To Love and to Perish

THIRTEEN


CORY WANTED TO RACE home and replace the items he’d taken from Brennan’s. I knew we wouldn’t make it in time without risking a serious accident. Instead, I convinced Cory to plug Elizabeth Potter’s home address into his GPS and follow the directions over there, hoping we’d learn something of use.

But minutes later when he pulled out in front of an oncoming car that swerved to narrowly miss us, I realized just how dangerous it was to ride with an agitated driver. “Cory!”

He pulled over to the side of the road. “You drive. I can’t concentrate.”

We hopped out and ran around the car. I slid in and adjusted the driver’s seat position. Cory put the passenger seat all the way back so he was almost lying flat. I pulled out and continued to follow the instructions from the GPS.

“What am I going to tell Brennan when he realizes that I took his stuff?”

“The truth.”

“What if he never speaks to me again?”

Any answer I thought of would be nothing more than empty reassurances. I opted for silence. When we arrived at Elizabeth’s townhouse fifteen minutes later, Cory asked to remain in the car, claiming he felt sick.

I walked up the sparkling white gravel sidewalk to the front stoop, taking in the old-fashioned orange brick townhouse and cracked cement porch, trying to guess her rent. I estimated it at the lower end of the scale.

No one answered when I rang the front bell. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Elizabeth, no doubt, had a day job.

Across the street, a row of mailboxes sat, numbered to correspond to the townhouses. I considered leaving her a note. As I hesitated, the neighbor’s door opened and an elderly woman in a light blue housedress poked her head out.

“Are you looking for her?” She jerked her finger at Elizabeth’s door.

“I am. Is she at work?”

The woman nodded.

“Do you know where she works? I could call her there.” I smiled, hoping to convey I was worthy of this woman’s trust.

Her blue-veined hand on the door knob trembled as she thought. I wondered if she had Parkinson’s or the like. “In an office downtown. She used to come home every night around five thirty, but now she’s got a young man. She might not come home at all. Would you like me to give her a message?”

“No, thank you. I’ll call her instead.”

“Suit yourself.” She closed her door.

Another dead end. Frustrated, I couldn’t resist kicking some of that sparkling white gravel all over the lawn on my way back to the car.

_____


Cory remained silent for most of our ride back to Wachobe. We stopped in Watkins Glen to get gasoline, drinks, and a few snacks. I purchased the area newspaper, curious to see what, if anything, it had reported lately about Gleason’s death. Although Cory offered to drive when we got back in the car, I refused. He didn’t seem any less agitated than he had earlier. In fact, his knee bounced up and down the whole ride home.

As soon as we reached my house, I relinquished the wheel to Cory, who pulled away from the curb with a screech of his wheels, hell bent on seeing Brennan as soon as possible. I could only hope their reunion would be a happy one.

Danny and his friends were in the middle of a heated pickup game of football two houses down from ours. He called “hello” and waved to me.

I stopped to watch a few plays. Danny’s passing arm was true. All his practice with Ray had paid off. Danny’s football team had their first game this Sunday. He couldn’t wait. Ray couldn’t wait either. Ray never got to play football in high school. His fireman father had died a hero on the job, and Ray had assumed responsibility for the care of his little brother after school while his mother worked, just as I took care of Erica for my dad. It was one of the life experiences that brought the two of us closer. But now Ray could have his football vicariously again through Danny, who had the makings of a star athlete, as had Ray’s younger brother. Pride and happiness flowed through me. I headed into the house.

The aroma of beef stew greeted me at the front door. I kicked off my pumps and carried them across the living room and into the kitchen, where Ray stood at the counter making a salad.

I rose up on my toes to kiss him. He barely gave me a peck, clearly preoccupied. I dropped my heels to the floor with a thud. “What’s wrong?”

“We had two phone calls. The first was Danny’s father.”

Danny’s father called once a week and the two of them talked for five minutes or so each time. If Ray was home when he called, Ray always found something to do outside. I suspected he felt conflicted over law enforcement’s failure to put Danny’s father in jail for car theft, especially since he’d made off with the Ferrari from my showroom right under Ray’s nose. I knew allowing Mr. Phillips to contact Danny without any effort to discern his location and arrest him violated Ray’s code, although he never said a word, perhaps not wanting to risk losing Danny. It was in the back of both our minds that Mr. Phillips could pick Danny up from school or off the street at any time and disappear with him, but we counted on Mr. Phillips’ continued desire for us to provide stability for Danny. After all, he stole my Ferrari in order to get money for Danny’s college fund.

“Did Danny talk to him?”

“He did.” Ray tossed the knife he’d been using to slice a cucumber onto the counter. He turned to face me, folding his arms across his chest. “Did you know they met up at the vintage festival?”

Surprised, I dropped onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar. “No, when?”

The moment I asked, I knew the answer. Danny never bugged me to go back and buy the 1:43 scale car model he’d asked for when he came out of the store. If he’d really wanted it, he would have. His father had been in the store. I should have known he wouldn’t miss a moment of the parade laps for anything as insignificant as a miniature car.

“That’s what I want to know. I didn’t see his dad. Did you?”

“No, but Danny went in the store to use their bathroom. He didn’t want me to go with him.” Now I wondered if he’d known his father was inside or if it had been a delightful surprise. Last week, I had overheard him tell his father we were going to the festival, but it didn’t seem like they’d made any plans to meet up.

Ray stared at me, his good-cop, bad-cop, whatever-you-need-me-to-be-cop expression in place. God, I hated that expression, completely unreadable and oh so frustrating!

He turned back around and started slicing the cucumber again.

I sidled over next to him. “Ray, does it bother you that Danny saw his father?”

“The man’s a wanted felon.”

“He’s also Danny’s father.”

Ray stopped slicing. “I know.” He sighed. “I know.”

“It’s important for Danny to know his father loves him, as important as it is for you and I to both love him and provide a good example.”

Ray slid his arms around me and buried his face in my hair. “You are the only mother figure in Danny’s life. You don’t feel the constant tug of war.”

I understood. Ray needed reassurance and, since he’d probably been stewing about this issue for hours, a diversion. “Remember Mr. Phillips gave us Danny because he thought we’d be best for him, and you’re doing a great job. Danny’s got a wicked spiral. I saw him outside playing with the boys.”

Ray chuckled. “I know. He’s awesome. I can’t wait to see the game.” He pulled me a little closer. “Hey, we’re alone here.” His lips ran up and down my neck, sending shivers up my spine. “We could take advantage of this opportunity.”

I slid my fingers underneath the back of his shirt. “We could.”

His lips slid to mine. My heart started beating faster. I pressed closer.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs. The front door f lew open. “What’s for dinner?”

Danny’s steps pounded across the living room. His bedroom door crashed into the wall. “I need a second to change for dinner then I’ll be right there.”

Ray sucked on my bottom lip and pulled away, a rueful expression on his face. “I need more than one second.”

I smiled. “Yes, you’re always very thorough.”

He resumed slicing the cucumber. “The other call was from your sister.”

“What did she want?” I went to the cupboard to get plates for the table.

“She wanted you to know your mother thinks canoeing is a really bad idea.” The sardonic tone of Ray’s voice let me know what he thought, too. “Your mother said if your sister was meant to float, she’d be a hippopotamus.”

Although our mother died more than twenty-five years ago, Erica claimed the two of them still were in communication. I didn’t know quite how that worked, nor did I want to. However, often when Erica got an idea in her head, she attributed it to Mom. “So she’s not going canoeing?”

“On the contrary, she and Maury are going first thing in the morning on Saturday. She just wanted to let you know.”

Strange, but then we were talking about Erica. “Am I supposed to call her?”

“No, she said she’d call you afterward.”

Oh, I couldn’t wait for that conversation.

_____


After dinner, Ray went outside to mow the lawn. Danny sat at the dining table to do his math and social studies homework. I spread out the newspaper I’d picked up in Watkins Glen and perused it from cover to cover. I found one tiny article about James Gleason’s death, accompanied by an equally tiny snapshot of a woman and a man. The man had his arm around the woman. Both had their heads bent, obscuring their faces.

According to the article, Gleason had been buried in Albany on Wednesday morning, following an autopsy performed by the county medical examiner for the Watkins Glen area. The photo was a shot of Gleason’s estranged wife and his son, leaving the medical examiner’s office on Tuesday with a bag probably containing the personal items found in his pockets. I could tell from the photograph that the wife was dark-haired, his son blondish. Her name was Suzanne Gleason, the son’s Matthew, both of Albany. The article also said Brennan remained in the county jail, pending his ability to make bail. That was old news.

I refolded the paper and went out to the garage to toss it in the recycling bin, wondering if Cory and I should pay a condolence call on Gleason’s wife and son to see what more information we could ferret out about Gleason’s anger at Brennan. It would be tricky to make such a call. We’d have to admit to being at the scene and perhaps knowing Brennan, which meant they might not speak to us. We might also agitate them during their time of grief, which would be cruel, perhaps even unnecessary. Now that Brennan had made bail, he might be more forthcoming with information. Our investigation might be over. Cory had certainly planned to ask him about all the news reports of Monica Gleason’s death.

Assuming nothing, I entered the house and fired up the computer in our office to search for pictures from the Watkins Glen festival. Hundreds of photos were available and for sale, the majority featuring cars on the actual racetrack. After forty minutes of clicking through photographs, I began to despair. No one had been standing on the opposite side of the street from us. I couldn’t find a single shot of the cars coming around the Franklin Street corner where we’d been standing.

Then I found the YouTube video.

Granted, it was fuzzy and a little bit shaky. The parade of cars passing by was clearly visible, though. The crowd beyond on the other side of the road had featureless faces but their clothing, hair, and forms were easy to make out. I spotted my own yellow raincoat, jeans, and brown hair, curled from the humidity. The corner where Brennan and Gleason argued was outside the frame.

The accompanying audiotape included the roar of the race cars engines as the parade passed by the photographer, overridden by a child pestering over and over, “Dad, can I have money for a brownie?” His father, the cameraman, kept saying, “In a minute. Look at the cars.”

I watched as Brennan entered the frame from the right and as I tried to get his attention. As he passed me by. His stopping. His head turn. His wave to acknowledge me. His approach toward me. The redheaded man in the royal windbreaker—two beacons in a sea of darker colors—entering the frame from the right, his wife’s pink raincoat nowhere in sight. My search for Danny, my face looking into the camera as I swung around to look for Brennan again. Howard Pint leaning low to take his shots of the oncoming cars. A surge of the crowd. Brennan and Gleason shifting toward the camera, converging on a collision course, now side-by-side.

The BMW 2002 took the corner, brakes squealing.

I leaned forward, trying to magnify my view.

The Cobra rounded the bend, seconds before the incident.

I held my breath, hoping to have all my questions answered.

A child screamed, “I want a brownie, Dad. I want a brownie right NOW.”

The YouTube video ended.

Tears welled in my eyes. So close. Still, I couldn’t really blame the kid. Those brownies had looked good.

I replayed the video ten times, trying to spot Wayne Engle in the mass. Two men with light hair had passed behind Brennan and Gleason, along with a dozen others. One might have been wearing a gray sweatshirt. The angle and definition on the video made it impossible to tell for sure. The dark-haired woman who fingered Brennan arrived seconds before the BMW came into the frame. I recognized her hairstyle, although, honestly, I couldn’t remember her face. No wonder Ray didn’t think much of me as a witness.

The dark-haired woman was closest to Brennan and Gleason. I supposed she had had the best view of the two of them. All the other spectators’ heads were turned toward the disappearing BMW or toward the oncoming Cobra. She seemed to be looking at the street directly in front of her, perhaps trying to figure where to stand to get an unobstructed view. Brennan and Gleason blocked her view and appeared to be speaking to one another. No arms were raised. Not yet, at least. But a crowd surged past them. At any second a different person passed behind them, even some blond men, one of whom seemed to hover in the background right before the video ended. Could that have been Wayne Engle?

I picked up the phone to dial Cory’s cell. He answered on the fifth ring. “Are you with Brennan?”

“I’m home. We had an argument.”

“He noticed his stuff was missing?”

“No. We had dinner together. I managed to put it all back when he was outside grilling. Everything was fine until I asked him about Monica and James Gleason. He clammed up. Wouldn’t say a word. Refused to tell me anything we didn’t already know. Wouldn’t tell me anything about the reunion, the accident, or his high school friends. I got mad. He got mad. I told him if he didn’t trust me enough to confide in me, we were through.”

“How did he respond to that?”

“He didn’t say anything. So I left.”

“Oh, Cory, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure we’re on the right track, Jo. He’s hiding something. I know it.”

Only problem, Brennan might be hiding something to save himself from prison. He and Cory would definitely be through if that was the case, especially if Cory helped put him there, which remained possible.

I filled Cory in on the article from the newspaper and the YouTube video. I emailed him the URL. He watched it a couple times while I waited on the line. He didn’t spot anything new. The video confirmed nothing—but it would make a great advertisement for brownies.

“The only people involved that we didn’t talk to are Suzanne and Matthew Gleason. I’d love to hear firsthand what her husband and Brennan argued about, wouldn’t you, Jo?”

“It might give us a clue as to why Brennan is being so secretive.”

“Can we afford another day off?”

I’d checked the messages on the shop’s answering machine before our family sat down to dinner. Only five calls all day, three for oil changes before winter, two for inspections. Cory could get them done early in the day. “Maybe an afternoon.”

“Can you stand another drive to Albany so we can visit the Gleasons?”

“I’ll bake them some chocolate chip cookies.”