Daddy's Little Girl

The nurse popped her head in and reminded me that checkout time was noon. By eleven-thirty I was ready to ask if there was a social services office in the hospital, but then Joan called.

  “Ellie, I just heard what happened. For heaven’s sake, how are you? What can I do?”

  Any pride that I had about refusing help because she didn’t believe Rob Westerfield was a murdering animal evaporated. I needed her, and I knew darn well that she was as sincere in her conviction about his innocence as I was in mine about his guilt.

  “Actually, you can do a lot,” I said. Relief at hearing a friendly voice made my own voice tremble. “You can dig up some clothes for me. You can come and get me. You can help me find a place to stay. You can lend me some money.”

  “You’ll stay with us—” she began.

  “Negative. No. That’s neither a good nor a safe idea for either one of us. You don’t need your house to burst into flames because I’m around.”

  “Ellie, you don’t believe that someone set that fire with the intent of killing you!”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She considered that news for a moment, and I’m sure thought of her three children. “Then where can you stay that you’ll be safe, Ellie?”

  “An inn is my preference. I don’t like the idea of a motel with separate doors to the outside.” I thought of something. “Forget the Parkinson Inn. It’s booked.” And it’s a Westerfield hangout, I reminded myself.

  “I have a place in mind that I think will work,” Joan said. “I also have a friend who’s about your height and weight. I’ll call her to borrow some clothes. What’s your shoe size?”

  “Nine, but I don’t think I can take the bandages off my feet yet.”

  “Leo is a size ten. If you don’t mind wearing a pair of his sneakers, they might do for now.”

  I didn’t mind.

  * * *

  JOAN ARRIVED within the hour with a suitcase containing underwear, pajamas, stockings, slacks, a turtleneck sweater, a warm jacket, gloves, the sneakers, and some toiletries. I dressed, and the nurse brought in a cane I could use in walking until my blistered feet began to heal. On the way out, the billing clerk reluctantly agreed to wait for payment until I could have a copy of my medical insurance card faxed to her.

  Finally we were in Joan’s SUV. My hair was smoothed back and caught at the neckline with a rubber band I had acquired at the nurses’ station. A cursory glance in the mirror showed that it looked tidy enough. The borrowed clothes fit quite well, and even though the sneakers looked wide and ungainly, they did a good job of protecting my painful feet.

  “I made a reservation for you at the Hudson Valley Inn,” Joan told me. “It’s about a mile away.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to drive to Mrs. Hilmer’s place. My car is still there—or at least, I hope it’s there.”

  “Who would take it?”

  “No one would take it, but it was parked about two feet from the garage. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that a beam or some debris didn’t fall on it.”

  There wasn’t a wall standing of the structure that had housed the cheery apartment Mrs. Hilmer had so generously lent me. The area around it was cordoned off, and a policeman was standing guard.

  Three men in heavy rubber boots were painstakingly examining the rubble and undoubtedly trying to pinpoint the source of the blaze. They looked up when they saw us, but then went back to their probing.

  I was relieved to see that my car had been moved about twenty feet toward Mrs. Hilmer’s house. We got out of the SUV to examine it. It’s a previously owned BMW that I bought two years ago, the first decent car I’ve ever had.

  Of course, every inch of it was grimy with black smoke, and there were some blisters in the paint on the passenger side, but I considered myself lucky. I still had my wheels, even if I couldn’t use them yet.

  My shoulder bag had been in the bedroom. Along with everything else, my key ring was in it.

  The cop on guard came over to us. He was very young and very polite. When I explained that I didn’t have the key to the car and would contact BMW for a replacement, he assured me the car would be safe. “One of us will be on the premises for the next few days.”

  To see if you can pin the fire on me? I wondered as I thanked him.

  Whatever lift in spirit I’d felt when I got dressed and left the hospital disappeared as Joan and I started to get back in her SUV. It was a beautiful, clear fall day, but around us the smell of smoke permeated the air. I fervently hoped that it would dissipate before Mrs. Hilmer got back. That was another thing I had to do: phone and talk to her.

  I could visualize the conversation.

  “I’m really sorry I caused your guest house to burn down. I certainly won’t let it happen again.”

  I could hear the pealing of church bells in the distance, and I wondered if my father went to Mass after he visited me—he and his wife and son, the basketball star. I had thrown away his card when I was clearing out of the hospital room, but I’d noticed he still lived in Irvington. That meant he probably was still a parishioner of Immaculate Conception, the church in which I was baptized.

  The godparents who were to assist my parents in reinforcing my religious education and spiritual well-being were my father’s close friends, the Barrys. Dave Barry was a state trooper, too, and probably also retired by now. I wondered if he or his wife, Nancy, ever said, “Oh, by the way, Ted, any word from Ellie?”

  Or was I a subject too uncomfortable to be discussed? A person to be dismissed with a shake of the head and a sigh. “It’s one of those sad things that happen in life. We just have to put it behind us and go on.”

  “You’re very quiet, Ellie,” Joan said as she turned on the ignition. “How do you feel, really?”

  “Much better than I dared hope,” I assured her. “You’re an angel, and with the money you are so kindly going to lend me, I am buying you lunch.”

  I could see that the Hudson Valley Inn was going to be a perfect spot for me. It was a three-story, wide-porched gingerbread kind of Victorian mansion, and the minute we stepped into the vestibule, the elderly clerk behind the desk was looking us over carefully.

  Joan gave her credit card for an imprint, explaining that I’d lost my purse and it would be a few days before I would have new cards issued. That bonded Mrs. Willis, the clerk, to me for life. After introducing herself, she confided that seven years ago, in the train station, she had laid her purse beside her on the bench.

  “I turned the page of the newspaper,” she recalled, “and in that split second, it disappeared. What a nuisance. I was stranded. I was so upset. Someone had run up three hundred dollars on my card before I could even collect my wits and make the phone call, and . . .”

  Maybe because of our shared experience, she went out of her way to give me a particularly desirable room. “It’s priced as a room, but it’s really a junior suite because it has a separate sitting area with a little kitchenette. And best of all it has a wonderful view of the river.”

  If there’s anything in the world I love, it’s a river view. It’s not hard to figure out why that is true. I was conceived in the house in Irvington that overlooks the Hudson and lived there for the first five years of my life. I remember that when I was very little, I would pull a chair over to the window and stand on it so that I could catch a glimpse of the river shimmering below.

  Joan and I walked slowly up the two flights to the room, agreed that it was exactly what I needed, and made our equally slow passage back to the quaint dining room at the rear of the inn. By then I felt as though all the blisters had given birth to septuplets.

  A Bloody Mary and a club sandwich did wonders to restore a sense of normalcy to me.

  Then, over coffee, Joan frowned and said, “Ellie, I hate to bring this up, but it’s necessary. Leo and I went to a cocktail party last night. Everyone is talking about your Website.”

  “Go on.”

  “Some people think it’s outrageous,” she said frankly. “
I understand it was legal for you to register it in Rob Westerfield’s name, but a lot of people think that was unfair and totally unnecessary.”

  “Don’t look so worried,” I said. “I have no intention of shooting the messenger, and I am interested in getting reactions. What else are they saying?”

  “That you should not have put those mug shots of him on the Website. That the medical examiner’s testimony describing Andrea’s wounds make brutal reading.”

  “It was a brutal crime.”

  “Ellie, you asked me to tell you what people are saying.”

  Joan looked so terribly unhappy that I was ashamed of myself. “I’m sorry. I know how miserable this is for you.”

  She shrugged. “Ellie, I believe Will Nebels killed Andrea. Half this town thinks Paulie Stroebel is guilty. And a lot of other people feel that even if Rob Westerfield is guilty, he has served his sentence and has been paroled, and that you ought to accept that.”

  “Joan, if Rob Westerfield had admitted his guilt and honestly expressed regret, I still would have hated his guts, but there wouldn’t be a Website. I understand why people think the way they do, but I can’t stop now.”

  She reached across the table, and we clasped hands. “Ellie, there’s another sympathy vote out there. It’s for old Mrs. Westerfield. Her housekeeper is telling everyone who will listen how upset she is about the Website and how she wishes you would at least shut it down until after a new jury has heard the evidence.”

  I thought of Dorothy Westerfield, that elegant woman, offering condolences to my mother on the day of the funeral, and I remembered my father ordering her from the house. He couldn’t tolerate her sympathy then, and I could not allow myself to be swayed by sympathy for her now.

  “We’d better change the subject,” I said. “We’re not going to agree.”

  Joan lent me $300, and we both managed a genuine smile as I paid for the lunch. “Symbolic,” I said, “but it makes me feel better.”

  We said good-bye in the vestibule at the front door. “I hate to see you having to make that climb upstairs,” she said, looking worried.

  “It will be worth it just to get there. And I’ve got my freebie to lean on.” I thumped the cane lightly to emphasize my point.

  “Call me if you need anything. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  I hesitated about bringing up anything else controversial, but there was one more thing I had to ask her. “Joan, I know you never saw the locket that I insist Andrea was wearing, but are you still in touch with some of the girls who were in school with you and Andrea?”

  “Sure. And you can bet I’ll be hearing from them, given all that’s going on.”

  “Would you ask them directly if any of them ever saw Andrea wearing the locket I described to you? Gold, heart-shaped, embossed at the edges, small blue stones in the center, and ‘A’ and ‘R,’ Andrea’s and Rob’s initials, engraved on the back.”

  “Ellie—”

  “Joan, the more I think about it, the more I believe that the only reason Rob went back to the garage was that he couldn’t afford to have the locket found on Andrea’s body. I need to know why, and it would help if someone else confirmed that it existed.”

  Joan didn’t comment further after that. She promised she would make inquiries and then left me to go home to her orderly life with her husband and children. Leaning heavily on the cane, I limped upstairs to the room, locked and bolted the door, carefully removed the sneakers, and sank down on the bed.

  The ringing of the telephone woke me up. I was startled to see that the room was in darkness. I struggled up on one elbow, fumbled for the light, and glanced at the clock as I picked up the phone on the bedside table.

  It was eight o’clock. I had been asleep for six hours. “Hello.” I know I sounded groggy.

  “Ellie, it’s Joan. Something terrible has happened. Old Mrs. Westerfield’s housekeeper went into Stroebel’s delicatessen this afternoon and shouted at Paulie, telling him to admit that he’d killed Andrea. She said it was his fault that the Westerfield family was being tortured.

  “Ellie, an hour ago Paulie went into the bathroom at home, locked the door, and slit his wrists. He’s in intensive care in the hospital. He’s lost so much blood that they don’t think he’s going to live.”

  28

  I FOUND MRS. STROEBEL in the waiting room outside the intensive care unit. She was weeping quietly, the tears running down her cheeks. Her lips were clamped together tightly, as though she was afraid that parting them would release a tidal wave of grief.

  Her coat was around her shoulders, and even though her cardigan and skirt were dark blue, I could see dark stains that I was sure had been caused by Paulie’s blood.

  A large-framed, plainly dressed woman of about fifty was sitting protectively close to her. She looked up at me, a hint of hostility on her face.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect from Mrs. Stroebel. It was my Website that had triggered the verbal attack from Mrs. Westerfield’s housekeeper and Paulie’s despairing response to it.

  But Mrs. Stroebel stood up and walked halfway across the room to meet me. “You understand, Ellie,” she sobbed. “You understand what they have done to my son.”

  I put my arms around her. “I do understand, Mrs. Stroebel.” I looked over her head at the other woman. She knew the question my eyes were silently asking and made a gesture with her hand which I took to mean that it was too soon to tell if Paulie would make it.

  Then she introduced herself. “I’m Greta Bergner. I work with Mrs. Stroebel and Paulie in the delicatessen. I thought you might be a reporter.”

  We sat together for the next twelve hours. From time to time we went in and stood at the entrance to the cubicle where Paulie was lying, an oxygen mask over his face, tubes in his arms, heavy bandages on his wrists.

  During that long night, as I observed the agony on Mrs. Stroebel’s face and watched her lips move in silent prayer, I found myself beginning to pray as well. At first it was instinctive, but then it became deliberate. If you spare Paulie for her, I’ll try to accept everything that happened. Maybe I won’t succeed, but I swear I’ll try.

  Streaks of light began to penetrate the outside darkness. At nine-fifteen a doctor came in to the waiting room. “Paulie is stabilized,” he said. “He’ll make it. Why don’t you people go home and get some sleep.”

  * * *

  I TOOK A CAB BACK from the hospital; along the way I had the driver stop so I could pick up the morning papers. I had only to glance at the front page of the Westchester Post to be grateful that in the intensive care unit Paulie Stroebel did not have access to newspapers.

  The headline was “Murder Suspect Attempts Suicide.”

  The rest of the front page was covered with pictures of three people. The photo on the left was of Will Nebels posing for the camera, a self-righteous expression on his weak-featured face. The one on the right was of a woman in her mid-sixties with a worried frown that enhanced her severe features. The center photo was of Paulie, behind the counter of the deli, a bread knife in his hand.

  The picture had been cropped so that only the hand holding the bread knife showed. There was no context for it, no baguette being sliced in preparation for a sandwich. He was looking into the camera, his eyebrows drawn together.

  My guess is that Paulie had been caught by surprise when his picture was taken. Whatever, the effect was that of a surly man with disturbing eyes brandishing a weapon.

  The captions under the pictures were quotes. Nebels’s was “I knew he did it.” The woman with severe features said, “He admitted it to me.” Paulie’s caption was “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  The story was on page 3, but I had to put off reading it; the cab was pulling up to the inn. Once in my room, I turned again to the newspaper.

  The woman in the photo on the front page was Lillian Beckerson, Mrs. Dorothy Westerfield’s housekeeper of thirty-one years. “Mrs. Westerfield is one of the finest human beings who ever walked t
he face of the earth,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “Her husband was a United States senator, his grandfather was governor of New York. She’s lived with this stain on her family name for over twenty years. Now, when her only grandchild is trying to prove his innocence, that woman who lied on the witness stand as a child is back trying to destroy him again on a Website.”

  That’s me, I thought.

  “Mrs. Westerfield was looking at that Website and crying yesterday afternoon. I couldn’t take it anymore. I marched myself into that delicatessen and yelled at that man, asking him please to tell the truth, to admit what he had done. You know what he kept saying to me? ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ Now, if you were innocent, would you have said that? I don’t think so.”

  You would if you were Paulie. I forced myself to keep reading. I’m an investigative journalist, and I could see that Colin Marsh, the guy who wrote this story, was one of those sensationalists who knows how to elicit and then manipulate provocative quotes.

  He had looked up Emma Watkins, the guidance counselor who years ago swore on the stand that Paulie had sobbed, “I didn’t think she was dead,” when the class was told about Andrea.

  Ms. Watkins told Marsh that over the years she always had been troubled by Rob Westerfield’s conviction. She said that Paulie was easily agitated and that if he learned that Andrea had been joking when she said she’d go with him to the Thanksgiving mixer, he might have been upset enough to lash out.

  Lash out. What a delicate way to put it, I thought.

  Will Nebels, that poor excuse for a human being, that sleaze who used to like to hug teenage girls, was extensively quoted in the story. With even more flourish than he had exhibited in the earlier television interview I’d seen, he told Marsh about seeing Paulie go into the garage-hideout that night, carrying a tire jack. He ended by piously lamenting he’d never be able to make up to the Westerfield family that he didn’t come forward sooner.

  When I finished reading the account, I threw the paper on the bed. I was both furious and worried. The case was being tried in the press, and more and more people were going to come to believe that Rob Westerfield was innocent. I realized that if I had read the story cold, even I might have been convinced that the wrong man had been convicted.