The Heritage Paper

Chapter 36



Rose didn’t acknowledge their presence, as her nose remained glued to the book she unsteadily held. Veronica noticed magazines scattered across the floor. All of them were of the celebrity gossip type. The catchy theme of Entertainment Tonight played in the background at earsplitting volume.

Veronica approached the prisoner and introduced herself, trying to match the loudness of the television. Rose looked up at them in a childlike way. They didn’t register to her, but she looked happy to see them nonetheless, and announced, “Welcome to the Grand Hotel!”

This should be good, Veronica thought. She was admittedly no Mike Wallace and opened the questioning with, “I love your dress.”

Rose smiled. Her teeth were whiter than Veronica expected. “It’s my wedding dress.”

Veronica had researched Rose Shepherd backward and forward, so she knew she had never been married. But then again, in her mind, she might have been.

Veronica’s eyes swept the room once more. The choice to come here seemed right at the time, but now she wasn’t so sure. The room was full of entertainment—TV, movies, books. So she tried to play off that. “You look like a movie star.”

The comment seemed to awaken Rose. “Ever since a little girl I wanted to be an actress. I always wanted to see my name up in lights like Jean Harlow,” she replied enthusiastically. Zach clicked off the television so they could better hear. She didn’t seem to notice.

The answer matched Veronica’s research. According to a 1976 TIME Magazine article in which Rose gave her only interview about Greta’s murder, she mentioned that the Shepherds came to New York following World War I. As a young woman, Rose caught the acting bug, and while she never became the next Jean Harlow, she did earn a small role in a 1949 off-Broadway play.

In the 1950s she moved behind the camera—another one of her passions—and opened her own photography shop on the Upper West Side. Her big break came when she was chosen as the photographer for the wedding of Aligor Sterling’s son. Aligor was so impressed with her work that he hired her for all photography work for Sterling Publishing. By most accounts, she spent the next decades living out the successful life of a professional single woman in New York. There was nothing in her past that would foreshadow a violent future. That’s what made what happened next so perplexing.

She was arrested in May of 1975 for blackmail and extortion. It wasn’t a crime that made headlines like the Mrs. Cleaver stabbing had, months earlier. Rose Shepherd claimed to have come across information of a sensitive nature that she felt could hurt Sterling Publishing, and tried to extort money from Aligor Sterling in exchange for her silence. He alerted the authorities and cooperated in a sting operation. When she tried to blackmail him on tape, she was arrested.

The content of the “sensitive” photos was anybody’s guess because the court sealed them. But no action was taken against Sterling, so Veronica figured they might have been embarrassing, but weren’t illegal. The bigger question was what would cause a sixty-something woman to suddenly turn on her biggest client and blackmail him? It seemed like she was biting the hand that fed her. But then things took an even more bizarre turn. While in prison awaiting her trial, she strangled her cellmate.

Likely feeling guilty over their mother’s murder, Aligor Sterling offered the Peterson children lifetime jobs at his company. Carsten took advantage of this opportunity and moved quickly up the ranks. But Eddie had always dreamed of following the family tradition of working in law enforcement, and never took him up on it. Veronica wondered if the security job for Kingston had some connection to that original offer.

Rose’s eyes returned to the television. Zach turned it back on just in time for the anchorwoman to deliver a story about a one time A-list actress who had fallen on hard times and reportedly attempted suicide.

“I feel so sad for her,” Rose surprisingly blurted out. “She was forced to go through life under the glare of the spotlight, I know exactly how it feels. I once tried to kill myself because a boy broke my heart. I just wanted to make the pain stop.”

Rose pointed out the scars on her wrist to confirm her suicide attempt. The scars were faded with time, but it was obvious that her unstable behavior began long before she shared that cell with Greta Peterson.

“I want to ask you about a day last year when a man named Carsten Peterson came to see you,” Veronica said.

Her eyes glazed over as she stared at the television screen. Veronica asked again, louder this time, like she was talking to one of her children.

Rose looked up with a baffled look. “I don’t know—who is he?”

“You killed his mother,” Veronica said directly.

Rose remained entrenched in her own little world, showing no outward emotion. “It’s so sad when a child has to grow up without a mother.”

Veronica was losing her cool, but luckily the unflappable Zach stepped in, “Rose—I’m trying to figure out how a woman in her sixties with a no criminal record, wakes up one morning and decides to blackmail one of the world’s most powerful men … who also happens to be her meal ticket. My guess is that it was about more than the money. Maybe you should think about cleansing your soul before it’s too late.”

Her eyes un-glazed, and she was suddenly in the moment. “I didn’t blackmail anybody.”

“A court of law didn’t agree with you.”

“That’s not true, the blackmail charges were dropped. The only thing I was convicted of was murder,” she said, surprisingly coherent.

“Only? Let me guess, you didn’t do that either.”

“They had Jew lawyers to say I did. They were very powerful men.”

“So you’re saying that Sterling conspired to frame you for murder. Why would he do that?” Zach pushed on, needing to take advantage before she drifted back into la-la land.

She clammed up, looking nervous. The woman was ninety-nine, serving a life sentence without parole, what did she have to lose? “Shh—the Jews can get you anywhere,” she whispered.

Veronica found it peculiar that a man who ran an organization dedicated to Jewish causes would hire someone with such views, no matter how talented a photographer she was.

Zach pleaded with her, “Please, Rose, it’s very important.”

“I found out things about him,” she said quietly like she was worried Big Brother was listening. Everyone inched closer. “I came across things.”

“What things were those?”

“A good girl never kisses and tells.”

Veronica was pretty sure that she was implying that she’d had an affair with Sterling. As Maggie might say—super gross!

“I was the only non-Jew associated with Sterling Publishing. Do you think he really hired me because my photographs were so special?”

Veronica was curious what Mr. Conspiracy Theory, Ben Youkelstein, thought about this, as he’d been mysteriously quiet during the interview process. She wondered if they might have crossed paths at some point, both working for Sterling.

But his only question for her was, “You said you tried to kill yourself over a boyfriend when you were younger. What was his name?”

She flickered a reminiscing smile. “Henry Wolf. He died in World War II, and I could never marry another man … including Aligor.”

Veronica had no idea what Ben was getting at, but it appeared that it would be the final question. Before they could dig deeper into Carsten’s final visit, Rose Shepherd drifted off to sleep.

The interview was over.