“That’s interesting,” I said, trying not to sound too curious. That’s the end of learning anything from teenagers. “Did they tell you anything?”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “He was shot, they said, and they wanted to know if we knew anything suspicious, but about his life, not like for crime witnessing. It didn’t happen here, I guess.”
He went on, “My dad, he lived on this block his whole life. He always said the old lady who was there before was scary, she was Rick’s mother, but Rick, he was friendly, talked to everyone, came to the block parties and all.”
“And he was—you know—not boring, like everyone else around here is.”
“Like our parents!”
They laughed again, as if they had a shared secret.
“What about Rick’s cool friends?”
“Yeah, well, lots of time we were here, there were cars in the driveway, really bad sports cars, and sometime parties at night.”
Very warily, I asked, “Did he ever invite you in join the parties?”
They looked shocked.
“Hell no. We’re just kids, you know?” red Mohawk said. “Our parents would have killed us.”
“We saw his girlfriend a few times,” the boarder said.
Blond dreads looked around, as if about to share a secret and whispered, “I saw her leaving sometimes in the early morning!”
They really were very young. I tried not to smile. And they say girls are gossips.
“She was…” The speaker turned red and then his friend elbowed him.
“Yes, she was…?”
“Um. She was hot.”
“Yeah, way hot, for an older chick.”
“How old would that be?”
They looked at each other, baffled, and didn’t answer.
“But she can still wear those wild outfits.”
“She really
wears
them, if you know what I mean.”
“And her car? Red Miata convertible. I mean….” Words seemed to fail him.
I didn’t want to write anything down, and maybe scare them into silence, but the tape in my head was rolling.
“It says fox on it, her plate, I mean. Like in caps with an extra X—FOXX.”
They both nodded with what looked like reverence, and then one suddenly said, “We gotta roll!” and roll away they did.
As I walked back to the car, I was smiling at the encounter with boys who were probably in junior high. And I was wondering how hard it could be, to track down the owner of a license plate that said FOXX?
So Rick had a girlfriend he never wanted me to meet? I certainly wanted to meet her.
Before I could go home, I had to make one last stop. It was about time— no, it was way past time—to check in with Elliot, my boss at the museum. I had called in about bereavement leave, but I felt I was pushing my luck here. Part-time internship though it was, they were giving me a small paycheck and I needed to get academic credit for the work. I had to compose my face and my mind, and simultaneously find a parking space in impossibly crowded Brooklyn Heights. Calm in the face of stress.
It took twenty minutes of circling the crowded streets before I found a parking space. I sat in the car for another ten, waving away hopeful parking-space seekers, while I thought through what I needed to say and how I needed to say it. Apologetic yet firm, reassuring, and responsible.
Elliot is a laid-back former professor, but I’d had a message from him that THE boss wanted to talk to me. It’s a small museum so I’d sat in on meetings with the boss and she knew my name, but I didn’t really know her. She was older than I am but she was neither old enough to be motherly nor so inclined. She was new on the job and very determined to raise our museum’s profile, raise attendance, and, of course, raise money. I found her smart and somewhat scary.
I knocked on her door.
“Erica! Come in, and tell me what is going on. Elliot had some distressing information for me.”
“Yes, I had a family crisis, a death…”
“So he said. Please accept my sympathies. Now, what I really need to know is, how will that affect your work here? We do have a schedule for our upcoming exhibits and deadlines we need to meet.”
“I am unexpectedly involved in a funeral. I mean, it is usually unexpected but in this case…”
She stopped me with a raised hand. “The details don’t really matter and you have no obligation to tell me. What I need is to know that you will manage to fulfill your responsibilities in a timely fashion, or—if you cannot—then we will need to reassign your projects. Normally I would leave this to Elliot to manage but this fall will be a busy time here, and I need to be more hands-on. So?”
I gulped. This was even harder than I had expected. “I may need to take some extra days off to manage these personal responsibilities but I’m sure Elliot and I can work this out.” I was afraid my voice shook. “I can complete work at home, at odd hours, writing up research and so on, so we do not fall behind in anything. Absolutely.”
She smiled, a very small, very tight smile. “I’m glad to hear that. Of course you know we will be unable to give you a favorable report for your academic program if you cannot complete the research assigned to you? I’m sure you will keep that in mind, that if you let us down, you will also let yourself down.”
“Thanks. I promise you have nothing to worry about. Nothing.”
I walked out with a firm step, head held high, and then sagged against the wall in the hallway. I knew I would have to make good on that promise, even if I had to steal the time from sleeping. I could not afford to throw away a whole summer of work.
When I finally got home Joe’s crew was gone, but as evidence of their presence, I had shiny new appliances in their assigned places in the kitchen and the frames of my new cabinets were up all around them. It was the one bright spot in my day but I had no time to check them out in detail. And nothing was hooked up yet, so I had no food to cook and no access to cooking equipment anyway. I was too exhausted to go out and did not want any of Mrs. Rogow’s care package. One meal like that in a day was enough. Too much.
Then I found a shopping bag on the coffee table with my name in bold black marker.
It was full of containers: Greek salad with salty feta cheese and delicious olives; lemony chicken kebabs and rice; a platter of Middle Eastern dips with fresh pita bread wrapped in napkins. A bottle of water, a bottle of my favorite beer, a large Styrofoam cup of high-test Greek coffee and two slices of baklava oozing honey syrup. And a note in more marker:
Thought you might need dinner, now that we’ve packed up your kitchen. My treat, and have a relaxing evening at home.
J.
Joe. What a good friend he was. A Middle Eastern feast, so appealing on a hot night; a sinful dessert; a cold beer.
I had excellent intentions to get to work, but I could not focus. My whole life right now was about researching, asking questions, finding answers. Of course that’s what my professional life always was, but that work took place in libraries, whether they were stone and brick or virtual. It felt less compelling right now than the real world questions about Rick and the girl in my house and recent events in my life, all tumbling around in my mind like clothes in a dryer. Of course I couldn’t focus.
What I wanted to do most, this minute, today, was find Rick’s girlfriend. That was the one concrete thing I could do. Maybe she was the key I needed. Maybe, I hoped faintly, she could lay all my doubts about him to rest. She could tell me he was a fun loving guy—well, he must have been, if he had a girlfriend called FOXX!—but that he was the straight arrow cop
I always thought he was
.
She could tell me that those detectives with questions had it all wrong.
A quick Internet search turned up several offers to get this type of information fast and cheap
.
I hit the right keys, sent in my request, paid for it electronically, and crossed my fingers.
I had one more task I could not continue to duck. I punched in the numbers for the camp office and asked for the camp director.
She was sympathetic and understanding and assured me it was not the first time they had to cope with a situation like this. We worked it out that Chris would call me soon, when she came to the dining hall for dinner. We could arrange to have her leave camp if she wanted to, or to come home for the service and go back, or perhaps it would be better for her to hold tight to her routine and stay there. I would have to feel her out.
Finally, she offered all the support Chris might need, and volunteered that I had a lovely daughter who had instantly fit into camp life.
It was all I could do to keep from telling her the whole story of my life and pour out everything that was on my mind. She was that good.
In a few minutes Chris would call. I paced the floor; thought about what to say, having no idea what to say. Noted that I already had an e-mail answer to my query about the license plate. The FOXX was named Wanda Beauvoir and she lived in Bay Ridge. In Brooklyn. Not far. I was working out my next move when the phone rang.
“Mommy?” She hadn’t called me mommy in years except for the day we found the body. “Why am I calling you? What is wrong?”
“Oh, honey.” I flashed on her face, so far away from me. “Something…happened. Do you have someone there with you?”
“Yes, yes, Katherine, the director. And Mel came with me. What IS it?” Her voice shook
.
“Not grandpa?”
“No, no, it isn’t that. In fact I talked to him yesterday. No, it’s Rick.’
“He’s in the hospital? It’s his awful smoking, isn’t it? We told him and told him….”
“No, honey, it’s worse than that.” I swallowed hard. “Chris, I’m so sorry to say this. He passed away. It was several days ago. I didn’t…no one knew…for awhile.”
There was an endless silence, then a flat, “That’s impossible.”
“If only, but it’s the truth.”
Another long silence, then sobbing, then Mel came on, “Mrs. Donato, what’s wrong? What should I do?”
I gave her an extremely edited version of the facts, then said, “Give Chris a big hug and put her back on with me, please.”
“Look, Chris,” I said. “Are you listening?”
She whispered, “Yes.”
“If you want to come home right now, we’ll find a way. OK? Talk to Katherine there, and think about it, and call me later. She said that because of this, you could call me any time. I would so love to see you, but you don’t have to come home. It’s your choice. You could wait and come back for the memorial service when we finally get it planned. You got that? Or stay there in your camp routine and come home when camp is done.
“And Katherine knows everything and will help you with everything. Including feelings. She said you can sleep in her cabin tonight if you don’t want to be in yours. Oh, honey…”
She started sobbing again, and so did I. She was the one who stopped first, I am ashamed to say, and said, “Tell me what happened to him. I have to know.”
So I gave her the same edited version I had given Mel. I thought I knew my daughter. I thought she would have plenty of questions, once the shock wore off, but it didn’t even take that long.
“I don’t believe it, not a word of it. He died, just like that, and no one knew for a while? That’s ridiculous. What are you not telling me? You have to stop treating me like a baby!”
“Honey, I don’t know the details myself.”
“You know something. I can tell.”
I crumbled. She would learn the facts eventually, and they would hurt no matter when.
“He was shot, Chris, and it was not an accident. His body was found—somewhere, I don’t know where,
and
it’s a police investigation.”
“Someone killed him? I don’t…that’s….” Her voice faded and I was afraid she might faint, but she came back strongly with, “And what are they doing to find this…this murderer?”
I assured her they were working very hard, and when she tried to ask more, I maintained I had nothing else to tell her. There was no way she needed to know about the ugly suspicions.
“Mom?” she finally said. “I don’t want to hang up yet. Could you, like, just talk to me? About anything? For a minute more?”
So I told her about the Pastores’ albums, and turned my meeting with Leary into an adventure, and about the progress on the house. I told her the entertaining parts of my visit with Mrs. Rogow and expressed pride that she had made the contact all on her own.
I talked until I could hear in her voice that she would not fall apart when I said good-bye.
“Did you do anything more about our skeleton?”
“I’ve had a couple of other things to think about! I still have a job, you know, which I haven’t been doing, and responsibilities about Rick and I have the house. Joe misses you, he says. And I have…”
“I know, I know, but you did promise not to forget about her.”
“I know I did, sweetheart, and I haven’t, but I’ve been pretty distracted. I won’t forget. Really.”
She sighed. “I feel a little better now. Oh, Katherine had someone bring our supper in to her office, she says so I can have a little privacy and quiet. And then I think I’ll go for a walk, you know? To to think about things.”