Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 04 - Any Port in a Storm (14 page)

I made a face at him and both dogs thumped their tails.

“Two years, he’s about to turn twenty.” George looked back at his notes. “Then he gets arrested for fleeing the scene after he totals daddy’s car on the New Jersey Turnpike. Just runs off.”

“I saw an article about the accident on line, but it didn’t give a lot of details,” I said.

“I saw that too. Anyway, they must have been near a turnpike exit, because he leaves this girl, who was hurt, and stays out of sight long enough that he doesn’t test for alcohol.” George looked up, “A real charmer. No one from the party he’d been at will say he drank too much, but he would have been the only sober one there if he didn’t.”

“Jeez.
Private college and a wrecked car. That’s one expensive kid,” I said.

“What happened to the girl?” Scoobie asked.

“Not sure,” George said. “So then he goes to live with his sister and her husband, the one named Bruno, and he seems to have been there until he showed up here.” He looked up.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Did I hear a thank you in there?” George asked.

“Dream on,” Scoobie said.

I flushed. “I’m sorry. It just seemed kind of anti-climactic. Where did you find all this?”

“
The Press
pays for a bunch of on-line databases, including some that have information on a lot of arrests and trials and stuff.”

Scoobie placed his hand flat against each dog’s head and gently pushed them aside.
“I gotta go study. You need anything?”

“No, I’m good,” I replied, and he gave me a grin and left.

Our eyes followed Scoobie as he walked out of the kitchen, and then George and I looked at each other. It occurred to me that for all the time I’d spent comparing notes with George last summer and now that we hadn’t really been alone together, not in private, anyway. I could feel myself getting hot.

George looked away, then cleared his throat.
“So we gotta figure where we go next.” He studied me. “You want some ice water or something?”

“That’d be great.
Some of the pain meds give me hot flashes.”

His eyes lit up, and then he seemed to think better of what he was going to say, and he walked to the sink and poured water into a tumbler that was in the dish drainer and grabbed a couple cubes of i
ce from Aunt Madge’s ice maker.

“Thanks.”
I took it from him and took a big gulp. “Much better.” I gave him a bright smile.

George sat back down.
“Thing is, I can’t spend a lot more time on this. Not during the work day, anyway. My editor thinks the answer to the murder is in Ocean Alley, not back where he came from.”

“And we don’t?”
I asked him.

He shrugged.
“Can’t tell. I just figure it has to relate as much to why he was here as what he did here.”

“Okay.”
I thought for a few seconds. “Maybe I could talk to his sister.”

“Not by yourself,” George said, almost sternly.

“I can’t believe they’d want to talk to a reporter,” I said.

“I’ll drive you,” he said.

A low growl came from under the sofa I’d been lying on. I twisted, still in pain but not as much as Friday or Saturday, and looked over the side. Miss Piggy had one paw under the couch. She saw me and, tail thumping, gave a small bark.

“You know you can’t bark in here.
Leave Jazz alo…”

There was a squeal and Miss Piggy stood fast and whined.

Mister Rogers was on a rug by the door and gave a half bark, half snort.

“I told you, she doesn’t play nice.”
I pointed toward the door. “Go sit with Mister Rogers.”

She gave me a forlorn look and plopped down next to
Mister Rogers.

“Jeez,” George said.
“It’s like you’re babysitting toddlers.”

“I’m used to it.
And I’m going to visit Hayden’s sister.”

I WAS TIRED OF being indoors and had begun taking fewer pain meds, so on Monday I decided to go out. First I had to call the car repair place to see about my car. I was relieved to find out it was very much out of alignment and one tire had been ripped by something sharp in the ditch. It could have been a lot worse. I told the repair shop I’d pay them an extra twenty-five dollars if they dropped the car in the Cozy Corner parking lot and put the key under the mat. I love small towns.

“I’m not going to work,” I told Aunt Madge.
“I’m just going to Java Jolt and maybe to the library.”

“Such an exciting life,” she said.
“I’ll drive you.”

I shook my head and winced.
“If I needed you, I’d ask. I just need to be in charge of where I’m going.”

We were in the kitchen.
She had only had one guest, and he had eaten his muffins early and left to drive into New York City for work. “All right. But if you get somewhere and don’t want to drive back, Harry and I will come and get you.”

“You forget how to drive?” I asked.

“Don’t be a twit, Jolie.”

I carried Jazz back upstairs so she would be in my room while I was out.
You can’t exactly keep a cat in one place unless you have a shut door. Last week Aunt Madge walked into a guest room to put in fresh towels and Jazz was curled up on the bedspread. She has been outlawed from any room except mine, unless I’m with her.

“I told you if you would stay in our room and the sitting room you’d be golden.
But you had to look for new territory.” She placed a paw on my cheek.

“Aw, that’s nice.”
I nuzzled her neck. She swatted me.

MY LIST WAS A LONG one. After all, I’d had a couple days to do nothing but take meds and think. My thinking is definitely better when I’m not on pain meds. Even so, I had started another list, this one of people to talk to.

People Hayden Knew

His parents.
Not.

Sister named Bruno and husband. Yes.

Sister still at home. Not.

Double M couple from church. Maybe

Teacher from funeral. Maybe.

Girl from car accident on NJ Turnpike.
Find her?

Alicia.
Wishful thinking.

Alicia’s friends.
Maybe.

Markle store clerk.
Yes. How?

Megan.
??

I thought for a moment and added Josh, since Scoobie said Josh had watched Hayden a couple of times when he was with Alicia on the boardwalk.

It was a start.
Since coffee is always a good way to begin my day, I parked a block from the boardwalk steps that lead to Java Jolt and walked the short distance. The wind was brisk and I smelled the water as soon as I parked. I sniffed almost hungrily. The ocean is such a common part of life in Ocean Alley that I don’t usually think about it. Give me a few days without seeing it and I need a fix. Kind of like coffee.

The walk felt good after being inside the better part of three days.
I’d sat on the swing on Aunt Madge’s meandering front porch yesterday, but that’s hardly a way to stretch your legs.

I climbed the boardwalk steps slowly, hand lightly on the railing.
I was much less sore than I’d been and I didn’t see any side effects of my low dose of pain meds, but I told myself, in a pious tone, that safe is better than sorry.

“Hey, Jolie!”
Joe Regan sounded really glad to see me.

“Hi, Joe.
Missed your coffee,” I said. “Can I have it to go?”

“Jeez, as weak as you drink it.”
He began mixing regular and decaf for me. “Watch out for Lester.”

“Great.”
I took a sip and tried not to make a face as I scalded my tongue. “Thanks. Good I’m already getting it to go.”

I talked for a minute to an elderly couple who are almost always in Java Jolt.
Names?

“We figured you were okay or there would have been more in the paper,” the man said.
He was dressed in blue and white seersucker pants that looked as if they were straight from the 1960s. The bald spot on the top of his head glistened. That and the iced tea in front of both of them made me think they had just come in from a walk.

“Of course, we could have called Madge,” the woman said.
In contrast to her partner (husband?) she had on neat capris and a coordinating top, which shouted ‘expensive.’

Of course
. I said a couple more polite things — really polite, since I now knew they know Aunt Madge — and left.

I had planned to use the Java Jolt computers to learn more about Hayden’s family, but the library permitted better Lester-avoidance.
Daphne appeared to be off this morning, which was good. She might rat me out if she knew what I was looking for.

I chose a computer in the area farthest away from the front desk, since my coffee cup was hidden in the canvas sack I had slung over my shoulder in lieu of a heavy purse.
I placed both on the floor near my feet and logged in for my half-hour of computer searching.

I figured George had found anything there was to find about Hayden’s criminal activities or court appearances, so I planned to search for information on his parents and maybe his sisters.
My logic was that if he was such a bad apple the tree might have shed more of them.

Hayden’s mother’s name came up in an early search, as did his father’s, but both times the link took me to their local paper, the
Lakeview Ledger
, and you needed to be a subscriber to read anything more than the front page. I pulled out my debit card — the only electronic purchasing power I have since my ex ruined not only his but my credit rating — and bought a three-month subscription, the shortest available.

All I learned was that Alberto and Mary Patricia Grosso had celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with friends at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Matawan.
“Joining in the celebration were the priest who married them, Father Patrick O’Brien, their matron of honor, Mary Jo Patterson, and best man, Norman Benton. Mrs. Patterson and Mr. Benton are godparents to the Brunos’ two oldest children.”

I stared at the screen for a moment, then searched for Father O’Brien.
If I could find where he was twenty-five years ago I could learn where Hayden’s parents lived then, or at least what church they went to. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to know, but any new information was better than nothing.

Sure enough, another article in the same paper announced Father Patrick O’Brien’s retirement from Saint Rita’s Parish in Newark, and gave a short summary of his career.
At least I learned two things with the newspaper subscription.
Twenty-five years ago, Father O’Brien had at been at St. Columbkill’s Parish in Matawan New Jersey.

I went back to the article about the Grosso’s twenty-fifth anniversary, which I had printed.
St. Columbkill’s was in the same town as the Knights of Columbus hall that hosted the anniversary party. I frowned. If the Grosso family had been in the same community all that time, why not have Hayden’s funeral there? I was sure it was not something as simple as another dearly departed needing the altar at the same time.

Since I was already at the newspaper’s website, I searched by Hayden’s name and was greeted by a slew of articles.
Three dealt with things George had found — the two drug arrests, one for having meth precursors and a baggie and another for pot. The third run-in with the law was the car accident on the New Jersey Turnpike. This one named the girl he deserted, Agnes Flaherty. I printed all three articles.

Other mentions of Hayden were usually as part of a group, including half of a duo that won first place in his middle school science fair.
I scanned the other names and looked at the fuzzy picture of the science fair. Mark Montgomery and Hayden had their arms around each other’s shoulders and the broad smiles spoke of two young men with unlimited possibilities and a lifelong friendship.
Not.

I jotted the date of the article, not inclined so spend money to print a copy.
I skimmed over articles about Hayden’s role in a tenth-grade school play (Brigadoon) and his time flipping pancakes with his father at a Knights of Columbus breakfast.

No more in the
Lakeview Ledger.
I started to go back to the search engine when I remembered that I now knew the name of the girl in the car accident. Agnes Flaherty’s name brought up seventeen articles. My eyes filled with tears as I read about firefighters needing the jaws of life to get her out of the car after the accident and her long struggle to recover from two not just broken but crushed legs and a severe concussion.

More articles talked about her friends holding car washes to help her family build a ramp into their house and the school board voting to leave her on the cheerleading squad even though she would never be able to jump in the air or climb on another cheerleader’s shoulders.
That last part I inferred. Apparently the paper would only describe her progress, not her continuing disability.

The most recent article showed a smiling Agnes Flaherty, a parent on each side of her, graduating from massage school.
Agnes stood with the aid of one of those metal crutches that looks like a cross between a cane and a crutch. She was quoted. “There were so many times that I was in pain and the wonderful masseuse in the hospital’s physical therapy unit spent extra time helping me loosen tight and knotted muscles. I wanted to give that kind of help to others.” The article went on to say that while she would work in a physical therapy clinic Agnes would be not be in a clinical position.

The town must hate him.
No wonder the funeral was in Perth Amboy.

A throat cleared behind me and I jumped about four inches off the chair and turned, painfully, to find George behind me.
I also kicked over my coffee, which was mostly absorbed by my canvas bag. “You startled the stuffing out of me!”

He pulled up a chair.
“Sorry. I waited until you were finished reading.”

“And read over my shoulder, of course,” I said.

“Of course.” He pulled the article from the printer and read it more slowly, nodding a couple of times.

I tried to look at George without staring, which is kind of hard when you are sitting next to someone.
Though he still wore a Hawaiian-style collared shirt, he had on a pair of lightweight tan pants and his hair was shorter than usual.
New girlfriend? What do you care?

“So, we know why hardly anyone went to the funeral,” George said.
He was silent for a moment. “He must have felt a lot of guilt.”

“Guilt!” I actually hissed.
“He acted like he didn’t have a thing on his mind besides getting into Alicia’s pants.”

George shrugged.
“Key word could be acted, but it doesn’t really matter. You done here?”

“I want to search for his sisters, see if they got in trouble, too.”

“I’m gonna harass Daphne for a minute. She just got in.” He walked toward the front of the library.

I keyed in ‘Veronica Bruno,’ but nothing popped up.
Maria Grosso was another story. The kid probably never slept. Still only sixteen, she was on the high school swim team, headed the Math Club, and was in charge of the junior prom decorations. She and her friends did such a good job that “the high school gym was transformed into a fairytale world of pale greens and yellows.”

I sat back in my chair, thinking about how different she and Hayden were.
But nothing on Veronica. I was about to close my session when I remembered her name would have been Veronica Grosso most of her life.

There was a stunning photo of a happy and relaxed bride, a formal portrait in the weekly paid announcements of weddings and anniversaries and such.
Another photo showed the full bridal party of bride and groom, six other women and six men, a flower girl, ring bearer, and her sister, a junior bridesmaid.
That was one expensive wedding
.

Idly I read the accompanying article, stopping when I saw the name of the maid of honor.
Mary Jo Pedone was from Matawan, New Jersey. Out loud, I said, “Joe Pedone’s sister?”