been tricked or convinced or bribed into doctoring evidence to make his boss a big shot. Either way, it’s unlikely the attorney general’s chief of staff is going to divulge the truth.
But, reporters’ credo, I must attempt to get both sides of the story. Tek agreed to do the interview, thanks to Franklin’s persuasive skills. As well as the fact that Tek has never met a camera he didn’t like. Tek insisted he would only give a statement reaffirming the government’s position on Dorinda’s guilt, but that won’t stop me from asking other questions. Plus, he doesn’t know that I know that the photo lineup is a fake. If he figured I’d just take the evidence file and go away, that was his first mistake. His second was agreeing to the interview.
Still, I’m facing some unfortunate complications. One: Walt Petrucelli, photographer from hell, was supposed to meet me here. If his camera’s not set up and ready to roll when Tek arrives, in the unwritten but nevertheless inviolable rules of the time-honored game of reporter versus interview subject, Tek gets the upper hand. Because we weren’t ready, he can walk out. No interview, he wins. And I have nothing.
Two: my thin arsenal of ammunition. Tek could just deny the photos are fake. He could say the sweatshirt photo is a mistake, somehow got in there by accident. I’ll know he’s wrong, but I can’t prove it. The only people who know what photos were actually shown are the witnesses, missing, and the bartender. Missing.
As for what I think happened in the archives, he’s already taken the position that I’m a wack job. I’ve got no leverage—or proof—that he’s wrong.
Actually, come to think of it, I’ve got another problem. Even if the photos are fake, it doesn’t prove Dorinda’s innocent. And I have no way of floating my suspicion about Del DeCenzo as murderer to Tek. He’d just repeat the two-word mantra that I’d be thrilled never to hear again: She confessed. It almost makes me wish Walt wouldn’t show up.
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