Dead by Any Other Name (17 page)

forty-four

Sputnik shook himself semi-dry,
I put his leash back on and we walked up the hill and around the side of my building toward the back door.

“Janet.”

I turned to see Chevrona coming toward me.

“Oh, hi there.”

She reached me and we stood in a little pool of shadowy light. The party music echoed and throbbed from down the street. She looked crisp and sharp in a white oxford and black slacks that fit
just so.

“You're not going to the party?” she asked.

“I've been. I didn't know you were coming, I looked for you.”

“Long day at work. But I'm here now.”

“You are.”

She reached down and petted Sputnik.

“That cellphone is destroyed, was in the water too long.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

“It's been a long day for me, too. I brought Josie back down from Troy, she's going to be living with me.”

“That's great news. She's such a good kid. A big adjustment for you, though.”

“Yeah, it is. But I'm ready. I think.”

“If there's ever anything I can do … I'm here for Josie. And for you.”

There was a long loaded silence. I looked into her eyes and they were filled with that mix of hard and soft that I found so intoxicating. She reached up and rubbed the back of her neck.

“So …” she said.

“Yeah …”

“I'm getting the feeling you want to knock off for the night.”

“Well, yeah, maybe a good idea. I am kinda wrung out.”

The strains of Otis Redding singing
Try a Little Tenderness
drifted over from the party.

We looked at each other.

Then she took me in her arms and we started to dance.

forty-five

I woke up a
little dazed the next morning. After our dance, Chevrona and I had said good night with a kiss—it wasn't a big kiss (it wasn't that small, either) but there was a lot in it and it sent a luscious moist shiver racing up and down my body. What it all meant I wasn't sure, where it was all leading I had no idea. I did know that it felt good and right, but also that it complicated my life at a time when that was the last thing I needed. I made a decision to let it play out slowly; I was pretty sure Chevrona was on the same page.

I lay in bed listening to Josie move around the apartment. There was something comforting about the footfalls, drawers opening, water running, but I also knew that my freedom was suddenly curtailed. No more slothful days where I didn't bother to get dressed or do the dishes, no more PB&Js for dinner, no more dragging Zack upstairs for a quickie, no more being responsible for my own needs and no one else's.

After getting cleaned up and dressed, I walked out to the main room to find Josie sitting at the kitchen table on her laptop.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Did you know that the Bump family fortune was made in steak and kidney pies?”

“I'm not surprised, Lavinia Bump seems to live on them.”

“They sound kinda gross but they sure are popular. Bump Pies was formed in 1811 and is still the best-selling meat pie in England.”

Josie went back to her Internet as I made myself a pot of coffee.

“Now
this
is interesting,” she said, eyes glued to the screen.

“What?”

“In 1981, Octavia Bump's betrothed died in a suspicious accident at the Bump estate in Kent, England.”

“What happened?”

“Francis Litchfield fell from a third floor balcony and fractured his skull. The only witness was Octavia Bump, who was with him on the balcony.”

“Were any charges brought?”

“There was an inquest and the death was ruled accidental. Octavia said that a gust of wind came up and blew her hat off the balcony. Litchfield chivalrously tied to grab it and overreached, tipping himself over the balustrade. But Jane Ormond, another English blueblood, claimed that she and Litchfield were in love and that he had gone to the Bump estate to break off his engagement with Octavia.”

I could just picture Octavia, that raging bundle of entitlement, passion, and impulse, shoving Francis Litchfield to his death after he told her he was leaving her. And if she did it to him, what would stop her from pushing Natasha to her death from the Platte Clove so that Pavel would be hers, all hers? She claimed that she was home that night painting, but there were no witnesses. And I wasn't surprised that the inquest had led to nothing—if the British legal system was anything like the American, money talked and the rich walked.

“Pavel better go through with their marriage,” I said.

“I'll say.”

“Listen, I'd appreciate anything you could find out about Sally and Howard Wolfson. And also Collier Denton.”

“I'll nose around,” she said, standing up and heading to the fridge. “I made a little pancake batter. It's multigrain with blueberries.”

“I don't really eat much breakfast, Josie.”

She looked hurt for a moment, but took out the batter, put a pan on the stove, tossed in a little butter, turned on the heat. “I'll just make myself a couple.”

I felt a stab of guilt, would it kill me to eat a pancake? But if this new arrangement was going to work I had to have some control, feel like I wasn't giving up all my freedom, everything I'd worked to create in my new upstate life.

“Listen, Josie, I'd like to set a few ground rules for our life together.”

“Good idea,” she said, spooning the batter into the pan.

“If I seem distracted or involved, just leave me alone. I'd like to keep dinner informal, if either one of us is inspired to cook, fine. If not, it's every gal for herself. I'll buy you a television for your room, please keep the volume low, or better yet get headphones. Zack spends the night once in awhile, I don't want to feel inhibited about that. I'm not your maid—I expect you to clean up after yourself and do your own laundry. I'll give you thirty dollars a week allowance. How does all that sound?”

“It sounds reasonable. Now it's my turn. If my door is closed, please knock and
wait
for my okay before you come in. I love
to cook, so count on me for dinner most nights, if I'm not around check the freezer—I'll mark everything so you won't find any mystery meat. If you and Zack want to screw on that table, go for it, I'll make myself scarce. As for the allowance, Abba hired me last night as sous chef-slash-waitress-slash-whatever, so I'd like to contribute seventy-five dollars a week to general household expenses. How does all that sound?”

We just smiled at each other. Then she turned and flipped the pancakes.

“Any chance I can get that first batch?” I asked.

forty-six

It was a sweet
September evening in the valley—mild with just a hint of October's nostalgic nip, the trees showing their first dapples of red and orange—but I couldn't really savor it because I was heading down to Highland for my meeting with Julia Wolfson and I was too focused on what she might tell me. I drove through New Paltz and headed east on 299 to 9W, then north a few miles to the western end of the Walkway Over the Hudson.

The Walkway is a former railroad bridge, a cool steel trellis structure that looks like it was built with a giant erector set. When it opened in 1889 it was the first bridge over the Hudson and the longest bridge in the world; today it's the longest pedestrian bridge. It carried trains until 1974 when it was damaged in a fire. A lot of people wanted to tear it down, but some prescient folks saw its potential, and in 1992 efforts began to turn it into a walkway that would link up with trails and bike routes on either side of the river. It opened in 2009 and everyone was hoping for fifty thousand visitors in its first year—it got seven hundred thousand, and has turned into a serious economic engine for the entire valley, especially Poughkeepsie, where it has jolted up the funky 'hood surrounding its eastern end.

I parked in the lot and hoofed down to the entrance area. It was a few minutes after six, twilight was descending and the bridge stretched out in front of me like an invitation. People were pouring across in both directions, a Valley hodgepodge of ages, colors, and classes, dogs and skaters and runners. But there was no sign of Julia and I began to worry that she'd pull a no-show, that she'd gotten cold feet on her promise to level with me.

But then she appeared, “I'm
so
sorry I'm late,” she said, too apologetic in that way insecure people are. She looked pretty great, hip and pulled together in black slacks, black silk shirt, and a blazer, eyes clear, skin glowing. But she also seemed fragile and high-strung, and I felt for her—early sobriety is never easy.

We set off across the walkway. “Thanks for meeting me,” I said.

“Do you know why I'm here?”

I shook my head.

She patted her bag. “I have some of Natasha's ashes, I'm going to scatter them off the bridge. It's what she would have wanted. We grew up just down the river, she loved the valley, it was home. One of the last times I saw her, we took this walk. We were both finally starting to put things together, how Sally and Howard had fucked with our heads, how much we had in common, how we could be friends,
should
be friends.”

“What do you mean about your folks?”

She reached into her bag and took out a pack of American Spirits and lit up, sucked deep on the smoke, her last drug left. “It was schizo time—in public we were their adored little girls, trotted out at parties and events, talked about on TV, written about. But at home they either ignored us or put us down, but in subtle
ways, especially Sally. It would have been better if she'd just slapped us around—at least we would have known where we stood.
”

“Like what subtle ways?”

“Oh man, where to begin? When I told her I wanted to be an actress, she said, ‘But do you
really
have the talent?' And when Natasha brought her first CD home, she cooed over it but then never unwrapped it. She once said to us, ‘Thank God you're both pretty, because
serious
careers are out of the question.' By the way, she must be feeling a little guilty—she called and gave me their cell numbers.”

“What about your dad?”

“I barely know the guy. I can count on one hand the times we did stuff, just the two of us. And he used to flirt with Natasha, I guess he thought it was cute, but it was
creepy
.”

“Flirt how?”

“He'd admire her figure, tell her she had a lot of sex appeal, play with her hair. For all I know it went further.”

“You think he actually molested her?”

“I don't know, Natasha never said he did. But last time I saw her, she talked a lot about what went down between them. She wanted to confront him.”

A chill shot through me. “
Did
she confront him?”

“I don't know.”

Even if Howard Wolfson didn't molest Natasha, it sounded like he was way out of line and when a girl gets those kind of messages—well, Natasha's sexual history speaks for itself. If actual abuse took place and she did confront him, maybe with threats to go public, could it have driven him to murder her?

“Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

“That's one thing. There are a couple more—Howard isn't Natasha's biological father.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah, he adopted her when she was three-and-a-half. Mom had Natasha when she was like nineteen. She was at Sarah Lawrence on a scholarship, studying journalism, she wanted to be Barbara Walters, the
last
thing she wanted was a kid.”

“Who is Natasha's father?”

“Some classmate Sally dated a few times. He gave her the money for an abortion but the doctor told her she'd waited too long and it would be risky.”

“What happened to him?”

“He moved to Texas, I think, a million years ago, Natasha never met him.”

“Natasha told you all this?”

“Yeah. She forced it all out of Sally, only like five years ago.” She took a deep drag on her smoke. “Lot of fucking secrets in this family, feels
so
good to get it out. Sally couldn't deal with having a kid, she was obsessed with her career, so she dumped Natasha at her dad's, right over there in Poughkeepsie. She visited maybe once a month.”

Another sad new wrinkle to Natasha's story—she was unwanted
to begin with, essentially abandoned for the first years of her life.

“So your mom is from Poughkeepsie?”

“Yeah, her dad was a school custodian. Try
prying
that out of her. In her official bio, it says he was an educator.” She laughed, sharp and hollow. “I'll give her this—she's worked like a dog to get where she is today. A rabid dog.”

“What about your dad?”

“He's from outside Philly. His dad was a pediatrician. My folks are a weird match—Irish Catholic working-class girl meets Jewish doctor's son. Of course, Howard was already half famous when they met. Famous
and
married.”

“Your mom broke up the marriage?”

“Oh yeah, she just moved right in for the kill.”

Julia was talking rat-a-tat-tat, the words pouring out on a wave of pent-up emotion, and I got the strong sense that she didn't really know who
she
was. Her childhood had been a confusing one, full of conflicting messages, lax discipline, ostensible privilege masking parental disengagement, hostility, and maybe worse. There was no guidance, no help developing a sense of herself—now she was trying to build a life on a foundation of sand.

“How do you know all that?”

“Because I ran into his first wife at a party and she went on a drunken rant.” She stopped, dropped her cigarette and ground it out. “Payback's a bitch, Mom.” She let out another laugh, this one of bitter triumph. We started walking again.

“You mean your father's cheating?”

“Yeah. And this time I think it's serioso. Guess who's freaking out? Sally's got a great colorist but her roots are showing. I almost feel sorry for her.
Almost
.”

“Strange that they weren't ambitious for you two girls.”

“When Natasha's CD made a splash Sally was perturbed, like jealous. Howard barely noticed.”

Everything Julia was telling me fit my profile of Howard Wolfson as detached, entitled, and leading with his very-male ego, and of Sally Wolfson as a driven narcissist. But even narcissists often want their children to do well because it confirms their high opinion of themselves and raises their stature in the world. Sally's jealousy of her daughters was puzzling. There was some missing element to my understanding of her psychology.

“Did your mom have a rough childhood?”

“Oh yeah. That's the other thing I wanted to tell you. She
never
talked about it, she's very ashamed, but her own mom was batshit.”

We'd almost reached the midpoint on the Walkway—below us a tugboat was pulling a barge downriver.

“Your grandmother?”

“Yes, I mean she was really crazy, schizophrenic. When Sally was about five she was institutionalized.” She pointed to the east bank, “Right over there, at Hudson River State Hospital.”

Hudson River State was notorious in psychiatric circles. A massive gothic complex that first opened in the late nineteenth century, it's original good intentions gradually gave way to warehousing, neglect, and even abuse of its patients, the foreboding red brick buildings a perfect symbol for the horrors within. It was finally closed for good in 2003.

“And when did she die?”

“She killed herself when Sally was fifteen. Like I said, none of this has ever been discussed.”

“But you and Natasha talked about it?”

“Oh sure. And we'd ask Sally questions but she'd always brush us off. She has this weird ability to just shut out things she can't handle. Wish I'd inherited
that
.”

“Does your mom have any relatives still in the area?”

“Her brother, crazy ass Uncle Bob; he still lives in Poughkeepsie. I've only met him once, she keeps him hidden but good. But I'm sick of talking about my mother. She's a stone-cold bitch and I hate her.”

She reached into her bag, took out a simple metal box and opened it. It was filled with Natasha's grainy gray remains. She reached her hand in and raked her fingers through the ashes, like she was trying to connect with her sister one last time.

“Thanks for looking out for Natasha,” she said.

It meant a lot to me that she said that. “Hey, we're all in this together.”

“You know when I was really little, me and Natasha were close, she was my big sister, we'd play hide and seek, watch TV, do each other's hair. But we were sent to different schools, even in grade school, and we never got close again. But in the last few months we were starting to. We were both scared. But we realized that when it came to family, all we had was each other.”

She grew very still and her eyes filled with tears. Then she reached out over the railing and tipped the box—Natasha's remains, picked up by the breeze, billowed through the air and down to the river below.