“Rob Westerfield.” Mrs. Duval practically spat out the name. “He’s a bad one. Why did they let him out of prison?”
She didn’t need encouragement to tell her story. “He came in here with his mother and father during one of the parents’ weekends. How old was he? Fifteen, maybe. He was arguing with his father. Whatever happened, he jumped up to leave. The waitress was walking behind him, and he knocked into the tray. The food went all over him. I tell you, Miss, I never saw anything like it. He grabbed that girl’s arm and twisted it until she screamed. He’s an animal.”
“Did you call the police?”
“I was about to, but his mother begged me to wait. Then the father opened his wallet and handed the waitress five hundred dollars. She was just a kid. She wanted to take it. She said she wouldn’t press charges. Then the father told me to add the price of the food that was lost to his check.”
“What did Rob Westerfield do?”
“He stalked out and left his parents to deal with the mess. The mother was terribly embarrassed. After the father paid the waitress, he told me that it was all her fault and that his son had reacted that way because he had been scalded. He told me I should train waitresses before I let them carry trays.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him that we would no longer continue to serve him and that they should leave my restaurant.”
“You can’t imagine what Mama is like when she’s angry,” her daughter said. “She picked up the plates that had just been put in front of them and carried them back to the kitchen.”
“But I was very sorry for Mrs. Westerfield,” Mrs. Duval said. “She was so upset. In fact, she wrote me a very nice letter of apology. I still have it in my files.”
When I left The Library half an hour later, I had permission to tell that story on my Website and a promise that I would receive a copy of the letter Mrs. Westerfield had written to Mrs. Duval. Plus, I was on my way to visit Margaret Fisher, the young waitress whose arm Rob had twisted. She was now a psychologist living two towns away, and, yes, she would be very happy to talk to me. She remembered Rob Westerfield very well indeed.
* * *
“I WAS SAVING MONEY for college,” Dr. Fisher told me. “The five hundred dollars his father gave me seemed like a fortune at the time. Looking back, I’m sorry I didn’t sign a complaint against him. The guy is violent, and if I know anything about the human mind, I suspect that twenty-two years in prison didn’t change him a bit.”
She was an attractive woman in her early forties, with prematurely gray hair and a young face. She told me that she had appointments only until noon on Friday and was just about to leave her office when I phoned. “I saw the interview with him the other night on television,” she said. “Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. It sickened me, so I can understand how you feel.”
I told her what I was doing with the Website and how I had gone to stand outside Sing Sing with the sign requesting information about Rob’s conduct in prison.
“I’d be very surprised if there weren’t more incidents there that you may find out about,” she said. “But what about the years between the time he was in school here and when he was arrested for your sister’s death? How old was he when he went to prison?”
“Twenty.”
“With his history, I seriously doubt there weren’t other situations that were hushed up or never reported. Ellie, has it occurred to you that you’re setting yourself up as a constant menace to him? You tell me that his grandmother is very alert. Suppose she learns about your Website and visits it, or has someone in her employ visit it for her every day. If she reads enough negative facts about him, what’s to keep her from deciding to change her will even before Westerfield has a second trial?”
“Wouldn’t that be absolutely wonderful!” I said. “I’d love to think that I was responsible for having the family money go to charity.”
“I would be very careful if I were you,” Dr. Fisher said quietly.
* * *
I THOUGHT ABOUT her advice as I drove back to Oldham. There had been a break-in at my apartment and then what amounted to a threat lodged in my computer file. I turned over in my mind the question of whether I should have notified the police. But for the reason I had given Mrs. Hilmer, I knew I was right not to notify them; I wasn’t going to put myself at risk of being considered some kind of nut case. On the other hand, I had no right to put Mrs. Hilmer in any kind of jeopardy. I decided I’d have to find another place to live.
Dr. Fisher had given me permission to use her name when I wrote about what had happened in the restaurant. That was something else I’d do on the Website—invite people to share any problems they’d had with Rob Westerfield in the years before he went to prison.
* * *
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when I pulled into the driveway and parked in front of the apartment. I’d stopped at the supermarket in Oldham and picked up some much needed supplies. My plan was to make a simple dinner: a shell steak, baked potato, and salad. Then I’d watch television and get to bed reasonably early. I needed to begin to write the book I had contracted to do about Westerfield, and while the material I used on the Website could be repeated in the book, it would have to be presented differently.
Her house was dark, so I wasn’t sure if Mrs. Hilmer was home. I reasoned that her car might be in the garage and that she might not have turned any lights on yet, so I phoned her when I got into the apartment. She answered on the first ring, and I could tell that her voice was troubled.
“Ellie, this may sound crazy, but I think someone followed me today when I went to the library.”
“Why do you think that?”
“You know how quiet this street is. But I was hardly out of the driveway when I could see a car in the rearview mirror. It stayed a distance behind me, but it didn’t turn off until after I’d turned into the parking area next to the library. Then I think the same car followed me home.”
“Did it keep going when you turned off?”
“Yes.”
“Can you describe it?”
“It was midsize, dark, either black or dark blue. It was far enough behind me that I couldn’t see the driver, but I have the impression that it was a man. Ellie, do you think that whoever was in the apartment last night is hanging around here?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m going to call the police, and that means I’ll have to tell them about last night.”
“Yes, of course.” I hated myself for the nervousness I heard in Mrs. Hilmer’s voice. Until now, she obviously had always felt secure in her home. I only prayed that by being a lightning rod for trouble I had not destroyed that sense of security for her.
A squad car pulled up at the house ten minutes later, and after debating for a few minutes, I decided to walk over to talk to the police. The officer who looked to be a longtime veteran of the force obviously did not think much of Mrs. Hilmer’s suspicions. “Whoever was in that car didn’t try to stop you or contact you in any way?” he was asking her when I arrived.
“No.” She introduced us. “Ellie, I’ve known Officer White for many years.”
He was a craggy-faced man who looked as though he’d spent a lot of time outdoors. “And what’s this about an intruder, Ms. Cavanaugh?”
His skepticism was apparent when I told him about the pen and the entry in the file. “You mean your jewelry wasn’t touched and the only evidence you have of someone having been in the apartment is that you think your pen had been moved from one side of your notebook to the other and there are a couple of words in a file in the computer that you don’t remember writing.”
“That I didn’t write,” I corrected him.
He was polite enough not to contradict me directly, but then he said, “Mrs. Hilmer, we’ll keep an eye on the house for the next few days, but my guess is that you were a little nervous after hearing Ms. Cavanaugh’s story this morning and that’s why you picked up on that car. Chances are it was nothing.”
>
My “story,” I thought. Thanks for nothing. But then he said he’d like to examine the lock in the door of the apartment. Promising Mrs. Hilmer that I’d call her, I walked back to the apartment with him. He did take a look at the lock and came to the same conclusion I had reached: It had not been forced in any way.
He lingered for a moment, obviously trying to make up his mind about something, and then he said, “We heard about you being at Sing Sing yesterday, Ms. Cavanaugh.”
I waited. We were standing in the hall outside the apartment. He had not asked to see the computer file, which showed just how much credence he had put in my “story.” I was not about to invite him in to shrug it off any further.
“Ms. Cavanaugh, I was here when your sister was murdered, and I do understand the pain your family experienced. But if Rob Westerfield did commit the crime, he has served his sentence, and I have to tell you there are plenty of people in this town who had no use for him as a wild kid, but who think he got a bum rap.”
“Is that your opinion, Officer?”
“Frankly, it is. I’ve always thought that Paulie Stroebel was guilty. There was a lot that didn’t come out at the trial.”
“Such as . . .”
“He’d bragged to a number of kids in school that your sister was going to the Thanksgiving mixer with him. If she told any of them, I mean some of her close friends, that she was going only because Rob Westerfield wouldn’t get jealous of a guy like Paulie and it got back to him, he might have gone crazy. Rob Westerfield’s car was parked at the service station. You said yourself on the witness stand that Paulie told Andrea he’d followed her to the hideout. And then there was that guidance counselor who swore on the stand that when Paulie heard about Andrea’s body being found, she heard him say, ‘I didn’t think she was dead.’ ”
“And there was a student nearer to him who swore that he said, ‘I can’t believe she’s dead.’ A big difference, Officer.”
“It’s obvious we’re not going to see eye to eye on this, but let me give you a warning.” He must have sensed that I stiffened, because he said, “Hear me out. You’re in way over your head, carrying signs around Sing Sing. The guys getting out of there are hardened criminals. You’re standing there, a young, very attractive woman with a sign giving your phone number and begging them to call you. Half of those bums are going to end up back in there within a couple of years. What do you think goes through their heads when they see a woman like you just begging for trouble?”
I looked at him closely. There was sincere concern on his face. And he certainly had a point. “Officer White, it’s you and people like you I’m trying to convince,” I said. “I understand now that my sister was terrified of Rob Westerfield, and after what I’ve just learned about him today, I can understand why. If I’m in any danger, I’ll take my chances with the people who saw that sign—unless, of course, they’re in any way connected to Rob Westerfield and his family.”
That was when it occurred to me to describe the man who had spoken to me in the parking lot of the railroad station. I asked him to see if he could learn whether a prisoner of that description had been released yesterday.
“What would you do with that information?” he asked me.
“All right. Let’s forget it, officer,” I said.
Mrs. Hilmer must have been watching for Officer White to leave. My cell phone rang just as the taillights of his squad car disappeared onto the road.
“Ellie,” she said, “I made a copy of the newspapers and the trial transcript. Do you need the originals this evening for any reason? I’m meeting some friends for a movie and dinner and won’t be back until ten o’clock.”
I hated the thought that I was afraid to have both the originals and the copies under one roof, but I was.
“I’ll be right over,” I said.
“No, I’ll call you when I’m leaving. I’ll drive past the apartment, and you can run down and get the duffel bag.”
She came a few minutes later. It was only four-thirty, but already the sky was dark. Even so, I could see the tension in her face when she opened the window to speak to me.
“Did anything else happen?” I asked.
“Just a minute ago I got a phone call. I don’t know who it was. The caller ID was blocked.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I know it’s crazy, but somebody said I should be careful keeping a psycho around me. He said that you’d been institutionalized for setting fire in a classroom.”
“That’s absolutely untrue. My God, I’ve never spent a day in a hospital since I was born, never mind an institution.”
I knew from the relief on her face that Mrs. Hilmer believed me. But that meant, of course, that she had not instantly disbelieved the caller. After all, the first time I visited her, she had suggested that Rob Westerfield might be innocent and that I was obsessed with Andrea’s death.
“But, Ellie, why would anyone say such a terrible thing about you?” she protested. “And what can you do to stop him from saying it to someone else?”
“Someone’s trying to discredit me, of course, and the answer is that I can’t stop it.” I opened the back door of the car and retrieved the duffel bag. I tried to choose my words carefully. “Mrs. Hilmer, I think it’s better if I move back to the Inn tomorrow morning. Officer White thinks that I’m going to attract some pretty strange people as a result of standing outside Sing Sing with a sign, and I can’t have them finding their way here. I’m safer in an inn, and certainly you’ll have your peace back.”
She was not dishonest enough to contradict me. There was relief in her voice when she said, “I think you would be safer, Ellie.” She paused, then added in all honesty, “I guess I would feel safer, too.” After that she was gone.
I walked back up to the apartment, the duffel bag in my hand, feeling almost bereft. In biblical days the lepers were made to wear bells around their necks and to shout, “Unclean, unclean,” if anyone happened to wander near them. At that moment I swear I felt like a leper.
I dropped the bag and went into the bedroom to change. I replaced my jacket with a loose sweater, kicked off my shoes, and stuffed my feet into ancient fleece-lined slippers. Then I went into the living room, poured myself a glass of wine, and settled in the big club chair with my feet on the hassock.
The sweater and slippers were my comfort clothes. For a fleeting moment I thought about my old comforter, Bones, the floppy stuffed animal who had shared my pillow when I was a child. He was in a box on the top shelf of a closet in my apartment in Atlanta. He shared the box with other mementos my mother had kept of the past, including her wedding album, pictures of the four of us, baby clothes, and, most wrenching of all, Andrea’s band uniform. For a moment I felt a childish resentment that Bones wasn’t with me now.
Then, as I sipped the wine, I thought of how often when Pete and I went out after work we’d linger over a glass of wine before ordering dinner.
Two memories: my mother drinking to seek peace, and Pete and I relaxing and joking about what had sometimes been a wildly busy or frustrating day.
I hadn’t heard from him in the ten days since we’d had dinner in Atlanta. Out of sight, out of mind, I decided. Looking for another job. “Pursuing other interests,” as the business jargon goes when an executive is told to clean out his desk.
Or when he decides to cut his ties. All of them.
21
AN HOUR LATER there was a subtle change in the weather. The faint rattle of a loose pane in the window over the sink was the first hint of a shift in the wind. I got up and pushed up the thermostat, then went back to the computer. Realizing that I was in acute danger of feeling sorry for myself, I had begun to work on what would become the opening chapter of the book.
After some false starts, I knew that I should begin with my final memory of Andrea, and, as I wrote, my memory seemed to sharpen. I could see her room with the white organdy bedspread and frilly curtains. I remembered in sharp detail the old-fashioned dres
ser Mother had so carefully antiqued. I could visualize the pictures of Andrea and her friends stuck in the frame of the mirror over that dresser.
I could see Andrea in tears as she talked on the phone to Rob Westerfield, and then I saw her putting on the locket. As I wrote, I realized that there was something about the locket that still eluded me. I knew that I couldn’t positively identify it now if I saw it, but at the time, I gave a clear description of it to the police—a description that years ago had been dismissed as childish fantasy.
But I knew she had been wearing it when I found her, and I was certain I had heard Rob Westerfield in the garage-hideout. Mother told me later that it had taken her and my father ten or fifteen minutes to calm me down so that I was coherent enough to tell them where I had found Andrea’s body. Plenty of time for Rob to get away. And he had taken the locket with him.
On the witness stand he claimed that he’d been out jogging at that time and had been nowhere near the garage. Nevertheless, he had washed and bleached the sweats he’d worn that morning, along with the bloodied clothes from the night before.
Once again I was struck by the terrible risk he had taken in coming back to the garage. Why did he retrieve the locket? Was he afraid that it would be enough to confirm that Andrea was not just a kid with an annoying crush on him? Even as I thought of that morning, and the harsh breathing and the nervous giggling sound he had made as he hid on the other side of the van, my hands turned clammy on the keyboard.
Suppose I had not slipped through the woods alone but had brought my father with me? Rob would have been caught in the garage. Did sheer panic bring him back? Was it possible that he needed to confirm to himself that what he had done wasn’t just a nightmare? Or, worst of all, had he gone back to make certain Andrea was not alive?
At seven o’clock I turned on the oven and put in the lone potato to bake; then I went back to work. Shortly afterward the phone rang; it was Pete Lawlor.