Scrapbook of Murder Page 16

  Zack and I followed her out of the room and across the foyer into a formal dining room with a table large enough to seat a dinner party of thirty-six. Dozens of plastic shoeboxes, labeled by year, covered one end of the table.

  “Sometimes I wonder where the years have gone,” she said. She sighed as she indicated the boxes with a broad sweep of her arm. “Tempus fugit. I always intended to organize our family photos into albums but as you can see, best laid plans...That’s why I was thrilled when I learned of your project. I’d like to hire you to organize all of these photos into albums for me.”

  Lupe had presented me with one small suitcase of old photographs. What confronted me was easily twenty times the number of snapshots.

  “What about those?” I pointed to several old photo albums stacked alongside the boxes.

  She picked up the top album and flipped it open to the first page, one that contained deckled-edged snapshots of a newborn Albert Owens, the photos attached with old-fashioned corner mounts to a black construction paper page. His name and date of birth were written in delicate white ink script at the top of the page. “These are from my husband’s childhood. I thought you might like to see them.”

  Zack took a few shots of Virginia flipping through the pages of her husband’s early years. “Do you have any albums from your childhood?” I asked.

  “My mother has them. My husband’s parents are deceased.” She closed the album and turned to face me. “I know I’ll never get around to organizing all these photos, and my children will never forgive me if I die without doing so. I’m willing to pay you well, Mrs. Pollack.”

  Given my precarious financial situation, I found it impossible to turn down any form of moonlighting, no matter how daunting the task. “Are the individual photos labeled?”

  “I believe some are. It’s been years since I’ve looked at any of them.”

  “I’d need you to do some preliminary work.”

  She frowned. “How much work?”

  “Sort through each box. Pull the photos you’d like included in the albums, and write any missing names and dates on the backs.”

  Virginia Owens directed her frown toward the stack of boxes. “I don’t know that I’ll have the time before I leave.”

  “You’ve waited this long. A few more months won’t matter.” I fished a business card from my purse and handed it to her. “Once you’ve culled the photos, get in touch with me. At that point I’ll be able to give you an estimate of the cost.”

  She glanced at the card before placing it in her pants pocket. “That sounds fair.”

  A few minutes later Zack and I departed the Owens estate. Nothing I had learned brought me any closer to discovering the identity of the man who had raped Carmen or whether someone had targeted Lupe. That left one interview—State Assemblyman Mickey Rigato and his wife. Given my success rate so far, I wasn’t at all optimistic I’d fair any better with them.

  We were meeting the assemblyman and his wife at his district office on Stuyvesant Ave. in Union. However, minutes after Zack pulled onto Rt. 78 the assemblyman’s secretary phoned to reschedule the appointment.

  “He had to rush off to Trenton for an emergency budget meeting,” I told Zack after I hung up from the call. “His secretary said he and his wife can meet me at their home in Cranford at six this evening as long as the interview won’t exceed an hour. They have a dinner engagement later tonight.”

  “Do you want to head home?” asked Zack. “Or should I drop you at the magazine for a few hours?”

  “You’d have to pick me up later.”

  “I don’t mind. My calendar is clear.”

  I loved Zack for his willingness to sit in rush hour traffic for me, but I’d bank the offer for some day in the future when I really needed to call in a favor. “I’m already scheduled to be out of the office all day. Let’s go home. With Lucille cooling her tootsies in a cell and the boys in school, we’ll have the house to ourselves.”

  Zack turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “Is that a proposition, Mrs. Pollack?”

  “You catch on quickly, Mr. Barnes.”

  ~*~

  At six o’clock that evening Zack and I arrived at the Rigato home, an understated early twentieth century Craftsman a few miles from my own house. If the payoff rumors were true, the assemblyman certainly hadn’t channeled the graft he accepted into an over-the-top McMansion. The house, situated on a tree-lined street of similarly modest early nineteen-hundreds homes, certainly didn’t stand out in any way from the other homes on the street.

  Mickey Rigato answered the door after I rang the bell. Although not the kind of man who would stand out in a crowd—balding gray head, average height, and in need of shedding twenty or thirty pounds—I recognized him immediately. Once every two years for as long as I’d lived in Westfield, he’s shown up on my doorstep during campaign season. I’d even voted for him on more than one occasion, mostly because throughout my adult life I’ve found myself staring at a choice between two questionable candidates and eventually pulled the lever for what amounted to the lesser of two evils. At least Mickey Rigato came with a reputation for getting things done.

  A true politician, he greeted me as if we were old friends. Cynic that I am, I suspect he’d checked the voter registration roles to ascertain my party affiliation before agreeing to the interview.

  After I introduced Zack, he ushered us into a living room furnished in what I recognized as period Stickley pieces in keeping with the style of the house. If the furnishings weren’t antiques, they were darned good reproductions. Perhaps that’s where he and his wife spent the graft he pocketed—assuming the rumors were true.

  Mrs. Rigato, the quintessential gracious politician’s wife decked out in a pale pink twin sweater set and a delicate strand of pearls, rose from the sofa to greet us. “Would you join us in a glass of wine?” she asked, nodding to a bottle of pinot grigio and four glasses at the ready on the coffee table.

  “Thank you.” Zack and I took seats in the two easy chairs on the opposite side of the coffee table.

  Mrs. Rigato handed the bottle and a corkscrew to her husband. “Will you do the honors, dear?” While he uncorked the wine, she turned back to me and said, “We’re delighted you’ve invited us to take part in your article. I must admit, though, I’m a bit of a slacker when it comes to keeping up with family photos.”

  “You must not be a complete slacker,” I said, nodding to the stack of five or six albums perched on the end of the coffee table.

  She laughed. “Those are from the early years of our marriage and filled mostly with pictures of our children, but as the years went by, for some reason I took less and less photos.”

  “That’s quite common,” I said. Zack flipped open the top album and took a few shots as I continued. “Most people have album upon album of snapshots of their first child. By the time the last one comes along, it’s Christmas, birthdays, and the yearly school photos. Sometimes a few pictures to document a special family vacation or event but little else.”

  “I wonder why that is,” she said, passing around glasses of wine as her husband poured. “It’s not that we loved our younger children any less.”

  “No, of course not,” I said, “but the more children we have, the less time there is to spread among them. We’re always running, juggling all sorts of commitments and rarely think to grab the camera to document our daily lives.”

  “Yet now we always have our cameras with us,” said Assemblyman Rigato. He pulled his phone from his pocket and held it up. “Taking photos has never been easier. No film and flash bulbs to buy, no trips to the drug store to drop off film for developing and printing. And people document all sorts of things these days, many that should never be captured for posterity, let alone shared with the world on social media.”

  The four of us laughed.

  “That’s the paradox,” said Zack.

  “People are taking more photos, thanks to smart phones,” I said. “My concern—and the reason for
my article—is that all those snapshots can easily disappear. Phones die. Most people don’t think to back up their files. Or they either don’t want to pay for cloud storage or forget to renew their subscription. Others don’t think to share storage information with a trusted family member. When they die, their heirs can’t access their virtual albums.”

  Mrs. Rigato took a small sip of her wine. “I never thought of that.”

  “Your generation, and those who came before you, had actual snapshots,” I said, “whether they were stored in shoeboxes in a closet, mounted in albums, or framed and displayed in their homes. My fear is that too many future generations will never have a pictorial record of their families because we now rely too much on Facebook and Instagram. What happens if one day they go the way of the dodo bird?”

  “Highly unlikely, don’t you think?” asked Assemblyman Rigato.

  “Is it?” I asked. “Companies go out of business all the time. Technology becomes obsolete. Think of all the people who have home movies on VHS tapes or files on floppy disks.”

  “But there are companies that will convert those files,” he said.

  “For now. But many people never get around to converting their files. Besides, someday that conversion equipment will no longer exist. A hundred years from now when your great-great-great grandson stumbles upon an antique iPhone or a box of CD’s in an attic, will he be able to access the photos on them? Probably not. Yet we still have photographic records of the Civil War, thanks to preservation efforts by historians with foresight. I think families should have that same sort of foresight.”

  I then proceeded to tell them about the suitcase of photos a deceased neighbor’s daughter had asked me to preserve for her. Of course, I didn’t mention any names. “That’s what got me thinking about all of this.”

  “Why the interviews?” asked Rigato. “Not that I don’t welcome positive press.”

  “Especially in an election year?” I asked.

  He punctuated a shrug with a chuckle. “It certainly doesn’t hurt.”

  “The interviews were my editorial director’s idea. She thought it would give some gravitas and cachet to the article.”

  “Showing that people in all walks of life are guilty of the same lack of foresight?” asked Mrs. Rigato.

  “Exactly, not to mention that interviews with celebrities and politicians always sell more issues. Most people have a bit of voyeur in them. They love hearing interesting personal stories about famous people.”

  She glanced at her wristwatch. “Then we’d best get on with the interview. We have a prior engagement.”

  I pulled the tape recorder from my purse. “Do you mind?”

  Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Rigato objected. I depressed the button. “You might find these questions a bit unusual for an article about scrapbooking, but I chose them because I want them to spur our readership into thinking about their own lives, especially important events and friendships from their past. Let’s begin with how the two of you met.”

  Mrs. Rigato blushed. “In the most cliché of ways. I was a poli-sci major in college. The summer going into my senior year I worked as an intern in the State House. Mickey was serving his first term. It was love at first sight.”

  I peppered the Rigatos with questions about their youth, making certain I asked Mrs. Rigato as many questions as her husband, even though she was of no interest to me.

  Having met her husband in college, she’d have no knowledge of what happened the night of the party. After all, what man—especially a politician—would admit taking part in drugging and raping a couple of fourteen-year-olds? If Rigato had a hand in what happened to Elena and Carmen, he’d keep the secret deeply buried. His political career depended on it. Then again, that also gave him motive for trying to silence someone snooping into his past.

  However, Mickey Rigato was genuinely a nice guy, or he’d mastered the art of projecting such an image. Stereotypes aside, my money—if I had any—was still on Peter Donatello. The guy had spiked my sleaze-o-meter firmly into the red zone.

  “One final question,” I said. “So many of us lose touch with friends who meant a great deal to us at some point in our lives. Could you pick up the phone today and call your childhood best friend?”

  The Assemblyman lowered his head and shook it. “I wish. My closest friend overdosed on heroin shortly after we graduated high school.” His wife reached over and clasped his hand in both of hers. Rigato raised his head and sighed deeply before continuing in a ragged voice. “My biggest regret in life is that I didn’t see the signs, didn’t realize the demons he struggled to exorcise. People—men, especially—kept too much buried back then.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. “What sort of demons?”

  Rigato shook his head again. “I’d rather not say. It wouldn’t be fair to his family. After Kirk died, it became their secret to share if they so chose.” He glanced at his watch, then rose. “I’m sorry, but on that somber note we really do need to bring this interview to an end.”

  EIGHTEEN

  “Sounds like the deceased football player was the rapist,” I said as Zack and I drove home. “My money was on Donatello.”

  “You have no money,” he reminded me.

  “And that’s a good thing. I would have lost a bundle in a bet.”

  Zack grew thoughtful. “Under the circumstances, this is probably the best outcome,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “If Lupe awakens from her coma, you can give her some closure, but she won’t be able to confront her mother’s rapist.”

  “Good point. Given her rage, there’s no telling what she may have done.”

  “It also means the hit-and-run had no connection to Lupe asking questions at the school.”

  “Right. Poor Lupe was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. No one was trying to shut her up.”

  “Exactly.”

  A few minutes later we walked into the house and were immediately swarmed by two extremely hyper teenagers before we even had a chance to remove our coats.

  “Mom, you’re never going to believe what happened,” said Alex.

  My heart sank. “Lucille made bail?” I suppose it was unrealistic to hope the police would keep her cooling her tootsies behind bars until Monday. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a weekend free of Mama, Lucille, or both of them camped out in what used to be Nick’s bedroom.

  “Worse,” said Nick.

  I’m not sure what could be worse than my mother-in-law arriving home from her forced stay in the Westfield hoosegow. She’d inevitably blame me for her arrest and make my life miserable for days—if not weeks.

  “Remember Matt Ronson?” asked Alex.

  “Remember? How could I forget the original Bad Seed?”

  Zack raised his eyebrows. “As in a demonic child?”

  “Definitely,” I said, then went on to explain. “Matt Ronson was in Alex’s nursery school class. He moved here mid-year from Chicago. One day Alex was invited to his home after school. When Nick and I drove over to pick Alex up, the kid nearly killed Nick.”

  “He wrapped his hands around my neck and squeezed,” said Nick. Alex started screaming, and Mom came running.”

  “Thankfully, I was near enough to stop him before Nick passed out,” I said. “Needless to say, that was the first and last time Alex had anything to do with Matt Ronson.”

  “Why would he do such a thing?” asked Zack.

  “His mother apologized profusely, saying Matt had been acting hostile ever since they moved.”

  “Knowing that, she placed another child in jeopardy?”

  “Exactly what I said to her. She thought if Matt made some friends, he’d straighten out and start behaving. I was furious.”

  “What happened to Matt?” asked Zack.

  “He got worse,” I said. “I later learned his mother had lied to me. The move to New Jersey only exacerbated psychotic tendencies he’d exhibited back in Chicago.”

  “He stomped his
grandmother’s canary to death,” said Alex. “And he strangled his sister’s kitten.”

  “The mother admitted that?” asked Zack.

  “Hardly,” I said.

  “Matt bragged about it in school,” said Alex. “Everyone was afraid of him. One day in second grade he stabbed the class hamster with a pen and was kicked out of school.”

  “Matt’s parents placed him in a school for emotionally disturbed kids,” I said. “That was the last I heard about him until now.”

  “That school didn’t help,” said Alex.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “He finally got even with his parents. He torched his house last night.”

  “My god!” I said. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “His parents and sister are in the hospital with smoke inhalation. Matt was arrested.”

  Being reminded of Matt Ronson got me thinking. What if Cloris and her husband weren’t the victims of a scam? What if the buyers really were innocent? Could one or more of their kids have created The Sentinel because they resented being uprooted from the only life they’d ever known and dragged halfway across the country to an unfamiliar town populated by strangers?

  Would the police or the private investigator have even thought to question the homebuyers’ kids?

  “I have to make a phone call,” I said, heading to the kitchen. I grabbed the phone and punched in the speed dial for Cloris’s number. As soon as she answered, I asked her that very question.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably not. I believe our realtor mentioned they’re relatively young.”

  “How young?”

  “Pre-teen, I think.”

  “Old enough.”

  “For what?”

  “Revenge.” I quickly told her about Matt Ronson.

  “You think one of the buyers’ kids wrote those letters?”

  “I think it’s certainly worth investigating.”

  “I think I need to get off the phone and call the lawyer.”

  “Go for it.”

  ~*~

  After breakfast the next morning Alex and Nick left for their part-time jobs at Starbucks and Trader Joe’s, Zack headed up to his apartment to prepare for an upcoming assignment, and I tackled a week’s worth of laundry and various other household chores. I was in the middle of stripping the sheets off my bed when the phone rang. Although the display came up as Unknown Caller, the number looked vaguely familiar, so instead of automatically dismissing it as a robocall, I decided to answer. “Hello?”