SISTER (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 4) (3 page)

CHAPTER 4 - DIARY

The next day, I was in my office on my iPad scrolling through the digital version of
The New York Times
sports section. Just reading about the various ankle, hip, elbow, knee and tendon woes of the ancient and ailing Bronx Bombers made me feel old. I once commanded a platoon in a combat zone that was less banged up. I was also thinking about dinner. Truth was, I’d been thinking about dinner since shortly after lunch.

Two cops walked in. I knew they were cops by the way they assumed they could go anywhere, like in my office.

The cops didn’t look New York. And they weren’t Feds, because they both had on sports jackets; one brown, the other green. Their pants matched the jackets, but not the ones each was wearing. But it’s not like they could have switched. Brown jacket was a beefy older guy with some small but noticeable striations on his nose. He liked to drink and I made him for a tough hombre in whatever jurisdiction he came from. Blue jacket was rapier-thin, fresh faced and tried to look stern. Still wet behind the ears, he’d be no problem.

“You Rhode?”

It was brown jacket. He was holding a thick manila envelope.

The name “Alton Rhode” is etched on the outside door of my office suite.  On the desk I was sitting at there was a nameplate that said “Alton Rhode.” The nameplate was not my idea. One of my clients in the office supply business had one made up for me after I successfully proved that his wife’s orthodontist was drilling more than her bicuspids. I swiveled my feet to the floor and turned the nameplate around and made a point of studying it.

“I’m pretty sure I am,” I said, and then pitched the nameplate in the trash, “because if I’m not, then the three of us don’t belong here.”

He sighed, and the badges came out. 

“I’m Detective Broderson,” he said, hooking a thumb toward his thin partner, “and this is Detective Huntley. Worchester Homicide.”

He said “Wooster,” which, of course, is the way it is pronounced.

“Massachusetts,” Huntley said.

“I know where Worchester is,” I said. “Even though you guys say it wrong. It should be “
War-chester
.”  

“What do you mean? We live there, for crissakes.”

I wondered if they knew that I went to Holy Cross, the small Jesuit college located in Worcester. If they didn’t, I wasn’t prepared to tell them just yet. It was unlikely they’d traveled this far to sell tickets to the Worcester Policeman’s Ball. It was more likely somebody had been murdered in their fair city. When talking to homicide cops from anywhere, discretion is always the better part of valor, or candor.

“But I’ll let the pronunciation slide,” I continued, “because you have to love a town named after a good steak sauce. Of course, the common name is Worcestershire sauce, but it was originally concocted in Worcester, England. Lea & Perrins is the best. Though I prefer Peter Lugar’s sauce myself. But there’s no beating Lea & Perrins in a Bloody Mary.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He’s bustin’ your balls, Dick. They said he thought he was funny. All those Holy Cross boys are a riot.”

Well, that answered that question. If they knew where I went to college, what else did they know. And why?

They sat down without asking and pulled out notepads. Then Broderson got right to it, wanting to see my reaction. I’d used the trick myself.

“Veronica Frost is dead. Murdered.”

Usually when you are told that someone you haven’t seen in almost 20 years has died, you struggle to sound and look concerned. You might even have trouble remembering what they looked like, or who they were. But not if it’s the first girl you really fell in love with. The one who got away. Or, in Ronnie’s case, ran away. Even after all this time, it hit me like a blow in the solar plexus. 

“How?”

“Strangled. Piano wire.”

He said it casually, but was looking at me closely for my reaction. It was another old cop trick. Ronnie had presumably not been strangled. If I was the killer, the false information might have taken me by surprise. My eyes might have given me away. It wouldn’t be proof, but homicide cops don’t only need proof, they need suspicions, someplace to go. I looked over at his partner, who had a curious expression on his face. Broderson hadn’t let him in on the ploy.  

“When?”

“A month ago.”

“In Worcester.”

“Yeah.”

So, Ronnie wound up in Worcester, where I went to college. Small world. The irony was palpable. I had been looking forward to her visiting me at Holy Cross when she moved away.

“When was the last time you saw her,” Huntley said.

“Probably 20 years ago.”

“Can you tell us where you were?”

“Twenty years ago!”

“No, pal, on the night she was killed.”

Broderson looked up at the ceiling.

“We haven’t told him when she died, Dick.” He had seen my reaction to the news and filed it away. I was not at the top of his list of suspects. But he was a pro and now tried to rescue the interview from the hole his partner was digging. He gave me the date without looking at his notepad. It wasn’t just another case for him. “The M.E. puts the time of death around 7 P.M.”

Friday, May 3rd. The day I drove up to the lake to fish. The night I had the disturbing dream about Ronnie. That wasn’t something I wanted to tell the cops. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell anyone that, ever. Who would believe me? I almost didn’t believe it myself. It had to be a coincidence. Except I don’t really believe in them, either. I closed out the story about the Yankees and switched to my Lotus Organizer. After a quick glance, I said, “I was staking out the Swan Motel in Elizabeth trying to catch a woman cheating with her orthodontist.”

“Where’s Elizabeth?”

“Just over the Goethals Bridge in New Jersey.”

“Go on.”

“The good doctor showed up to fill her cavity around lunch time. I waited until they came out together, got what I needed and went to my office to download the photos. Then I went to Wagner College to work out in the gym. I was probably home by 6 P.M. I changed, packed some gear and headed upstate to fish. Got there just before 10.”

“Where upstate?”

“About an hour and a half north, Greenwood Lake.”

“I suppose you can prove all of this,” Huntley said, trying to recover.

“I can prove the motel part. You can check my cell phone calls, which will put me at the motel until about 2 P.M. The manager will also remember me, since he spotted me lurking about and I had to grease him forty bucks. My office manager was still here when I left for the gym around 4.”

“Anyone see you at the gym?” Broderson asked.

I couldn’t remember if my pal Dom DeRenzi, the Wagner athletic director, was at the gym that afternoon. I didn’t know if any of the kids working out would remember me.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Maybe you drove to Worcester instead,” Huntley said.

“To kill someone I haven’t seen since college?”

“So you say.”

“In three hours?”

“I’ve seen stranger things.”

“You haven’t seen dick, Dick. Why don’t you let your partner here ask the goddamn questions before I lose my patience and throw you out the window?”

I realized that I was shouting and had come halfway out of my chair. I had been flip up until then because that’s often how I react when I take an emotional hit. The news about Ronnie was beginning to sink in. The young cop shrank back and his partner stood up.

“Sit back, pal,” he said with authority, “and calm down. Nobody is accusing you of anything. Anybody see you up at this lake?”

“Bartender at Maloy’s Tavern. Maybe a patron or two. It was late. And fisherman lie, you know.”

“Mostly about fish,” Broderson said.

“You can check my EZ-PASS. Tolls will put me where I said I was.”  

I sat back and looked at the young detective.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just pissed off”

“Catch anything?” Broderson asked.

“Big bass. This big.” I held my hands about two feet apart. “Between the eyes.”

Broderson smiled.

“We spoke to some local cops, Rhode. They think you are a royal pain in the ass, but can’t see you as a murderer. But we have to chase everything down because we’ve got bupkis so far. You were on the job. You know how it goes.”

If they had hit a stone wall, they would be reaching for straws. But I was a pretty obscure straw.

“I’m curious. How did I pop up on the radar? You interviewing everyone Ronnie ever knew? Or just those that went to Holy Cross. And just how did you know that?”

“The Internet is a wonderful thing,” he said. “But we had something else.”

“Her diary,” Huntley said.

“Diary?”

‘Yeah,” he said. “We found it at the bottom of a trunk in an attic. There were several names in it. But you were the one she wrote about the most.”

“Recently?”

A part of me hoped that was true, even if it made me more of a suspect. I had loved Ronnie, and always hoped she loved me. If she was still writing about me, that would prove it. But Broderson brought me back to reality.

“No, the last entry was from about the time you claim you last saw her. Maybe 20 years ago.”

The disappointment must have shown on my face. Broderson didn’t miss it. He’d been there. Most men have. 

“There were other men she mentioned in the diary,” he said, not unkindly, “but apparently, you were the only man she was intimate with sexually. I mean, the only one she went past heavy breathing with.”

“It was pretty racy stuff,” Huntley said. “For a nun, I mean.”

CHAPTER 5 - MEMORIES

A nun.

I didn’t see that one coming.

“Of course, she wasn’t a nun when she wrote it,” Broderson said. “She was Sister Veronica, principal of Ave Maria Academy in Worcester.”

Ronnie had never once mentioned to me that she wanted to become a nun. She attended Notre Dame Academy on Staten Island and then went on to Rosemont College in Merion, a suburb about ten miles west of Philadelphia. Both schools were, at the time, exclusively Catholic and exclusively female. But I had the impression when I knew her that she was spiritual without being overly religious.

I first saw her at the Richmond County Country Club, the summer after of my freshman year in college. My family didn’t belong to the club, but one of my several summer jobs was caddying at its golf course. As a result I palled around with guys whose parents were members and that got me invited to the pool on occasion.

She was sitting at a table on the terrace next to the pool eating lunch with three other girls from Notre Dame. They were all dressed in tennis whites, their rackets and bags propped against the low wall that separated the terrace from the club’s main patio. I had just come off the diving board and swam over to the side of the pool where they were. I said hello. Big college frosh trying to impress some high-school juniors. It actually doesn’t get much better than that.

I knew all the girls except Ronnie. All leggy and attractive, with healthy summer tans. But she was drop-dead gorgeous, with short-cropped black hair, and green, doe-shaped eyes. The other girls smiled and said hello. Ronnie just looked at me. One of the girls started to introduce us but their food came and the next thing I knew I was staring at a waiter’s ass. I backstroked away. I was halfway across the pool when the waiter moved. I looked at the table. The other girls were eating their burgers and Monte Cristos. Ronnie was still looking at me. Fortunately, one of the girls said something to her and she turned away just before I hit the back of my head on the opposite side of the pool. I’m pretty sure I got away with it. Then the guy who invited me that day dragged me off to a volleyball game. When I got back to the pool she and the other girls were gone. It didn’t matter. I was sure I would run into her again. But it turned out she wasn’t a member either, and that was the last time I saw her that summer.

“You didn’t know she was a nun?”

I came out of my reverie and looked at Broderson.

“I told you, I lost track of her years ago.”

“Still, you must have had friends in common. And there is an aunt still living in Staten Island.”

“I didn’t even know she had any relatives left on Staten Island after she moved away with her folks.”         

I nodded at the manila envelope that was in his lap.

“You want me to read the diary, don’t you?”

He smiled.

“Sharp fellow,” he said, pulling out the diary and sliding it across to me. “Let us know if you see anything unusual in it.”

That’s why Broderson brought it. He never really thought I was the killer. But I could still be useful.

“You want to tell me how she was really killed.”

He smiled.

“I knew you were sharp, Rhode. It was worth a shot, to see your reaction. She was stabbed once, right in the heart.”

It was probably quick, then.

“Weapon?”

“Not recovered. M.E. says it was long and sharp, and not serrated. Most likely an ice pick.”

I clamped down on my teeth.

“Anything else?”

“She wasn’t beaten or raped. They found her slumped by the side of her car, near a trail where she often jogged. And her killer was probably left-handed.”

“Probably?”

“The angle of penetration seemed to indicate that, but it’s not as conclusive as if there had been multiple wounds.”

I knew what he meant. A single wound that appeared to come from the left could be inflicted by a right-handed person approaching from the side. But if there were multiple wounds, all with similar angles, right- or left-handedness could be implied.

I needed a drink. I reached down to open the right-hand drawer where I had a bottle of Rebel Yell and some disposable plastic party cups. The young cop was startled and his hand moved toward his jacket. Even Broderson became more alert and sat up a bit. I might not be a serious suspect to him but he didn’t become an older cop by being careless. They both relaxed when my hand came back holding the bourbon and not a Glock. I put out three paper cups.

“We’re on duty,” Huntley said.

“I’m not on duty in Massachusetts,” Broderson said, nodding at me.

I poured two drinks and passed one across to him. We raised glasses and took long pulls. He smiled.

“With a name like Rebel Yell, I had my doubts,” he said. “This is pretty good.”

“There was a time they only sold it below the Mason-Dixon Line,” I said. “But wiser heads prevailed, although not everyone up here stocks it.”

The young cop looked at us and said, “Shit.” Then he reached for a cup and poured himself a shot. Maybe he’d work out. It was a start. I got up and put on a fresh pot of coffee.

“When it’s done, help yourself,” I said, sitting down.

I got out a pad and pen and started reading.

The diary spanned two years, ending shortly after the last time I saw Ronnie. But it wasn’t comprehensive. On the inside cover she had written:
“This is a journal of only the happy things in my life. There is too much that is not.”

The first entry was the most cryptic, and the only one on the first page:
Matt left
.

Just that. Two words. Two words on one page. I’ve known a lot of Matts and Mathews, but I couldn’t remember one that had any connection to Ronnie. Of course, it might have been someone she knew before I came on the scene. But whoever this Matt was, he was important enough to rate a mention. And since she was writing about things that made her happy, the implication was she was glad he’d left. She was starting a new chapter in her life.

From the dates and entries, it was obvious that there were wide swaths, often months, when she couldn’t find anything pleasant to write about. From what I found out about her family when I knew her, I was not surprised. Most of the entries concerned friends, and a favorite aunt. I was not the only boy mentioned, but Broderson was right; I was almost certainly the only lover in the pages.

About a year into the diary, there was an entry about the first day she saw me.

“Played tennis with Marcy, Anne and Bev today, and then had lunch at the R.C.C.C. pool. A cute boy swam up to talk to us but I never got introduced. But he couldn’t stop looking at me. He was so engrossed he hit his head on the far side of the pool when he swam away! His name is Alton Rhode and he’s not a club member. The girls said he’s a bit of a wild man but they all like him. I hope I see him again. He goes to Holy Cross. A college boy, no less! La de da.”

It occurred to me that teen-age girls probably don’t try to act cool or sophisticated when writing in their diaries. They can act like the nice kids most of them are. Reading Ronnie’s words brought me back to a more innocent time and I felt a profound sadness at what we all eventually lose.

There were perhaps a dozen entries, mostly about school, over the following months. I next appeared early in the following spring:

“Alton Rhode called and asked me out. He was the boy from the pool last summer! I asked him what took him so long. He said the French Foreign Legion wouldn’t give him leave! How am I supposed to say no to someone as nutty as that? We’re going to a movie and then out for a bite.”

***

I remembered it like it was yesterday. I was scrunched in a car with seven other sweaty guys. We’d just finished a half dozen pickup basketball games in the gym at the Sunnyside campus of the College of Staten Island and were heading along Ocean Terrace on Emerson Hill. I’ve always wondered why they called it Ocean Terrace, since it was nowhere near the ocean.

Our destination was a bar in Oakwood where the owner was more interested in our money than our specious proof of age. The car was a big black Mercedes sedan, so the ride wasn’t that uncomfortable, despite the pungent jock smells. The driver was Arman Rahm, who I’d only recently met. I had been prepared to dislike him, given his background, which was no secret. But he was unselfish with the ball on the basketball court and always seemed to find me when I was open. Besides, he had provided me with the phony proof I had in my wallet. He was also unconcerned about the interior of his Mercedes. He had others.

One of the players had to be home early, so Rahm turned off Ocean Terrace and on to Longfellow Avenue, a dead end street where the kid lived. After dropping him off amid the usual vulgar remarks about his manhood, we U-turned and headed to the bar. Our car had just reached the bottom of the street when Ronnie turned the corner and walked past us in the other direction. She was alone, her head down, carrying books. She was even more beautiful than I remembered, with a slow, gliding walk that emphasized her hips.

“Jesus,” one of the other guys said.

As we passed her, my head snapped around and I swiveled violently in my seat. I was sitting in the front next to Rahm and my twisting body interfered with his driving.

“Down boy,” he said, laughing, as the car swerved, almost jumping the curb and hitting a street sign. “She is certainly very pretty, but not worth dying over.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I replied. “I remember her from the country club.”

“Good Lord, Rhode,” he said, pulling out onto Ocean Terrace. “You look like Michael Corleone after he was hit with the thunderbolt.”

None of the other guys knew what he meant, but I did. In
The Godfather
, the Don’s son, hiding out in Sicily, sees a beautiful peasant girl walking on a hillside and instantly falls for her.  

“I didn’t know you were a movie buff,” I said, my neck still craning to keep Ronnie in sight.

“I’m not, really,” Rahm said, laughing again, “but that’s one movie everyone in my family has seen. Coppola filmed the wedding scene on the street we just left, Longfellow.”

I had almost forgotten that Rahm’s father was said to run the largest Russian crime family in Brooklyn and Staten Island. I also knew about the film’s Staten Island connection. But neither mattered to me right then. 

“Go back,” I said. “I want to talk to her.”

That brought hoots of derision from the other boys in the car and some very inventive sexual remarks. But Rahm made another U-turn and went back to Longfellow.

“A man after my own heart,” he said.

She was gone.

“I think she lives nearby,” Rahm said. “She’s probably at a friend’s. Do you want to start ringing doorbells?”

I think he was serious, but by now the howls and hoots from the other passengers were at a fever pitch. I told Rahm to head to our original destination.

We had no trouble getting into the tavern. Rahm went first and nobody even asked us for our I.D.’s. We drank an awful lot of beer, although none of it seemed to bother Rahm, who already had a reputation for being able to hold his booze. Later, after we left the bar, he dropped me off last at my house in West Brighton. As I walked away, he called me back.

“Her name is Ronnie Frost,” he said through the window. “She goes to Notre Dame Academy and is a very nice girl.” He smiled. “Obviously not my type. But I would be careful, my friend. Her family is screwed up.”

That, from a kid whose father traveled with bodyguards.

“What do you mean?”

“Her father is a crooked lawyer. Even by Staten Island standards. Harry Frost. Lives on Coverly Avenue, not far from Longfellow. They’re in the book.”

Even back then I realized that if the Rahms knew so much about Harry Frost, he was probably bad news. But I called Ronnie, anyway. Moth to a flame? Maybe. Or maybe I’ve always been attracted to a bird with a wing down, which was indicated by Arman’s remark that she was a nice kid in a screwed up situation.