Caught Dead (6 page)

“Benny,” I began, “the cops have decided it was an accident. They say she got lost or…”

He stared directly into my face, and I involuntarily jerked my head back because his look was so raw and haunted.

“No, there's more of an answer,” he cried out. “Mary did everything with purpose. You hear me. She was
not
a woman who made mistakes.”

It was an effort for him to say so many words, and he mumbled at the end, as though losing his train of thought. But then he summed up, his voice loud again. “Somebody didn't
love
her.”

That sentence stunned me. “What?”

“There's someone out there that killed her.”

True, I thought, but that didn't mean the shooter knew her, wanted her dead, even cared whether she died—but I kept my mouth shut. Again, that full, stark look into my face.

“He has a name that somebody knows. Murderers have names.”

I swiveled toward Hank. He shot me a look. We sat there, our eyes riveted to the glass pitcher of iced ginger tea, beads of sweat running down the side.

The awful silence was broken by the sound of a slammed car door. Tommy and Cindy arrived, traipsing in from somewhere, rapid footsteps in the hallway and into the living room. Cindy was yelling at Tommy for something he'd said, which I didn't catch. Suddenly the house had noise as Benny's two children settled into armchairs, adjusting their bodies as if they were late for a good movie. Benny didn't even look up at them. The cousin, unhappy now, with steely eyes and angry mouth, chided them for going out.

Tommy spoke into her face. “We can't sit around here like zombies, Aunt Hyunh.”

“Your mother is dead.”

I thought that a little cruel, and even Benny looked at her.

Tommy closed himself in like a turtle, tucking in his neck and folding his arms. The pale sunlight filtering through the blinds caught the irregular shape of his metal earrings and his eyebrow ring, and he sparkled there in the shadows like a glittering store mannequin. I stared at him, this twenty-five-year-old who was a little old to be so punked out, so deliberately and calculatingly tough. Beneath the tattoos and ripped T-shirt, the stomp-you boots, the thick chains hanging off his studded belt, the last-of-the-Mohegans haircut—beneath it all was a gangly, feckless Vietnamese boy with a long narrow face and intelligent eyes, but eyes filmed with a spacey blankness I couldn't penetrate. Something was going on there, for sure, but what? A drifter from one dead-end job to another—used-music store clerk, pizza delivery boy, various stock boy jobs, now and then a clerk in his father's grocery. Tommy wanted nothing to do with his Old Country family. The son of one of the most beautiful women of Hartford, he had once told Hank that he had little use for his parents, born as they were into the woeful poverty and endless war of Saigon.

“They're strictly FOB,” he told Hank. Fresh Off the Boat—that dismissive and insulting phrase. He, however, was ABV—American-born Vietnamese. That made all the difference.

I said, “Tommy, I'm sorry about your mom.”

For a second he looked ready to hurl a flip comment my way, because I saw his lips purse. But then his body sagged, folding into the armchair, and his arms fell like broken tree limbs against his side. It was like watching a puppet loosed from its strings. For a second his face crumbled, but then immediately tightened. He nodded. “Thanks, man. She was—okay.” That was a strange remark, but maybe not. It came out like a perfect epitaph for the mother he couldn't help caring about.

And somehow those words, so casual but so apt, elicited an unexpected dry sob from Cindy, sitting opposite him. Her cell phone chimed, but she ignored it.

“I hate this.” We all looked at her. She was looking at Hyunh Le.

Cindy, I realized, must have had a brutal adolescence, living in the shadow of the legendary beauty of her mother. No one ever said the “beautiful” Cindy Vu. Not by a long shot. And they never would. She'd never approached even a suggestion of the sensuality, the allure, the dead-in-your-tracks beauty of her mother and Aunt Molly. It wasn't that she was unattractive, I realized. It was that she was abysmally plain, as though fate had willed her the dull out-of-proportion features of her father, the flat round face, the loopy ears, the disappearing chin, the undersized head. She'd done everything possible to correct this. I'd never seen her without an overabundance of makeup. As she was now, in fact, sitting there with her Asian new wave wardrobe, the laced-up boots and tight halter top, that tattoo of a heart where her almost nonexistent cleavage began. And the spiked, magenta-tinged hair. But the face: the shrill whore's lipstick, white Kabuki powder too generously applied, thinned out and repainted eyebrows, arching too high on the flat face. She'd done everything possible to hide the face she could not love. At twenty-four she was a young woman trying to disappear.

“What?” From Tommy, looking at her.

She was shaking. “I just hate this. This is not the way…” She fumbled. She looked at Hank. “We had a fight that morning. Like we always did, her and me. The same stupid, stupid fight over nothing. I told her that I
hated
her. I ran off and left her alone for the whole day. I was supposed to
be
with her that day. I didn't go home.” A long silence. “Then someone calls the house that night and tells me somebody murdered her. How can your mother get murdered? How? She stocks shelves at a fucking loser grocery store. She washes the kitchen floor. She…”

“
Dung ngay
,” her father demanded. Stop it!

Cindy, trembling, stood up suddenly, ready to fall. Hank rushed over, wrapped his arms around her, and held her. Tears rolled down that powered face. I thought of mountain rivulets, water coursing through spring snow. She whispered, “Mommy.”

Tommy jumped up, chains rattling against his side. “For shit's sake, Cindy, what the fuck's wrong with you? We talked this out in the car, no?”

“Talked what out?” I asked.

Tommy looked at me, disgusted. “It doesn't do any good to fall apart now.”

“What does that mean?” From Hank.

“It means, we gotta pull the pieces together and keep going.” The words sounded harsh and unfeeling, but there was a barely-controlled edge to them. Unhinged. Wound too tight.

“Dien,” Benny said, using his son's Vietnamese name. “It is okay to grieve for your mother.”

Tommy looked from his sister, still held by Hank, to his father. He spat out angrily, “You never had a clue, did you, Pop?”

“Tommy!” From Hank.

“None of this is your business, Hank. Why are you even here? And why'd you bring
him
?” Pointing at me. “The white guy.”

They all looked at me. “Actually I'm half-Vietnamese.” I immediately regretted the words.

“Which is the half that made you stumble into our house?”

With that, he left, but not before hurling another angry look at his sister. Cindy moved away from Hank now, sitting in a chair with her arms folded around her chest.

Benny turned to me, his face sad. “My children don't know how to grieve for their mother. They forgot that they loved her.” He lit another cigarette.

When Hank and I left, Benny was in his chair, slumped over, staring at the floor. He glanced up when we said good-bye, then went back to staring at the carpet.

“Well, that went well,” I said to Hank in the car. “Any other ideas?”

“And we didn't really learn a thing.”

I shook my head. “Actually, Hank, I think we learned quite a lot in that house.”

“But none of it useful.”

“That remains to be seen.”

Chapter Eight

Molly Torcelli opened the door before we rang the doorbell. “You're early.”

On the phone I'd said five o'clock, and it was ten of the hour. “Sorry.”

She turned, walked back into the vast foyer under the chandelier, and Hank and I followed. She hadn't said come in, but she was used to people following her. To her back I mumbled my traditional Vietnamese condolences.

I'd never been to her home in Farmington, but I was surprised when Hank said he'd never been there either. Molly didn't entertain stragglers from the Vietnamese community. Lost in the leafy, mountainous hills, the estate was set far back in a cove of towering maples, far inside the gated acreage, unseen from the narrow road we drove in on. A white sprawling Colonial, with Greek columns staggered across the front, it looked like the forest had grown up around it, sheltering it. A circular driveway followed a rise of land, with beds of flowers speckling the overwatered blue-green lawn. A bank of garages masquerading as a carriage house was off to the left. The neighboring estates were barely seen—a hint of chimney, a suggestion of attic windows—tucked away in their own private forests.

“I've been waiting for you,” Molly said as we sat in a sunroom, all wicker and polished green ivy. “People have been coming all day, and they look at me for answers.” She sighed. “What answers can I give people? What? Tell me that. My twin sister is gone. Stupidly gone.”

Suddenly she was quiet, staring from me to Hank, but I could see her body tighten. She sat still, her hands folded into her lap, a study in fragile self-control. She was dressed in a light yellow cotton summer dress, with yellow sandals. A gold bracelet. In her hands she held a crumpled yellow handkerchief, wadded and damp. Only her hair held slight reddish highlights. And her nails—fingers and toes—were a shade of pink. Of course, as I looked at her, I pictured the dead sister, her dark flashing eyes in the oval, delicate face. Here was a woman who'd known nothing but being beautiful since she was a child. And the redundant yellow of her appearance simply reinforced her exquisite look. I was impressed.

A maid entered the room, almost apologetically, and set a large silver tray on the table. I saw a pitcher of iced tea and an array of Italian cookies. Four tall glasses, chilled. “Anything else, Miss Molly?”

Molly looked into her face and suddenly burst into tears. The maid nodded, made a sympathetic sound, looked ready to cry herself, and backed out of the room. Molly sobbed into her crumpled handkerchief. In between the giant, sloppy gasps, she tried to apologize, tried to control herself.

“No need to apologize,” I told her. “Maybe we should leave you alone.”

“No, no,” she protested, half rising. “I can't get used to—can't believe—Mary is gone. Unbelievable. Un
bear
able. Someone
shot
her. Mary. Quiet, simple Mary.”

Those quaint, sentimental words—“quiet, simple”—jarred me, maybe because I sensed a little patronizing tone, and I found myself adding the obligatory final word—quaint, simple,
poor
Mary. Probably this was unfair of me, I told myself, as I watched Molly pull herself together, pour herself a glass of tea. She forgot to offer us some. Her hand trembled.

I repeated, “Maybe now's not a good time.”

She breathed in. “Will there ever be a good time for something like this? I don't think so. Oh no.”

“Are your children here?”

She waved her hand in the air. “Somewhere.” The flighty hand suggested they were lost, out of satellite range, in some distant wing of the large palatial estate, doubtless playing violent video games on a Sony PlayStation in the lower forty.

Then, her sobbing under control, Molly looked at Hank, her voice all business. “Your mother called this morning. She told me about your grandmother wanting Rick to ask around.” She glanced at me.

Ask around—what did that mean? I tried to distance myself. “Mrs. Torcelli, the truth of the matter is that I don't even know if there's any reason
to
ask around. The police are pretty sure about this.”

“Please—my name is Molly.” Then, blunt, to the point. “But isn't that why you're here?”

“I suppose so. I told her I'd
talk
to people. But also, of course, bring my condolences.”

She almost smiled. “Like a good Vietnamese.”

She started to nibble on an almond cookie, collecting the crumbs in the palm of her hand.

“I'm not the kind of investigator who takes on murder…”

The word
murder
startled her, and she choked on the cookie. “I'm sorry,” she stammered. “Just the way you said that hit me to the quick. It's not a word I'm comfortable with.”

I apologized.

“No, no.” She leaned toward me. “It's me. I had a sleepless night last night. I expect I'll have a few more such nights ahead of me.”

“How's your family doing?”

She ignored me. “I expect I'll have to see someone.” She looked away, as though running through a list of therapists on call.

It dawned on me that Hank had said nothing since we'd arrived. After offering his own condolences, he'd closed himself up. Glancing in his direction, I saw him leaning forward in his chair, elbows on knees, hands on the sides of his face, staring wide-eyed at nothing. Not at Molly, to be sure. His lips were drawn into a thin, disapproving line, bloodless and tight. In the car on the way over he'd confessed that he never really cared for Molly, what little he saw of her.

“Money has made her different.”

“It has that effect,” I'd told him. “How different?”

“She likes it too much.”

“That's not a sin.”

“She learned it from her husband Larry. He's the dean of that school, let me tell you.” He sounded angry.

“Well, think about it, Hank. She came from nothing, born in Saigon during the war, airlifted out, dirt poor, you know, and now she's on the Board of Directors for the Athenaeum in Hartford. That's a leap.”

Hank made a face. “I don't trust people who don't have any self-doubt.”

“But we can cut her a little slack in light of her twin sister's death, no?”

“We'll see.”

So now he sat still, Rodin's
The Thinker
meets the young kid in
Home Alone
—that pose. Frozen, the prisoner in the tower.

When Molly confided, “You know, I've had to cancel four appointments this week alone,” Hank stood up, coughed, and gazed out the bank of windows at the rolling acres that swept down the back into a thicket of hemlock. The muscles on the back of his neck looked like rough thick rope.

Molly paid him no mind. “How do you go about questioning drug dealers?” she asked.

Good question. I had absolutely no response to that.

“Well?” Impatient.

“This really is not a case, Molly. Right now, I'm just exploring. I'm just talking a bit…”

She interrupted. “Rick Van Lam, it's either a duck or it's not a duck. You either do something or you don't.” She half-closed her eyes. “I'm sorry. That's not me talking. That's my husband Larry. That's his philosophy of life.”

“Drug dealers—or gangbang shooters—are not known to talk about themselves. Even the police hit a brick wall there. I'm more concerned with Mary's behavior that night.
Her
decision to go there.”

Hank returned, sat down, and stared at her.

“Iced tea?” she interrupted, as though just remembering to be a perfect hostess. She leaned forward, indicating the pitcher. The gold bracelet, I noted, was inlaid with tiny diamonds. She handed two glasses to us.

“Molly,” I began as she sat back, “why do you think Mary was in that neighborhood, even stepping out of her car?” I waited.

The question took her off guard. She hadn't expected it. Then she composed herself. “You know, I don't have a clue. Mary wouldn't be caught dead in such a place.” She looked away.

But in the split second that she caught my eye, repeated the line she'd said before, and then turned away, something happened. I caught a momentary flicker of an eye, a quick bleak flash of fear and terror. When she looked back, the eyes were dull, veiled.

I didn't know what to make of it. I swear I saw something there.

The front door opened, and Larry walked in, undoing a tie and the top button of his blue dress shirt. He didn't look happy to see us there. “I wondered who was driving the ancient BMW.” He looked at me.

He sat down, reached for the iced tea. That explained the fourth glass the maid had placed on the tray. I noticed thick graying beard stubble on his afternoon face. Larry had the rumpled, slightly gone-to-seed look of a very wealthy man who once was tremendously handsome, athletic, popular, and aggressive. Now, it seemed to me, the aggressiveness dominated, but it was tempered with a hazy sort of good looks. People would always refer to him as handsome, but they might also comment on the steeliness of his eyes, the harsh wrinkles around the sensual mouth. The Mediterranean good looks—he and Molly must have been Scott and Zelda country club luminaries way back when—had hardened, and the shock of black hair was thinning now, gray at the temples. What he exuded, I felt, was a kind of blunt, no-nonsense force, the authority of stock portfolio and embarrassingly wonderful cash flow.

He was trying to be friendly, joking idly with the totally unresponsive Hank. “Haven't seen you in a dog's age.” He punched him in the shoulder. Hank nodded.

Molly introduced me. “This is Rick Van Lam, a friend of Hank's.”

Larry looked like he could care less, but he extended his hand, and we shook. His palms were wet.

“Horrible, horrible,” he spoke to no one in particular. “Makes no sense to anyone.” He undid another button on his shirt. The home was beautifully air-conditioned, but he looked flushed from the heat of the afternoon. He dabbed his face with a handkerchief.

Molly smiled thinly. “You know how we said the police were doing absolutely nothing, Larry?”

“What do you expect? It's Hartford. Most of the cops are on the take, if they're not boinking some crack hooker on Asylum Hill.”

“For God's sake, Larry.” She looked at me, then back at her husband. “Larry is a man of definite opinions.” Her face crumbled a bit.

He smirked. “Molly hates it when I'm candid.”

“Rick here is an investigator and he's looking into the case…”

I raised my hand in protest. “Wait. It's not a case…”

“What case?” From Larry.

“Hank's mother and grandmother have asked if he'd ask around about Mary. To see if anyone knows
why
she went there. You know, help the police a bit. You know. Talk to people.”

Larry looked at me as though he were in the presence of a lunatic. “You're doing what?” Incredulous.

“Just talking to people.”

“Like us?”

“People.”

“Well, knock your socks off.” He shrugged, dismissing the subject. “But it seems to me you'd be better off nailing that lowlife that gunned her down.”

“For God's sake, Larry,” Molly pleaded.

“Let the Ricans shoot each other. What's sad is that Mary was…”

Hank spoke for the first time, “. . . in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I stared at him. His face was red now.

“Exactly,” Larry summed up. “Well, I got business I gotta take care of.” He stood up. “Molly,” he turned back, “where are Jon and Kristen?”

In the lower forty, I thought.

“I told Susie a half hour ago to get them to say hello to Hank and—and to Rick when they arrived.” She made a you-know-how-they-are gesture, and smiled.

“I'll tell Susie again.” He nodded at us. “See you, guys.” He rushed off.

A horrible man. Or maybe not—a man used to having the world fall into line, a world that obeyed his commands.

Eventually, after an awkward silence during which we sipped tea, I heard footsteps on the stairwell, and Jon and Kristen strolled into the room, both looking like they'd been summoned to a gathering they preferred to skip. “What?” asked Jon.

His mother pointed to the two of us. We stood and shook hands. Jon said, “I saw you both at the funeral.” He sat down, yawning, but covering his mouth after the fact. I found myself looking at him, thinking of him in ways I often thought of myself. Here was this half-Vietnamese, half-white man, twenty-five years old, I'd been told, comfortable with himself, a BA from Yale, a perpetual student, now living at home during the summer break. According to Hank's capsule summary in the car, Jon was getting a graduate degree in Public Policy, intending to become a lawyer “down the road, maybe.”

That was Hank's quote.

Jon looked more Asian than white, though he had a square jaw and a shock of Italian hair. Those narrow eyes. Sepia skin like his mother's, supple and silky, and he'd inherited his mother's looks. Tall, a little too thin, he sat down with his long legs stretched out. He wasn't wearing shoes. Hank had told me Jon had forgotten most of the Vietnamese his mother taught him as a boy. Mary once told Hank's mother that Jon thought speaking Vietnamese made him sound like a Disney cartoon character. The few times I'd spotted him at gatherings he looked sullen and miserable. We'd never been introduced.

“Hi, Hank,” Kristen nodded at him. “I saw you in church.”

“Hi, Kristen.” Hank smiled. “Sorry again.”

“Oh, it's just awful. Awful.” Then she stopped, as though confused.

“It's all right, dear,” Molly said protectively.

We all knew that Kristen was, as one old Vietnamese man announced, “as dumb as two chopsticks trying to find each other in the dark,” a cruel barb that had some currency a while back, one that got back to Molly and Larry. Kristen was, well, slow. As Hank told me in the car, “She's
ngu nhu cho
.” As thick as two short planks. She'd become a recurring joke in a Vietnamese community that celebrated brainpower. And because she was rich—and half-white—the joking was often vicious and heartless. She said dumb things, not knowing they were dumb. Her father had a long history of enrolling her in progressively more and more expensive girls' schools. One of the last and most unsatisfying had been Miss Porter's down the street from my apartment, a school that talked of Jackie Kennedy as though she were still enrolled there, sitting in the cafeteria adjusting her bobby socks. But Kristen forgot to go to class and was expelled. She didn't care. I'd talked to her once at a New Year's party and I found her a sad young woman who'd come to believe her drop-dead gorgeous looks were all she needed to survive. That, her cell phone, and a checkbook.