Stunner (23 page)

The beat of Leonard Cohen continues pounding from all directions. Unbeknownst to us, Benny Sullivan, this time with the unlit cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, has been standing outside his office watching the commotion from the loft space above. He hollers down to us, “Who are you two, really?”

I look up and smile on the way out of the bar and call up to him loudly. “Like I said before, just a housewife from New Jersey.”

“Here to see Mara Smith,” I say to the man in the small guard house at the entrance to the very private community of Taconic Harbor.

He peers into my driver’s side window and smiles at me. “Yes, Ma’am. Make a left turn, and it’s the seventh house on the right.” The security guard waves me through, and in my rearview mirror I see him write down my license plate number.

Driving down the curvy road in this exclusive Greenwich, Connecticut enclave, I catch glimpses through walls, gates and hedges of perfectly maintained homes and grounds. My iPod plays Abba’s “Money, Money, Money,” and I sing along.

I slow my Mustang in order to get a better look at early-twentieth-century grand white elephants that must cost a fortune in upkeep. Scattered among these testaments to new wealth a century before, I catch sight of today’s testosterone-produced tributes to hedge-fund excess…uh, success. These massive structures are too, too what—shiny, monstrous, and new?

I make a right at the seventh driveway and pull up to a version of Scarlett O’Hara’s Tara on steroids. Oh, dear. While staring at bulging Corinthian columns that reach three stories high to a widow’s walk, I sing along to Abba more quietly.

One half of a massive, shiny, black double-door opens, and a slender figure in deep purple yoga clothes springs down the steps, her luscious, thick, red hair bouncing on her shoulders. Two yapping Yorkshire terriers leap down after her, protecting their mistress from unfamiliar visitors.

“Hi, there!” She waves to me.

I step out of my car, and the little dogs swirl around my feet making a racket. “Hush, Trixie, Falco,” the redhead orders. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says to me. “I hope you like dogs.”

I squat down and stretch out the top of my hand for sniffs from two cold noses. “It’s fine. I’ve got a German shepherd at home.” The Yorkies settle down.

“I’m Mara Smith.” I hear a slight Southern drawl in her welcoming voice.

“I’m Ronnie Lake. Thanks for seeing me.” We shake hands, and I gaze around the property, hoping I’m displaying a fitting degree of admiration. Mara watches me.

To my surprise, she directs my gaze above her hedge to a lovely old stone mansion with a steep slate roof across the road. “Now, that’s where I’d love to live, even though I’m just positive it’s a money pit.” She giggles. “But since my husband sold his business five years ago, he’s become a builder. Said he always wanted to create big, beautiful houses. He built this place and our other homes in Boca Grande and up on Nantucket. Don’t get me wrong. I just love Mike to death, but all our houses are so huge…” She rolls her eyes and giggles again. “…and definitely over the top.”

“Oh, no—” I interject.

“Where do you live, Ronnie?”

“Over in Willowbrook, New Jersey—”

“Oh, I thought you were here in Greenwich.” She looks at me as if intrigued and then beams a million-dollar smile. “Mike is from New Jersey, too. He grew up in Asbury Park.” She walks back up the steps. “Come on, Ronnie. Let’s go out back and sit where we have a view of the water.”

I follow Mara through a long marble-floored hallway lined with fluted pedestals holding a mix of antique and contemporary sculptures. I discreetly glance through doors as we walk, and the mistress of the house notices my curiosity. She stops at one door, and we look into an enormous empty room, maybe four times the size of the largest room at Meadow Farm. Massive paintings hanging on all the walls are the only adornment. The two Yorkies dash in and chase each other around the expanse as if they were in an Olympic stadium.

“Mike likes to call this the gallery, because he collects art, but it’s really our party room,” Mara says. “We keep it empty, so that we never have to move out the furniture when we entertain a big group.”

Well, now… “That’s very practical, Mara,” I tell her approvingly.

“Ronnie, guess how many bedrooms in this house.” She giggles. But before I can even hazard a guess, she blurts out, “Twelve! In case we have weekend guests for a house party. Can you imagine? Mike planned it that way for the resale value.”

“How many do you actually use?” I ask.

“Only a few.” She shrugs. “Most of them I never even furnished…just keep the doors closed.” She smiles. “Enough of this. Let’s go outside.”

Mara and I continue walking. This mini museum mile leads to the back of the house, and we step onto a terrace with a spectacular view of the harbor.

We head toward a cluster of oversized outdoor furniture positioned to take in the panorama and sink into their plush cushions. Trixie and Falco hop up on a chaise to better observe what Mara and I are up to.

“I never get tired of looking at the water.” Mara reaches for a huge pitcher of lemonade on the glass coffee table.

“With this view, I wouldn’t either,” I say, as I watch sailboats moored at the yacht club on the other side of the harbor bob in the water.

“Ronnie, I don’t mean to brag about my wonderful husband, but Mike made it even more spectacular than when we first bought this property. It was hilly toward the water with giant boulders and too many trees.” Mara fills two tumblers and hands me one.

“You don’t mean to tell me—”

“Exactly. Mike used some of his earthmoving equipment and got rid of those hills and the boulders. Then he cut down the trees and created this beautiful smooth lawn that swoops down to the water.” She grins like a kid getting a pony. “He says he feels as though he’s in
The Great Gatsby
when he walks on this perfect grass at dusk with a cocktail and stares out at the lights over there.”

“Mara, it is amazing, and it’s great how you appreciate and enjoy it all.” I can’t help but like her.

“The kids are at camp until the afternoon, and my tennis game was cancelled.” She takes a drink. “When you called this morning, I really thought you were already in Greenwich. I never in a million years thought you were in New Jersey.”

“Oh, it’s not that far.” I sip the lemonade. “Anyway, as I said on the phone, I’ve got this deadline looming for a family gathering. And none of us have seen Terry in a long time—I guess you knew her as Julie—so I decided to try to find her.” I can’t help but notice that Mara, about thirty-five, is one fit lady in her gorgeous yoga clothes. Probably has an enormous gym in the basement of this monster manse where she works out every day.

“So, you’re kind of playing detective?” She giggles.

“Yeah, right.” I roll my eyes in agreement, and we giggle together. “I kept hitting dead ends, until I got to Benny’s Bar. I met the owner, and he suggested I get in touch with you, since you and Ter—I mean Julie—were good friends.” From shot girl at Benny’s Bar & Grill to housewife and mom living in a Greenwich palace, Mara Smith hasn’t done too badly for herself. No siree.

“Mara?”

“Yes?”

“Did Terry ever tell you why she changed her name to Julie Jones when she went to work at Benny’s?”

“I think it probably had to do with this guy she had grown up with who was big trouble,” Mara says.

“Oh, yeah.” I roll my eyes yet again. “Bobby Taylor, right?”

“That’s the guy, Ronnie. A real lowlife.”

“How long was Bobby around?” I ask as Trixie jumps off the chaise and then into my lap.

“I guess it was only a couple of weeks,” she answers as Falco also hops down and squeaks. Mara picks him up. “But he was bad news. I think he hit her and grabbed her hard. One time I saw bruises on one of her shoulders and the other bicep when she took off her sweater, and her cheek was kind of swollen. She told the boss she had been to the dentist, but I knew it wasn’t true.”

That Bobby Taylor sure had one helluva grip. “That’s awful,” I say and make a face. “But are you sure it was Bobby Taylor? Maybe it was someone else?” I scratch Trixie’s head as she looks at me with deep dark eyes. These Yorkie fur-balls are adorable.

“Absolutely.” Mara is certain. “It was Bobby Taylor. One night I caught him pushing Julie around in the alley behind the bar. I hollered at him, pulled out my phone to call the police, and he ran.” Mara drinks her lemonade while Falco squirms in her other arm. “Julie begged me not to tell Benny or anyone else at work. She was afraid she’d lose her job.”

I act horrified, though I’m not entirely acting, of course. “Did this happen a lot during the two weeks he was around?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t talk about it with me. Then one day she was gone, except for a letter she left me to give to the boss.” Mara gets a sad expression on her face. “Just gone. Nobody knew where. I really missed her.”

Mara and I sit quietly watching a sail boat pass by. “I think she got pregnant.” Her voice is almost a whisper, and my head whips toward her.

“Excuse me?” I say.

“Some time after she took off, I got a few letters and postcards from her. I don’t have them anymore, but I remember in one of the last ones she wrote me she was pregnant.” Mara shrugs her shoulders and says, “But then she stopped writing, and we lost touch. I don’t know how that all worked out…if she ever even had a baby.”

“Do you think it happened while she was still at Benny’s?” I ask. “And do you think Bobby Taylor could have been the father?”

“Who knows when it happened. But no way was it Bobby Taylor. If he was, then he must have raped her, because she couldn’t stand him.” We put the Yorkies on the ground, and they chase each other in circles around the terrace. Mara continues, “Look, he may have hit her, but I got the feeling that she could pretty much take care of herself. She wasn’t afraid of him—”

“Did she have a boyfriend while she worked at Benny’s?” I interrupt. “You would have known, right?”

“Positively, and she did not,” Mara says. “She was pretty sad about a breakup she’d had…some guy she was about to marry. She never said his name, but he definitely was the one she cared about.” She shakes her head. “I lost touch with Julie after that.” A breeze blows, and Mara pushes her hair out of her face. “We both just got on with our lives.”

We’re quiet for a long moment, as I let these thoughts sink in. A baby. If she was pregnant, that scenario could have played out in different ways. I flash on Francesca with
Tía
Connie in Scranton and do the math. Working at Benny’s Bar & Grill could have overlapped the time when Francesca was conceived.

And now I have two candidates as the father. First, that creep Bobby Taylor harassing her at work and, who knows, perhaps raping her. And second, Juliana running into her ex-fiancé, John Palmer, in the city after their break-up and spending the night together. I mean, Palmer pretty much told me so with his ‘the next morning she was gone’ comment when I was in Salt Lake City.

Finishing my lemonade, I look at my watch. “Mara, thank you for sharing all this with me. Not sure it brings me any closer to finding her in time for our reunion, but I’m not giving up yet.”

We walk back through the museum-mile hallway with the Yorkies’ prancing at our heels. As we descend the front steps of the house, Mara says, “The one thing I remember is that Julie really wanted to get her college degree. You do know she was taking classes over at Manhattan Community College in Tribeca?” I nod. “Maybe they know where she transferred for her four-year degree,” Mara offers. “Don’t know if they’ll tell you, but it’s worth a try.”

While I was traipsing from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Greenwich, Connecticut, and into Manhattan doing my own P.I. work, niece Laura tipped me off that Juliana had disappeared from Meadow Farm several times after my brother headed elsewhere for business meetings. So, once again Warrior sits quietly in the front passenger seat of Daniel’s unobtrusive grey van as I drive over to the Keystone State, following Juliana, of course. I wonder if she’s picked up on my investigation of her at all. If so, she’d probably accuse me of being a stalker.

We enter a familiar, rundown neighborhood on the outskirts of Scranton, and Juliana slows down in Meadow Farm’s inconspicuous Toyota. She turns exactly where I thought she would, onto the same street of ramshackle clapboard houses that I’d visited before, and parks. Slowly, she looks around as if taking in every detail of this impoverished neighborhood. I discreetly pull into an empty slot near a fire hydrant on the block before hers.

Juliana has a brown envelope in her hand, slightly smaller than the one she gave to Bobby Taylor at the Moosic Café some days ago. Is this one also filled with cash?

She hurries over to the front stoop of the row house I observed last time. The door swings open, and Mrs. de Torres emerges. Juliana runs up the steps where she and the elderly woman embrace, and I take pictures. They go inside the house.

To stay busy, I take pictures of the neighborhood in general, including its residents coming and going. I’m not sure any of it is relevant to my surveillance, but you never know.

Forty minutes later—so boring all this sitting around— Juliana comes out with Mrs. de Torres and I duck down. Both appear to be wiping tears from their eyes. More hugs between the two. The elderly woman goes back inside, and Juliana leaves. I stick around.

Nothing happens for the next ten minutes. I let Warrior out for a drink from his water bowl. We make our way up the sidewalk, as I tell him to
do your business
. Big mistake. First the sound of a car engine alerts me, and then I spot the Meadow Farm Toyota two blocks away heading in our direction.

In a panic at the thought of being spotted, I rush Warrior back to the van and hurry him into the vehicle as the Toyota drives by and stops close to the brownstone. Mrs. de Torres comes out again, and Juliana runs up the steps, glancing in my direction just as I enter the driver’s side of the van. She hands the woman two big shopping bags and says something to her. Maybe she forgot to give the bags to her the first time around. They embrace, and Juliana drives off one more time. Mrs. de Torres enters the brownstone with the bags.