Tell Me You're Sorry (10 page)

“Mom?” he said again. He looked over to his left, where they stored the Christmas junk. Then he turned toward the side with the one window, where the roof came to a point.

There he saw his mother. With a rope tied around her neck, she hung from one of the ceiling beams.

Below her was an old chair turned on its side—and one of his mother's slippers. It must have fallen off as she'd kicked and struggled in the air.

She'd been waiting for him after all.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

 

T
he cute blonde smiling in the photo looked like a nice person. But she was surprisingly unsexy. It was hard to imagine her as the vamp who had come into Scott's life, manipulated him into marriage, and then more or less swindled him.

Stephanie sat at her desk in front of her laptop, studying Halle Driscoll's photo on the monitor for the umpteenth time since the private detective had e-mailed it to her last week. She was home for a change—in her study alcove off the living room of her three-bedroom home in the Hawthorne district. The extra bedrooms upstairs had been for Rebecca and the kids when they came to visit.

Dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and thick red wool socks, she'd taken a break from decorating the Christmas tree. She had a pine-scented candle burning, because the tree was artificial. But it looked real—and quite pretty with the multicolor lights. She had only about a fourth of the ornaments hung so far. Though she heard nonstop holiday music in the different airports along her routes, she had Chris Isaak's Christmas CD playing.

The private detective had told her that Halle used this photo—taken outside by Washington D.C.'s reflecting pool—for the online dating service she'd joined. He e-mailed Stephanie a dozen other photos of Halle, collected from her family and friends. Halle exuded a kind of bland wholesomeness in those shots, too. The detective hadn't been able to find a decent photo of her after she'd left D.C. In the few pictures that existed of her with Scott or the kids, she always had her head turned to one side or her face was partially obscured. But it certainly looked like the same woman. Even some of her clothes were the same as those in earlier photos.

A friend of Jim's had recommended J. B. Church Detective Agency. Stephanie had met J.B. in his small office in Long Island City. Fortyish, with curly hair and an affable smile, he could have passed for an English professor in his corduroy jacket, oxford shirt, and jeans. His fee seemed reasonable enough: $750 up front, $150 a day plus travel expenses, and $5,000 if he got results. Results in this case meant any information about Halle Driscoll the police would find useful in their investigation into the Thanksgiving night murders.

After a week, it had cost her nearly two thousand dollars for his train fare and lodgings in the Washington, D.C., area, plus his daily fee. J. B. Church told her he didn't feel right taking any more than $2,500 for the results. The police weren't interested in what he'd found out about Halle Driscoll. But Stephanie was.

J.B. reported that Halle's friends and coworkers had echoed what her cousin, Deborah, had told Stephanie at the funeral. Halle was well liked, dependable, and a bit of a homebody. She hadn't had a steady boyfriend in three years. There had been a flurry of dates (“one-date wonders,” Halle's best friend, Rachel Porter, called them) when Halle had first signed on with the dating service, but nothing in the last few months before she left.

For six years, she'd worked in the human resources department at Washington Gas. She'd recently been promoted to a management position.

On Sunday, June 17, Halle had visited her parents in Manassas for Father's Day. They'd had an early dinner, and Halle left for her apartment in Arlington around 7:15. She telephoned her mother a little past eight to say she'd arrived home.

Mr. and Mrs. Driscoll said their daughter had seemed in a good mood—and in good health—that night.

But the following morning, Halle e-mailed her boss, saying she was sick. That same day, her friend, Rachel Porter, telephoned her about a dinner date they'd made. Halle replied with a text, saying she was ill, and would get back to her later. Rachel's subsequent calls were all answered with texts or curt e-mails. “It was like she was giving me the royal brush-off,” Rachel told J. B. Church. Halle's other friends and her coworkers received the same brisk treatment. In her messages, Halle claimed to be recuperating. But people were still concerned about her. It seemed she suddenly didn't want to talk to anybody or see anybody.

On Thursday, June 28, she e-mailed her boss, explaining that for personal reasons, she wouldn't be returning to work. His calls to her home went unanswered—except for a formal e-mail saying she didn't wish to return to the office. Could they send her any personal items from her desk and any paperwork necessary to terminate her employment there?

J.B. interviewed several of Halle's neighbors in her apartment building. During this time when she'd claimed to be sick, a few neighbors had seen her coming and going—in the parking garage or in the hallway. None of them were ever close enough to talk with her, but they said she looked fairly healthy.

On July 8, Halle e-mailed her building manager, explaining that she would be late with her rent. She would be able to pay it the first week in August—along with that month's rent and any penalty. “It was the first time in six years she was late with the rent,” the landlord told J.B. “So I decided to cut her some slack, and told her not to sweat the small stuff. . . .”

On Monday, July 30, a neighbor reported that Halle's smoke detector was beeping incessantly. There was no smoke, so it had to be a battery that needed replacing. The landlord had been in Halle's apartment about two months before to fix the air-conditioning. When he let himself into the unit to tend to the smoke detector, he found that except for a few odds and ends—and the heavy furniture—everything was gone. Moldy food was in the refrigerator.

Down in the lobby, her mailbox was full of bills with “Second Notice—Open Immediately” printed on the envelope. The landlord notified Mr. and Mrs. Driscoll, whom Halle had listed on her rental agreement as next of kin. He forwarded the unpaid bills to them.

Halle had cleaned out her savings and maxed out her credit cards with cash advances. Her cell phone service was shut off. No one could reach her.

The first week in August, Halle sent her parents a letter from New York, explaining that she'd moved there and would forward an address once she'd settled down. She planned to get herself out of debt soon. If they could cover the minimum balance due on her bills, she would pay them back. The letter was in her handwriting on her stationery, but there was no return address on the envelope.

She notified friends with a group e-mail:

“According to both Halle's best friend and her cousin,” J.B. told Stephanie on the phone, “this e-mail was—and I'm paraphrasing—complete, utter bullshit. It pissed off a lot of casual friends, who didn't want to have anything to do with her after that. But the close ones, the through-thick-and-thin friends, were convinced she was in serious trouble. Her friend Rachel even wondered if Halle had been forced to write that e-mail.”

Rachel, Deborah, and Halle's parents were about to hire a private detective to track down Halle's exact whereabouts. But then something happened the second week of September. Halle's parents received a birthday card for her father. Inside was a cashier's check for $500. Halle said she would be sending them another check soon, and she'd phone them. She mentioned she was dating a very nice widower with two children.

Stephanie didn't have to guess how Halle had suddenly come into some money.

The five hundred barely put a dent in her debts. But it gave Mr. and Mrs. Driscoll hope that their daughter was getting back on her feet. Moreover, she seemed ready to reach out to them. For the time being, they decided against hiring a detective. They were afraid if Halle found out, she'd cut off communication entirely.

Another cashier's check made out to her parents—for $250—arrived in a Halloween card the first week of November. She wrote in the card:

That was the last communiqué.

The Thanksgiving reunion turned out to be Halle's memorial service.

The $750 that Mr. and Mrs. Driscoll received was just a pittance compared to how much money Halle had drained from Scott's bank account, credit cards, and safe-deposit box.

All of J. B. Church's painstaking research didn't really tell Stephanie much that she didn't already know. It just confirmed that Halle had been a sweet, decent person. At least, she'd come across that way. But at some point—obviously, around Father's Day—she'd gotten herself into trouble. Whether related to drugs, gambling, or some man, she'd kept her dilemma a closely guarded secret—a secret she'd taken to her grave.

Was it just a coincidence that Rebecca had killed herself the Friday before Father's Day? She'd written that message to Scott on the bathroom mirror:
Hate You
.

Stephanie had figured that Halle's erratic behavior and the way she'd gone through Scott's money would have warranted a police investigation. Certainly, J. B. Church's findings deserved some kind of official follow-up. In all likelihood, the murders on Thanksgiving had some connection to whatever—or whoever—Halle Driscoll had been running away from.

But the police didn't see it that way.

Chris Isaak sang the last Christmas song on his CD. With a sigh, Stephanie went onto Google, and typed: “Croton, NY Murders, Thanksgiving.” The first search result was an article in the
New York Daily News
from the day before. Stephanie clicked on it and stared at the headline:

Mug shot photos of two surly-looking teenagers appeared beneath the headlines. Ronald Mady, eighteen, and Calvin Davis, seventeen, each had police records and gang associations.

Frowning, Stephanie studied their faces. They looked like trouble—especially Mady, with his skinhead look and the Mike-Tyson-style face tattoo. Still, Stephanie didn't think the police had the right guys—at least not for the murder of her sister's family.

“Are you still looking at that?”

Startled, Stephanie swiveled around in her chair. “You scared me,” she murmured. “Did you have a good nap?”

Yawning, Jim ran a hand through his mussed hair and nodded. He was wearing a wrinkled long-sleeve T-shirt and jeans. “I thought you were going to give that a rest and decorate the tree.”

With one click of the mouse, Stephanie closed the Internet connection and got to her feet. She kissed him on the cheek and then brushed past him and opened up the old Meier & Frank box that held another batch of ornaments. “I was waiting for you,” she said. “It's no fun doing it alone.”

He flopped down on the sofa. “Can I just sit here and watch for a few minutes? I'm still half asleep. That flight from D.C. always wipes me out.”

These evenings at her house with Jim were too few and far between. She liked to cook him a real homey dinner on such occasions, which usually came at the tail end of a business trip. He'd sneak home a day early, spend the night in her bed, and Stephanie could almost fool herself into thinking they were man and wife. Tonight's dinner was pot roast, slow-cooking for the last two hours while Jim had napped.

Stephanie put on Nat King Cole's Christmas CD, and then went back to trimming the tree.

The Meier & Frank box had most of the cherished, fragile old ornaments that used to go on her family's tree. She always put them front, high, and center. Yet it was a bittersweet reminder of her parents—and everything that had been taken away from her. She always got blue around the holidays. This Christmas promised to be downright miserable for her. She might not have even put up a tree this year if Jim hadn't been with her tonight.

“I know you think I'm crazy,” she sighed, hanging up a blue ornament with a star pattern on it. “But I'm still convinced the police have the wrong guys.”

“Yeah, you can tell by looking at them that they're just a couple of fun-loving, misunderstood, ragtag, innocent kids.” He stretched out and clasped his hands behind his head. “Give me a break, honey. The cops found stuff in their apartments they'd stolen during all those house robberies . . .”

“But they didn't find Scott's car or anything from Scott and Rebecca's house,” she pointed out.

The two suspects had kept some electronics and high-tech toys from their other break-ins. Police tracked down several jewelry pieces and silverware that had been fenced or sold to local pawnshops.

As for Rebecca's jewelry, Scott's mother had a theory that perhaps Halle had taken it from the safe-deposit box to wear at upcoming functions during the holidays. And perhaps the pieces had been stolen on the night of the murders. But none of it had been recovered yet.

Stephanie put down a bell-shaped ornament and scowled at him. “Scott's car, my mom's jewelry, the silver service, all that Waterford Rebecca collected, the Royal Doulton figurine—where did it all go? Why didn't the police find that along with all the other stuff?”