The self made widow, p.19
The Self-Made Widow, page 19
And maybe, Kenny thought, as he looked into the miraculous spark of life in the baby’s gleeful eyes, he wanted to sabotage his life as much as Andrea did hers.
Both of them were so afraid that settling in meant giving up. Settling in, settling down, becoming comfortable and happy with their place meant they had become comfortable with themselves.
Kenny knew that both of them were terrified of being comfortable in their own skins.
Another gunshot echoed.
“Fuck,” Andrea said.
“Quarter in the swear jar,” Kenny absently said.
“Fuck the swear jar,” Andrea muttered. Her hand tapped the rail nervously, but in a discernible rhythm. Kenny suspected it was a timing mechanism for her, a way of measuring the gears that were grinding in her brain. He’d never seen her do that before, though he suspected it was something she preferred others not see. She added, “And fuck Molly Goode.”
“You’re ready to give up?” he asked, hoping she would say both yes and no.
“Fuck Molly Goode,” Andrea said again.
“Feels like we’re going over ground we’ve already covered,” Kenny muttered.
He was tired. Since he and Jimmy had missed the last New Jersey Transit train home the previous night, Kenny had sprung for an Uber and they hadn’t gotten home until almost four a.m. He’d been woken up at eight thirty by a call from Sitara, curious if he would be coming into the office, because Jimmy and Shelby were both already there.
“Teacher’s pets,” he muttered and hung up, falling back asleep for another hour.
During the Uber ride home, buzzed from the three watered-down bourbons he had milked, Kenny had talked with Jimmy about life and love. His friend was so free and casual about both that Kenny marveled at his seeming indifference to the burden of responsibilities and expectations that were placed on everyone who had just turned thirty.
If they weren’t married yet, there was something wrong with them.
If they were married, but didn’t have kids yet, there was something wrong with them.
If they had kids, but didn’t have a mortgage yet, there was something wrong with them.
If they had a mortgage, but didn’t have a prestigious pre-K sorted out yet, there was something wrong with them.
If they had a prestigious pre-K sorted out, but didn’t have a college fund established yet, there was something wrong with them.
For millennials, the word yet was both a lure and a cudgel.
He thought Andrea wasn’t going to accept the death of her case. Kenny could admit he’d gotten involved in this for all the wrong reasons, so that made it easier to admit it was over.
“Better now than if we’d gone further down the road,” he said aloud, surprised he’d said it at all, much less in a baby voice while speaking to JoJo. What was it about babies, he wondered.
“Further down the road might have gotten us closer to our destination,” she said.
“Or further away from the simple truth,” he said, still speaking in JoJo talk.
“You’re ready to drop this?” she asked.
“Even if you gathered a mountain of evidence, cocaine in Derek’s system when he had a heart condition is going to be reasonable doubt to any reasonable jury.”
“I know,” she said.
Kenny stood up, holding JoJo out. “What do you want me to do with this?”
Andrea gestured to the portable playpen that was opened up on the deck. He put JoJo inside. The baby wobbled on her legs a bit before dropping to her ass. At first, she struggled to stand up again, but then she was distracted by the geometric blocks lying in the pen and she started playing with them.
Andrea’s cell phone rang. She screened the call. She answered.
“Guess what I have in my hands?” Detective Rossi asked.
“A request from Derek Goode’s insurance company for an exhumation of his corpse and a toxicology examination of the remains,” she said.
Frustrated he couldn’t say, “I told you so,” Rossi said, “Shit, how did you know?”
Andrea didn’t respond.
“I’ll let you know what we find out,” he said.
Rossi hung up. Andrea put the phone down.
“They will find cocaine in his system,” she said. “And Molly skates.”
Kenny shrugged his shoulders and left, walking down the deck and around the side of the house. Andrea looked out over the pond, wondering how she had gotten this so wrong.
28
MIDDAY on Thursday, Brianne Singer was the last to arrive for lunch. The hostess at Mediterra in Princeton walked her over to the outdoor table where Molly Goode and Crystal Burns waited. Andrea had not been invited, at Molly’s request, though the others hadn’t complained. Brianne sat down at the table arranged in the corner of the tented sitting area facing Hulfish Street and the back entrance to Palmer Square.
It was a beautiful, sunny day; the air was crisp and the breeze light. A busboy immediately filled Brianne’s glass with water. Crystal had a mineral water and Molly was on her second cosmo.
“It’s going to be that kind of a lunch?” asked Brianne.
“It was that kind of a breakfast,” Molly replied. Brianne could tell she was fighting against the alcohol that was already in her system. She hoped her friend wouldn’t drink much more, since Molly tended to get meaner the more she drank.
“What did they say when they called you?” asked Brianne.
Crystal gave her the letter that was on the table. “Molly let me read this because you were running late.”
Brianne thought, Yes, Crystal, you always know everything first. She looked at the letter. It was an official request from the Hanscomb Insurance Company to the Mercer County medical examiner that Derek Goode be exhumed for a toxicology report. The police had to formally pass the request to Molly, because the decision to accept or deny the request was hers.
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Crystal said.
“They want to avoid paying out the life insurance,” Molly added.
“But don’t they need a reason of some kind?” Brianne asked.
“They have three million reasons,” Molly slurred slightly.
Crystal googled some information on her phone and said, “I think you can say no.”
“Yes,” Molly said. “But if I refuse their request, they can claim I violated the terms of our policy, and if I do allow them to exhume Derek, I risk that he violated the policy.”
Crystal felt nothing but sympathy for Molly’s situation. She wanted to believe her friend was an innocent victim, so she did.
Brianne felt nothing but uncertainty about it. She wanted to believe her friend, but she knew she couldn’t.
“Isn’t it odd the police didn’t do an exam when Derek died?” Brianne probed.
“Andrea has quite the influence on them,” Molly said, smoothly taking the last sip of her drink and then wiggling her glass in the air until she caught the waiter’s attention. “Does she have the same with the two of you?”
Crystal and Brianne didn’t know how to respond.
“Surely, she has discussed all this with you,” Molly said.
They hemmed and hawed.
“It’s quite all right,” Molly continued. “She was rather direct in asking me and I was equally direct in answering her. Why would I kill Derek?”
She picked up the letter that had been left on the table and waved it. “Depending on what they find after they dig my husband up, he either died of natural causes, or he died of self-inflicted natural causes.”
“What are you going to do then?” Crystal asked.
A baby at a table right next to theirs started to cry. The mother sat alone with her child. She was Indian, or Pakistani; none of them knew how to tell the difference. The woman picked the boy up from his travel seat, which had been resting atop a high chair. The boy looked positively gelatinous. The mother, thin with very piercing brown eyes, seemed a little embarrassed, but as she put the baby against her chest and burped him, she strove for defiant.
Eyes turned back as the waiter deposited another cosmopolitan on the table for Molly. She took a leisurely sip. “Well, I have an appointment at the police station with that swarthy little Detective Rossi and his brutish companion at three o’clock.”
That surprised the others. Brianne said, “Today? That’s in two hours. Are you sure you should be drinking before going to meet them?”
“Darling, I think I should be drinking so that I can go meet them,” Molly cooed. She smiled, then took another relaxed sip of her supportive pink concoction.
* * *
■ ■ ■
AT THREE O’CLOCK that afternoon, Molly walked through the front entrance of the police station. From behind the security glass, Sgt. Templeton announced her arrival and buzzed her in. She was led through the rows of cubicles in the open office space to a larger cubicle that contained two desks and two extra chairs. Detectives Rossi and Garmin stood up to greet her.
“I have a room reserved,” Rossi said as he picked up a folder from his desk and gestured to an open door along a wall.
They entered the conference room, where two other men stood up to greet her. The shorter man was Caucasian, midforties, doughy, with hair sweat-slicked to one side, the other African American, large but firmer, likely the same age, also with a receding hairline. Both men might as well have worn name tags that read “Insurance Agent.”
Rossi introduced them: Lawrence “Call me Larry” Miller and Harold “Call me Harry” Walters. Each professed their sincerest condolences for Molly’s loss as they were seconds away from demanding she dig her husband’s body out of the ground so she could lose some more.
“Mrs. Goode,” Larry said, “we regret making this request of you.”
“But, in seeking resolution for your husband’s life insurance policy, several questions were raised,” Harry interjected.
They ping-ponged off each other, two heads rattling off one long, run-on sentence. Molly lost interest less than halfway through. The cosmos, on top of the two drinks she’d had that morning, had taken their toll and she had a splitting headache. Finally, she said, “Boys, let’s stop with the extreme oozing of sincerity and concern. I’m too tired, and frankly, have drank too much today to appreciate your efforts.”
The men all glanced at each other uncomfortably.
“Let’s cut to the chase. If you dig Derek up and he has drugs in his system, then he was in breach of his policy,” she said. “And if I don’t let you dig him up, then I forfeit the policy.”
Larry and Harry reluctantly nodded.
“Do you have any reason to believe your husband had been doing drugs, Mrs. Goode?” asked Garmin.
“No, Detective Simian—I mean Garmin.” She abruptly corrected herself, covering her mouth with her hands, but it wasn’t enough to stifle the release of a giggle. Composing herself, Molly said, “No, I don’t. But Derek’s job required him to entertain in the city a lot. He did drink.”
Then, turning to Larry and Harry: “Which wasn’t against the insurance policy.”
Then, turning back to Rossi and Garmin, she lied: “Did he do anything more than drink? Not to the best of my knowledge. Not since college. Well, a little weed when we were first married, but nothing since the kids were born. Except a drink here or there or everywhere.”
She turned back to Harry and Larry again: “Still, not a violation of the policy.”
Part of Rossi thought she was playing them all. Coy, innocent, hurt, slandered, angry, and righteous all at the same time. And she was doing it well. Maybe Andrea was right?
Molly absently rummaged through her purse. “Where do I sign?” she said abruptly.
The men were a little tentative. They had expected more of a fight.
“I have nothing to hide,” she said. “If I lose out on the insurance policy, then I lose out on the insurance policy. It wouldn’t be the worst thing my husband has ever done to me. I mean, three million dollars would certainly rank right up there, but at least he was sweet enough to leave me four years on the mortgage, thirty-one thousand a year in property taxes, and two college educations to pay off.”
She pulled out a pen and gave the men a sweet “fuck you” smile.
Rossi removed a document from his folder. Like Olympic-level synchronized swimmers, Larry and Harry took turns deftly removing separate papers from the one folder they’d placed on the desk. Molly held her Montegrappa Fortuna Mosaico pen and signed her name several times. She returned the pen to her purse.
“Let me know the time of the exhumation,” she said. “I would like to be there to monitor the activity.”
“You have to be there, ma’am,” said Rossi. “And we will let you know once it’s scheduled.”
Molly firmly shook everyone’s hands and left.
* * *
■ ■ ■
AT FOUR FIFTEEN that afternoon, Vince Rossi met with Andrea and Sathwika at the Starbucks in MarketFair Mall. Because it was after school, the women had dragged several of their brood along. Sadie chased Sathwika’s eldest son, Divam, around the mall as both tried—and failed—to keep up with Sarah. Sitting within a group of tables inside the coffee shop’s mall storefront, Andrea struggled with JoJo, who wanted to join the scampering kids, while Aditya rested in his mother’s arms.
Sathwika related, almost word for word, what Molly, Crystal, and Brianne had talked about during lunch at Mediterra. From her adjoining table, she had heard everything they had discussed and, even though she hadn’t been recording the conversation, relayed it back with perfect recall.
Earlier, Andrea had received a text from Brianne apologizing that she hadn’t been invited to lunch. Andrea learned when and where, then responded politely: It’s okay. Molly will tell you I already confronted her.
Since Andrea had wanted eyes and ears on the scene, she had called Sathwika.
Sathwika’s takeaway was that Molly had been so dismissively casual about Andrea’s accusations, she had convinced Crystal and Brianne there was no substance to them.
What Sathwika and Rossi didn’t know was that Brianne, certainly, and Crystal, possibly, had a vested interest in believing Molly because it meant protecting their own husbands. Andrea wasn’t quite ready to share that with them yet. Dragging Rossi and Sathwika into Jeff’s possible illegal activities seemed unwise at the moment.
“Molly presented herself as very aware of her situation and very comfortable in her narrative,” Sathwika said. “She’s the ultimate conundrum for people like us: you can’t tell if she’s telling the truth or if she believes the lie so strongly that it becomes the truth.”
“Having just spent half an hour with her, I agree with your assessment,” said Rossi. “But you’re not even covering the worst aspect to all of that.”
“What’s that?” asked Sathwika.
“That if people like us can’t tell for sure if she’s lying, then a jury never will,” said Andrea.
Rossi took a sip of his black coffee. He scowled. He hated Starbucks. He said, “Molly was surprisingly relaxed at the prospect of forfeiting the policy. Could the money really not matter to her?”
Andrea shrugged and said, “When will the exhumation take place?”
“There’s urgency to get this done,” Rossi said, “so probably sometime early next week.”
“Can I be there?” asked Andrea.
“You most certainly cannot,” said Rossi.
“Can a member of the fourth estate be there?” asked Sathwika.
“Shit,” said Rossi. “Please, no. . . .”
29
KENNY sauntered across the grounds of the Dutch Neck church cemetery with inappropriate glee. It was Wednesday at eight fifteen a.m. Even though they’d had several days to prepare for him, Rossi and Garmin were in no mood for Kenny’s antics.
“Hi, Detectives.” He waved to them.
Molly Goode stood off to one side of the exhumation crew hired to remove the casket from the ground. A heavyset woman in her late forties with salt-and-pepper hair and a dour demeanor watched over the backhoe as it dug into the soil. Larry and Harry oversaw the operation.
The woman approached Kenny. “I’m Diane Kerwin, the cemetery director for the church.”
“I’m Kenneth Lee,” he replied, and then, still not having gotten permission from his former editor to use them as the paper of record, added, “I’m with the Princeton Post.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I don’t understand what you don’t understand,” he replied.
“Why you’re here?”
“To report on the exhumation of Derek Goode,” he said. “I mean, you didn’t think I was doing a ‘Tombstones of West Windsor’ article, did you? But come to think of it, that could be kind of cool, too.”
“Why would you want to do a story about that?” she said.
“The tombstones? I guess it’s interesting, seeing the old family names and how they inform the current—”
“I meant about the exhumation!” she said more loudly.
Rossi and Garmin exchanged a glance. Garmin muttered, “FuckingKennyLee.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kenny said. The grin on his face managed to be acidic and innocent at the same time. “Derek. Sure. Well, a forty-year-old man dies of a heart attack and a few weeks later his body is being exhumed, it raises some questions. And you might not know this about me, which I’d be a little surprised and disappointed if you didn’t, but I tend to be a bit of a nuisance when there are questions looking for answers.”
“But how did you find out about—” Diane started, but Molly interrupted her.
“Mr. Lee was informed by a close friend of mine who, apparently, has decided she does not want to be a close friend of mine any longer,” Molly said.
