Daddy's Little Girl

  “Hi, Ellie.”

  There was something in his voice that immediately warned me to brace myself.

  “What’s the matter, Pete?”

  “You don’t waste time on chitchat, do you?”

  “We never do. That’s our agreement.”

  “I guess it is. Ellie, the paper is being sold. It’s definite now. The announcement will be made on Monday. The staff will be cut to the bone.”

  “What about you?”

  “They offered me a job. I turned them down.”

  “You said you were going to do that.”

  “I asked about you, but off the record they told me they don’t plan to keep up the investigative reporter series.”

  I’d been expecting that bit of news, but I realized how suddenly rootless it made me feel. “Have you decided where you’re going, Pete?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I may be seeing some people in New York before I decide. Maybe when that happens, I’ll rent a car and drive up to see you, or you can meet me in the city.”

  “I’d like that. I was kind of expecting that I’d get a postcard from Houston or L.A.”

  “I never send postcards. Ellie, I’ve been watching your Website.”

  “There isn’t much on it yet. It’s sort of like a sign, the kind you put on a shop you’ve rented. You know what I mean: ‘Watch for the grand opening.’ But I am digging up a lot of nasty stuff on Westerfield. If Jake Bern tries to portray him as an all-American kid, his book will have to be published as fiction.”

  “Ellie, it is not in my nature to—”

  I cut him off. “Ah, come on, Pete. You’re not going to warn me to be careful, are you? I’ve already been warned by my neighbor—a psychologist—and by a cop. And that’s just today.”

  “Then let me join the chorus.”

  “Let’s change the subject. Have you lost any of those ten pounds yet?”

  “I did better than that. I decided I look good just the way I am. Okay, I’ll call you when I know I’m coming in. Or you can always call me, you know. Long-distance rates are pretty cheap at night.”

  He disconnected before I could even say good-bye.

  I pressed the “end” button on my cell phone and laid the phone down next to the computer. As I made a salad, the ramifications of losing my job began to sink in. The advance on signing the contract to write my book would keep me going for a while, but what would I do when that was finished and I had given my best shot to torpedoing Rob Westerfield’s reinvention of himself?

  Go back to Atlanta? But my friends at the paper would be scattered. Another thing to ponder: It isn’t that easy to get a newspaper job these days. Too many newspapers have been swallowed up or have folded. And when the book is finished and I’ve put all this behind me, where did I want to live? It was a question that I kept pondering all through dinner, even as I tried to concentrate on the news magazine I’d picked up at the supermarket.

  The cell phone rang again as I was clearing the table. “You the lady who was standing outside the prison with a sign yesterday?” a husky male voice asked.

  “Yes, I am.” Mentally I was crossing my fingers. The caller ID registered “unavailable.”

  “I might have something to tell you about Westerfield. How much you gonna pay?”

  “I guess it depends on the information.”

  “You pay first, then you hear.”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand dollars.”

  “I haven’t got that much money.”

  “Then forget it. But what I can tell you would put Westerfield back in Sing Sing for the rest of his life.”

  Was he bluffing? I wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t take a chance on losing the caller. I thought of my advance. “I have some money coming in the next week or two. Just give me some hint of what you know.”

  “How’s this? When he was whacked out on cocaine last year, Westerfield told me he killed a guy when he was eighteen. Is the name of that guy worth five thousand dollars? Think about it. I’ll call back next week.”

  I heard a click in my ear.

  Margaret Fisher had told me only that afternoon that in her professional opinion Rob Westerfield had been guilty of other crimes before he murdered Andrea. I thought of incidents I had heard earlier that day, like the ones at school and at the restaurant. But if he had really murdered someone . . .

  Suddenly it was a whole new ball game. If the guy who had just called me was on the level and could give the name of a murder victim I could verify, it would be easy enough to find out the facts of the case. Of course, it might be that this was a hoax, just a way for a crook to make a fast $5,000. I had to decide if that was a risk I was willing to take.

  I was standing at the computer, looking down at the open file. As I read my description of Andrea in those last few moments that I was with her, I knew that to help put Rob Westerfield back in prison was worth every cent I would ever earn in my life.

  There was a glass of water at the side of the computer. I picked it up and lifted it in a kind of salute, a toast to Andrea and to the prospect of sending Westerfield back to prison.

  I tidied up the kitchen and turned on the TV to watch the local news. The sports editor was showing clips of a basketball game. The winning basket had been made by Teddy Cavanaugh, and as I stared, I saw the face of the half-brother I’d never met.

  He was close to being a mirror image of me. He was younger, of course, boyish, but our eyes and noses and lips and cheekbones were the same. He was looking straight into the camera, and I felt as if we were staring at each other.

  Then before I could change the station, in a final touch of irony, the cheerleaders began to chant his name.

  22

  MRS. HILMER HAD TOLD ME that Joan Lashley St. Martin lived on the road not far beyond Graymoor, the monastery and retreat house of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. When I passed the lovely Graymoor property, I had a vague memory of driving up the winding driveway to attend Mass in the main chapel with my parents and Andrea.

  Mother had sometimes reminisced about the last time we were there; it had been shortly before Andrea died. Andrea had been feeling silly that day and kept whispering jokes in my ear; during the sermon, I even laughed out loud. My mother had firmly separated us and after Mass told my father that we should go straight home and forget about having the brunch we’d been looking forward to at the Bear Mountain Inn.

  “Even Andrea couldn’t charm your father that day,” Mother recalled. “Of course when everything happened a few weeks later, I was sorry we didn’t have that last happy time together having brunch.”

  The day before . . . the last happy time . . . I wondered if I’d ever be free of that kind of remark. It certainly won’t be today, I thought, as I slowed down to check Joan’s address again.

  She lived in a three-story frame house in a lovely wooded area. The white clapboard shingles glistened in the sunshine and were complemented by the hunter green shutters framing the windows. I parked in the semicircular driveway, went up the porch steps, and rang the bell.

  Joan answered the door. She had always seemed tall to me, but I realized instantly that she hadn’t grown an inch in these twenty-two years. Her long brown hair was now collar length, and her thin frame had filled out. I remembered her as being very attractive. I would say the definition still fit, at least until she smiled—she is one of those people whose smile is so vivid and warm that it makes the whole face seem beautiful. As we looked at each other, Joan’s green eyes became moist for a moment, then she grasped my hands.

  “Little Ellie,” she said. “Dear God, I thought you’d be shorter than I am. You were such a tiny kid.”

  I laughed. “I know. It’s the reaction I’m getting from everyone who used to know me.”

  She put her arm through mine. “Come in, I have a pot of coffee going, and I stuck a couple of bake-and-serve muffins in the oven. No guarantees that they’re any good. Sometimes they’re fine; other times they taste like
lead balloons.”

  We walked through the living room that ran from the front to the back of the house. It was the kind of room I loved—deep couches, club chairs, a wall of books, a fireplace, wide windows that looked out at the surrounding hills.

  We share similar taste, I thought. Then I realized that the similarity also extended to clothing. We were both dressed casually in sweaters and jeans. I had been expecting to see a tall fashionable woman with long hair. In addition to expecting me to be small, I’m sure she also thought I’d be dressed in something frilly. Mother’s taste in dress-up clothes for Andrea and me had been very feminine.

  “Leo is out with the boys,” she said. “Between the three of them, life is one long basketball game.”

  The table in the breakfast room was already set for the two of us. The percolator was plugged in on the sideboard. The picture window offered a stunning view of the palisades and the Hudson River.

  “I would never get tired of looking out this window,” I said as I sat down.

  “I never do. So many of the old crowd went down to the city, but, you know something? A lot of them are coming back. The commute into Manhattan is only an hour, and they think it’s worth it.” Joan was pouring the coffee as she spoke, then abruptly set the percolator back on the sideboard. “Oh, my Lord, it’s time to rescue the bake-and-serves.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

  She may not look as I visualized her, I thought, but one thing hadn’t changed! Joan was always fun to be with. She was Andrea’s best friend and therefore was in and out of our house all the time. Of course, I had my own friends, but if I didn’t have one of them around, Andrea and Joan would let me join them, often to listen to records with them in Andrea’s room. Sometimes when they were doing their homework together, they’d let me do mine with them, just as long as I wasn’t a pest.

  Joan returned triumphantly carrying a plate of corn muffins. “Congratulations are in order, Ellie,” she said. “I caught them just before the bottoms started to burn.”

  I helped myself to one. Joan sat down, cut a muffin open, spread butter on it lightly, tasted it, and said, “My God, it’s edible!”

  We laughed together and began to talk. She wanted to know about me, what I had been doing, and I briefly sketched in the years between age seven and the present. She had heard of Mother’s death. “Your father put a notice in the local papers,” she said. “A very sweet one. Didn’t you know that?”

  “He didn’t send it to me.”

  “I have it somewhere. If you’d like to see it, I can dig it out. It might take a while, though. My filing is about on a par with my baking.”

  I wanted to say no, don’t bother, but I was curious to see what my father had written. “If you come across it, I would like to see it,” I said, trying to sound offhand. “But please don’t go to any trouble.”

  I was sure Joan wanted to ask me if I had been in touch with my father, but she must have sensed that I did not want to talk about him.

  Instead she said, “Your mother was so lovely. And of course your father was very handsome. I remember that I was intimidated by him, but I think I also had a crush on him. I was so sorry when I heard they separated after the trial. The four of you always seemed so happy, and you did so many things together. I always wished my family would go to Sunday brunches at the Bear Mountain Inn the way you did.”

  “Only an hour ago I’d been thinking of the brunch that we didn’t go to there,” I said, and then told Joan about Andrea making me laugh in church.

  Joan smiled. “She did that to me sometimes in school assemblies. Andrea could keep a straight face, and I’d get in trouble for laughing when the principal was speaking.”

  As she sipped her coffee, she reflected. “My parents are good people, but, to be perfectly frank, they’re not much fun. We never went out to a restaurant, because my father said the food was cheaper and tasted better at home. Fortunately, he’s loosened up a bit now that they’ve retired to Florida.”

  She laughed. “But when they go out, the rule is they have to be in the restaurant by five o’clock to get the early bird prices, and if they have a cocktail, they fix it at home and sip it in the van in the parking lot of the restaurant before dinner. Don’t you love it?”

  Then she added, “I mean, it would be different if he couldn’t afford to do otherwise, but he can. Dad is just plain cheap. My mother says he still has his First Communion money.”

  She poured us a second cup of coffee. “Ellie, like everybody else around here, I saw the Rob Westerfield interview on television. My cousin is a judge. He says there’s so much pressure for that second trial that he’s surprised they’re not already into jury selection. You have no idea how manipulative the father is, and, of course, Dorothy Westerfield, the grandmother, has made huge donations to hospitals and libraries and schools around here. She wants the second trial for Rob, and the powers that be want her to have it.”

  “You’ll be called as a witness, of course, Joan,” I said.

  “I know it. I was the last person to see Andrea alive.” She hesitated, then added, “Except for her murderer, of course.”

  We were both silent for a moment. Then I said, “Joan, I need to know everything that you remember about that last night. I’ve read the trial transcript over and over, and it strikes me that your testimony was very brief.”

  She put her elbows on the table and folded her hands together, resting her chin on them. “It was brief, because neither the prosecutor nor the defense attorney asked me questions that, looking back, I think they should have asked.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “About Will Nebels, for one,” she said. “You remember how he was a handyman and worked for just about everyone in town at some point. He helped build your porch, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “He fixed our garage door when my mother backed the car into it. As my father used to say, when Will wasn’t three sheets to the wind, he was a good carpenter. But, of course, you could never count on him showing up.”

  “I kind of remember that.”

  “Something you wouldn’t remember was that Andrea and I used to talk about the fact that he was a bit too friendly.”

  “Too friendly?”

  Joan shrugged. “Today, knowing what I know, I would say that he was one step away from being a child molester. I mean, we all knew him because he’d been in our houses. But any number of times when we bumped into him in the street, he’d give us each a big hug—although never if an adult was around, of course.”

  I was incredulous. “Joan, I’m sure even at that age I would have been aware if Andrea had complained about him to my father. I certainly knew when he ordered Andrea to stay away from Westerfield.”

  “Ellie, twenty-two years ago we kids simply weren’t aware that he was potentially more than a nuisance. At that time we told each other how yucky it was when Nebels would give us a hug and call us ‘his girls.’ ‘How do you like the new porch I built with your daddy, Andrea?’ he’d say with an overly friendly smile, or ‘Didn’t I fix your garage good, Joanie?’ he’d whine.

  “Now understand, he didn’t molest us, but in retrospect, he was just a boozy sleaze who had a hell of a nerve, and there was no question in my mind that the one he really had his eye on was Andrea. I remember I joked to your mother and father that Andrea was going to invite Will Nebels to the Christmas dance. They never picked up that there was anything behind the joking.”

  “My father missed that!”

  “Andrea could do a great imitation of Will sneaking beer out of his toolbox and getting bombed while he was working. There was no reason for your father to look behind the joking for a potential problem.”

  “Joan, I don’t understand why you’re telling me this now. Are you saying that you think that this story Will Nebels is telling now is anything but an outright lie that the Westerfields are paying him to tell?”

  “Ellie, ever since I heard Will Nebels with Rob Westerfield during th
at interview, I’m wondering if there’s any truth to what he said. Was he really in old Mrs. Westerfield’s house that night? Did he actually see Andrea go into the garage? Well after the fact, I wondered if I’d seen someone coming down the road when Andrea left our house that night. But I was so vague about it when I talked to the police and the attorneys then that it was pretty much dismissed as teenage hysteria.”

  “What I told them was dismissed as childish imagination.”

  “I do know for certain that Will Nebels had lost his driver’s license at that time and was always wandering around town. I also know he had a thing for Andrea. Suppose she was hoping to meet Rob Westerfield in the garage hideout and got there early. Suppose Will had followed her there and made a pass at her. Suppose there was a struggle, and she fell backward? That was a cement floor. There was an injury on the back of her head that they blamed on the fact that she’d fallen after she was hit with the tire jack. But isn’t it possible she fell before she was hit with the tire jack?”

  “The blow on the back of her head would only have stunned her,” I said. “I know that from the records.”

  “Hear me out. Let’s assume for one single minute that, lowlife that he is, Rob Westerfield’s story is true. He parked his car at the service station, went into the movie, and after it was over, drove to the hideout, just in case Andrea was waiting for him.”

  “And found her dead?”

  “Yes, and panicked. Just as he claimed.”

  She saw the protest forming on my lips and held up her hand. “Hear me out, Ellie, please. It is possible that everyone has told parts of the truth. Suppose Nebels struggled with Andrea, and she fell and hit her head and was unconscious. Suppose he ran inside Mrs. Dorothy Westerfield’s house while trying to decide what to do. He had done work there and knew the alarm code. And then he saw Paulie drive up.”

  “Why would Paulie have taken the tire jack out of the car?”

  “Maybe for protection, in case he ran into Westerfield. Remember that Miss Watkins, the guidance counselor, swore Paulie had said: ‘I didn’t think she was dead.’ ”