The Greeks of Beaubien Street (17 page)

Jill walked to the elevator and pushed the down button. She was dragging this morning after little sleep. It was testimony to what bad news could do your body. The irrelevant thought that Dana had hated her passed through her head. Jill had tried to befriend her, but Dana wasn’t interested. Andy said he thought she was jealous of Jill’s education and freedom. Jill didn’t understand it. Dana had the money to go back to school, and the time. Her kids were fabulous, too.
How could she even compare my life with hers?
Of course, she was dead, so no amount of dissatisfaction would change anything. It was too late. Now Andy would be living in the city with his kids as he had dreamed.
At least everyone there wanted to be there
, she thought.

She drove to the hotel and asked if there was a camera on the other side of the hallway from Gretchen’s room and also, on a whim, for tapes from the camera facing the street. The more complicated a case became, the more time it would take to view tapes and interview and document. It was part of the territory. Once back to the precinct, she and Albert spent the rest of the morning watching video and finally there it was, bold as daylight: Marianne Parker and her husband, leading their wayward, evening gown clad daughter back to her hotel room in Greektown. And then a half an hour later, they were leaving it, a disheveled looking Gretchen leaning between her mother and father, wearing what appeared to be sweatpants. In both instances, Marianne appeared to have something hidden under her jacket. A bat? Albert, who had fallen asleep, woke up when Jill moaned.

“Marianne was with him. Marianne went to the hotel with Jacob. I wish we had a camera inside that room. What happened in there?” Jill had her head in her hands. “We need to go back to Dearborn and talk to Marianne,” she told Albert. He pulled himself up out of his chair and yawned. “I’ll drive,” Jill said. She wanted to be occupied one hundred percent. Imagining what may be taking place at Gus’s Greek Grocery was a distraction that she needed to squash. Driving would help.

“You forget the blood in the tub,” he said.

“No, I remember it. But the bullet is what killed her and no one heard gunfire. Plus, the three of them are clearly seen leaving her room together with Gretchen upright. If you are going to sleep through these videos, you will miss a few things, my friend,” she chided him. They took the stairs down to the parking garage and were silent on the ride into Dearborn. Albert thought about the video from Gretchen’s closet. At first when he found the camera, his mind said it was something the father planted there to spy on his daughter as she exited her bathroom. But the suspicion that the mother could have suspected something was going on between her husband and daughter, then planted the video camera herself, loomed large. Albert said what they were both silently thinking.

“Filicide is very rare. I don’t think we have had a case here in years.”

“It’s unheard of in my culture,” Jill offered.

“Oh is that right? What about Medea?” Albert teased. “Do you think Euripides just pulled that one out of his hat?”

“Okay, let me change that to
in my family.
I’m an American, remember? Besides, filicide is the killing of children in general, not just the parent killing the kid. Anyway, Medea did it to piss Jason off. I suppose children are never murdered in China?” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “You’re lucky you were born a boy,” Jill said under her breath. Albert grimaced.

“You’re a cruel woman. My grandparents were born in White Plains. You know that crappy hospital we were at yesterday morning? I was born there. And I know you were too.” Albert said.

“Yes. We have had this conversation before,” Jill sighed. “We must be losing it.” The tragic case was starting to take its toll on both of them after just two days. They fell silent again, thinking about Gretchen Parker.

“If Jacob thought Gretchen had been having sex with Mike Ahmed, knowing what a racist Jacob was, it may have driven him into a jealous rage. He is a coward, so of course he wouldn’t kill the man. It would have been easier to kill the daughter,” Albert said.

“Yes,” was all Jill could say.
It would be easier to kill your own daughter
. She thought of her father, his loving, patient ways, how tender and kind he was to her and her brother Chris. He was so respectful, and except for his slightly Puritanical views on sex and marriage, she couldn’t imagine him ever, in a million years, even arguing with her or harming her in any way

The worst of it was that the bat did contain DNA from Gretchen, and cells from her cervix. Jill felt her gorge rise when Albert read the report in an email on his phone. The bat was an enigma because of its coating of DNA from every member of the household, including the cat. The handle had fingerprints from several people.

Jill shut the engine off before they arrived at the Parker residence, allowing the cruiser to roll silently to a stop. Albert was staring out the window at the house, still not able to comprehend what they had concluded after seeing the results of the bat, and watching the surveillance videos from the hotel hallway, inside the casino, and at the main entrance on Beaubien. Jacob’s car, a classic nineteen sixty-five Cadillac, stood out like a sore thumb, and his wife, sitting in the front seat with her prim suit jacket on and ruffle-collared blouse, had been seething intensely enough for the security camera to pick up the emotion from a telephone pole down the street. Jill and Albert sat speechless, waiting for the Dearborn police to show up.

In front of the Parkers’ house, Jill could see Marianne standing in the window behind the closed curtains. She would wait quietly for them to approach the house. It wouldn’t do much good to try and flee. Dressed in her signature polyester pants suit and crisp, white blouse, her hair dyed and arranged in an out-of-fashion style, she looked and felt much older than sixty-two.

How did it happen that she would adopt her husband’s age and sensibility? She really loathed him. She thought of the years she worked as a secretary in an insurance office. It was good work, didn’t take a lot of emotional energy to process insurance claims and answer the phone. She had her own money, a lovely child, a nice home. And then she thought of her daughter. Her daughter had become an icon. She represented everything that was good about life. Gretchen was proof of her goodness, of her worthiness. She was happy in spite of being married to a reprobate because she had Gretchen and Gretchen was their common ground.

Until the slip-up. It had happened so unexpectedly that Marianne almost missed it. It was a morning like any other morning. She was puttering around her light-filled kitchen getting their breakfast ready and Gretchen came down, looking fresh and lovely from her shower after a run, a sparkling white, virginal terry-cloth bathrobe on, and while Marianne’s back was to her family, she saw her daughter open her robe up to her father, who was sitting and drinking his morning coffee. Marianne could see their reflection in the shiny chrome of the toaster.

She might have dismissed it if they would have ended their encounter there. However, she saw Jacob look up toward his wife to see if she was occupied, and then back to the body of his daughter and Marianne saw him reach with his hand and caress, what? Gretchen’s breast? It was only because of years of self-control from having lived with him and biting her tongue that she didn’t whip around and lash out at both of them. She waited until they were finished, seconds really was as long as it lasted, and then fled the room. She went up the stairs to her own bedroom and left them alone in the kitchen, something that was the norm in their household. Why not? Who doesn’t leave her husband alone with their daughter? She suddenly became aware of other times in the recent past that may have been inappropriate, but she was so removed from such behavior, so sure of her husband’s love for his daughter, that nothing underhanded or perverse ever had crossed her mind.

Now, Marianne thought of seemingly innocent wrestling matches between the two of them in which Gretchen appeared to be naked under her nightgown, or times that she would find Jacob sitting on Gretchen’s bed and the two of them talking in hushed voices. She never thought anything of it until this particular day. There was a time in the distant past that Gretchen had complained to Marianne about Jacob coming into her bed at night. Jacob denied any wrongdoing, saying he must have been sleepwalking. So if they had been doing something under this roof, if her adult daughter was not the picture of innocence Marianne had built her up to be, there were ways to find out.

There was a technical store not far from their house, one in which she and Jacob weren’t known as customers, and Marianne told the clerk that she wanted a video camera to spy on her cleaning lady who she was sure was stealing. She was to mount the tiniest camera she had ever seen right inside Gretchen’s closet door. She never closed her closet, so it would be perfect place to spy, aiming it at the bathroom door and her bed. If anything happened in there, Marianne would soon find out.

Shortly after Jill turned the car off, a Dearborn unmarked car pulled up behind them. It was Aaron Barry again. Albert introduced Jill to Officer Barry. The three of them walked up to the front door, Jill aware of neighbors peering at them. A member of this household had been murdered; it was a house of curiosity now. Marianne opened the door for them before they knocked.

“We would like to talk to you, Mrs. Parker. May we come in?” Albert asked. Marianne stood aside for them, holding the door open for the officers. Albert had been in the house the night before with a search warrant and was startled, if not shocked, at its stark sterility. It was impersonal as a hotel. The daughter’s bedroom looked as though it had recently been redecorated though Marianne said it had always been like that, since Gretchen was a little girl. Albert had an idea and he gave Jill a look with his eyebrows raised. She gave him an almost imperceptible nod. They would reveal all the evidence. Marianne pointed a finger at the sofa.

“Do you want to sit in here? Or should we go into the kitchen?” she asked. The little house didn’t have a dining room. Albert thought the kitchen might be more comfortable for Marianne and he wanted her guard down. They followed behind her, sitting down around the table. Albert was right across where Marianne would be. She was poised to get them refreshments, but no one wanted anything. She pulled out a chair and reluctantly sat down. Albert pulled a small recording device out of his pocket.

“Okay if I record this?” he asked. Marianne shook her head
yes
. Jill was watching the woman closely and could feel the blood draining out of her face. Did Marianne Parker kill her own daughter? Was she preparing to confess to such a heinous crime? In a jealous rage, angry that her daughter was having sex with her father, did Marianne Parker first rape her daughter with a baseball bat, and then shoot her to death? The hows and whys weren’t clear to Jill yet; when she saw the entire scene play out before her eyes, the shooter’s form was unclear to her. The blood in the bathtub was from the injury to Gretchen’s vagina. She must have lost at least a pint of blood by the sound of what the plumber found in the drain, clotted enough that it had stopped the drain up.

“Both Gretchen’s and your DNA was found on the bat,” Albert was saying. “Actually, to be exact, cells from Gretchen’s cervix were on the end of the bat. Someone had shoved the bat into your daughter while she was still alive. We think it took place in the hotel room, because Gretchen’s blood stopped up the drain when it clotted. Mrs. Parker, we have a video of you entering your daughter’s hotel room with her at your side, and there is obviously something under your suit jacket.” He waited a moment before he went on. “I have the video camera from Gretchen’s closet. I saw the tapes. It shouldn’t be difficult to find out who bought the camera. I have a warrant to get your credit card statements. The store clerk will remember who he sold the camera to.”

Marianne was silent. She knew it was futile to keep quiet in hopes she’d get away with it. She wanted Jacob to take the blame for the bat. It felt so perverted when she was doing it, telling her daughter to lie down in the tub, she felt as bad as the child molester he was. And he was willing to do anything if she would keep quiet about him nursing from her breast. She was ready to scream that from the mountaintops. He was a pervert. She had finally realized the extent to which he would go to be close to his daughter. And now that stupid Gretchen, her dimwitted daughter was dead, she’d never know the complete truth. She should have used torture to get a straight answer. If she’d had only a little more time. Marianne couldn’t help herself, she started laughing. It just sort of popped out of her lips, a little spittle going along with it.

“Oh lord, I really didn’t think I was going to get away with it. But that ass of a husband of mine...we can be frank, correct? Did you watch all the tapes from the house? How about the dress-up tapes? Did you get to those yet? Oh my God! Jacob in my daughter’s thong underwear, her little bra stretched over his chest and back! I thought I would die laughing! I had a feeling for years he might be wearing my clothes while I was at work but I could never prove it.

“You know he was having a relationship of some bizarre kind with Gretchen. He was willing to take blame for the murder. He was ready to spend his life in jail if I didn’t tattle on him. I’m sure it will come out later, but you have what you need from me now, correct? I did that to her with the bat. My only child. I was in awe of Gretchen, did you know that? She was on a pedestal here. I thought Jacob and I were in agreement about one thing and that was Gretchen. She was the neatest, cleanest little girl! From the time she could walk, Gretchen had to have clean hands. She wanted polished shoes, neat socks, combed hair. Did you see her bedroom? It was like a hotel room it was so neat.

“Gretchen was disciplined. She got up at dawn to run every morning. She watched her diet like a hawk, never eating between meals, taking a lunch I packed for her every day of exactly two hundred-eighty calories. Gretchen never missed a day of work. She was the most dependable teller the bank had. Her boss told me so. This is what is so shocking to me. Why would a young woman who looked like Gretchen, who had her self-control, end up screwing around with Jacob Parker?