Lloyd Corricelli - Ronan Marino 01 - Two Redheads & a Dead Blonde (7 page)

FIVE

We
pulled into the driveway and to my dismay our father’s red Ford Explorer was parked out front.

“Please tell me you didn’t call Dad.”

“No, Mom. I figured they should know before they heard it somewhere else.”

At times like this, the benefits of living three thousand miles from family were appealing. We used to be a quiet little family that didn’t talk all that much, and that’s how I liked it. Somewhere along the way it all changed. I blamed it on my father who was made to take “people” classes as part of his professional development when he made captain in the fire department. Now he expected all of us to be touchy-feely types who sat around the campfire holding hands and singing “Kumbayah.” I hated that song.

“Thanks for picking me up.”

Marc pulled me into a hug. Damn my father.

“Let me know if there’s anything you need.”

I nodded and got out of his car. Before I reached the front porch, my mother flew out of the house like a drunken bee and hugged me. I hadn’t seen her move that fast since she got food poisoning from some bad chicken and dashed to the bathroom like Jackie Joyner.

“Oh baby, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Do they think you did it?”

“No, it looks like it was an accident,” I replied, not wanting to go into a long discussion about my true thoughts.

My father walked out, and I half-expected him to hug me too. To my relief, he didn’t.

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked.

“We thought maybe you didn’t want to be alone,” Dad said.

I would have settled for a hug from him if they’d leave. Both had that pained, concerned parent look, and I didn’t want them to suffer all day worrying about me. I could suck it up and deal with them for an hour or so.

As much as I loved my parents, they could be a royal pain in the ass. It wouldn’t be so bad if Dad was working but since he retired, he was always looking for something to do. Marc told me that he comes by his station every day, sometimes twice. If he had a hobby, it might occupy his time, but it was evident to my brother and I that we were his hobby. I might have to invest in buying him a model train set to keep him out of our hair.

* * * *

Joseph Dominick Marino was born during World War II. The son of Italian immigrants, he grew up in Revere, a heavily Italian community next to Boston, and put himself through Malden Catholic High School. After graduating, he enlisted in the Marines and went off to a place called Vietnam, where he liked it so much he volunteered for a second tour. Highly decorated for valor, he returned not to a hero’s reception but to protests and hippies calling him a “baby killer.”

I asked why he put up with it, and he said those people were “commie” plants sent to discredit the military. He didn’t want to give them ammunition by proving them right by smacking them around. To my father, everyone out of the mainstream in the sixties, from John Lennon to Jim Morrison, were communist plants.

When the military discharged him, he used his G.I. bill and entered what was then called Lowell State College. That’s where he met my mother, Karol Lee Kelly. That’s right, an Irish girl, Protestant to boot. Their parents were against it, but it was love at first sight and six months later Mom and Dad were married. A year later I was born. Soon after, the Lowell Fire Department hired him, so he dropped out of the university and spent the next thirty-three years on the city payroll.

While I was growing up, there were stretches where he would be gone for days down at the station. When he was home, he always made sure to spend quality time with Marc and me. We had some great whiffle ball games out in the backyard in the summer and snowball fights in the winter.

He also spent a lot of time talking to us about things like pride, honor and loyalty–personal attributes the Corps and his own father had instilled in him. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about at the time, but as I got older his lessons served me well.

He also taught us to fight and defend ourselves when necessary. The most important thing you can ever do in this life, he said, was to stick up for those that can’t defend themselves and stand up for what is right. That was also a lesson he learned in the Marines to justify going to ‘Nam, or so I’ve heard from some fellow veterans.

The first time I got in a fight was at Pike Street Elementary. It was in second grade and Billy Tolen, the class bully, shoved me down into a mud puddle. I went home crying, and my father threatened to punish me if I didn’t go back and kick Billy’s ass. He’d spent all those hours teaching me to defend myself and was upset that I’d just lay down and taken it from a bully. I hated him more than anything at that moment but the next day, Billy again pushed me in the puddle. When I stood up, he tried it again but this time I fought back. I took him out with one punch to the nose and made him cry. Billy’s bully days ended at that moment, and I never backed down from a fight again. That’s not to say I won many fights when I was younger. My smart mouth managed to get me beat up more times than I can count.

When I told my father I planned to go into the military as an officer he beamed with pride, assuming it would be with his beloved Corps. He seemed a bit disappointed when I chose the Air Force but that didn’t prevent him from smiling from ear to ear when he pinned on my gold Second Lieutenant bars on commissioning day. He told me that day I’d always made him proud. Though he hadn’t said anything recently, I could tell he was still a bit peeved about my leaving the Air Force. Eventually I hoped he’d get over it.

My mother was the prototypical fifties housewife, even though I’m most certainly not of that generation. She worked sporadic part-time jobs, usually around the holidays, but generally was content to stay home and raise her children. Supper was on the table every night promptly at six, and our house was always immaculate. Mom was a regular June Cleaver
,
and my brother and I were better off for it. I know far too many people forced to shuttle their children off to daycare so they can make the mortgage payment. I don’t blame them though; it’s the times we live.

I never really connected with my mother as much as Marc did. Maybe it was because I was the oldest child and her maternal instincts were newer. I hated asking her if I could do anything she might remotely construe as dangerous, because the automatic answer was always no. For example, I wanted to play football, but because I was smaller than a lot of kids she talked my father out it. Marc, only three years my junior, got to play, and did so through high school.

That doesn’t mean she wasn’t a great mom. She always made sure we had “cool” clothing when my father could care less. Marc and I would have been wearing leisure suits to school if our Dad had his way. Mom was the one who convinced my father to stop making us get buzz cuts and let us wear our hair like we wanted.

Despite all the issues, I’d say between the two of them they did a hell of a job raising us.

* * * *

Mom and Dad followed me into the house, and I could smell the freshly brewed coffee. The smell of perfume on a woman is easily my favorite aroma; coffee is a close second, ranking just above warm chocolate chip cookies. I prayed my mother had made the coffee because my father had a real problem producing a decent cup of Joe. You’d think a guy who spent over thirty years on the fire department would have learned, but no. His coffee had the consistency of mud and tasted just like it. Even the instant coffee packs that came in the Meals Ready to Eat I had in the military tasted better.

I was relieved when I saw the coffee wasn’t oozing out of the filter like swamp gas. I sat down at the kitchen table and waited for their inevitable questions. The wait was short lived.

“Any word on what happened, son?” Dad asked.

“No, not really. They’re doing an autopsy today. Hopefully that will help.”

“Are you going?” he asked.

I’d been to numerous autopsies so it wasn’t necessarily a dumb question. I’d even attended one of someone I’d known. I didn’t ever want to do that again.

“I don’t have a badge anymore, Dad. Besides, I don’t think I’d want to see her like that.”

“I can understand.”

He had seen his fair share of death working for the fire department and in the service, although he never talked about it. It was one of the few things that he and I could understand about each other.

My mother put a cup of coffee in front of me. “Do you want anything to eat?”

“No. Marc and I stopped at the Raven.”

“Oh good,” she said in a disappointed voice. She would have felt better if I’d let her make me something, but that would have kept them at my house longer.

They stared at me, waiting for some type of revelation I suppose. I just sipped on the coffee.

“Look, I know you’re worried,” I finally said, “but I’ll be fine.”

“We know that,” Dad said, “but we also know that you cared about her. It was obvious even if you didn’t say it to us.”

There it was again, my father using those “people” classes on me. I’d had enough for today. I finished my coffee and stood.

“I’m going to take a nap.”

“Uh, okay son,” Dad said. “Do you want us to do anything?”

“Please, just go home. I promise I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” Mom asked.

“Very.”

They pouted, slumped their shoulders and walked slowly toward the door like two kids being forced off to bed. Through the window, I watched their SUV pull out of the driveway and out of sight. Now that the slow torture was over, I could spend some time getting my thoughts together in peace.

I went upstairs and found my bed made and everything tidied up. My mother couldn’t stand a dirty or unkempt house, even if it wasn’t her mess. Thankfully I hadn’t left anything embarrassing lying around. I sat on the bed and thought about Karen. Last night had been such an incredibly powerful moment; I found it hard to believe it was to be our last one together.

The drug issue crept back into my mind. I tried to reassure myself that Karen wouldn’t use, especially something as deadly as a speedball. If she had, I would have noticed, right? I was trained to spot that type of behavior and always prided myself on the ability to do so. The possibility that I had missed it was slim. Even still, I had my doubts.

I lay down, but my mind ignored the desire to sleep, and I started to compile a list of people who might have wanted Karen dead. No one immediately jumped to the top of the list; it was fairly empty in fact. She was very well liked and had lots of friends. Outside of a random act, there was no reason anyone should want her dead. A random attacker though wouldn’t have bothered to shoot her full of drugs. It could very well have been an accident, but until I ruled out all the possibilities I’d have a hard time accepting that.

After twenty minutes in bed I was unable to fall asleep, so I got up and went downstairs. The coffee maker was still on, and I poured myself another cup. As I sipped on the hot beverage, I speculated that, in my infatuation with Karen, I may have overlooked any signs of drug use. There had been no track marks on that magnificent body I’d explored in the greatest of detail. I was fully confident that there is no way I would have failed to notice something so obvious.

I tried to think about other things, like the good times we had in our short time together, but was unable to put the drug issue to rest. The lingering doubt would continue if I weren’t able to completely rule it out. Besides talking to her friends, who might deny it, the only other way I figured I’d find anything out was to check her apartment. If she had been using, there might be something there to prove it. I hoped not. I grabbed my jacket and keys and headed out.

* * * *

Karen had lived in an old, white double-decker subdivided into student apartments, just around the corner from the university’s North Campus. It was close to my first apartment or, as my roommates and I referred to it, the Anheuser-Busch campus.

I could have approached the building’s owner and pretended to be a relative, but I didn’t feel like running a con today. I simply picked the lock and let myself in. It was a skill I’d learned in the Air Force when we wanted to get into a building to set up a wireless surveillance system without the residents knowing. I never thought I’d use it again after I left. As I entered, the smell of apple blossoms greeted me. Her apartment always smelled nice because of the potpourri she kept in little baskets scattered throughout the rooms. I was surprised to find the place neat. It didn’t even look like Morley and Garcia had even bothered to do a search. Sloppy police work was inexcusable, and I was surprised Shea let them get away with it.

I thought of my first time there. It was our third date and after dinner and a movie, Karen invited me up for a drink. I never did get that drink, and we were half-naked by the time we made it to her front door. The next morning, I felt like I had been in a fifteen round bout with Wonder Woman. I considered using the Viagra I kept for emergencies, but at my age that could set a dangerous precedent. I had never tried it, and the image of me walking around with a three-day hard-on was not pretty. I chose not to take the chance until it became a necessity.

Men handle divorce differently. Some guys go out and screw anything that moves in celebration, and some avoid relationships of any kind. I chose the latter. After what my ex had done to my psyche, I was cautious, almost fearful of a new relationship. I approached women carefully, never committing and never allowing myself to develop feelings. Anytime I found myself getting too close, I simply ended it. Karen caused me to rethink that approach. She had a way of making me feel that she was interested in nothing but being with me. I never felt pressured, and I needed that badly. After six weeks together, I was miraculously almost back to my pre-marriage self.