Daddy's Little Girl

  The five girls who were Andrea’s particular pals, their eyes swollen with tears, were clustered in a corner. Joan, whose house Andrea had been visiting, was especially distressed and was being comforted by the other four.

  I felt apart from all of them. My mother, looking very sad in a black suit, was sitting on the couch in the living room, friends on either side, holding her hand or pressing a cup of tea on her. “It will warm you up, Genine. Your hands are so cold.” She was composed even though her eyes kept welling with tears, and several times I heard her say, “I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  She and my father had clung together at the graveside, but now they sat in different rooms, she in the living room, he on the enclosed back porch that had been turned into a sort of den for him. My grandmother was in the kitchen with some of her old friends from Irvington, sadly reliving happier times in their lives.

  I wandered among them, and even though there is no question that people spoke to me and told me what a brave little girl I was, I felt acutely alone. I wanted Andrea. I wanted to go up to my sister’s room and find her there and curl up on the bed with her while she chatted endlessly on the phone with her friends or with Rob Westerfield.

  Before she called him, she would say, “Can I trust you, Ellie?”

  Of course she could. He almost never called her at home because she was forbidden to have anything to do with him, and there was always the worry that even if she answered the phone on her extension, my mother or father might pick up downstairs and hear his voice.

  My mother or father? Or was it just my father? Would my mother have been upset? After all, Rob was a Westerfield, and both Mrs. Westerfields, senior and junior, occasionally attended meetings of the Women’s Club, to which my mother belonged.

  We got back to the house at noon. At two o’clock, people started to say things like “After all you’ve been through, you folks need a rest.”

  I knew that meant that, having paid their respects to the afflicted, having sincerely grieved, they were ready to go home. Any reluctance in leaving was caused by the fact they were also eager to be in our house the moment any developments in tracking down Andrea’s killer were reported.

  By then everyone had heard about Paulie Stroebel’s outburst in school and knew that Andrea had been in Rob Westerfield’s car when it was stopped for speeding on the thruway last month.

  Paulie Stroebel. Who would ever have guessed that a quiet, introverted kid like that would have a crush on a girl like Andrea, or that she would have agreed to go to the Thanksgiving dance with him?

  Rob Westerfield. He had finished a year at college, and he certainly was no dope—anyone could see that. But the rumor was he’d been asked to leave. Apparently he’d just wasted his whole freshman year. He was nineteen when he noticed my sister. What business did he have fooling around with Andrea, a sophomore in high school?

  “Wasn’t there some story about his having been involved in what happened to his grandmother at her house?”

  It was precisely as I overheard that particular remark that the doorbell rang and Mrs. Storey from the bridge club, who was already in the vestibule, went to answer it. Standing on the porch was Mrs. Dorothy Westerfield, Rob’s grandmother and the owner of the estate with the garage where Andrea had died.

  She was a handsome, impressive woman, broad-shouldered and full-bosomed. She stood very straight, which made her seem taller than she was. Her iron-gray hair had a natural wave, and she wore it brushed back from her face. At seventy-three, her eyebrows were still dark and drew attention to the intelligent expression in her light brown eyes. A heavy jaw line kept her from ever having been considered pretty, but on the other hand, it added to her overall impression of commanding strength.

  She was hatless and wearing a beautifully cut dark gray winter coat. She stepped into the vestibule, and her eyes swept the interior as she looked for my mother, who by then was pulling her hands away from her friends and struggling to stand up.

  Mrs. Westerfield went directly to her. “I was in California and could not get back until now, but I had to tell you, Genine, how heartbroken I am for you and your family. Many years ago I lost a teenage son in a skiing accident, so I do understand what you are going through.”

  As my mother nodded gratefully, my father’s voice rang through the room. “But it wasn’t an accident, Mrs. Westerfield,” he said. “My daughter was murdered. She was bludgeoned to death, and your grandson may have been the one who killed her. In fact, knowing his reputation, you must be aware that he is the prime suspect. So please get out of here. You’re damn lucky that you’re still alive yourself. You still don’t believe he was involved in that burglary when you were shot and left for dead, do you?”

  “Ted, how can you say that?” my mother pleaded. “Mrs. Westerfield, I apologize. My husband . . .”

  Except for the three of them, the crowded house might have been empty. Everyone was frozen in place, as in the statues game I used to play as a child.

  My father might have been a figure from the Old Testament. He had taken off his tie, and his shirt was open at the collar. His face was as white as the shirt, and his blue eyes were almost black. He had a full head of naturally dark brown hair, but at that moment it seemed even thicker, as if anger had sent bolts of electricity through it.

  “Don’t you dare apologize for me, Genine,” he shouted. “There isn’t a cop in this house who doesn’t know that Rob Westerfield is rotten through and through. My daughter—our daughter—is dead. Now you—” he walked over to Mrs. Westerfield—“you get out of my house, and take your crocodile tears with you.”

  Mrs. Westerfield had turned as pale as my father. She did not answer him, but gave my mother’s hand a squeeze and walked unhurriedly to the door.

  When she spoke, my mother did not raise her voice, but her tone was a whiplash. “You want Rob Westerfield to be the one who took Andrea’s life, don’t you, Ted? You know Andrea was crazy about him, and you couldn’t stand that. You want to know something? You were jealous! If you had been reasonable and let her go out with him, or any other boy for that matter, she wouldn’t have had to make secret dates . . .”

  Then my mother imitated my father’s way of speaking: “Andrea, you may only go to a school function with a high school boy. You will not drive in his car. I will pick you up, and I will deliver you.”

  The skin over my father’s cheekbones reddened, whether from embarrassment or fury I am still not sure. “If she had obeyed me, she would still be alive today,” he said evenly, his voice quiet, but bitter. “If you had not been kissing the hand of anyone named Westerfield—”

  “It’s a damn good thing you’re not investigating this case,” my mother said, interrupting him. “What about that Stroebel kid? What about that handyman, Will Nebels? What about that salesman? Have they found him yet?”

  “What about the tooth fairy?” Now my father’s tone was contemptuous. He turned and went back into the den where his friends were gathered. He closed the door behind him. Finally there was complete silence.

  10

  MY GRANDMOTHER HAD planned to stay with us that night, but sensing that it would be better if my father and mother were alone, she packed her bag and departed with a friend from Irvington. She would stay there overnight and be driven to the airport the next morning.

  Her hope for some sort of reconciliation between my mother and father after the bitter exchange of words was not to be.

  My mother slept in Andrea’s room that night and every night for the next ten months, until after the trial, when not even all the Westerfield money and a high-powered defense team could save Rob Westerfield from being found guilty of murder in Andrea’s death.

  Then the house was sold. My father moved back to Irvington, and my mother and I began a nomadic life, starting in Florida near my grandmother. My mother, who had worked briefly as a secretary before marriage, got a job with a national hotel chain. Always very attractive, she was also smart and diligent, and worked
her way up rapidly to being a kind of troubleshooter, which entailed moving every eighteen months or so to a different hotel in a different city.

  Unfortunately, she applied that same diligence to concealing from everyone—except me—the fact that she became an alcoholic, drinking steadily each day from the moment she arrived home from work. For years she managed to retain enough control to do her job, with only occasional bouts of “flu” when she needed several days to sober up.

  The drinking sometimes made her silent and morose. At other times she became loquacious, and it was during those sessions that I realized how passionately in love she was with my father.

  “Ellie, I was crazy about him from the time I first laid eyes on him. Did I ever tell you how we met?”

  Over and over again, Mother.

  “I was nineteen and had been working six months at my first secretarial job. I bought a car, an orange crate on wheels with a gas tank. I decided to see how fast I could go in it on the thruway. Then all of a sudden I heard a siren and in the rearview mirror saw a dome light flashing behind me, and then a voice on a bullhorn told me to pull over. Your father gave me a ticket and a lecture that had me in tears. But when he showed up for my court date, he announced he was going to give me driving lessons.”

  Other times she would lament, “He was terrific in so many ways. He’s a college graduate; he’s got looks and brains. But he was only comfortable with his old friends and didn’t like change. That’s why he didn’t want to move to Oldham. The problem wasn’t where we lived. It was that he was too strict with Andrea. Even if we’d stayed in Irvington, she’d still have been making secret dates.”

  Those recollections almost always ended with “If only we’d known where to look when she didn’t come home.” Meaning, if only I had told them about the hideout.

  The third grade in Florida. The fourth and fifth in Louisiana. The sixth in Colorado. The seventh in California. The eighth in New Mexico.

  My father’s check for my support arrived without fail on the first of the month, but I saw him only occasionally those first few years and then not at all. Andrea, his golden child, was gone. There was nothing left between him and my mother except bitter regret and frozen love, and whatever he felt for me was not enough to make him desire my presence. Being under the same roof with me seemed to open whatever scar tissue he had managed to grow over his wounds. If only I had told about the hideout.

  As I grew up, my adoration of my father was replaced with resentment. What about asking yourself: If only I had questioned Ellie instead of ordering her to bed? What about that, Daddy?

  Fortunately, by the time I began college we had been in California long enough to establish residency, and I went to UCLA as a journalism major. My mother died of liver failure six months after I received my master’s degree, and, wanting yet another fresh start, I applied for and got the job in Atlanta.

  Rob Westerfield did more than murder my sister that November night twenty-two years ago. As I sat in the Inn and watched Liz place the steaming onion soup in front of me, I began to wonder what our lives would have been if Andrea were still alive.

  My mother and father would still be together, would still be living here. My mother had great plans for improving the house, and my father undoubtedly would have settled in. Driving through the town, I observed that the rural village I remembered had grown considerably. It now had the look of an upscale Westchester town, which was exactly what my mother had foreseen. My father would no longer have had to drive five miles for a quart of milk.

  Whether or not we had remained here, there was no question that if Andrea had lived, my mother would still be alive. She’d have had no need to find comfort and forgetfulness in alcohol.

  My father might even have taken note of my hero worship, and in time, perhaps when Andrea went off to college, he might have given me some of the attention I craved from him.

  I sipped my soup.

  It was exactly as I remembered it.

  11

  LIZ WAS BACK at the table, a basket of crusty bread in her hands. She lingered for a moment. “From what you mentioned about the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I guess you used to come here.”

  I had piqued her curiosity.

  “A long time ago,” I said, trying to sound casual. “We moved away when I was a child. I live in Atlanta now.”

  “I was there once. It’s a nice city.” She drifted away.

  Atlanta, the Gateway to the South. It proved to be a good move for me. When so many of my journalism classmates were only interested in breaking into television, I for some reason always knew that the printed word held the greatest attraction for me. And at last I began to develop a sense of permanence.

  Fresh-out-of-college employees are not paid much at newspapers, but my mother had a modest life insurance policy that gave me the freedom to furnish a small three-room apartment. I shopped carefully in secondhand furniture stores and at closeout sales. When the apartment was furnished, I was almost dismayed to realize that I had unconsciously recreated the overall effect of the living room of our home in Oldham: Blues and reds in the carpet. A blue upholstered couch and club chair. Even an ottoman, although it was a tight fit.

  It brought back so many memories: My father dozing in the club chair, his long legs stretched on the ottoman; Andrea unceremoniously pushing them over and plopping down; his eyes opening, his smile of welcome to his saucy, pretty, golden child . . .

  I always tiptoed around when he was napping, not wanting to disturb his sleep. When Andrea and I were clearing the table after dinner, I would listen intently as he began to unwind over a second cup of coffee and tell my mother what had happened that day on the job. I was in awe of him. My father, I bragged to myself, saved people’s lives.

  Three years after the divorce, he remarried. By then I had paid my second and final visit to him in Irvington. I did not want to go to his wedding, nor did I care when he wrote to tell me I had a baby brother. His second marriage had produced the son I was supposed to be. Edward James Cavanaugh, Jr., is about seventeen now.

  My last contact with my father was to write and inform him that my mother had died and I would like to have her ashes shipped to Gate of Heaven Cemetery and interred in Andrea’s grave. If that did not meet with his approval, I would have her buried with her own parents in their plot in the cemetery.

  He wrote back, expressing sympathy for me, and told me he had made the arrangements I requested. He also invited me to come and visit in Irvington.

  I sent the ashes and declined the invitation.

  * * *

  THE ONION SOUP had warmed me up, and the memories had made me restless. I decided to go upstairs to my room, get my jacket, and drive around town. It was only two-thirty, and I was already beginning to wonder why I hadn’t waited until tomorrow to come here. I had an appointment with someone named Martin Brand at the parole office at ten o’clock on Monday morning. I would make an impassioned effort to convince him that Rob Westerfield should not be released, but as Pete Lawlor told me, it was probably a useless gesture.

  The message light on the phone in my room was blinking. I had an urgent message to call Pete Lawlor. He picked up on the first ring. “You seem to have a gift for being in the right place at the right time, Ellie,” he said. “It’s just coming over the wire services. The Westerfields are holding a press conference in fifteen minutes. CNN is covering it. Will Nebels, the handyman who was questioned in your sister’s murder, has just made a statement claiming he saw Paul Stroebel in Rob Westerfield’s car the night Andrea was killed. He claims he saw him go into the garage with something in his hand, then run out ten minutes later, get back in the car, and drive away.”

  “Why didn’t Nebels tell that story years ago?” I snapped.

  “He claims he was afraid someone would try to blame him for your sister’s death.”

  “How was it that he saw all this happen?”

  “He was in the grandmother’s house. He’d done some repairs
there and knew the code for the alarm. He also knew that the grandmother had a habit of leaving loose cash in drawers around the house. He was broke and needed money. He was in the master bedroom, which has windows overlooking the garage, and when the car door opened, he got a good look at Stroebel’s face.”

  “He’s lying,” I said flatly.

  “Watch the press conference,” Pete told me, “then cover the story. You’re an investigative reporter.” He paused. “Unless it’s too close to home for you.”

  “It’s not,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  12

  THE NEWS CONFERENCE was held in the White Plains office of William Hamilton, Esq., the criminal attorney retained by the Westerfield family to prove Robson Parke Westerfield’s innocence.

  Hamilton opened the proceedings by introducing himself. He was standing between two men. One I recognized from his pictures as Rob’s father, Vincent Westerfield. He was a distinguished figure in his mid-sixties, with silver hair and patrician features. On Hamilton’s other side, a visibly nervous, somewhat bleary-eyed fellow, who could have been anywhere between sixty and seventy, was compulsively opening and closing his interlocked fingers.

  He was introduced as Will Nebels. Hamilton gave a brief summary of his background. “Will Nebels has worked in Oldham for years as a handyman. He often worked for Mrs. Dorothy Westerfield at her country home, the one at which Andrea Cavanaugh’s body was found in the garage. Along with many other people, Mr. Nebels was questioned as to his whereabouts that Thursday evening when Andrea lost her life. Mr. Nebels claimed at the time that he had dinner at the counter in the local diner and went directly home. He had been seen at the diner, and there was no reason to doubt his story.

  “However, when best-selling true-crime writer Jake Bern, who is writing a book about Andrea Cavanaugh’s death and Rob Westerfield’s claim of innocence, spoke to Mr. Nebels, new facts came to light.”