The Greeks of Beaubien Street (24 page)

“Every family has some secrets,” Alex said in an attempt to make her feel better. It did, but only marginally.

“I’m not sure I care about the secret part,” she said. “It’s more like, who
was
my mother? How could she sleep with someone like Nick, who I’m sure had a dark side, and then my father, who is the sweetest man? It’s such a contradiction.” She shook her head in disgust. “Honest to God, between my cousin’s wife being murdered, the Parker’s antics, and Aunt Paula, I have had it with family.” They returned to her apartment. Alex went up the stairs with her, but stopped at the door.

“I’ll call you in the morning, okay?” he said. They kissed good night, and Jill scratched Fred behind the ears.

“Take good care of Freddie, Al.” She let herself into the living room and shut and locked the door behind her. She walked to the window to look down and see if she could see Alex walking to his car with their dog. It was moonless, but the stars were bright. She could see the freeway and hear the noise; between buildings, she saw the river too and the lights of a freighter, chugging toward Lake Erie.

Jill was glad she was alone. It would force her to confront something that had bothered her all evening but that was never addressed. If Chris wasn’t Gus’ son, why didn’t Nick claim him and bring him home? Gus said that it was his mother’s decision to keep the child in an institution. What exactly was his role in keeping Chris away from home? It was all intertwined. Her mother was killed because she drove to Plymouth every day. Gus allowed it. Jill moved away from the window, but continued gazing out over the city while sitting on the edge of an overstuffed chair. Leaning back onto the comfort of it, every muscle in her body hurt. She sat up abruptly; slipping into self-pity was not an option. She would do yoga until she was tired enough to fall asleep.

It would take an hour of stretching and poses, but soon, she was relaxed and her mind was finally at ease. What was done was done. She wasn’t going to start judging people now, especially the dead. As she lay on the floor, Jill made a resolution of sorts. She would be grateful for her life, and make sure that those who she loved knew it.

~ ~ ~

Fred, the bulldog got into the front seat of Alex’s car and promptly went back to sleep. They would have a short ride, but he was tired and didn’t want to miss out on one second of rest. Alex found a spot to park directly in front of his apartment.

“Come on Fred,” he said to the dog, patting his head. “Let’s go.” Fred jumped down, though not without difficultly. Alex took a short walk past a weed-covered lot in case Fred needed to go again. It was getting late and Alex wanted to get inside and start sketching what had popped into his mind at Gus’s apartment. He had never painted a portrait in his life, and realistic painting, sort of what he was doing in his new landscape where the viewer could actually make out an image rather than having to guess what it was, was new to him. He had an idea that would not go away. He thought of it for the hours that he sat with Jill’s family that night, obsessing over each line, which color would go where. He saw the painting done. Now he simply had to execute it.
That’s the easy part, right?

His skills were getting better and better, so he wasn’t afraid to do the work. He was happy to get started tonight or he realized work would be intolerable tomorrow, concentration on anything else impossible. He and Fred went inside and Fred got up on Alex’s recliner, his spot for the night. Alex quickly changed his clothes. He had a piece of gessoed Masonite ready to go. He got his pallet and put a clean sheet of waxed paper on it. He’d place the paint pallet in his freezer when he took a break. But first he would sketch out the drawing he had fantasized about all evening. The memory of it flowed perfectly from his brain to the hand holding the pencil. In reality, the subjects had never sat together before. It was a conglomeration of photos he had seen with made up clothing and colors he thought were pleasing together.

He sketched for thirty minutes and then found his paint case; he got tubes large and small and began to squeeze paint out on the waxed paper. The brushes he used were stored immaculately in mason jars lined up on the window of his one room apartment. He mixed and applied paint for hours. Finally, at four in the morning, he’d reached his limit. He didn’t need to be up until eight; he would have to be okay with four hours sleep. He put his pallet carefully in the tiny, empty freezer. As he walked slowly back to the area where his easel stood, he put his hands up to his face, frightened to look at his work too closely, but knowing that if there were major changes to be made, he needed to do it now, while the paint was still workable. Walking around to the front of the painting, he gasped with joy. It was exactly what he had in mind. The proportions were lovely, the colors vibrant so far. He lowered the thermostat, just in case it didn’t look as good in daylight. Hopefully it wouldn’t dry out too much. He stripped his clothes off and dived onto his cot, falling asleep immediately.

Chapter 31

Marianne Parker was having a miserable night in jail. She realized that this was a temporary place, and that once she was sentenced she would have a permanent cell in a prison outside of the city. She’d probably have to share a cell; after sleeping in a room alone for most of her life, that would be the most difficult thing to adapt to, the lack of privacy. She also wore ear plugs; the simple sound of the furnace blower going on, or the wind hitting the window of her bedroom would wake her and she often found it impossible to fall back to sleep. Would she be able to get ear plugs in jail? She was sitting on the edge of the cot in the jail cell, looking at the paint chipped table, the rickety chair, the water spotted aluminum toilet. The cell smelled like urine. She thought a man must have occupied it before she did, peeing all over the floor like they were known to do, and that no one had washed up before she was placed there.

Hands folded in her lap; she bowed her head and closed her eyes. Her thoughts were calm for a woman who had just confessed to assaulting her own daughter. The detectives would be back in the morning to get her statement when her attorney could get there. She didn’t want to relive the details of that night. As she remembered what was done to her daughter, her blood pressure slowly climbed. They had driven to their storage locker after the hotel incident. Jacob had gone there with one motive and that was to get to a private place where they could punish Gretchen without the neighbors hearing.
It was bad enough that her picture was posted all over the TV and newspapers with the word
Missing
. Now they would know she had joined an escort service. Oh God, the humiliation.
As they stood in the locker, Gretchen was crying, clinging to Marianne’s pristine blouse. She slapped away the clawing hands from her chest, but the child must have known what was going to happen. It fueled Marianne’s anger, seeing Gretchen out of control like that.

“Momma, I’m sorry! I am so sorry!” She repeated it over and over. Marianne sneered at her with contempt.

“What are you sorry for? Which thing, Gretchen; the affair with your dad? Or being a whore? Which is it?” So close to her daughter she could smell her familiar smell, of soap and water, her breath warm and sweet. “You’re a virgin, so then what were you and daddy up to? Tell me Gretchen, I’m confused!” She shook her daughter, trying to understand what it was they were doing together. She knew it was sick, but was it just playful? Or sexual? How long had it gone on? She’d never get an answer from Jacob and she had to know.

“We didn’t do anything, momma! He couldn’t get hard,” Gretchen whispered. “We just fooled around, I swear to you.” Hearing her daughter speak like that, admitting they had attempted intercourse but thank God Jacob’s dick wouldn’t cooperate, enraged Marianne. She gasped, but caught herself in time, not allowing the tears to begin. Examining her daughter’s face, she tried to understand what had happened. Did boredom and the comfort of home lull her husband and daughter into a false sense of security so that innocent play turned into something sexual? She wanted to find the thing that would justify what Jacob had done so she could forgive them and move on. At what point did they cross a line?

“When did it start?” Marianne asked softly. “How often did you
play around
?” It was so quiet in the locker; she could only hear their breathing. Jacob was in the car, waiting for, what? He wanted Marianne to punish their child for making them worry. Jacob didn’t know yet that Marianne had discovered the relationship he had with Gretchen. Marianne’s body responded to the stress by shedding tears without her crying. The water poured from her eyes.

“I don’t remember exactly, momma. I think when I twelve or thirteen. You weren’t home and I wanted to try a tampon. Dad helped me with my bath all the time. It seemed natural to go to him and ask him,” she said, sniffing. Marianne was shaking, appalled. She wanted to lock her child in the locker and leave her there. It would be safer to pretend none of this had happened. Who heard of such things? A loving father turned molester? A perfect daughter turned prostitute? At first, she wanted to believe that Gretchen was innocent. But hadn’t she seen her daughter exposing herself to her father? Jacob probably just couldn’t resist. He was more interested in wearing Gretchen’s underwear than seeing her in them.

“But you need to tell me the truth Gretchen. You need to tell me what daddy did to you.”

“Okay, Momma, I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you the truth,” Gretchen said. Marianne was preparing to push her daughter down on a box so they could sit and have an old fashioned mother-daughter chat, but suddenly the door to the locker slammed up against the wall and Jacob was in the doorway with his old service pistol. He was crying and shaking, but when he fired, it hit Gretchen perfectly in her heart and with such force that she flew into the air, landing on top of the pile of cardboard boxes her mother was going to have her sit on.

Gretchen died immediately, before she could tattle on her father. The rest of the evening went by in a blur. There was a bathroom on site at the storage facility where they washed her up. Jacob kept saying they needed to take her back to the hotel in Greektown so whoever she was with there would be blamed. He found a big tarp to wrap her body in to keep the trunk of his precious car clean. The last thing Marianne did to Gretchen before they threw their daughter’s body out onto Cass was to pass a comb through her gorgeous hair.

Marianne actually talked herself into believing that they wouldn’t get caught. When the police called the house Monday morning, Jacob’s histrionics stemmed from remorse and shame, but it served to get them two more days of freedom. He sure wasn’t acting like a guilty man acted. He used those two days to browbeat his wife into believing she was an accessory and just as guilty as he was. Now, sitting in the jail cell, she couldn’t bear the pain. Her anger at Gretchen succumbing to Jacob was spent. She was a silly young girl, after all. She probably didn’t have enough common sense to know that a sex game with one’s father was sick. Any more than she would know that dressing up like a whore and being someone’s escort was unacceptable as well.

Marianne shook her head. Why did it happen? She would never know. She glanced down at the leg of the cot with its sharp metal edge and the cotton sheet on the mattress. Not planning to take her life at first, it suddenly seemed logical. She took the sheet and tore it into strips using the sharp edge of the cot leg to get it started. She knotted it securely, noting the metal cage around the light bulb with its two -fold use; to prevent bulbs from getting broken and to provide a place for hangers to tie their nooses. She struggled to get the table below the bulb, and then put the chair on the table.
For an old lady I’m pretty agile,
she thought. She climbed on the bed and then onto the table, and then carefully, up on the chair. She got the sheet knotted around the cage and then a foot or so down, around her neck. It was simple to push the chair off the table with her foot so it would fall on the cot and not make any noise. She wanted to be sure she was dead before they found her swinging.

Chapter 32

Jill didn’t get much sleep after all, but the three hours she got were deep and restful thanks to the yoga. The jail called her at four to tell her about Marianne Parker’s suicide. She couldn’t believe it. Now they would have to rely on Jacob’s testimony alone for the facts. Not able to go back to sleep, she decided to go into the precinct to get as much done as she could before Dana’s funeral. She might go see Jacob before breakfast.

For a brief moment or two, she allowed some sadness to come into her thoughts. Senseless deaths and family secrets. They sure all had them. She thought of her dad and his archaic ways; maybe he clung to those old-fashioned beliefs because in doing so, he thought he could protect his daughter from the ways of her mother. Jill imagined how scandalous it would have been if the affair between Nick and her mother had been made public in the family when it was happening. The birth of Christopher would have made a field day for gossips. She thought of her brother and the sadness increased. She never saw him interact with the family, yet most of them visited him regularly and had relationships with him. Had anyone ever planned an event where the whole family got together to see him? What would he be like in a circle of his friends and relatives? She would think about it for a while. Maybe it would be her responsibility as the sister to plan something like it in the future.

She went to the precinct and got the CSI report from the storage locker in Allen Park. Even though three days passed since the murder it was still a gruesome site, the blood still appearing bright red, pieces of her heart and what Jill imagined was Gretchen’s back skin sprayed all over the contents of the locker. It was pretty simple to see that whoever had shot her was standing in the doorway. Gretchen had been standing half way into the locker, in front of the boxes. He was either an expert marksman or extremely lucky. When Marianne alluded to responsibility for the killing, Jill didn’t believe it. She poured a cup of coffee and picked up the case file; she’d walk over to the jail to see Jacob. Walking through the tunnel from the precinct to the jail gave her a feeling of entitlement. She belonged there. The precinct was her home away from home.