Apprehended (2 page)

“Okay, that's what everyone
thinks
they know about him—but listen to this. Donna asks me to take her there, and once we're parked and I open her door for her and help her out of the Mustang, she tries to get me to leave.”

“Which would have been the polite thing to do.”

“That's a matter of opinion. Anyway, I tell her I'm going to see her home safely. She's insistent that I wait in the car. She's acting really edgy. So, we compromise and I stay in the car. Wasn't bad—I was parked under a big tree and I just put the top down and listened to the radio.

“She goes up the walk, knocks on the door, and is let in. The butler or whoever he is closes the door behind her. She's in there for about twenty minutes, then leaves, carrying an envelope.

“When I see her coming back down the walkway, I get out of the car and open the door to let her back in. She stumbles a little over one of the tree's roots, and when she puts her hands out to catch herself, the envelope and her purse go flying to the floor of the car.

“Is she okay?”

“Yes, I caught hold of her and kept her from hitting too hard.”

“I'll bet you did.”

“I was a perfect gentleman, and removed my hands as soon as I knew she had her balance again and wasn't hurt,” he said, affronted. “But that's not what's important.”

I couldn't help laughing.

“You know what I mean. Anyway, while a few things scattered out of her purse, when the envelope fell, it spilled out cash. A lot of cash.”

He had my attention. “Define, ‘a lot.'”

“Seven thousand dollars.”

“Seven—!”

“Thousand. Yes.”

Seven thousand dollars. Enough to buy a brand new car, pay for tuition and books, and still have enough left over for a down payment on a house.

If I had been able to work my minimum-wage job full-time instead of part-time, and taken home every cent of the dollar sixty-five I made each hour, it would have taken me more than two years to earn seven thousand dollars.

I caught myself going down the envy road and put the brakes on. I said something that really went against my natural state of being curious. “It's none of our business.”

“That's how I acted,” Eldon said. “She turned beet red and hurried to gather the money. I didn't touch any of it, of course. I just helped her pick up her lipstick and compact and other little things that had fallen out of the purse.” He paused and a sly look came over his face. “That reminds me. What's that colorful plastic tube you girls all carry, around yay long?” He held his hands a few inches apart.

“A double-barreled tampon holder, as well you know. You forgot you told me you have sisters, Eldon.”

He laughed. “Okay. But no joke, there were seven packets of one hundred dollar bills. I asked her if she was sure she had all of them while I raised the top on the car again. As flustered as she was, I was afraid if she had forgotten one of them, it would blow out of the car once we pulled out into traffic. That's when she told me that all seven thousand was there.”

“And?”

“Long story short, she tells me that Langworthy is her father.”

I didn't bother to hide my shock.

“She's illegitimate,” he said, enjoying my reaction.

“Eldon, you are such a little shit! I'll bet she asked you to keep it confidential.”

“Of course she did! Can you blame me for wanting to talk to someone about it?”

“If someone asks you to keep a confidence, you keep it.”

He shrugged. “I'm human. Besides, I thought you might already know.”

“Why?”

“You were the one who introduced us.”

“That is such a lie. You saw a pretty girl and made a beeline for the table. For the record, yesterday at lunch was the first time I'd met her.” I paused. “I've never liked that phrase, ‘illegitimate child.' Children aren't to blame for what their parents do.”

Eldon considered this for a moment, then said, “Never thought of it that way. So—I guess he doesn't openly acknowledge her, but he was happy she was moving back here. Tough for her really, even with the money. Like he's ashamed of her.”

“He's got to be seventy years old, right? That generation—his reputation in the community—he's probably more ashamed of himself than of her. At least he's helping her out.”

“Yeah. You suppose he's going to leave all his bread to her?”

“Eldon, listen to me. You've broken her confidence by telling me. Fine, you're human. Do not tell anyone else. Not
anyone.
It's unkind to her and unkind to him. You'll only embarrass her. Besides, do you want every creep who wants to marry money going after her?”

He stood. “No way I want to increase the competition.”

It belatedly occurred to me, as he walked off whistling, that he was probably one of those creeps.

•   •   •

Competition or no competition, it didn't take long to see that Eldon hadn't been able to keep his big yap shut. Donna had shown a strong preference for Mark's company, so maybe Eldon decided to blab by way of sour grapes.

Before the week was over, there was always a crowd of men around her, and any number of women ready to pick up the leftovers. It wasn't just the guys who were broke who spent time with her. Families of the wealthy began to invite her to their parties, willing to overlook the sins of the father if the father was going to make her his heir.

As for the father in question, no one was too surprised to learn that the day after Donna's visit to his home, Homer Langworthy left town, reputedly for a long voyage on a cruise ship. Or an African safari. Or a European tour. The stories varied, but the bottom line was the same: Homer was unavailable to confirm or deny rumors.

She ate at the best restaurants, sat in the best seats at any concert or play, and was offered extravagant gifts that she very properly refused, a fact which only substantiated, in some minds, that she was an heiress.

She received no fewer than three offers of marriage within her first three weeks on campus. She graciously declined. Until Mark Kesterson asked.

•   •   •

I was sitting in the offices of the campus newspaper after everyone else had gone home, chewing on a pencil, when an ex-pirate who was dear to me walked in.

The pirate tale was one of the many explanations Jack Corrigan, retired star reporter for the
Las Piernas News Express,
now journalism professor extraordinaire, offered to anyone bold or rude enough to ask him how he lost his eye. I never heard the same story twice whenever I was around to hear him respond to the inquisitive. I never asked him; I figured he'd tell me if he wanted me to know.

He cocked his head, sat down near me, and lit up a cigarette.

“Now, what has Ms. Kelly staying here late, I wonder?”

“Well, we both know you're trying to sneak in extra cigarettes before you go home.”

“Not sneak, exactly. Just trying to be supportive of Helen. She quit ten years ago, but I don't like to tempt her to go back to it. Nice evasion, by the way.”

His wife, Helen Corrigan, another veteran reporter, only slightly edged out her husband as my favorite professor. Neither one of them went easy on their students. I loved them for it.

But just then, I wasn't sure I wanted to participate in the Donna Vynes rumor mill. Still . . .

He waited. I wasn't the first person to break under that patient silence of his. I would have loved to learn how he managed to keep a question mark in the air over such long stretches of quiet.

“It's like this,” I said, and told him the story of Donna Vynes.

He raised his brows a couple of times, but didn't interrupt the telling. By the time I had finished, he was on his second cigarette.

“I've spent some time with Donna,” I said, “and she seems like a sweet person. None of it is really my business, and they seem to be in love, so I should probably adhere to Lydia's Ax Murderer Rule.”

“Ax murderers have rules?”

“No, Lydia has some good rules. The Ax Murderer Rule is this: if your friend is in love with someone, and that someone is an ax murderer, and you have photographs to prove it, you can try to gently talk your friend out of staying in the relationship. But only if all three conditions are met.”

He laughed. “Smart Lydia.”

“It's nice in theory, but Mark and I have been friends since high school, and I don't want to see him hurt.”

“Why should this relationship hurt him?”

“Something about all of this—just doesn't seem right. Eldon is a gossip and I wouldn't trust him to keep a secret, but he's not in the habit of making up whoppers. All the same, I think the whole ‘tripped as she got into the car' business was a little hokey.”

“What else?”

“Married at sixteen, veteran's widow? Farm girl whose mother died not long ago, and she dresses better than Alicia? I don't know. But you can't be suspicious of people based on their clothing.”

“Sure you can. You probably should not judge someone's character by what they wear, but that's not what I hear you saying. Your instincts are telling you something's not right. So you think over things that don't fit well with whatever message a person is trying to send to you and others—those things that seem incongruous can be clothing, the way a person carries himself, how they talk, and so on. That doesn't mean whatever hypothesis you've dreamed up about him or her is right, or that they've done something wrong—just that you need to figure out what's really going on.”

“That's why I'm in here chewing on pencils.”

He took a drag, exhaled slowly. “I have an assignment for you.”

I sat up straighter. “A story?”

“Not exactly. A research assignment.”

“Oh.”

He laughed. “Spare me these transports!”

“Sorry. I actually do like research. I'm just in a funk.”

“This assignment will help with that. It may or may not help you decide what to do, but it will wear off some of that energy more productively, and at the very least spare the newsroom the destruction of all its pencils.”

•   •   •

The assignment was to go to the library and find a copy of
The History and Story of the Doings of the Famous Mrs. Cassie L. Chadwick.
Then I was to look through the
New York Times
microfilm collection for stories about her. He gave me a hint and said that early March 1905 would be a good place to start.

“You've assigned this before?”

“Oh yes. I'll tell you why later. But you should find them especially interesting, I think. Unfortunately, my requests to buy copies of microfilm for
The
Cleveland Plain Dealer
for those years have gone unheeded.”

“Cleveland!”

He smiled and put out his cigarette, then said, “Happy hunting,” and left.

•   •   •

I made sure we were alone. That was actually the hardest part. After realizing that no restaurant in the city would be free of people who might know Donna, I ended up inviting her over for dinner on a night when I knew Lydia had an evening class. Until two months earlier, Lydia and I had shared the place with another roommate, but she had married over the summer. We had been putting off finding another renter, but tonight I was glad for the lack of a potential eavesdropper, enjoying the emptiness and quiet that usually had me thinking that I was going to have to move back home again.

Donna and I made small talk until after I cleared the dishes. She seemed a little down. All the same, she was an easy person to talk to. I was fighting some very cynical thinking about that as I pulled out some photocopies I had made.

I had thought of going all Perry Mason on her ass, cross-examining her until she wept and admitted her crimes. I couldn't do it. The truth is, I liked her.

“I had a special assignment given to me this week,” I said. “Do you know who Jack Corrigan is?”

She shook her head. My tone must have hardened, or my look, or—somehow I tipped her off that the nature of our little dinner party was about to change.

“Well, I suppose that doesn't matter. I have a feeling that you do know who Cassie Chadwick was.”

She, who blushed so easily, turned pale. She looked at me with such desperation that, for a full minute, I wasn't sure if she was going to cry, run away, or punch me. But she just nodded yes and looked down at her hands.

“If she hadn't harmed so many people,” I said, “I could almost admire her cunning, not to mention her nerve. After running a number of other scams, she marries a naive doctor from Cleveland, just happens to convince him that they should visit New York at the same time a man from home is there—a man who is a high-society gossip in Cleveland. She asks that man to give her a carriage ride, and has him wait for her outside the home of Andrew Carnegie, a wealthy, confirmed bachelor. She goes into the house, comes out thirty minutes later, and—this part really interested me—trips as she's getting into the carriage. Drops a promissory note for two million dollars—a note that appears to be signed by Andrew Carnegie, whom she blushingly claims is her father.”

She stayed silent.

“Too bad promissory notes aren't what they used to be. Planning to borrow millions based on phony documents, and cause a bank or two to fail?”

“No.”

“I didn't think so.” I let the silence stretch for a time, then said, “Who told you about Cassie Chadwick?”

“Aunt Lou, my great aunt. She grew up hearing stories about her. Aunt Lou claimed to ‘admire her brass' as she put it. Aunt Lou doesn't think women ever get a fair shake in this world.”

“Is Donna Vynes your real name?”

“My married name, yes.” She was tracing patterns on the tablecloth with one of her perfect fingers, still not making eye contact.