Forty four box set books.., p.114
Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44), page 114
“Just make sure you know how to whistle, Steve.”
It was the worst Lauren Bacall ever and sent David into one of his trademark wheezing fits.
“You know, I’ve never been to Hollywood,” I said. “I wish I could tag along.”
“Well, if I land the role, there will be plenty of time for…”
He didn’t finish.
“For what?” I said after a minute.
“I was going to say there’ll be plenty of time for you to visit, but TV being what it is, well, let’s make sure you come out that first day.”
“I’m there like smog.”
CHAPTER 20
I was glad to have the day behind me.
It started with an early morning shift at Back Street, followed by a block of classes, and then my new professional carrot chopping job. My back ached, along with my feet, and my fingers were cut up almost as bad as the carrots from my brain going faster than my hands.
The sun had just fallen behind the mountains as I pulled out of the lot. I turned up the heat and navigated slowly into the roundabout, which was crusted over with ice on top of more ice.
I stepped into the house. It was dark and quiet and cold. I walked through all the rooms, turning on lamps and hitting switches, and checking the closets and under the beds. It had become a new habit. Ever since Kate moved out, even when David was home. I did it once when I got home and then again before going to bed.
I picked up the mail that was scattered on the floor and separated the bills from the junk without opening any of the envelopes.
I was still learning about living on my own. The house was paid for and my student loan covered most of my tuition, so those were big pluses. But that didn’t mean I didn’t have expenses. Last month’s gas bill was like a kick to the gut, five times what it had been at the beginning of fall, and I was giving serious thought to scaling back my satellite TV package to something more basic.
So far I was making ends meet without Kate, but I had originally hoped to reduce my hours at Back Street while in school and that just wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. I would have to make it work if I didn’t want to be completely broke all the time. Besides his company, I was glad to have David’s rent money coming in.
I thought about lighting a fire, but I was too tired. Instead I sat there in the cold and opened my laptop.
It was time.
Time to find out everything I could about Sarah Modine’s death.
***
It was easy to find information on the incident and the Modines. In fact, there were literally hundreds and hundreds of stories about what had happened. It was big news at the time.
Sarah Modine had long dark hair, the bangs hanging just above her eyes. She didn’t look like a lawyer. More like a model. Her lips were full and cheek bones high and she stared at the camera like she knew something, something that she was going to keep to herself.
Charles and Sarah Modine leased a penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Mr. Modine was a partner at a big advertising firm. Mrs. Modine worked in the DA’s office for almost a decade and had quickly risen through the ranks. At the time of her death, she was one of the city’s top prosecutors, handling several high profile cases.
The facts of her death backed up Modine’s account.
Sarah Modine was out running early one morning when she was struck by a car. The driver fled. She died instantly. Two of the witnesses thought it was an accident. But the third one disagreed.
“There was no one else on the street at that time. The driver crossed into the opposite lane and then onto the sidewalk. This was no accident. He took her out. Deliberately. It was out and out cold-blooded murder, is what it was.”
The police seemed to keep an open mind, interviewing several ex-cons who Sarah Modine had prosecuted. They followed up on all death threats she had received and talked to associates and family members of people Sarah Modine had come across who were currently serving time and might have held a grudge.
I clicked on some of the news videos.
The initial TV coverage showed footage captured from a traffic camera, which the police had released to the press in hopes of getting the public’s help in finding the car. The anchorman warned that “What you are about to see is graphic in nature.”
The blurry video showed the accident from a distance, at normal speed and then several times in slow motion. It was all there. The car leaving its lane and jumping up on the sidewalk. The impact. The body flying through the air. The dark pool forming on the pavement.
I remembered my dream. It was the same car I had seen in the alley. It was true that Charles Modine had said it was a GTO, but before the dream I wouldn’t have known the difference between a GTO and a Lamborghini. But here I was staring at one.
“Police are asking for the public’s help in identifying the driver of the car,” the anchorman said.
I went back to some of the earlier photos.
Sarah Modine reminded me a little of a younger Cat Power, back before she cut her hair and went with the platinum pixie. Good Woman started playing in my head, Eddie Vedder singing backup, the song’s sadness mixing with my own and forming a lump in my throat.
“Damn it,” I whispered.
After a minute, I forced myself to watch it again. And again.
It was impossible to gauge the driver’s intent. I could see it both ways, as an accident and then as something more malevolent. It was the type of thing where people could almost see what they wanted to see.
It was also impossible to see the driver. He was just a shadow in the dark behind the tinted glass.
I started reading the accounts again.
The car that killed Sarah Modine had been reported stolen earlier in the week. It was found later that same day in an alley less than five miles from where she was hit. Blood on the vehicle matched the victim’s, but no evidence was found that could help police identify the driver. No gum wrappers, no cigarette butts, no DNA, no fingerprints.
The months went by and investigators turned up nothing. There were no leads, no witnesses coming forward with new information, no trace of the man behind the wheel.
Media interest faded and at one point a few of the tabloids ran stories suggesting that the police were looking into Charles Modine as a person of interest. Sarah Modine had taken out a sizeable life insurance policy years earlier, naming her husband as the sole beneficiary. But police quickly denied that they suspected Charles Modine of any wrongdoing.
“The husband is the first place we look at in cases where the wife dies under suspicious circumstances,” an NYPD captain stated. “And that’s exactly what we did in this case. But Mr. Modine came up clean. His alibi checked out. From all indications, theirs was a very happy marriage. And he certainly was not hurting for money, which shoots a big hole in those murder-for-profit theories currently making the rounds in the scandal sheets. Contrary to some of what’s been printed, Charles Modine is not presently and has never been a person of interest in this case.”
Almost a year after the incident the lead investigator issued a statement.
“From the beginning, the evidence pointed to manslaughter hit-and-run as a very real possibility in this case. The car swerved suspiciously but, really, it could have been anything. A drunk driver. Someone on the phone. Someone eating. A senior citizen losing control of the wheel. Someone who fell asleep for a second. Hell, a bee could have flown in the car, distracting the driver for one terrible moment.
“We will not stop looking for this individual, but at this time it appears more and more like this crime was not a premeditated act.”
After that, Charles Modine, who had refused to talk to the press up until then, put out his own theory of what happened to his wife.
“They killed her,” he said in an exclusive interview with the New York Daily News. “The Church, the DA, the mayor. They all killed her. And now the cops are covering it up.”
It made headlines for a few days but it seemed no one took his claims as anything other than the ravings of a grieving widower.
Interest died out and the stories dried up.
But the Modine saga had one more chapter.
I found the story a few minutes later.
About what happened to Charles Modine.
After.
After his wife’s murder. After her case went cold.
I closed my laptop and bit my lip, wondering why.
Why had Charles Modine lied to me about his own death?
CHAPTER 21
I started working on the fire, but my attention wasn’t on the kindling or the promise of warmth. It was on Charlie Modine.
On March 15, the one-year anniversary of her death, Charlie Modine hanged himself.
I threw in some more scraps of newspaper. They danced for a minute but the wood, aloof and disinterested, refused to join in. I was no Cody Lundin.
I heard the doorbell and stood up out of my catcher’s crouch. I was surprised to see Ty’s truck out front.
“Hey, Babe,” he said when I opened the door.
“Hey, I didn’t think you were getting off for a few more hours.”
He smiled as he took off his jacket, hung it up, and stared at all the cold smoke in the fireplace.
“Emergency house call. The ghost of Jim Morrison dropped by and told me you were having trouble,” he said, taking the poker from my hand. “I’ve come to light your fire.”
“And just in time, too. I’m freezing. Hey, did you eat? I could whip something up.”
“Yeah, that’d be good. How about breakfast for dinner again?”
We had been doing that a lot lately, feasting on eggs over easy, hash browns, and buttered toast with fig jam at night. I headed to the kitchen and got to work, using sweet potatoes for a little variety. Thirty minutes later we were at the table, sitting down to a perfect winter meal.
When we finished, I stood for a while admiring the roaring fire. I pulled up the chairs close to the flames and handed Ty a beer.
He rocked back and forth and I started smiling.
“What?”
“Oh, it’s just something David said the other day,” I said.
“Please do share.”
“He says that between the rocking chairs, the fleece blankets, and my late night tea habit, it feels like he’s moved into a retirement home.”
Ty let out a chuckle.
We sat there and talked about our days. I thought about holding back on what I’d learned about Charlie Modine but then remembered the troubles we had early on in our relationship because either I was keeping too much from Ty or he couldn’t handle the little I told him. We had been down that road in the past and had both promised not to go there again. The truth was hard to hear sometimes, but secrets were harder.
I told him about my Google search and the suicide.
“His story just keeps getting sadder, huh?” he said. “Poor bastard.”
“Yeah. I wonder if he feels guilty about it. Killing himself, I mean. He told me it was a heart attack.”
Ty looked at the flames and nodded.
“And now that I’m putting it together, he’s always covered,” I said. “Coat buttoned up high, scarf around his neck. Maybe he’s hiding it from me.”
“Or it was just the way he dressed when he was alive,” Ty said. “Manhattan and all that. Or maybe he’s just cold.”
“He does seem to complain about how cold he is all the time. Which is kind of weird. They usually don’t seem to feel those things.”
“Everyone has their limits.” Ty got up and threw another log in the fire. “Why should ghosts be any different? Hey, you think Modine is right? That the killer is really here in town?”
“I don’t know. If it is him, there’s still a huge canyon between knowing that and proving he did it. That’s the part I’m struggling with. At some point I’ll need something to take to the police. I have to find a piece of solid evidence. Something that was overlooked, something that links him to her death. But right now all that feels very far away.”
“You think it’s like he says, that it was more than a hit-and-run?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s hard to tell.”
Ty shook his head.
“What?”
“Be careful, that’s all,” he said. “If you assume this guy’s a killer, you have to assume that he’d stop at nothing to keep his secret. I don’t like the idea of you going after him, Abby.”
“I’m not going after him.”
“You know what I mean. If he got away with murder, you have to figure he’s pretty smart.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said.
“Just promise me you’ll take me with you. Or David or that guy from school.”
“I promise. Oh, man. David would be thrilled.”
“Great. Just remind him this here is real life.”
“I will, but I’m not sure he knows what that means.”
He leaned forward, lost in thought or something dark. His face glowed in the flames and the wind howled around the outside of the house.
“I knew someone once who did that,” he said finally, his voice low. “It happened about a year before I came out here. Her name was Julie. She married a friend of mine. And they seemed really happy, you know. But seven months after the wedding, out of the blue, she killed herself. No one saw it coming. It’s been years and Russell’s still not the same. I don’t think he’ll ever be the same.”
I reached over and held his hand.
“I’m so sorry, Ty,” I said, the words feeling small.
He kept looking at the fire.
“I still think about her sometimes, you know, before I drift off. I watch you sleep, watch you breathe, and I think how lucky I am. But it scares me a little. Sometimes it scares me a lot. I don’t know what I would do if I ever lost you.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Ah, hell. I’m sorry for being such a downer. You know a lot more about all that than I do. Death and dealing with it. After all this time, I know you still miss him.”
“I do,” I said. “But it helps being able to see him once in a while. And it helps that you understand. It makes me love you even more. If that’s possible.”
We didn’t talk too much about Jesse, but the few times we did Ty was always gentle. But there was also a current beneath it, beneath us.
“I love you,” he said slowly, just above a whisper, his words blending in with the crackling and hissing of the fire.
I took his hand and pulled him into me. I wasn’t sure, but as I was kissing him there, I thought I felt a tear run down his cheek.
CHAPTER 22
“Have one of these,” Miguel said, sliding a plastic container across the table. “Just a little something I threw together before leaving the house this morning.”
I put one in my mouth, the subtle tartness of the cream giving way to an intense burst of brininess as it hit my tongue.
“Oh, man,” I said, shaking my head. “What are these?”
“Marionberry blini with crème fraîche and caviar. Have another.”
I reached for one but then stopped. I heard David’s voice.
“Thanks, no, I need to be light on my feet in there,” I said, pointing in the direction of the lecture hall. “Otherwise I would. Believe me.”
Miguel smiled.
“It makes me jealous of her,” I said.
“Of who?”
“Your future wife. I mean, she’s gonna eat like a royal.”
His fleshy cheeks turned dark as he looked away.
I stopped in the bathroom to wash my hands before heading to class.
Lecture days were a pain. It never took too long for the stress to reach the boiling point as Dubois called on one student after another. On the surface it might appear that she was checking for understanding, but the reality was that she was on the hunt for a victim. Someone she could dangle over the bubbling pot of culinary ignorance before finally dropping their carcass inside.
And it was never just one question. It was an interrogation that sooner or later always ended the same way. In death.
So far Miguel was the only one who had managed to get out alive.
I was pretty sure no one enjoyed it, but for me it was different. It was torture. I heard once that most people would rather die than speak in public, and having experienced both I couldn’t really disagree with the majority. It didn’t matter that I knew all the students and had worked with them since September. When I was called on to speak, they all turned into a faceless, heartless blob of judgment.
My brain clogged up and stopped working. I came off as a slacker, as someone who hadn’t bothered doing the assigned reading, even though I had. Most of the time, I even knew the answer, but my nervousness stifled it and it slipped back far inside my head often resulting in a disappointing look of pity or disdain from the instructor.
I wanted to think I was getting better at it, but I knew I wasn’t.
I took my seat just a few seconds before she stepped to the front and scanned the room, noting the names of the absent on her clipboard.
“Bonjour,” she said.
And then we were off. I strapped in and held on tight. She started by talking about the origin of sauces and how they began to spread in France in 1691. She described it as a “culinary revolution” that took the country by storm.
“And then, in the nineteenth century, Antonin Careme furthered French classical cooking, developing the ‘Grande Cuisine,’ or the high art of French cooking, perfecting and classifying four of the five mother sauces of which you are learning about,” she said, pacing back and forth. “And for those of you who have the passion for watching cooking shows on your televisions, keep in mind that Monsieur Careme is considered one of the first celebrity chefs, well-known throughout France.”
She stopped and looked out at the class. She found Miguel, who actually seemed happy that he was on her radar.
“So then, Monsieur Berasategui, who was it that added the fifth and final mother sauce?”
“Auguste Escoffier,” Miguel said. “In the twentieth century, he added the hollandaise and its derivatives covering classic emulsions.”
