A worn picket fence that had once been white separated the front yard of the Betts’s house from the street. In its center, in an opening for a long-gone gate, a brick walkway led toward the front steps of the little bungalow. The left side of the porch had been replaced by a wheelchair ramp of dark green painted wood that crossed the front of the house like a scar, from the middle of the porch to the driveway on the left. The yard was a patch of thinning Bermuda grass lawn, its winter green almost gone in the month or two since the last rains.
We walked down the uneven blacktop driveway, past an aging brown van. Incongruously, in a long brick-lined bed between the driveway and the yard, a row of roses was flourishing, needing pruning, but in full bloom, white, pink, peach, and red. Their scent hovered sleepily in the warm air. Our steps echoed on the plywood surface of the ramp, and I heard a dog start barking inside, along with the faint sound of a television. At the back of the porch, closed drapes covered the front windows.
The doorbell seemed ancient, so I knocked on the front door. The dog inside barked wildly—a little dog, from the sound. After half a minute I heard shuffling, and the sound of a lock being turned on the door. It opened a foot or so, and the woman standing there stared at us skeptically and asked, “Can I help you?” The dog was still barking from behind a door somewhere.
“I hope so,” I said. “Are you Kim Grandison?”
“Yeah,” she said. She opened the door a little wider. She was a big woman, tall and heavy. Her face was round and unhealthily pale, and her brown hair was skinned back from it into a ponytail. A whiff of air, a little cooler than outside, came from inside the house, carrying a faint smell of old frying grease.
I began what felt like a spiel. “I’m an attorney representing Sunny Ferrante, and this is my investigator. We’re hoping we can talk with you and your mother about Sunny’s case.”
For a second, Kim looked blank, then puzzled. “You mean that rich woman, the one that killed her husband?”
“Yes.”
“That’s still going on?”
“Yes; it’s up on appeal.” I left it at that, for now.
“So you’re here to ask about Todd.”
“Yes.”
She drew in a breath, then exhaled it in a sigh, her face stern. “Everybody thought he killed that guy.” She shook her head. “You may as well come in.” She opened the door wider, stepping aside, and Natasha and I sidled into the house.
The door opened directly into a small living room, with a sofa and two armchairs, none of which matched, arranged in a semicircle around an oval coffee table and, beyond it, a widescreen television on a low stand. The TV, which was playing some kind of morning show with a panel of women chatting in shrill voices, dominated the room. Dwarfed by the television and half-invisible in the dimness of the room, a small gray-haired woman in a nightgown, pink chenille bathrobe, and slippers, reclined halfway in one of the armchairs, watching the show. She peered up, mildly curious, as Kim led us in.
“Have a seat,” Kim said. She nodded toward the woman in the chair. “This is my mom, Lynn.”
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Janet Moodie.”
“Natasha Levin,” Natasha said.
Lynn looked up at us, without much interest. “Hi,” she said, her gaze shifting toward the couch. “Sit wherever you can.”
We chose the couch and sat there, side by side.
“I’ve got to let Muffin out of the bathroom, or she’ll bark all morning,” Kim said. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Water?”
“Water would be great,” I said.
Kim walked heavily away, and a few seconds later a fluffy white dog exploded into the living room, barked a few times, and then stood staring at us with black button eyes. I reached out a hand, and she came over and let me scratch her in the tangle of curly hair behind her ears. “Muffin?” I said. She wagged her tail.
Kim came back, with four glasses of water expertly balanced in her hands. Natasha jumped up and took a couple to help her set them down on the coffee table. Kim was wearing a loose tank top and leggings that stopped at her knees, and I could see multicolored tattoos on her arms and lower legs. “Muffin behaving herself?” she asked.
“She’s fine,” I said. “I have a dog at home.”
Kim turned to Lynn and handed her a glass about a third full of water. “Here, Mom,” she said. “Have this.”
Lynn thanked her and took the glass and set it on an end table beside her, alongside a couple of neatly stacked pill boxes. She turned her head to survey us, but did not sit up. Kim took the other armchair, sitting toward the edge of the seat and leaning a little forward. She picked up a remote from the coffee table in front of Lynn and muted the television. The women on the screen continued their animated chat in silence.
“The police told us years ago Todd confessed the murder to Uncle Steve,” Kim said. “They came and asked a lot of questions, searched the house for Todd’s .22.”
“He didn’t kill anyone,” Lynn said suddenly, and with surprising firmness. “He didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, I don’t care what they say.”
Kim glanced sideways at Lynn and said, as if she wasn’t there, “Mom never got over losing Todd. He was her youngest, and her only boy.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “It’s a terrible thing for a family to go through. And when you come down to it, the evidence against him was kind of thin.”
“You can say that again,” Lynn said. She glared at us from the depths of her chair. “Steve was the only one accused him. He lied to save his own skin and stay out of prison. That’s what he’s always done, take care of himself and to heck with everyone else. He’s been that way since he was a kid. He’s my little brother, so I should know.”
“In all honesty,” I said, “I don’t know who killed Mr. Ferrante. But whoever it was, we don’t think Mrs. Ferrante had anything to do with it, and we’re trying to prove that.”
Kim spoke up. “So you think the man who killed the guy may not have been Todd?”
“I really don’t know, but we certainly don’t think Mrs. Ferrante hired Todd to kill her husband. And I don’t know of any reason Todd would have had to kill him. Do you?”
Kim shook her head. “Not that we could see. Todd was working for the man’s brothers and I guess seeing his daughter. He was crazy about that girl, and he was like one of the family at the ranch. The idea that he’d kill his girlfriend’s father just didn’t make any sense to us. And besides—if you knew Todd—”
A movement from Lynn caught my eye. She had bent her head and put a hand up to her face. After a moment she raised her head again and reached for a tissue from a box on the table next to her. Her eyes, magnified by her glasses, were full of tears. “People say you get over it,” she said thickly, “but I never have.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We won’t stay too long. Just a couple more things we need to ask. Did Todd ever say anything that might suggest he knew who might have done the murder?”
Kim glanced at Lynn. “No,” she said. “Nothing I can think of.”
“And do you know where Steve Eason is?” Natasha asked.
Lynn and Kim both shook their heads. “We haven’t heard from him in a while,” Kim said. “We decided we were done with him when Lynn caught him stealing from her. He took some of her jewelry and a Civil War cavalry sword that had belonged to Ralph, Mom’s last husband. Mom said she was going to call the cops. Haven’t seen him since.”
A cellphone rang, and Kim looked around and found it on the table next to Lynn’s chair. She talked for a minute or two, then ended the call and said to us, “I can’t talk long, I’m going to have to start getting Mom ready for her dialysis appointment. Is there anything else you want to ask us?”
“We were wondering if any of Todd’s friends are still around. We’d like to talk with them, if we can.”
“Well, I was just on the phone with Mom’s sister, my aunt Rita. She has a son close in age to Todd, Aaron, who still lives in
town; they were tight. Then there’s Flaco—Jeff Brackett. He’s around; I think he’s a janitor at the grade school. Todd’s best friend then was—let me think—Devin—that’s Devin with an ‘I’—Schneider. They were housemates when Todd died. Devin was living with his mother for a long time after he got out of the military, but I haven’t seen him in a while; I don’t know if he’s still in the area. The only other one I can think of is Ian; I can’t remember his last name. He’s not around anymore: I don’t know where he ended up. Rory Ebersole—they called him Smurf—was another friend of Todd’s, but he passed away.”
“Was Todd close to his father?” Natasha asked.
Kim shook her head. “Todd hardly knew him. Mom married him after she and my father split up, I think because she was pregnant. He took off when Todd was really little.”
“Did he have any role in Todd’s life?”
“No. He was from Missouri, and I believe he moved back there after he and Mom divorced. We never saw him after that. He was an alcoholic; I don’t know what happened to him.”
“Do you remember his first name?”
“Stanley, maybe. My father was Alan Grandison. He died a few years ago in a car accident.”
“Did Todd have a stepfather he was close to?”
“Well, we all liked Ralph Teasdale. Mom married him after she divorced Ron Euler. Todd definitely didn’t like Ron. Ron seemed to have some competitive thing going on with Todd; he went out of his way to treat him bad. Ralph was a nice guy, though. He married Mom around 1997, if I remember. Took care of us, bought this house. But he had a heart attack and died in 2001—not that long before Todd, as it turned out. His life insurance paid off the mortgage. If it weren’t for that and her part of his pension, I don’t know how Mom could have gotten along till now. Poor Mom! She’s had a tough life.”
“Sounds like it.” We thanked her and each gave her one of our business cards. “We won’t keep you longer,” I said. “If you remember anything you think might be helpful, please call or email us.”
“Sure,” Kim said. “Here, let me call my aunt Rita and let her know you’d like to see her.” She picked up her phone and had another abbreviated conversation, then turned back to us. “Aaron’s last name is Oliveira. He lives on the other side of Harrison.” Kim gave us Rita’s phone number and an address and phone number for Aaron as well. “She says Aaron’s probably at work and isn’t usually home before six. Hope that helps,” she said.
As we turned to leave, Lynn called out a faint goodbye, and we returned it. Muffin rolled to her feet from where she’d been lying on the floor in front of Lynn and skipped after us to the door, where I stooped again to give her a pat on the head.
Kim held Muffin’s collar as we slid out the door. “Sorry,” she said. “If she gets out, she’ll run.” She gave Muffin a push away from the door, stepped outside, and closed it quickly behind her.
Hot air settled on us as we stood on the ramp. Kim straightened up and pulled the bottom of her tank top over her hips. “Sorry,” she said. “I wanted to say something where Mom couldn’t hear it.”
I nodded. She was silent for a few seconds, as if organizing her thoughts, before speaking again.
As she gazed into the distance, I noticed that her eyes were a hazel brown, and I wondered, irrelevantly, what color Todd’s eyes had been.
“Back when all this happened, I wasn’t living with Mom. I had my own place, an apartment, and my boyfriend at the time worked for the local radio station, and he could get us tickets and free admission to shows and stuff. Todd came by a lot with Brittany, and we all sometimes went out together. She seemed like a nice enough kid, kind of young, though. I used to wonder what Todd saw in her, but she and Todd really liked each other. Todd was always young for his age, too. I remember Brittany said a few things about her stepfather—the guy who was killed. I don’t think she liked him.
“Then this other guy started showing up with them. He was a little older, and, like, her cousin or something. He was this total snotty rich kid; I always had the feeling he was slumming when he came over, like we were all beneath him. He’d bring weed, and I didn’t like it, because he and Todd and Brittany and Jason, my boyfriend, would all get high and stupid and sit around the living room all evening eating junk food. I can’t do it; I have asthma, and I wasn’t much interested anyway. I’d end up in the bedroom watching videos. This guy was always running down his family and talking about all these schemes he had to make money. He tried to get Jason to sell weed for him, but Jason turned him down.
“After Brittany’s stepfather was murdered, things really changed with Todd and her. I remember Todd came over by himself once right afterward, and I said something about it, and asked him how Brittany was holding up. And he got all shaky and said he didn’t want to talk about it. He and Brittany and Jason and I went to a movie together once around then, and Todd just… well, he had a dark cloud over his head. Brittany was trying to cheer him up, but he was in a world of his own. That was the last time I saw them together. Todd and Brittany and that cousin of hers stopped coming over; Todd was spending all his time with his friends and Uncle Steve, probably because they could all smoke weed together without anyone bothering them about it. But when I’d see him, like at Mom’s house, he looked terrible. I remember I asked him once where Brittany was, and he said she was away somewhere with her mother. He must have started using heroin around then; he looked different, messed up. But I didn’t know that at the time, and it was an awful shock when he OD’d. Anyhow, all that has made me wonder if he wasn’t more mixed up in what happened than Mom thinks. And maybe Brittany and that other guy, too; I don’t know.”
I was nodding, and I could see Natasha was, also. “It could be,” I said. “There’s an awful lot we don’t know. Would you mind if I asked you one more thing?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Did Todd ever say anything about Mrs. Ferrante?”
“No—well, maybe just in passing; she was Brittany’s mother, so he may have mentioned her.”
“Nothing to indicate he had any kind of separate friendship with her?”
“Oh, no.”
“Did he say anything about getting a check from Mrs. Ferrante?”
“Not to me. I know when he died he had a bunch of money in his checking account, over four thousand dollars, and I wondered where he’d got that kind of money. Then later the police told us Mrs. Ferrante wrote Todd a check for five thousand dollars, asked us if we knew anything about it. I guessed that’s where the money came from, but more than that I don’t know.” She stopped—unwilling, I thought, to connect the last of the dots between the check and the murder. “That’s it; that’s all I can remember.”
“Thank you for telling us all this,” Natasha said. “The more we know about what happened, the better.”
“I don’t know where it gets you,” Kim said, “but if that lady, Mrs. Ferrante, isn’t guilty, maybe you can find out who is. Todd’s gone now; he can’t be hurt by it.” Kim stopped talking and bit her lower lip. When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse. “Damn. He was a good kid, really sweet and kind-hearted. He always wanted to help everyone. It’s hard for me to believe he’d do something like this. But if he did, there had to be a reason. He’d never do it on his own. Anyhow, I just wanted to say that. I’d better go inside and get Mom ready.”
I thanked her again, and then, because I felt strange about leaving the conversation where it was, I added, “I noticed your roses on the way in. They’re lovely.”
“They’re Mom’s,” Kim said. “She planted them after Todd died, and she takes care of them. She doesn’t have energy to do much of anything these days, but she goes out when she can and keeps them weeded and such. It makes her feel a little better.” She turned away, toward the door.
I didn’t feel much like talking as we walked down the ramp and the driveway toward my car, and I don’t think Natasha did, either. A cold case like Sunny’s is full of melancholy. The painful memories, vivid
as they are, are mixed with the events of a world that has moved on; the fires of anger, even if still smoldering, are banked. The neighborhood was quiet; I could hear the humming of bees in the still air. Behind us somewhere, a mockingbird sang, running through its repertoire of borrowed melodies.
13
We crossed back over the railroad tracks and stopped for lunch at a Thai restaurant in a strip mall.
“Did Kim tell the police what she told us?” Natasha asked, as we drank Thai iced tea and picked at our rice plates. “I don’t recall seeing anything like that from her in the police reports.”
“Me neither. I’ll read them again, to make sure. But I think once the police had Eason’s statement, they didn’t do that much besides look for the gun and maybe someone else Todd might have confessed to. And his family were mad enough at the police for pinning the murder on him; it doesn’t sound as if they were interested in helping them.”
Over our food, we talked about seeing Todd’s cousin Aaron and the friends Kim had told us about. Natasha had her notebook computer out and was scrolling down it for the information she had gathered about Todd’s circle of acquaintances.
“Kim gave us a couple of new names—we didn’t have Aaron Oliveira or Jeff Brackett—but there are police reports and defense interviews of Ian Nestor, Devin Schneider and Rory Ebersole.” I found myself admiring how quickly she had absorbed the volumes of documents in the case. “I ran locates on everyone we knew of. Rory died—let’s see—in 2006. Devin is still around; his address is here in Beanhollow. I can probably locate Jeff fairly quickly; and we could even go ask at the school. Those are all the friends of his we know of who are still in the area. There were two more, but they’ve moved away. I’ve talked to Ian Nestor; he’s living in Riverside County. And there’s one in Texas. I’ll probably fly out to interview him later in the summer.”
Janet Moodie--Next of Kin Page 11