Lara Reznik - The Girl From Long Guyland (27 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Gotcha One More Time

Austin, Texas, 2012

Eduardo, Steve, and Sutherland extricate Danny’s hands from my neck and hold him down on the ground. Eduardo clenches his fists.

“Don’t do it,” Steve yells.

Three armed security guards are on the scene in seconds and handcuff him.

Danny’s voice trails off as they march him down the hall. “You’re responsible, bitch. Denise was my life.”

Sutherland calls Steve into another conference room. The rest of us sit in silence until they emerge a few minutes later. Steve tells Ed and me to follow him into the reception area. He says that Sutherland no longer thinks there’s enough evidence to summon a grand jury. He believes that Ben and Chris are guilty of a lot of sick behavior but not murder. After forty years, the nightmare is over.

As we ride the elevator down to the lobby, I tell Eduardo and Steve that Denise hated her brother. “I believe he abused her. He tried to attack me one night in the dorm.”

“You’ve never told me about that,” Ed says.

I look Ed in the eye. “I plan to fill you in on everything that happened that year.”

Steve refuses to take any money for his legal services. Ed and I head back to the
casa
on the lake. I sit on a lounge chair on the deck drinking a glass of Sauvignon Blanc with Willow at my feet. Ed opens the French door and joins me with a bottle of beer. “You must be so relieved now that this whole ordeal is over.”

“I still feel bad for Mrs. Costello,” I say.

“Poor woman.”

I touch his hand. “Maybe we could go to New Mexico and find Joey’s remains.”

I CALL VICTOR
and tell him I need a week before starting back to work. Eduardo and I drive to New Mexico the next morning. We spend a day with his mother at the ranch. She is still grieving the death of Juanita’s mother. Does my mother-in-law wish her son was married to Juanita instead of me? Perhaps. Life is never perfect.

Ed and I drive through the mountains east of Albuquerque where we meet up with the some federal officers as well as two state policemen at a local restaurant. We caravan in three vehicles for the next few hours retracing the route from that fateful trip forty-two years ago. No shopping mall, no office complex. The isolated dirt road is still there. Other than a few adobe homes, the desert wilderness remains as pristine as I remember it.

About a mile down the road I recognize the unusual red rock formation where we had stopped. Miraculously, it is still there. They’d buried Joey right in front of it. The troopers spend the next hour digging up his remains.

I can’t look at them.

Ed hands the officers a slip of paper with Mrs. Costello’s address in Queens. When we get back to Austin, I send her a personal note summarizing everything that has transpired.

A week later, Ed brings in the mail and hands me a letter with a postmark from Far Rockaway, New York. It smells of lilacs. I tear open the envelope and find a note handwritten on crisp white stationary lined with flower borders. It says:

“I finally feel my Joey is resting in peace. I like to think he’s together with poor Denise. Thank you, Laila, and God bless.

Sylvie Costello”

“It’s really over now,” Ed says, as my iPhone rings.

I see the
520
area code but not the name A
MBY
.

“I thought you should know the truth,” says the voice on the other end. “I’ve held on to it for over forty years.”

I mouth the words, “It’s Ben,” to Eduardo.

He rolls his eyes.

“Why don’t you talk with your friend Chris, the therapist?” I say.

“I’m here in Austin. I need to speak to you, Laila. Can you meet me somewhere? Margaritaville, perhaps?”

“You’ve got to be kidding. No way.”

“Don’t you want to know what
really
happened?”

“For crissakes. Does it have to be in person?” I say.

There’s a long pause. “Yes.”

“Hold on a minute.” I tell Eduardo what Ben has proposed.

“You want to meet with that jerk?”

“I need closure,” I say. “I have to see him.”

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER
, I’m waiting for Ben at the same table at Starbucks where I sat with Darlene. Poor, crazy Darlene. He’s wearing hip aviator sunglasses and a genuine smile. He removes the glasses then hugs me. Handsome as ever with those big brown eyes with gold flecks. “You’re still so beautiful, Laila. How do you stay that way?”

I don’t want to sound flirtatious and give him the wrong impression. “Let’s not mince words. What do you have to confess to me?”

“Where do I start?” he says.

“You’re the one who called the meeting.”

He bites his lip. “Okay, here’s what I came to say. Chris was the one who’d suggested we climb in bed with Denise to get Joey’s goat. It was supposed to be a joke.”

“Hilarious,” I say.

“Things got outta control like Doc said. Joey smashed the beer bottle and came after us. We pushed him in self-defense. At least
I
did.”

“And Chris?”

“When we were at Seaside Beach that night, Chris confessed Angel had called that afternoon. He told him if we didn’t get rid of Joey, he’d get rid of us.”

“Why didn’t Chris tell you that earlier?”

“He knew I wasn’t the type of person who would kill someone, for crissakes.”

I glare at him. “And Chris is?”

“I told you. Chris is a sociopath. He almost lost his therapy license a few years ago for having sex with a patient. A young girl, as a matter of fact. He managed to get away with it because she recanted her testimony. But his wife left him.”

“Chris said his wife was having an affair with you. That
he
left
her
because of it. I suppose if I call him, he’d tell me it was you who Angel spoke with and—”

He laughs. “I suppose so.”

“How do you two remain friends?”

He takes my hand. “Is it too late for us? I’d move here to Austin for you.”

“You know, Ben, there never was an ‘us.’ Just a really dumb mistake I made in a dark attic one night.”

“Guess it’s back to your bourgeois husband and the big house on the lake.”

“Guess so.”
Hmmm. I’ve never mentioned that I live on a lake.

He retracts his hand. “Some people never evolve.”

I glare at him.
Have you looked in the mirror lately?

“Just playing with ya, sweetheart. Gotcha though.”

“Yes, of course you did.”
Asshole.

I stand up and amble to my car with a smile plastered on my face. Moments later, I am on the road back to the lake and Eduardo. Back where I belong.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is dedicated to Jacob, Matthew, and Marshall who grew up with a mother devoted to the craft of writing that only is second to her love for them.

To Rudy, who has always supported my passion to write starting with buying me my first computer, to enduring hours and hours of having his wife glued to it.

And to the light of my life, Madison Elizabeth.

Special thanks to the cadre of authors who have bonded with me to mutually help each other through the maze of creating and marketing a work of fiction in the new frontier of the 21st century independent publishing world. Especially: Tosh McIntosh, Cindy Stone, Brad Whittington, John J. Asher, Ray Fuentez, and Rick Bolner. Check out some of their wonderful novels online.

Above and beyond the call of duty:

Tosh McIntosh – for the endless time he spent on both the front and back cover as well as the formatting of this novel for print, Kindle, and Nook.

Cindy Stone – my “think tank” and copy editor.

Kim Greyer – for additional front cover graphic design expertise.

Writing is a lonely profession. Hours, days, weeks, months and years spent producing a manuscript without a clue if you’re the only person in the world who will ever read it. There are moments of ecstasy and days of despair in the process. In my case, I’ve been blessed to have someone who can make the unique claim to having read pretty much everything I’ve ever written. Not once or twice, but numerous times through endless revisions. That person is my sister, Rita Singer. Not only has she provided limitless encouragement and critique, but helped make the journey fun for me through the highs and lows of it all. I’m forever grateful.

Discussion Questions

THE GIRL

FROM LONG GUYLAND

By Lara Reznik

Discussion Questions

1. How much of a person’s character is shaped by the time in which she lives?

2. Seventeen-year-old Laila leaves her sheltered Long Island home and becomes involved in a love triangle and a hippie lifestyle in college. Is it feasible that she would take such risks so soon after leaving home?

3. Adult Laila lives with the terrible guilt of being part of a conspiracy to hide what happened to her friend Joey in 1970. When she faces a similar choice of doing the right thing by standing up for her promiscuous boss at the risk of losing her job, does she make the right decision?

4. Chris, Ben and Bob E. are amoral and egotistical men. Why do women fall for “bad boys?”

5. Young Laila never felt that she belonged in Long Island. She has a misguided sense of belonging in “the family.” Adult Laila doesn’t feel like she belongs in Austin. Why does Laila struggle with a sense of belonging?

6. Who is your favorite character in the story and why?

7. Do Doc and Rojo have redeeming qualities? What did you like and dislike about them?

8. Denise is a very complex character. Do you believe she betrayed Laila?

9. Is Laila’s obsession with Ben believable? Have you ever known someone who remains in your fantasies? Did Ben have a chance of wooing Laila away from Eduardo?

10. Laila is a flawed character who made some poor choices in her youth and is not as appreciative of her adult life as she should be. What important lessons has she learned by the end of the novel?

11. In a real-life corporation could Darlene and Laila be promoted on the whim of a CEO and then fired? Do guys like Bob E. still exist today?

12. Who is the real antagonist in the story? Ivy, Juanita, Ben, or Chris? Why?

About the Author

Lara Reznik, a native New Yorker, attended college at the University of New Mexico where she studied under esteemed authors Rudolfo Anaya and Tony Hillerman. Ambidextrous from birth, Lara preferred her right-brained creative side, but discovered she could make a better living with her left-brain skills so entered the I.T. field in 1995. Her debut novel,
The Girl From Long Guyland
, was launched on Amazon on Nov 8, 2012. The novel consistently ranked the #1 spot in Suspense, #1 in Contemporary Women’s Fiction, and #4 overall during it’s Amazon Kindle Free Promotional Days. In addition to her novels, Lara has written and optioned three screenplays.

Screenplays by Lara Reznik:

The M&M Boys

Bagels & Salsa

Dance of Deception

Connect with Lara online:

www.larareznik.com

Email: [email protected]