Daddy's Little Girl

  Emma Watkins, the guidance counselor, already stunned by the tragedy, felt as though a knife had gone through her. She was fond of Paulie and understood the isolation of the earnestly plodding student who tried so hard to please.

  She herself was positive that the anguished words he shouted were “I didn’t think she was dead.”

  That afternoon, for the first time in the six months he’d been working at the service station, Paulie did not show up, nor did he call his boss to explain his absence. When his parents got home that evening, they found him lying on top of the bed, staring at the ceiling, pictures of Andrea scattered beside him.

  Both Hans and Anja Wagner Stroebel had been born in Germany, and they immigrated to the United States with their parents when they were children. They had met and married in their late thirties and used their combined savings to open the delicatessen. By nature undemonstrative, they were fiercely protective of their only son.

  Everyone who came into the store was talking about the murder, asking each other who could possibly have committed such a terrible crime. The Cavanaughs were regular customers at the deli, and the Stroebels joined in the shocked discussion that Andrea might have been planning to meet someone in the garage on the Westerfield estate.

  They agreed that she was pretty, but a bit headstrong. She was supposed to be doing homework with Joan Lashley until nine o’clock, but had left unexpectedly early. Had she planned to meet someone, or had she been waylaid on the way home?

  Anja Stroebel acted instinctively when she saw the pictures on her son’s bed. She swooped them up and put them in her pocketbook. At her husband’s questioning glance, she shook her head, indicating that he was to ask no questions. Then she sat down next to Paulie, and put her arms around him.

  “Andrea was such a pretty girl,” she said soothingly, her voice heavy with the accent that became stronger when she was upset. “I remember how she congratulated you when you made that great catch and saved the game last spring. Like her other friends, you are very, very sad.”

  At first it seemed to Paulie that his mother was talking to him from a distant place. Like her other friends. What did she mean?

  “The police will be looking for anyone who has been a particular friend to Andrea, Paulie,” she said slowly but firmly.

  “I invited her to a mixer,” he said, the words coming haltingly. “She said she would go with me.”

  Anja was sure her son had never asked a girl for a date before. Last year he had refused to go to his sophomore dance.

  “Then you liked her, Paulie?”

  Paulie Stroebel began to cry. “Mama, I loved her so much.”

  “You liked her, Paul,” Anja said insistently. “Try to remember that.”

  On Saturday, composed and quietly apologetic for not showing up on Friday afternoon, Paulie Stroebel reported for work at the gas station.

  Early Saturday afternoon, Hans Stroebel personally delivered a Virginia ham and salads to the Cavanaugh home and asked their neighbor Mrs. Hilmer, who answered the door, to convey his deepest sympathy to the family.

  3

  “IT’S A SHAME Ted and Genine are both only children,” Ellie heard Mrs. Hilmer say a couple of times on Saturday. “It makes it easier when there’s a lot of family around at a time like this.”

  Ellie didn’t care about having more family. She just wanted Andrea back, and she wanted Mommy to stop crying and she wanted Daddy to talk to her. He’d hardly said a word to her since she came running home and he grabbed her up in his arms and she managed to tell him where Andrea was and that she’d been hurt.

  Later, after he’d gone to the hideout and had seen Andrea, and all the police came, he’d said, “Ellie, you knew last night she might have gone to the garage. Why didn’t you tell us then?”

  “You didn’t ask me, and you made me go to bed.”

  “Yes, I did,” he admitted. But then later she heard him say to one of the cops, “If only I had known Andrea was there. She might still have been alive at nine o’clock. I might have found her in time.”

  Somebody from the police talked to Ellie and asked her questions about the hideout and about who else went there. In her head Ellie could hear Andrea saying, “Ellie is a good kid. She’s not a snitch.”

  Thinking about Andrea, and knowing that she’d never come home again, made Ellie begin to cry so hard that the police stopped questioning her.

  Then on Saturday afternoon a man who said he was Detective Marcus Longo came to the house. He took Ellie into the dining room and closed the door. She thought he had a nice face. He told her that he had a little boy exactly her age and that they looked a lot alike. “He has the same blue eyes,” he said. “And his hair is just the color of yours. I tell him it reminds me of sand when the sun is shining on it.”

  Then he told her that four of Andrea’s friends had admitted they went to the hideout with her, but none of them had been there that night. He named the girls, then asked, “Ellie, do you know any other girls who might have met your sister there?”

  It wasn’t like snitching on them if they had already told on themselves. “No,” she whispered. “That was all of them.”

  “Is there anyone else Andrea might have met at the hideout?”

  She hesitated. She couldn’t tell him about Rob Westerfield. That would really be telling on Andrea.

  Detective Longo said, “Ellie, someone hurt Andrea so much that she isn’t alive anymore. Don’t protect that person. Andrea would want you to tell us anything you know.”

  Ellie looked down at her hands. In this big old farmhouse, this room was her favorite. It used to have ugly wallpaper, but now the walls were painted a soft yellow, and there was a new chandelier over the table and the bulbs looked like candles. Mommy had found the chandelier at a yard sale and said it was a treasure. It had taken her a long time to clean it, but now anyone who visited admired it.

  They always ate dinner in the dining room, even though Daddy thought it was silly to go to all the fuss. Mommy had a book that showed how to set the table for a formal dinner. It was Andrea’s job to set the table that way every Sunday, even when it was just them. Ellie would help her, and they would have fun putting out the good silver and china.

  “Lord Malcolm Bigbottom is the guest of honor today,” Andrea would say. Then reading from the book of etiquette, she’d place him at the seat to the right of where Mommy would sit. “Oh, no, Gabrielle, the water glass must be placed slightly to the right of the dinner knife.”

  Ellie’s real name was Gabrielle, but no one called her that, except Andrea when she was joking. She wondered if it would be her job to set the table that way on Sunday from now on. She hoped not. Without Andrea it wouldn’t be a game.

  It felt funny to be thinking like that. On one hand, she knew that Andrea was dead and would be buried Tuesday morning in the cemetery in Tarrytown with Grandma and Grandpa Cavanaugh. On the other hand, she still expected Andrea to come into the house any minute, pull her close, and tell her a secret.

  A secret. Sometimes Andrea met Rob Westerfield in the hideout. But Ellie had crossed her heart and promised not to tell.

  “Ellie, whoever hurt Andrea may hurt somebody else if he isn’t stopped,” Detective Longo said. His voice was quiet and friendly.

  “Do you think it’s my fault that Andrea is dead? Daddy thinks so.”

  “No, he doesn’t think that, Ellie,” Detective Longo said. “But anything you can tell us about secrets you and Andrea shared may help us now.”

  Rob Westerfield, Ellie thought. Maybe it wouldn’t really be breaking a promise to tell Detective Longo about him. If Rob had been the one who hurt Andrea, everybody should know it. She looked down at her hands. “Sometimes she would meet Rob Westerfield at the hideout,” she whispered.

  Detective Longo leaned forward. “Do you know if she was going to meet him there the other night?” he asked. Ellie could tell that he was excited to hear about Rob.

  “I think she was. Paulie Stroebel had asked
her to go to the Thanksgiving mixer with him, and she said yes. She didn’t really want to go with him, but Paulie had told her he knew she was sneaking off to meet Rob Westerfield, and she was afraid he would tell Daddy if she didn’t go with him. But then Rob was mad at her, and she wanted to explain to him that that was why she agreed to go out with Paulie, to keep him from telling Daddy. So maybe that’s why she left Joan’s house early.”

  “How did Paulie know that Andrea was seeing Rob Westerfield?”

  “Andrea said that she thought he sometimes followed her to the hideout. Paulie wanted her to be his girlfriend.”

  4

  THE WASHING MACHINE had been used.

  “What was so important it couldn’t wait until I got back, Mrs. Westerfield?” Rosita asked, her tone a touch defensive, as though fearful she had left a task undone. She had gone out of town to visit her ailing aunt on Thursday. It was now Saturday morning, and she had just arrived back. “You shouldn’t bother yourself with wash when you have your hands full decorating all those houses.”

  Linda Westerfield did not know why a sudden alarm bell went off in her head. For some reason she did not respond directly to Rosita’s remarks.

  “Oh, every once in a while, if I’m checking on the decorative painting and touch it up myself, it’s just as easy to run the paint cloths through the machine as to leave them around,” she said.

  “Well, judging from the amount of detergent you used, you must have had a whole heap of them. And Mrs. Westerfield, I heard about the Cavanaugh girl on the news yesterday. I can’t stop thinking about her. Who would believe that kind of thing could happen in this little town? It breaks your heart.”

  “Yes, it does.” It had to be Rob who used the machine, Linda thought. Vince, her husband, would certainly not have used a washing machine at any time. Probably didn’t even know how.

  Rosita’s dark eyes glistened, and she dabbed her hand over them. “That poor mother.”

  Rob? What would be so important for him to wash?

  It was an old trick of his. When he was eleven, he’d tried to wash the smell of cigarette smoke from his play clothes.

  “Andrea Cavanaugh was the prettiest thing. And her father a lieutenant in the state troopers! Somehow you’d think a man like that would be able to protect his child.”

  “Yes, you would.” Linda was sitting at the counter in the kitchen, going over the sketches she had made for window treatments for a client’s new home.

  “To think that anybody would smash that girl’s head in. Had to be a monster. I hope they string him up when they find him.”

  Rosita was talking to herself now and didn’t seem to expect a response. Linda slipped the sketches into the portfolio. “Mr. Westerfield and I are meeting some friends at the inn for dinner, Rosita,” she said as she slid off the stool.

  “Will Rob be home?”

  A good question, Linda thought. “He went out for a run and should be back any minute. Check with him then.” She thought she detected a quiver in her voice. Rob had been agitated and moody all day yesterday. When the news about Andrea Cavanaugh’s death flashed through the town, she had expected him to be upset. Instead, he’d been dismissive. “I hardly knew her, Mom,” he said.

  Was it simply that Rob, like many nineteen-year-olds, could not confront the death of a young person? Was it that somehow he felt as though his own mortality was threatened?

  Linda went up the stairs slowly, suddenly weighted down with a sense of impending disaster. They had moved from the townhouse on Manhattan’s East Seventieth Street to this pre-Revolutionary house six years ago, when Rob went away to boarding school. By then they both knew that the town where they’d traditionally summered at Vince’s mother’s home was where they wanted to live permanently. Vince had said that there were great opportunities to make money here, and he had begun investing in real estate.

  The house, with its sense of timelessness, was a continuing source of quiet pleasure to her, but today Linda did not pause to feel the polished wood of the banister under her hand or stop to enjoy the view of the valley from the window at the top of the stairs.

  She walked directly to Rob’s room. The door was closed. He had been gone an hour and would be back from jogging any minute. Nervously she opened the door and stepped inside. The bed was unmade, but the rest of the room was oddly tidy. Rob was meticulous about his clothing, sometimes even pressing slacks fresh from the cleaners to sharpen the crease, but he was downright careless about discarded garments. She would have expected to see the clothes he had worn Thursday and yesterday thrown on the floor, waiting for Rosita’s return.

  She walked quickly across the room and looked into the hamper in his bathroom. That, too, was empty.

  Sometime between Thursday morning, when Rosita left, and early this morning, Rob had washed and dried the clothes he’d been wearing Thursday and yesterday. Why?

  Linda would have liked to go through his closet but knew she risked having him find her there. She wasn’t prepared for a confrontation. She left his room, remembering to close the door, and went down the hall and around the corner to the master suite she and Vince had added when they expanded the house.

  Suddenly aware that she might be feeling the onslaught of a migraine, she dropped the portfolio onto the sofa in the sitting room, went into the bathroom, and reached in the medicine chest. As she swallowed two prescription pills, she looked into the mirror and was shocked to see how pale and anxious she looked.

  She was wearing her jogging suit because she had planned to go for a run after she’d worked on the sketches. Her short chestnut hair was held back by a band, and she hadn’t bothered with makeup. To her own hypercritical gaze, she looked older than her forty-four years, with tiny wrinkles forming around her eyes and the corners of her mouth.

  The bathroom window looked out over the front yard and the driveway. As she glanced out, she saw an unfamiliar car driving up. A moment later the doorbell rang. She expected Rosita to use the intercom to let her know who it was, but instead Rosita came upstairs and handed her a card.

  “He wants to talk to Rob, Mrs. Westerfield. I told him Rob was out jogging, and he said he’d wait.”

  Linda was nearly eight inches taller than Rosita, who was only a shade over five feet, but she almost had to grab the small woman to support herself after she read the name on the card: Detective Marcus Longo.

  5

  WHEREVER ELLIE WENT, she felt in the way. After the nice detective left, she tried to find Mommy, but Mrs. Hilmer said that the doctor had given her something to help her rest. Daddy spent almost all the time in his little den with the door closed. He said he wanted to be left alone.

  Grandma Reid, who lived in Florida, came up late Saturday afternoon, but all she did was cry.

  Mrs. Hilmer and some of Mommy’s friends from her bridge club sat in the kitchen. Ellie heard one of them, Mrs. Storey, say, “I feel so useless, but I also feel as though seeing us around may make Genine and Ted realize they’re not alone.”

  Ellie went outside and got on the swing. She pumped her legs until the swing went higher and higher. She wanted it to go over the top. She wanted to fall from the top and hit the ground and hurt herself. Then maybe she’d stop hurting inside.

  It had stopped raining, but there still was no sun and it was cold. After a while, Ellie knew that it was no use; the swing wouldn’t go over the top. She went back into the house, entering the small vestibule off the kitchen. She heard Joan’s mother’s voice. She was with the other ladies now, and Ellie could tell that she was crying. “I was surprised that Andrea left so early. It was dark out, and it crossed my mind to drive her home. If only . . .”

  Then Ellie heard Mrs. Lewis say, “If only Ellie had told them that Andrea used to go to that garage that the kids called ‘the hideout.’ Ted might have gotten there in time.”

  “If only Ellie . . .”

  Ellie went up the back stairs, careful to walk very quietly so they wouldn’t hear her. Grandma’s sui
tcase was on her bed. That was funny. Wasn’t Grandma going to sleep in Andrea’s room? It was empty now.

  Or maybe they’d let her sleep in Andrea’s room. Then, if she woke up tonight, she could pretend that Andrea would be coming back any minute.

  The door to Andrea’s room was closed. She opened it as quietly as she always did on Saturday mornings when she’d peek in to see if Andrea was still sleeping.

  Daddy was standing at Andrea’s desk. He was holding a framed picture in his hands. Ellie knew it was the baby picture of Andrea, the one in the silver frame that had “Daddy’s Little Girl” engraved across the top.

  As she watched, he lifted the top of the music box. That was another present he had bought for Andrea right after she was born. Daddy joked that Andrea never wanted to go to sleep when she was a baby, and so he’d wind up the music box and dance around the room with her and play the song from it, singing the words softly, until she dozed off.

  Ellie had asked if he did that with her, too, but Mommy said no, because she was always a good sleeper. From the day she was born, she’d been no trouble at all.

  Some of the song’s words ran through Ellie’s head as the music drifted through the room. “ . . . You’re daddy’s little girl to have and to hold. . . . You’re the spirit of Christmas, my star on the tree. . . . And you’re daddy’s little girl.”

  As she watched, Daddy sat on the edge of Andrea’s bed and began to sob.

  Ellie backed out of the room, closing the door as quietly as she had opened it.

  Part Two

  Twenty-three Years Later

  6

  MY SISTER, ANDREA, was murdered nearly twenty-three years ago, yet it always seems as though it was just yesterday.