Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (71 page)

Jessica and Byrne would visit the Braceland Westcott McCall offices while Nick Palladino, Eric Chavez, and Terry Cahill headed down to Penn’s Landing to canvass.

T
HE RECEPTION AREA
of Braceland Westcott McCall was decorated in a modern Scandinavian style—straight lines, light cherry desks and bookcases, metal-edged mirrors, frosted-glass panels, and well-framed poster art that heralded the company’s upscale clients: recording studios, advertising agencies, clothing designers.

Stephanie’s boss was a woman named Andrea Cerrone. Jessica and Byrne met Andrea in Stephanie Chandler’s cubicle on the top floor of the Broad Street office building.

Byrne took the lead in the questioning.

“Stephanie was pretty trusting,” Andrea said, a bit unsteadily. “A little gullible, I guess.” Andrea Cerrone was clearly shaken by the news of Stephanie’s death.

“Was she seeing anyone?”

“Not that I know of. She got hurt pretty easily, so I think she was in shutdown mode for a while.”

Andrea Cerrone was not yet thirty-five, a short, wide-hipped woman with silver-streaked hair and pastel blue eyes. Although she was somewhat overweight, her clothes were tailored with an architectural precision. She wore a dark olive linen suit and a honey-colored pashmina.

Byrne moved on. “How long did Stephanie work here?”

“About a year. She came here right out of college.”

“Where did she go to school?”

“Temple.”

“Did she have any problems with anyone here at work?”

“Stephanie? Hardly. Everybody liked her and she liked everyone. I don’t remember a cross word ever coming out of her mouth.”

“What did you think when she didn’t show up for work last week?”

“Well, Stephanie had a lot of sick days coming. I thought she took the day off, even though it was unlike her not to call in. The next day I called her cell phone, left a few messages. She never got back to me.”

Andrea reached for a tissue, dabbed her eyes, perhaps now realizing why her phone never rang.

Jessica made a few notes. No cell phone had been found in the Saturn or near the crime scene. “Did you call her house?”

Andrea shook her head, her lower lip beginning to tremble. Jessica knew that the dam was about to break.

“What can you tell me about her family?” Byrne asked.

“I think there’s just her mother. I don’t recall her ever talking about her father, or any brothers or sisters.”

Jessica glanced at Stephanie’s desk. In addition to the pen caddy and neatly stacked file folders, there was a silver-framed five-by-six photograph of Stephanie and an older woman. In this picture—smiling, standing in front of the Wilma Theater on Broad Street—Jessica thought the young woman looked happy. She found it hard to reconcile the photo with the image of the brutalized corpse she had seen in the trunk of the Saturn.

“This is Stephanie and her mother?” Byrne asked, pointing to the photo on the desk.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever met her mother?”

“No,” Andrea said. She reached for a tissue from Stephanie’s desk. She dabbed at her eyes.

“Did Stephanie have a bar or a restaurant she liked to go to after work?” Byrne asked. “Anywhere she frequented?”

“Sometimes we’d go to the Friday’s next to the Embassy Suites on the parkway. If we felt like dancing we’d go to Shampoo.”

“I have to ask this,” Byrne said. “Was Stephanie gay or bi?”

Andrea almost snorted. “Uh, no.”

“Did you go down to Penn’s Landing with Stephanie?”

“Yes.”

“Did anything unusual happen?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Was anybody bothering her? Following her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you see her do anything out of the ordinary?” Byrne asked.

Andrea thought for a few moments. “No. We were just hanging around. Hoping maybe to see Will Parrish or Hayden Cole.”

“Did you see Stephanie talking to anyone?”

“I wasn’t really paying attention. But I think she did talk to a guy for a while. Men were always coming on to her.”

“Can you describe the guy?”

“White guy. Flyers cap. Sunglasses.”

Jessica and Byrne exchanged a glance. This fit with Little Jake’s recollection. “How old?”

“No idea. I really didn’t get that close.”

Jessica showed her a picture of Adam Kaslov. “Could this be the guy?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I just remember thinking that the guy wasn’t her type.”

“What was her type?” Jessica asked, flashing back to Vincent’s routine. She imagined everyone had a type.

“Well, she was pretty picky about the men she dated. She always went for the well-dressed guy. Chestnut Hill types.”

“Was this guy she was talking to part of the crowd, or was he part of the production company?” Byrne asked.

Andrea shrugged. “I really don’t know.”

“Did she say she knew this guy? Or maybe that she gave him her number?”

“I don’t think she knew him. And I’d be really surprised if she gave him her phone number. Like I said. Not her type. But then again, maybe he was just dressed down. I just didn’t get a really close look at him.”

Jessica made a few more notes. “We’ll need the names and contact information for everyone who works here,” she said.

“Sure.”

“Would you mind if we looked through Stephanie’s desk?”

“No,” Andrea said. “It’s okay.”

While Andrea Cerrone drifted back into the reception area, afloat on her wave of shock and grief, Jessica snapped on a pair of latex gloves. She began her invasion of Stephanie Chandler’s life.

The left-hand drawers held hanging files, mostly press releases and press clippings. A few folders were stuffed with proof sheets of black-and-white press photos. The photos were mostly of the stab-and-grab variety, the type of photo op where two people pose holding a check or a plaque or a citation of some sort.

The middle drawer held the nutrients of office life: paper clips, pushpins, mailing labels, rubber bands, brass brads, business cards, glue sticks.

In the top right-hand drawer was the urban survival kit of the young single workingwoman: a small tube of hand lotion, lip balm, a few samplers of perfume, mouthwash. There was also a spare pair of panty hose, a trio of books:
The Brethren
by John Grisham,
Windows XP for Dummies,
and a book titled
White Heat,
the unauthorized biography of Ian Whitestone, the Philadelphia-native director of
Dimensions.
Whitestone was directing the new Will Parrish movie,
The Palace.

There were no notes, no threatening letters, nothing to tie Stephanie to the horror of what had happened to her on the videotape.

It was the picture on Stephanie’s desk of her and her mother that had already begun to haunt Jessica. Not the fact that, in the picture, Stephanie was so vibrant and alive, but rather what the picture represented. A week earlier it was an artifact of a life, the proof of a living, breathing young woman, a human being with friends, ambition, sorrows, thoughts, and regrets. A human being with a future.

Now it was a document of the dead.

24

F
AITH
C
HANDLER LIVED
in a plain but well-maintained brick-front row house on Fulton Street. Jessica and Byrne met with the woman in her small living room overlooking the street. Outside the window, a pair of five-year-olds played hopscotch under the watchful eyes of their grandmothers. Jessica wondered what the laughing children sounded like to Faith Chandler on this, the darkest day of her life.

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Chandler,” Jessica said. Even though she had had occasion to say these words a number of times since joining the Homicide Unit in April, it appeared that it was not going to get any easier to say them.

Faith Chandler was in her early forties, a woman who had the creased look of late nights and early mornings, a working-class woman who suddenly found herself the statistic of another demographic, that of
victim of violent crime.
Old eyes in a middle-aged face. She was employed as a night waitress at the Melrose Diner. In her hands was a scratched plastic tumbler with an inch of whiskey. Next to her, on a TV tray, was a half-full bottle of Seagram’s. Jessica wondered how far into the process the woman was.

Faith didn’t respond to Jessica’s offer of condolence. Perhaps the woman thought that, if she didn’t respond, if she didn’t acknowledge Jessica’s offer of sympathy, it might not be true.

“When was the last time you saw Stephanie?” Jessica asked.

“Monday morning,” Faith said. “Before she left for work.”

“Was there anything unusual about her that morning? Anything different about her mood or her routine?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Did she say that she had plans for after work?”

“No.”

“When she didn’t come home Monday night, what did you think?”

Faith just shrugged, dabbed at her eyes. She sipped her whiskey.

“Did you call the police?”

“Not right away.”

“Why not?” Jessica asked.

Faith put her glass down, knitted her hands in her lap. “Sometimes Stephanie would stay with friends. She was a grown woman, independent. I work nights, you see. She works days. Sometimes we really didn’t see each other for days on end.”

“Did she have any brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

“What about her father?”

Faith waved a hand, snapping back to the moment, by way of her past. They’d hit a nerve. “He hasn’t been part of her life for years.”

“Does he live in Philadelphia?”

“No.”

“We learned from her coworkers that Stephanie had been dating someone until recently. What can you tell us about him?”

Faith studied her hands again for a few moments before answering. “You have to understand that Stephanie and I were never close that way. I knew she was seeing someone, but she never brought him around. She was a secretive girl in a lot of ways. Even when she was small.”

“Is there anything else you can think of that might help?”

Faith Chandler looked at Jessica. In Faith’s eyes was that burnished look Jessica had seen many times, a shell-shocked look of anger and pain and grief. “She was kind of a wild girl when she was a teenager,” Faith said. “Right through college.”

“Wild how?”

Faith shrugged again. “Willful. Ran with a pretty fast crowd. Lately she had settled down, gotten this good job.” Pride battled sorrow in her voice. She sipped her whiskey.

Byrne caught Jessica’s eye. He then quite deliberately directed his gaze at the entertainment center, and Jessica followed the line of sight. The unit, which stood in one corner of the living room, was one of those entertainment-center-
cum
-armoires. It looked like expensive wood—rosewood, perhaps. The doors were slightly ajar, and it was obvious from across the room that inside was a flat-screen TV; above it, a rack of expensive-looking audio and video equipment. Jessica glanced around the living room while Byrne continued to ask questions. What had struck Jessica as tidy and tasteful when she’d arrived was now clearly tidy and
expensive:
A Thomasville dining room set and living room suite, Stiffel lamps.

“May I use your bathroom?” Jessica asked. She had grown up in an almost identical row house, and knew that the bathroom was on the second floor. That was the point of her question.

Faith looked at her, her face a blank screen, as if she hadn’t understood. She then nodded and pointed at the staircase.

Jessica walked up the narrow wooden stairs to the second floor. To her right was a small bedroom; straight ahead, the bathroom. Jessica glanced down the steps. Faith Chandler, entranced by her grief, was still sitting on the couch. Jessica slipped into the bedroom. The framed posters on the wall indicated that it was Stephanie’s room. Jessica opened the closet. Inside were half a dozen pricey suits, as many pairs of good-quality shoes. She checked the labels. Ralph Lauren, Dana Buchman, Fendi. All full labels. It appeared that Stephanie wasn’t an outlet shopper, where many times the tags were cut in half. On the top shelf were few pieces of Tumi luggage. It appeared that Stephanie Chandler had good taste and a budget to support it. But where was the money coming from?

Jessica gave a quick glance around the room. On one wall was a poster from
Dimensions,
the Will Parrish supernatural thriller. That, and the Ian Whitestone book in her desk at the office, proved that she was a fan of either Ian Whitestone or Will Parrish, or both.

On the dresser was a pair of framed photos. One was of a teenaged Stephanie with her arm around a pretty brunette, who was about the same age.
Friends forever
kind of pose. The other picture was a younger Faith Chandler sitting on a bench in Fairmount Park, holding an infant.

Jessica went quickly through Stephanie’s drawers. In one she found an accordion file of paid bills. She found Stephanie’s four most recent Visa bills. She laid them out on the dresser, took out her digital camera, and took a photo of each. She did a quick scan of the list of posted charges, looking for high-end stores. Nothing. Nor were there charges to saksfifthavenue.com, nordstrom.com, or even any of the online discounters that sold high-end goods: bluefly.com, overstock.com, smart bargains.com. It was a good bet she wasn’t buying these designer clothes herself. Jessica put her camera away, then slipped the Visa bills back into the file. If anything she discovered on the bills turned into a lead, she would be hard-pressed to say how she got the information. She’d worry about that later.

In another slot in the file, she found the documents Stephanie had signed when she signed up for her cell phone service. There were no monthly bills detailing minutes used and numbers called. Jessica copied down the cell phone number. She then took out her own cell phone, dialed Stephanie’s number. It rang three times, then switched over to voice mail:

Hi … this is Steph … please leave your message at the beep and I’ll get back to you.

Jessica clicked off. The call had established two things. Stephanie Chandler’s cell phone was still active, and it wasn’t located in her bedroom. Jessica called the number again, got the same result.