Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry Page 24

  Her first words were “I hope you don’t mind driving.”

  “No, not at all,” Gina said as she tried to ignore the smell of alcohol that seemed to grow stronger each time her passenger exhaled.

  “Do you know Barney’s Steakhouse?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. This is my first time in this area.”

  “That’s all right. It’s about ten minutes from here. I’ll direct you. Start by turning around.”

  Barney’s was in a converted barn. About ten tables were spaced around the almost windowless structure. A bar with seating for six was on the left. A Hank Williams tune played softly from an ancient jukebox.

  After they seated themselves, a waitress came over, greeted Lucinda by name, and handed them menus. “Can I get you anything from the bar?”

  Lucinda looked at Gina. “You’re buyin’, right?”

  “Yes, I am,” Gina responded, once again wishing the magazine was covering her expenses. Lucinda ordered a Scotch while Gina contented herself with a Pinot Grigio, the only white wine they carried.

  “I know what I want,” Lucinda said. “Why don’t you take a look so we can order when she comes back.”

  Gina glanced at the menu then put it down. “I want to thank you again, Mrs. Stephenson, for agreeing to meet me on such short notice—”

  “Call me Lucinda. Everybody does. My daddy named me that because he loved to play ‘Lucinda Waltz’ on his accordion. It was about the only song he knew,” she said breaking into a loud laugh.

  “Okay, Lucinda it is. We spoke briefly on the phone last night. Are you familiar with the MeToo movement?”

  “They talk about that a lot on TV.”

  “That’s right. They do. For a lot of years women who were taken advantage of, abused, in the workplace either suffered in silence or left the company and never shared their story with anyone. They thought correctly that the deck was stacked against them and no one would believe them.”

  “Did this happen to my Paula?” Lucinda asked in a voice now filled with sadness.

  The waitress placed their drinks in front of them. Gina ordered the eight-ounce filet; Lucinda the twenty-six-ounce prime. They continued after the waitress walked away.

  “I’m almost certain it did. But thanks to MeToo, women who come forward with complaints are now being listened to. In most cases, their accusations are taken seriously. All companies hate bad publicity. Many choose to make confidential cash settlements with the victims to keep everything quiet and make it go away.”

  “Are these big settlements, more than a hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “That explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  Lucinda caught the eye of the waitress, jiggled her now empty glass, and turned back to Gina.

  “My son Jordan, Paula’s baby brother, three years younger, he got caught up in the opioid mess.”

  “I’m so sorry. Is he,” she paused, “all right?”

  “He’s doing much better. The treatment, if you can find it, is so expensive, more than I could ever afford.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last year.”

  “Did you reach out to Paula for help?”

  “I did, but not right away. Paula and I loved each other in our own way, but we didn’t always get along. She was a neatnick. I was the opposite. She wasn’t but twelve or thirteen when she started getting on me about drinking too much. We fought about that a lot. Maybe I should have listened to her.”

  “I haven’t heard any mention of Paula’s father. Is he in the picture?”

  Lucinda took a long sip and slowly put the glass down on the table. “He’s gone, thank God. He drove his truck into a ravine two years ago. Of course, no seatbelt and drunk as usual. It’s because of him Paula and me stopped talking.”

  “What happened?”

  “Paula was always smart as a whip. She got herself a full scholarship to University of Nebraska in Lincoln. She was a beautiful girl and was working at the college TV station. Her senior year she came home for Christmas break. Her father and I had stopped,” she paused searching for the right words, “being husband and wife a while ago. Lloyd came home late, I’m sure really drunk, went into Paula’s room and tried to get in her bed. There was a lot of yellin’ and fightin’. Thank the Lord nothing really bad happened.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Lloyd said he just made a mistake about which room he was in.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “It’s not easy when two family members who hate each other are both asking you to take their side.”

  “What did Paula do?”

  “She took off the next morning, went back to Lincoln to finish her senior year. She left me a note saying she was never coming home again. Don’t bother to look for her.”

  “Did you ever see her after that?”

  “No, but when her brother was going through his troubles, I tried to find her, hoping maybe he’d listen to her. A friend who was visiting relatives in Dayton saw her on the TV. She wouldn’t take my calls or answer any messages so I wrote her a long letter about Jordan’s problems.”

  “Did you finally connect with her?”

  “Yes and no. Next thing I know a lawyer from town comes knocking on my door and met with me and Jordan. Paula had sent the lawyer a check for one hundred thousand dollars. The money could only be used for Jordan to go to a facility to get himself clean.”

  “Did Jordan do that?”

  She smiled. “He did. I told you Paula was smart. She set it up so that if after treatment Jordan made it to one year of sobriety, he could keep the rest of the money for himself. Jordy made it. Now he’s working and using it to finish college at night.”

  The waitress arrived with their orders. Lucinda pointed at her empty glass. “I’m ready for another. How about you?”

  Knowing that she had a lot of work ahead of her, Gina declined in favor of a club soda.

  “In New York they’d charge forty to fifty dollars for a steak like this,” Gina announced while savoring her first bite.

  “Get out of here!” Lucinda responded.

  “I’m not kidding. Tell me, Lucinda. Did you grow up around here?”

  For the next twenty minutes Lucinda shared details of her life growing up on a farm, getting married at eighteen, and having her first child a year later. Motherhood in the early years was a happy experience; 4H clubs, school plays, and barn dances were pleasant memories. The whole town would show up for high school football games. Jordy was the quarterback and star player.

  There was no conversation during the first half of the drive back to the house. Lucinda broke the silence by asking, “I know I asked you last night, but what are you hoping to find in those boxes?”

  “If I can, I want to find out who Paula dealt with when she agreed to her settlement. Even more important, I want to confirm my belief that she was in the process of renegotiating, and if she was, who she was talking to.”

  “My Paula was a good girl,” Lucinda said, as much to herself as to Gina. “She saved her brother’s life. After she died that same town lawyer came knocking on my door. After her condominium was sold, almost two hundred thousand dollars was left. In her will she left half of what she had to the trust the lawyer made up for Jordan. The other half she left in a trust for me. Same deal. If I get treatment and get sober for a year, I get to keep the rest of the money.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “You may not believe me after tonight; I owe it to my little girl to give it a try,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye.

  As they approached the driveway, Lucinda said, “When those boxes arrived, I just shoved them in Paula’s bedroom. After you called last night, I slit them open. Most of them have clothes, books, dishes, and the like. I separated the ones with papers and put them by the door. I’d invite you in, but I’m a little embarrassed. I’m not much of a housekeeper.”

  “It
’s okay. I’d rather take them to a hotel room where I can spread them out and sort through them. I’ll drop them back off in the morning.”

  “If I’m not here, just leave ’em on the porch.”

  Five minutes later four boxes were in the trunk or backseat of the rental car. After saying goodbye to Lucinda, Gina tapped on her phone and made a reservation for a hotel thirteen miles west on Interstate 80.

  84

  Rosalee Blanco reread the letter from her mother. My poor family, she said to herself. My poor people.

  She had just turned thirty when she emigrated from Venezuela almost fifteen years ago. That was before things really started to go bad, before the dictators Chávez and Maduro destroyed what had been the country with South America’s highest standard of living. Her father and mother had run a successful grocery store in Coro, a city that at one time was the capital, before that title went to Caracas.

  The grocery store, along with most of the businesses in Coro, was forced to close. After they were ordered by the government to sell items at below the cost of acquiring them, before long there was no money to buy new inventory. Instead of feeling sympathy, the authorities had arrested Rosalee’s father. Shuttering his store, they claimed, was proof that he was working with foreign powers against the government.

  Using the precious American dollars Rosalee sent, her mother was able to bail him out. Her parents spent their days scrounging for food. With all of their neighbors doing the same thing, it was hard to find any. They would have been able to afford to buy more, but they insisted on using most of the money to buy Rosalee’s brother’s asthma medication.

  Trained as a hairdresser in Venezuela, Rosalee had quickly found work in New York City. She worked six days each week and split her evenings between taking English classes and learning to do makeup. She dreamed that one day she would move to Hollywood and work on movie stars.

  The salon that employed her was on the Upper East Side. Through word-of-mouth recommendations she counted as clients half a dozen women from REL News. One day a woman in her forties came to her for the first time. When Rosalee finished working on her, the woman gave her a business card with a number written on the back. “That’s my cell. Call me when you get off duty.”

  A week later she had an interview with this woman, who was assistant director of human resources at REL. Two weeks after that she was working as a hair and makeup artist for the company. “The people I work on are not in the movies, but they are on TV,” she had proudly written to her mother.

  But it wasn’t only the people one saw on TV who would come to her. Of course they were the first priority. When she wasn’t busy, the young girls would often come by when they’d finished their shift, to freshen their look before heading out for the evening. She loved getting to know them. They were the daughters she would never have.

  It was almost two years ago that the mal, the evil had begun. She would see the young women, the pretty girls, smiling as they walked past her area to the executive offices. When they came out, the smiles had been replaced by tears, eye makeup running, blouses in disarray. Often alone at that hour, she would call them to her, hold them while they sobbed, sometimes even rock them on her lap. She would redo their makeup and hair to help them recover a little piece of their dignity.

  Most of them would leave the company, their spirits wounded, the optimism that comes with being young having been ripped from them prematurely.

  She had been tempted to meet with the reporter, had even sent another email, but of late the mal had stopped. She thanked God for taking care of the problem and not forcing her to put her family at risk.

  85

  After checking in, Gina drove around the side of the hotel and was fortunate to find a parking spot opposite her first-floor room. Pulling her suitcase behind her, she used the electronic key to open the door and flipped on the lights. Her first glance confirmed that she had received what she had requested. Two double beds. She wanted as much surface area as possible to spread out and go through the papers. She took a few minutes to unpack her bag and put her toiletries in the bathroom before making four separate trips to the car to lug in the boxes.

  A wide yawn reminded her of the very early start she had had that morning. She was grateful that she had chosen a late afternoon flight to return to New York the next day. Even if she ran out of energy tonight, she would still have several hours tomorrow morning to conduct her search.

  She sat on the bed and rubbed her eyes. She had never met Paula Stephenson, but that did not prevent her from experiencing genuine heartache over her fate. Through sheer will and determination Paula had not only survived but thrived in a household with two alcoholic parents. She was ultimately driven away by her father’s attempt to sexually assault her. After escaping halfway across the country to begin a new life in New York, what was her fate? Being sexually assaulted. It’s no wonder that Paula succumbed to the disease that had ravaged her family, Gina thought.

  The familiar question about how much information to share with family members again weighed heavily on her. In her conversation with Lucinda, they had spoken about Paula’s death but neither of them mentioned the word “suicide” or alluded to Paula taking her own life. Although Gina had been tempted, she had held back. In her own way Lucinda had come to terms with losing her daughter. What good would it do to rip open a scab, to create uncertainty by introducing the possibility that she was murdered? I have no right to do that, Gina thought, at a time when I don’t have answers for her. Or for that matter, when I don’t even know if I’m about to walk away from this investigation.

  Gina looked around the drab hotel room, with its cheap window blinds, worn carpet from another era, and disposable cups wrapped in cellophane atop the desk. The glamorous life of a journalist, she said to herself as she pulled the desk chair next to one of the beds, used her car key to slit open the first box, and dumped its contents on the dingy bedspread.

  * * *

  By seven-thirty the next morning Gina was back at it. She had managed to go through two boxes the previous evening before being overtaken by fatigue. Feeling refreshed after eight hours of deep sleep, she had jogged on a treadmill in the fitness center, showered, and gone to a room off the lobby for a continental breakfast.

  Paula may have been a “neatnick” in her early days, but the habit did not carry over to her recordkeeping. The boxes Gina had gone through included three-ring binders and bound documents prepared by legal firms related to her investment in Capriana Solutions. Presumably, that was the boyfriend’s company. Randomly among the pages were old phone and utility bills. Paula had the habit of writing unrelated messages in the margins and on the back of the pages of the Capriana documents. Wanting to be thorough, Gina examined the front and back of every page. Paula’s spidery, hard-to-decipher handwriting further impeded progress.

  At eight-forty-five, Gina stood up and stretched. Three down, one to go, she thought, as she looked at the cardboard boxes.

  Her cell phone rang. The electronic screen identified the caller as Empire Review. Surprised, Gina answered.

  “Hi Gina, I hope I’m not calling too early. Are you home?” It was Jane Patwell.

  “Actually, Jane, I’m in Xavier, Nebraska, watching the corn grow. What’s up?”

  “Sounds exciting,” Jane said. “Two things. I received your expense summary. I approved it and sent it to Accounting. But that’s not why I called. Did you hear the news?”

  “No, but I’m all ears,” Gina responded, smiling.

  “Geoffrey Whitehurst resigned yesterday.”

  “Oh my God! I had no idea,” Gina said while wondering if this was an aftershock following the loss of the Friedman business.

  “Neither did anybody. We’re all stunned. He already cleaned out his office and is gone.”

  “Any idea who’s going to run things until they find somebody else?”

  “None. It would have been Marianne Hartig, but she just went out on maternity leave.”

&
nbsp; Gina knew the deputy editor from the time they worked together on the fraternity branding iron story.

  “Thanks for calling, Jane. I’m as surprised as you are. Out of curiosity, do you know where Geoff’s headed next?”

  “He didn’t tell anybody, but I found out. I went to put a message on his desk. My hand must have brushed the keyboard and it got his computer out of sleep mode.”

  Gina smiled broadly at the image of Jane “accidentally” seeing a message meant for her boss.

  “I guess he’s one of the people who’ve decided there’s not much of a future in magazines. He took a job at a REL News station in London. Got to go. Say hi to Nebraska for me.”

  Gina slowly sat down on the bed, her mind reeling. Think things through, she ordered herself. Could Geoff’s going to REL be a coincidence? Not a chance. Somebody at REL got to him. In exchange for an offer of employment, Geoff pulled her off the REL investigation. But wouldn’t they have been better off leaving Geoff in place? When Gina found out he went to REL, they’d know she would suspect—She stopped in mid-thought. She wasn’t supposed to find out he went to REL. It was a fluke that Jane saw it on his computer and mentioned it to her.

  How could they know about my investigation? she asked herself. Am I being watched? The answer dawned on her. It made sense. The victims who settled almost certainly agreed to contact REL if any reporters came nosing around. She remembered the REL lawyer, Brady, commenting that he was surprised Meg Williamson agreed to meet with her. Meg wasn’t acting on her own. She was told what to do.

  An all-encompassing feeling of being alone gripped Gina. What should I do? She opened her phone to Contacts, selected Ted, and quickly typed a three-word text. She pushed SEND before she had the opportunity to convince herself it was the wrong thing to do.

  Gina took several deep breaths to calm down. What would Ted say if he were here sitting next to me? Her eyes alighted on the lone box she had not gone through. He’d say, Get to work.