Finding Mrs. Ford

by Deborah Goodrich Royce

  “Yes.” Susan’s voice is barely above a whisper. “No point sitting here.”

  “C’mere.” Jack embraces her in a big bear hug when they are out on the sidewalk. “I know you’re upset. But it is all going to be all right.”

  “Oh, Jack. Thank you.” She allows herself to touch the cheek of this man who is, in many ways, still a child. Yet, will never be her child. “Thank you for everything.”

  The building is nondescript. There is no sign in the lobby to indicate the presence of the FBI. It could be a building filled with dentists, but this is the address they were given.

  They cross the lobby to the elevator and enter with a small group, asking someone to hit the button for the sixth floor. As they rise, fellow riders slowly vacate the car. When they are the last ones on the elevator, one floor to go, Jack turns to Susan, “You okay? You look a little wrecked. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you tied one on last night.”

  “Good thing you know me better than that.”

  The elevator stops at six, pings softly, and the doors sigh open. Susan and Jack emerge and are confronted by two very large men, police officers in uniform, in front of an enormous wall sign announcing the Federal Bureau of Investigation. One officer sits at a desk to the left and the other mans the metal detector. They are cordial, smiling. Jack and Susan are told to proceed through the security apparatus.

  Susan summarily opens her gun-free purse for a bag check, places it on the conveyor belt, and walks through the arched device. Jack Jr. follows.

  It is only steps to the reception desk where they announce themselves to the young woman seated there. She checks their IDs, asks them to sign in, and waves her arm to indicate the general direction of the chairs.

  Jack is, of course, wearing a suit: navy Prince of Wales check, white spread collar shirt, red silk knot cufflinks, and a pale blue tie. Brown shoes. As always, he looks good, very much in the mold of his father.

  Susan has chosen a dress of tan linen, a nondescript color, one that she thinks sets the right tone. She wears her gold shrimp earrings—Seaman Schepps, in honor of Jack Sr.—her wedding rings, and her Longines watch. No other jewelry. Brown ostrich pumps and a brown ostrich bag complete her discreet look—a little brown mouse. Albeit a well-dressed mouse.

  There is a large wall clock hanging over the receptionist’s head. Nine forty a.m.—twenty minutes to go. Jack alternates between checking his iPhone and rifling through papers that he has brought along in his briefcase. Susan merely sits. From time to time, Jack casts a glance at her, motionless, beside him. Once or twice, he squeezes her hand.

  At ten minutes to ten, Special Agent Provenzano, the tall one, the good cop, opens the door to the right of the receptionist and warmly greets Susan and Jack. He thanks them for their punctuality and ushers them down a short hall and into a small room.

  Save for a large mirror, which probably indicates a viewing room on the other side of the wall, this room has no décor—no photos or prints, no rug, no lamp. A plain metal table and chairs are the final cue to visitors that this is not a social call. There is a window in the door, so passersby and the room’s inhabitants can see each other clearly. Jack sits next to Susan on one side of the table and Special Agent Provenzano takes the opposite seat. One chair remains empty.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Ford,” Provenzano, ever amiable, repeats what he’d said in the hall. “Mr. Ford. Thank you both for coming in today.”

  “Of course,” Susan answers.

  Jack Jr. adds, “Just reminding everyone that I am here as Mrs. Ford’s stepson. This is unofficial. Everyone understands that?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Ford. This is a friendly visit.” Agent Provenzano smiles in a friendly way.

  “Will your partner be joining us this morning?” Susan looks at the empty chair.

  “Oh, Agent DelVecchio?” Provenzano appears not to have considered this possibility. “Well, he may. Or he may not.”

  “I see,” she says, though she really doesn’t.

  “But let’s talk about you, Mrs. Ford. Have you given any thought to Mr. Fakhouri?”

  “Yes, in fact, I have. I do remember him now. He was a patron of a restaurant where I worked as a college student.”

  “A restaurant?”

  “Yes, it was a restaurant. Dinner was served. There was music,

  as well.”

  “Like a supper club?” Provenzano asks.

  “Like that,” Susan answers.

  “And you knew Mr. Fakhouri in a professional capacity only?”

  “He was a patron. He was friendly. We chatted.”

  “I see. Do you have any idea why we might be interested in Mr. Fakhouri now, Mrs. Ford?”

  “None whatsoever. I can assure you of that.”

  “Do you have any idea why he might have been on his way to your house last week?”

  “No.”

  “Look.” Jack had been quiet to this point. “Why don’t you give us a little help here? In view of efficiency.”

  Provenzano turns to him. “Well. With efficiency in mind, I’ll give you a little recap on why we’re here today. Mr. Fakhouri was picked up on his way to see Mrs. Ford directly after he returned to the U.S. from Iraq.

  “To get right to it, Samuel Fakhouri has been spending some time in recent months in the north of Iraq. He’s from there, after all. From the north, near Mosul. Did you know that? Mosul, the place that’s in the papers every day now?”

  Susan hesitates. Then she lies. “Not really. I don’t think so.”

  Jack is slowly turning his neck to look at the face of his stepmother.

  “A village called Tel Keppe.” Agent Provenzano continues. “That’s where ISIS is on a rampage this summer. And the people they’ve been killing in that region are the Chaldeans. Yazidis and others too. But the Chaldean people are Samuel Fakhouri’s people. So, Fakhouri traveled from Baghdad to Mosul to Mehran. Mehran is about three hundred miles from Mosul but it happens to be in the country of Iran. We believe Fakhouri crossed that border, and then navigated back again into Iraq. As you can imagine, this is of note to the United States.”

  Jack Jr. speaks. “I can certainly appreciate our government’s interest in Mr. Fakhouri’s movements, but I don’t really see what that has to do with my stepmother.”

  “Exactly what we’re wondering, as well.” Provenzano pauses here. He stands up and wanders around the room, before turning back to Susan and Jack. “We’ve taken the liberty to learn some things about you, Mrs. Ford. You studied at Lake Erie College, in Painesville, Ohio, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Class of nineteen eighty. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our research hits a bit of an impasse somewhere along about when you were working at the, um, supper club. You worked there in the summer of nineteen seventy-nine. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. I worked at Frankie’s Discothèque that summer.”

  “Yes. Yes. A discothèque. That’s what it was. Not so much a supper club as a discothèque?”

  “Where are you going with this?” Jack asks.

  “We’re just trying to understand why Mr. Fakhouri would fly all the way back from his little sojourn in Iran and Iraq this summer and we find ourselves thinking about the events of the summer of nineteen seventy-nine.”

  “If you have a specific question, please ask it,” says Jack.

  “Of course, I don’t mean to stretch your patience, Mr. Ford.” Agent Provenzano returns to his chair. “Just a little question, first, not the big question, probably nothing to do with anything. We’ve looked into your school records and seem to come to a little hole. We can’t find any mention of you going back to school after the summer of nineteen seventy-nine. We can’t find any records of you having graduated from Lake Erie College in nineteen eighty. So, we find ourselves wondering, and I have to ask you, did you go back to college, Mrs. Ford?”

  In all their years of friendship, Susan knows that she ha
s never told Jack that she dropped out of college. Why hadn’t she ever mentioned it? Told in a different context, it wouldn’t seem to be such a big deal. But now, here, with everything else, a fact like that would appear to carry weight on the scale of significant life events. It is something you would mention to a good friend—your best friend, to be precise.

  Jack turns, full body, in his chair, to study her.

  “No.” Susan says it flat out, just like that. She casts a quick glance at Jack Jr. and sees it all over his face. She is losing his trust. “Jack, I…” She, too, turns, and speaks directly to him, ignoring the FBI agent across the table. “I’m sorry I never mentioned this. It’s true. I didn’t return to college. My friend died. And then my father died. I did not return to college. I just didn’t. And I didn’t ever know how to talk about it.”

  Jack cuts a quick glance at Provenzano and tersely says to Susan, “Let’s talk about this later.”

  “Well,” Provenzano says. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Mrs. Ford. I like to look at a case like a jigsaw puzzle, see what all the pieces are before I can understand how they fit together. Let me ask you another question about that time. Would this friend who died, happen to have been Annie Nelson, who also worked at Frankie’s Discothèque during that same summer?”

  “Yes. My friend, Annie Nelson, died at the end of the summer. And I did not return to college. I meant to. I wanted to. Annie died. Then my father died later that year. And then time passed. I never went back. I’m not proud of that. I don’t normally tell people.” She looks back at Jack when she says this.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ford, to probe into subjects that are unpleasant for you. But I’m trying to understand the connection to Mr. Fakhouri.”

  “Of course.” Susan’s voice is barely audible.

  “We’re doing some research into that period of Fakhouri’s life, the time when your life intersected with his. Newspaper articles on microfiche, that sort of thing.”

  “Can we come to a point here?” Jack is flustered, off balance, talking a little too loudly.

  “The point is: did Samuel Fakhouri have anything to do with Miss Nelson’s death? Could her death have been a homicide? And I must be honest here, Mrs. Ford, we are wondering just what you might know about that.”

  “You know what? I think we need a recess. I’d like some time to confer with my stepmother.” Jack says this in a rush, casting a cool eye on Susan, his stepmother and longtime friend, who is—she is vividly aware—showing herself to be more and more of a liar as the days roll by.

  28

  Tuesday, August 28, 1979

  Suburban Detroit

  Susan was going on a date! An official date with Sammy. He’d called her at home the day before and they’d arranged it for her night off. He would not say where they were going but suggested she dress casually. That, in and of itself, was a minefield. What did he mean by casual? Jeans? Corduroys? A dress? She rifled through her closet, from one end to the next, then back again to repeat. He’d also encouraged her to bring a sweater.

  Susan had even told her father. She didn’t tell him everything—Chaldean might be too much to explain right now. But, she had told him the important things. 1. Sammy’s first name. 2. The fact that he was nice. 3. The fact that he was smart. 4. Well, no, she didn’t mention how handsome he was. Her father was suspicious of a good-looking man.

  Her father had asked where Sammy had gone to college and she could honestly say she didn’t know. But she assured him that she would find out. Her father had soon tired, she’d kissed him goodnight, and promised to pop in when she got home.

  She moved over to her dresser to look at her sweaters. The infamous black cowl neck appeared at the back of a drawer. Susan yanked it out and laughed, imagining herself with Sammy, in this sweater upside down. “Nope,” she said to herself. “Not tonight.”

  Finally, she landed on a dress. A wrap dress like Annie had worn the first day she had met her, what felt like a lifetime ago. The shape was flattering, the color was good on her—a swirly emerald and white—and, with flats, it would look more casual. Some lipstick, blush, and mascara, and a little shake of her hair. She liked it short, no matter what her father said. She did think it made her look European.

  The doorbell rang.

  Susan took one last look in the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door and saw that she’d been wrong. The dress looked stupid with flats. She kicked them off as quickly as she could and dropped down to search through her shoes.

  The doorbell rang again.

  She grabbed a pair of Candies and went back to the full-length mirror. How did Annie walk in these stupid things all the time? Deciding she looked good, she grabbed her sweater and purse and headed down the hall.

  “Hi,” she said as she opened the door to Sammy, in his usual black pants and shirt.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, smiling. His smile always got her. “Really beautiful, Susan.”

  “Thank you, Sammy. Um…” she began. “Do you want to come in?”

  “No. I mean, we need to get going.”

  “Okay.” She stepped out the door. “Is there a start time to whatever we’re doing?”

  “There is, in fact.” Sammy leaned in to kiss her. He was always leaning since he was so tall. “Come on!”

  He led her to his shiny, black car. Of course, his car would be black.

  “Nice car!” Susan said. “I don’t think I’ve really seen it before.”

  “This is my baby. Nineteen sixty-nine Mustang. I take very good care of her. Shall I put the top down?”

  “Sure! I mean, if we have time.”

  “I’ll be fast.” Sammy got to work and moved forward and back, lowering the hood and tucking it into its place. In no time, he helped Susan in the passenger door and hopped inside his own. Then he roared the engine to life.

  “Wow! That’s quite a motor.” Susan laughed.

  “Well, maybe I’ve doctored it a bit,” Sammy said proudly. “Would you like some heat? There’s nothing like an open car on a summer night with the heat on.”

  “That sounds wonderful!”

  They drove for a long while, west into neighborhoods she did

  not know.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Ah, ma belle, it’s a surprise, remember?”

  Susan wished she could prolong this forever—this ride in the car with the heat from below and the cool above as the sun was starting to set. She really did not need to get anywhere. She knew, once they arrived, the clock would start ticking and this evening would come to an end. She imagined them driving forever and time not moving at all.

  Just as the sun dipped beyond the horizon, Sammy turned into a driveway. There, looming in front of them, was an enormous art deco slab. At the top, in neon, were the words, “Ford-Wyoming.”

  “What’s this?” She asked him. “Where are we?”

  “This, ma belle, is a drive-in!” Sammy announced with a flourish of his hand. “We’re in Dearborn and we’re going to the movies. But, we’re going to sit in my car!”

  Susan craned her neck around to find a marquee. To the right she saw it. There, in big black letters:

  David Lean

  Double Feature

  Dr. hivago

  Lawrence of Arabia

  1 showing only

  Tonight

  9 pm

  “Oh, Sammy! This is the best!”

  It was the first time she’d seen him blush. “Do you like it?” he asked shyly.

  “I do! It’s really perfect.”

  He looked back at the marquee. “I guess they didn’t have a ‘Z’ for Zhivago.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” And it didn’t. Sammy had created this evening specifically and perfectly for her.

  “Shall we go in?”

  As much as she didn’t want their car ride to end, she did want to see these movies with Sammy. “Yes. Let’s go in.”

  Sammy turned the wheel of his Mustang and drove them into
the theatre, out under the open sky.

  They found a spot and pulled up to the stand with speakers.

  “Want to get some popcorn?” He asked.

  “That sounds great.” They walked across the lot—holding hands like sweethearts—to the little concession building. Cars were trickling in, but the place was sparsely filled. “I guess not a lot of people are interested in these old films.”

  “Wouldn’t it be fun to have the place to ourselves?” Sammy asked as he opened the door. He ushered Susan to the popcorn line and handed her a twenty-dollar bill. “Listen, I need to go find a pay phone.”

  That was a startling departure from the flow of the evening for Susan.

  “Just get some popcorn and I’ll be right back. All right?” He smiled at her. “Don’t worry. I just need to check in with my cousin. Remember Jacob? The hand kisser?”

  Susan laughed but still, she felt uneasy. “Sure. How could I forget?”

  “Can you move up?” a man behind her asked. “The line is moving.”

  “Oh, sorry.” Susan edged forward.

  “I’ll be back in under two minutes,” Sammy said, as he gave her a peck and turned to leave the building.

  Susan waited in line. She could not help wondering what she would do if Sammy never returned. She was very far from home, an hour away at least. She had the twenty and some change in her purse. Would she have enough for a taxi? There was no one at home she could call. Not her dad. Not Annie, who was on the schedule at Frankie’s tonight and, anyway, had become increasingly distant. Her mind drifted back to her old boyfriend, Todd, and her long-lost friend, Christina. She certainly couldn’t call them.

  “Lady.” The man behind tapped her shoulder. “Can you move up?”

  “Sure.” She stepped forward again.

  “Listen.” Sammy appeared next to her, but his smile had disappeared. “I don’t even know how to tell you this. We’ve got to go.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. Come on.” He grabbed her elbow and walked her to the door, through it and toward the car. She felt like a zombie. None of it made any sense.

  Inside the Mustang, he detached the drive-in speaker and started the car with the same roar. It rang hollow to Susan now. How could the evening have gone so badly, when it had started out so well? She sat, staring forward, and Sammy was stonily silent.