The Death of an Ambitious Woman (14 page)

“A second garage. Jack drives and restores vintage cars.” Ruth raised her eyebrows at Moscone, who nodded back.

Margot Holden and Moscone loaded her possessions into her car. As Moscone stepped away, she backed out of the drive at full speed, gave a little wave, and accelerated away.

“We better go, too,” Moscone prodded. “We still need to get back to the Kendalls’.”

Ruth was opening her mouth to respond when Jack Holden pulled his coupe down the driveway.

“You!” he barked. “What are you doing here?”

“We had some questions for your ex-wife.”

“My wife! What could she possibly have to do with anything? Bob Baines assured me this afternoon that you’d tracked this Pace guy to Salton Beach. I thought I’d seen the last of you, and frankly, the thought made me pretty happy.”

Ruth ignored the diatribe. “You’re home early,” she remarked.

“I had some stuff to take care of. It’s been a helluva week. Even you can understand that.”

The cleaning company truck was gone when Ruth and Moscone arrived back at the Kendall house, but the driveway was crowded with other vehicles—a green minivan, a pickup truck, a plain gray sedan, and a catering company van were crowded at the top of the circular drive. Stephen Kendall’s sports car and Susan Gleason’s elderly German sedan weren’t visible.

The oak front door was open for the caterers, who were unloading tables and serving dishes into the dining room. Ruth called out and knocked and called again before she and Moscone entered the big front hall.

“My daughter would want a priest there!”The voice—female, loud, insistent—came from the direction of the kitchen. Ruth glanced through the doorway. A gray-haired woman sat at the head of the kitchen table, kneading a rumpled tissue. An older man stood behind her, hands on her shoulders in a soothing gesture. On one side of the table were two men who looked more alike than any adults Ruth had ever seen. At the end of the table, a short woman in a maternity smock stood, toddler on her hip. Tracey Kendall’s family.

“Now, Ma,” one of the men was saying. “Tracey wasn’t into that stuff. She hasn’t been in church since her confirmation. She wasn’t even married in the Church.”

“That wasn’t her choice.” Tracey’s mother shot a look in the direction of Kendall’s studio. “I don’t hold with this Unitarian stuff.Your sister didn’t even go to that church.”

“Stephen didn’t want a church at all,” the other man said. “He’s trying to compromise. Give him a little credit.”

“And there’ll be no casket?” the mother continued. “Your sister won’t be there with us?”

“Well, I can’t agree with that,” the twin who’d spoken before said. “Tracey was never one to miss her own party.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” the other responded. “She died in a terrible car crash. It’s not like we could have an open—if she can’t look good—” his voice broke. He couldn’t go on, but he’d made his point. The others nodded sadly, except for Tracey’s mother.

“This is my baby,” she said quietly. “I want her there.”

“Oh boy,” Moscone whispered from behind Ruth. “This is going to be awful.”

Ruth moved toward the kitchen. “Let’s get it over with.”

Ruth and Moscone interviewed Thomas and May Noonan in the Kendall living room. Ruth would have preferred the straight-backed chairs in the dining room, but she wanted the older couple to be as comfortable as possible. The Noonans sat together on the couch. Ruth and Moscone sat again in the chairs that were too deep and low for this purpose. Ruth perched on the edge of hers. Her thigh muscles ached from the effort required to stay balanced.

Mrs. Noonan continued to knead her rumpled tissue. She had on a shapeless dark dress, her short gray hair uncombed. She looked much older than Ruth expected. Ruth wondered whether this was her normal state, or if she had been a vigorous, well-dressed sixty-something only four days before, until she’d been told about her daughter’s death.

Mr. Noonan tried too hard. He offered tea and answered Moscone’s routine questions—name, age, address—in a strong voice. He had a full head of white hair and deep gray eyes. Ruth watched him as he talked. These were not the people Ruth had expected.

“I own a little grocery store in Water Mill, New York, on Long Island,” Mr. Noonan said.

“Relationship to the victim?” Moscone asked formally.

“May is Tracey’s mother. I’m her stepfather.”

“You are her father,” Mrs. Noonan said forcefully, emphasizing every word. It was the first time she had spoken.

“Now, May, I’m trying to be accurate. These are the police. They don’t care how we feel about each other.They want facts.” He turned back to face Moscone. “Tracey’s father left when she was a baby. Can you imagine? The twins were two, Tracey was a newborn, and he walked out.” He paused to let the picture sink in. Ruth thought about the abandoning father, something else she and Tracey had in common, though Tommy Noonan, with his kind eyes, had been a part of Tracey’s life almost from its beginning.

“May had some tough times, very tough times, let me tell you,” Mr. Noonan continued. “I met her at church two years later. I’d just moved back to town. My father was sick and he needed help at the store. It was love at first sight, but it took me five years to persuade her. She was gun-shy after her first marriage, don’t you see? And there were some legal problems with the divorce since we couldn’t find her husband. During all the time we courted, May never once let me help her out financially, though things were tight, I can tell you.” Tommy Noonan shook his head as if his wife still amazed him. “Anyway, we were married in June the year Tracey was seven.”

“And you never formally adopted her?”

“In the family, we say Tracey adopted me. She left first grade as Mary Ann Tracey. The school system skipped her, so she started third grade the next fall. ‘Hello,’ she said, shaking the teacher’s hand just as an adult would, ‘My name is Tracey Noonan.’ And so she was, ever after, until she became Tracey Kendall, that is. When Tracey wanted something, she took it upon herself to get it. She wasn’t going to wait around for me and May to make a decision.” Tommy Noonan smiled at the recollection.

“Had Tracey talked to you about any problems she’d had lately, at home or at work?”

“Tracey didn’t have problems,” May Noonan answered. “She wasn’t the type.”

“Or if she did, she certainly never told us,” Mr. Noonan said.

“And your son-in-law, Stephen Kendall, how do you get along with him?”

“He’s okay,” Tommy Noonan answered. “We haven’t seen them as much as we’d like. It’s hard for us to get away from the store, and they’re always busy with their lives.”

“I’ve never liked him.” May spoke for the third time. Her voice was loud and clear, its sound as startling as her candor. “But now, I suppose I have to be nice to him, because if I’m not, I could lose Carson, and that would be more than I could bear. I don’t think Stephen cares anything about Carson. He hasn’t spent five minutes with the boy since we’ve been here. I wish Carson could come back to Long Island with us.” Mrs. Noonan dabbed the crumpled tissue at her eyes, but there was too little of it left to have much effect.

“I think we have everything we need,” Ruth said quietly. She wanted to move on.There was little point in putting this woman through any more. Ruth gave the couple on the couch a look of frank assessment.

“We’re not what you anticipated,” Tommy Noonan offered. “No.” “We used to say, how come Tracey comes from money and the rest of us don’t? We couldn’t understand it. The truth is Tracey graduated first in her class from high school. She was accepted at a lot of good schools, with scholarships, which we needed, but Princeton turned her down. That fancy prep school offered to let her repeat her senior year of high school. Something they almost never do, I understand. Tracey saw it as another chance. She could retake the college boards, try again. This is the way our Tracey responded to adversity. She kept trying, looking for another way around. Tracey never gave up. She could bulldog her way through anything.”

“Thank you both for your time,” Ruth said, taking Tommy Noonan’s hand. He smiled a sad smile.

Tracey Kendall’s brothers were still in the kitchen. As Ruth and Moscone entered, one of them was standing at the phone while the other sat at the kitchen table, a set of blueprints and a pile of forms in front of him. The brother on the phone shouted to make himself heard over some noise on the other end. “What do you mean the plumber didn’t show? Does he know that—Well, call Fred and give him holy hell. Yes, now. And see if you can—”

Ruth and Moscone sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m Phil,” the sitting brother said. “That’s Brian.” Brian wound up his call and sat next to Phil. They were startling to look at. Ruth had seen twins who were dressed and coifed alike in childhood, but in her experience in adulthood, twins tended to look less identical. One stayed lean while the other got fat. One’s hair was short, the other long, and so on. But Brian and Philip Tracey looked exactly alike. They had thick, brown mustaches, identically trimmed, the same haircut, even the same length of sideburns, gray sprouting in the same pattern at the temples. Their hands were big and rough from outdoor labor. Ruth wondered if the calluses were in identical spots.

Both men were dressed in jeans and heavy work boots, the same brand, and each wore a plaid flannel shirt. The only difference was that one shirt was blue, the other gray. “Brian, blue,” Ruth said to herself three times, but she knew that if she were to see them again dressed in different clothing she would never be able to tell the difference.

“What’s this about?” Philip, gray-shirt, asked. “Stephen told us Tracey died in a car accident.”

“That’s true,” Ruth responded, “but some aspects of your sister’s accident make me uncomfortable.”

“Stephen mentioned something about her mechanic,” Brian responded.

“The man who serviced your sister’s car has disappeared. His name is Al Pace. Do you know him? Did your sister ever mention him?”

Both men shook their heads. Phil asked, “How can we help?”

“We need to know more about your sister’s life.”

Phil looked at Brian. “You see more of her than we do.”

“My older boy is the same age as Carson,” Brian explained. “Tracey liked to get them together. We’re Carson’s only family. We’d come up and spend the weekend here. Last summer, Carson came and spent a week with us. Anyway, it doesn’t matter who saw her last. Tracey never changed.”

“It’s true,” Philip said fondly. “Our sister was a one of a kind. She became the general in our war games when she was still in diapers.” His tone was one of fond remembrance, his voice husky with grief.

“She always got what she wanted,” Brian continued for his brother. “Phil and I were powerless.”

“When did you see her last, exactly?” Moscone asked.

“We were supposed to visit after Christmas, over the school break,” Brian answered, “but Tracey telephoned and told us something had come up. So that means I haven’t seen her,” he counted on his fingers, “since the weekend before Halloween.”

“Did Tracey seem upset when she called to cancel your trip?” Moscone continued. “Was she disturbed about anything?”

“I really didn’t think about it. She canceled plans all the time. She traveled a lot in her work.”

“Were your wives close to Tracey?” Ruth asked.

Philip shook his head. “No way. Jean was scared to death of her. Tracey was a little intimidating if you didn’t know her. My kids are much older, teenagers. We never hung out here the way Brian’s family did.”

“Maura and Tracey mostly talked about mommy things,” Brian filled in. “You know, croup, toilet training. It was pretty superficial.They didn’t have a lot in common besides the kids—and me, of course.” Brian cleared his throat and looked away.

Neither of these big men was going to break down in front of her, but both were obviously affected by the death of their sister. Ruth wondered why she was bothering these people. They had nothing to do with Al Pace and there was no family money to provide motive for anything. She asked one last question. “If your sister didn’t confide in you, I’d like to find a friend or confidant she might have talked to. Do either of you have any idea who that might be?”

Both men looked surprised. “Did you check Fran Powell across the street?” Philip asked. “She and Tracey have known each other since grade school. Mary Frances Kanjorsky she was then. Mary Ann and Mary Fran. They were thick as thieves.”

It took a moment for Phil’s remark to sink in. Tracey Kendall and Fran Powell childhood friends?

Ruth strode up the service road toward the Powell house, Moscone close behind her. She’d had enough of the dissembling Mary Frances Kanjorsky, childhood friend of Tracey Kendall. Indeed.

When Fran Powell opened the door, she was sober, clear-eyed, and well put-together. Definitely a change from the day before.

“May I help you?” Her voice was frosty.

“Yes,” Ruth said and went through into the living room. “Sit down.”

Fran Powell narrowed her eyes, then moved to the center of the enormous sofa. Moscone drifted into the shadows beside the big picture window.

“My father-in-law called the district attorney and was assured that—”

Ruth interrupted. “Mrs. Powell, the last time we spoke, you lied to me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You told me you met Tracey Kendall a few years ago, when Carson was a newborn.”

“I did not. I said that Tracey discovered I was here a few years ago.” Fran Powell’s tone was terse.

“But that wasn’t the whole story.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“You knew Tracey when you were girls.”

“Yes.”

“You were best friends.”

“Yes.”

“And yet, you didn’t tell me this.”

“I didn’t see what possible relevance it could have.”

“Then why did you lie about it?”

“I didn’t lie,” Fran Powell said. “It’s a simple story, really. Tracey and I grew up together. We graduated from high school. She went on to that ‘post-grad’ year at that boarding school. I went out to USC. We lost touch. It happens. After my mother died I had no reason to return to Long Island. I graduated from college. I stayed on the West Coast and got a job. I got married. I got pregnant. My husband didn’t want to raise a child out there. His parents owned this land. They built a house here. I never saw the place before the day we moved in. I didn’t choose it. I certainly didn’t know that Tracey Noonan was living in my front yard.”

“And when you found out, you resumed your old friendship.”

“Yes.”

“You know that what you’ve just told me is wildly improbable?”

“Then it must be true.”

“I hope for your sake that it is. Next lie. You said you didn’t know Al Pace.”

“I don’t.”

“Mrs. Powell, how long do you intend to keep this up? We have a copy of an invoice from Al Pace to you.”

“What does that prove?”

“Al Pace worked on your car, last October.”

“So what if he did? It doesn’t mean I met him.”

“If he worked on your car, he did it right here, in your driveway.”

“Perhaps I wasn’t home.”

“Al Pace was working on your car. Where would you have gone?” Ruth seethed with impatience, waiting for an answer, but none came, so she continued. “Another thing, you told us Tracey Kendall was having an affair with Al Pace. We haven’t found anyone else who can confirm it. Are you sure that was what was happening?”

Fran Powell, up to then defiant, dropped her head. “Yes, I’m sure. Tracey told me herself.”

“Give me some details. Where did they meet? When? Were they in love?”

“She never told me those things. Even as a child, Tracey was discreet.”

“Think, Mrs. Powell.”

Fran raised her head. “There is one thing that I thought was unusual. Tracey said she gave this Al Pace money sometimes. Cash. Maybe that’s something you can confirm? From his bank account?”

“Why would she do that?”

“She said she felt sorry for him. And a little guilty, so she wanted to ease things for his family.”

Ruth dropped Moscone at his car in the headquarters parking lot. She intended to run into her office, chuck the paperwork that had been piling up all day into her briefcase, and go straight home.

Too much had happened today. Baines’s scolding started off the morning, followed by the strange visit with Jack Holden at his office, Adam Bender’s information about the lunchtime e-mail, Brenda O’Reilly’s disclosure about Tracey’s accident at the mall and previous disappearance, the five thousand dollar payment to Al Pace, Stephen Kendall’s affair with Hannah Whiteside, and Rosie Boyagian’s confirmation of Stephen’s many affairs, including a relationship with Susan Gleason. Ruth wasn’t sure she believed Fran Powell’s story about the money, or anything else the woman said for that matter. But the cash payments were a fact. Ruth was dying for time at home to put everything back together and think it through. But before she could run out the door, Mayor Rosenfeld came through it.

“What the heck is going on around here? I asked you to make up with Baines or at least stay out of his way, and what do you do? Like a bee, you fly straight up his nose!”

Ruth felt the telltale red blush climbing her neck. She resisted the urge to stand up from behind her desk and raise her voice to the same volume as the mayor’s. That would just escalate the confrontation. Instead, she remained sitting and asked in a voice much calmer than she felt, “What’s Baines saying now?”

“He says there isn’t a shred of evidence against this Pace guy and there isn’t going to be. He says you’re going around bothering citizens and chewing up resources for no good reason.”

Ruth let her irritation show. “I disagree.”

“Agreeing or disagreeing isn’t what matters. You can’t bring this or any other case without a D.A.”

“So we just walk away from Tracey Kendall, never know what happened? Leave two killers out on the streets?” “Two?” “We have evidence Pace was paid to kill her. There’s another killer out there.”

“Paid to do it? You can’t even prove it was murder!” Mayor Rosenfeld dropped into the chair opposite Ruth’s desk and lowered his voice to a normal speaking level. “Chief, I think you’re losing the forest in the trees. Never mind what you’re doing to your career, and to those of us who have always supported you. Think about your troops. Think beyond this case. You can’t be at war with your D.A. It hurts every officer, every case.” Rosenfeld paused. “I don’t want the wheels to come off here. Besides your problems with Baines and the aldermen, I’m hearing rumors of dissension in the ranks, cops wondering what you’re doing. Are you going to risk it all for one dead lady? You need to get back in control of the situation.”

Ruth drove toward home tired and angry. In a long, upsetting day, the mayor’s news about unhappiness in the New Derby PD was the most upsetting thing yet. Ruth hadn’t seen or heard it. In fact, she had been basking in McGrath’s renewed interest in his job. But if rumors had reached City Hall, things must be bad. Her troops would tolerate a strained relationship with Baines. Some senior officers, like Lawry and McGrath, even knew her problems with Baines went beyond bureaucratic to personal. But the force wouldn’t tolerate open warfare with the D.A.’s office. They knew it could make their lives a living hell, from trouble getting warrants to rejected cases and even dropped prosecutions.

She’d only been able to command effectively through these six months as acting chief because her force assumed she’d get the job. With no other internal candidates, she was their preference. But as her problems multiplied with Baines and with some of the aldermen and if, God forbid, she lost the support of the mayor, her troops would split into factions, seriously diluting their effectiveness and her own, and making the job a misery.

Baines. All her problems seemed to come from Baines. And now, for the broader investigation the discovery of the five thousand dollars required, Ruth would need access to resources Baines controlled—C.A.R.S., computer forensics, the medical examiner.

Distracted by the thoughts swirling in her head, Ruth didn’t pay attention to where she was driving. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, she found herself at the intersection of Adams Street and Willow Road, quiet at the end of the workday. Ruth parked in the empty lot at Fiske & Holden. She picked up the phone and called Dan Logan. He would have gone home from the state garage hours ago, but she had his personal cell number. Maybe Baines hadn’t gotten to him yet.

“What can I do for you, Chief?” Logan asked when Ruth found him at home, eating his dinner.

“How’s my SUV coming?”

There was a long pause. “I’ve been instructed not to change any priorities at the garage to accommodate any requests you might make about that car.”

“By who?”

“You know who.”

“But I need the black box data and I need your reconstruction. I can’t wait.”

Logan had the decency to sound embarrassed. “Chief, if there was anything I could do—”

“Okay. You’ve been doing this a long time. Without all the fancy computer-generated info, just based on the damage to the car and what you know about Mrs. Kendall’s injuries, how fast do you think she was going when she hit?”

“My best guess, and that’s all it would be, is over seventy.”

“And how fast would she have to be going on that hill at the time she discovered she didn’t have brakes, to hit the wall at seventy?”

“Now you’re in territory I couldn’t even guess about.”

“Try it.”

“You’d have to hit fifty at the beginning of the steepest part of the hill to get up that much momentum, assuming you weren’t accelerating the whole way, which you’d only see with a suicide.”

“We know this wasn’t.”

“Agreed. Nobody is cold enough to off themselves while chatting with the nanny about what to have for supper.”

Ruth hung up and stared through the windshield into the last glow of the setting sun. She’d painted herself into a terrible corner. She’d gone on TV and made herself highly visible at the most vulnerable time in her career, talking about a case that would probably never be solved and would certainly never be prosecuted. She was a fool.

The best thing to do, the wisest course of action, was to let it go and hope it would fade quickly. Perhaps after Tracey’s funeral tomorrow the world would lose what little interest Ruth had been able to stir up. Tracey’s husband and colleagues at Fiske & Holden would be grateful if that happened.

But even as she considered walking away from the case, Ruth thought about Tracey Kendall and the neat lists of things to do in her personal organizer. She thought about the locket tucked in with Tracey’s old clothes, and about Carson crying on the edge of his sandbox. The boy would grow up believing his mother died selfishly, carelessly, speeding down a hill toward her aerobics class, talking on her cell phone.

Ruth was convinced that wasn’t what had happened. She was infuriated by the situation and the horrible sliminess of Baines. That Baines would, just to avoid a difficult and public case, deprive a four-year-old of an explanation for his mother’s death for the rest of his life, was unconscionable. Tracey deserved more, she deserved better.

It always came back to the odious Baines.

Ruth gunned her car out of the Fiske & Holden lot, driving with the confidence of someone who took the route every day, and turned left on Willow Road. The road descended gently for ten yards, then took a steep downward turn. She kept her foot on the gas pedal, gathering speed. Outside her window in the twilight, a squiggly arrow meaning “dangerous curves” flew by, followed in quick succession by signs saying SLOW, 15 MPH and SLOW again.

Ruth sucked in her breath. Over the dark spiders of the budding trees, she could see the parallel tracks of the railroad running along the steep embankment separating it from Willow Road. Her stomach heaved. She gripped the wheel as tightly as she could.

At the midpoint of the hill, descending wildly, Ruth took her foot off the gas and fought the impulse to brake, focusing on the place ahead where the road jogged sharply to the right. She knew if the car continued to gain speed, she wouldn’t be able to make the turn. The grassy verge bordered by the stone wall where Tracey Kendall died appeared in her high beams. Ruth waited until what she judged was the last possible moment, the stone wall growing larger straight ahead, glanced at the speedometer, slammed her foot on the brake and pumped. The car rocketed around twice in an impossibly short stretch of road. Ruth’s stomach climbed into her throat. A scream from deep inside her pushed its way through her lips, although there was no one to hear.

The car came to rest with its back wheels on the grass, facing the way it had come. Ruth jumped out and stood looking at the stone wall, shaking and gulping air. The speedometer had never gone over forty.