by Arthur Day
“Oh sure. See their trucks all the time. Didn’t associate them with the Pease family, though. Don’t know why not.” Buckmaster shook his head ruefully.
“No worries sheriff. I didn’t either when I first started this project. Anyway, the company prospered as the demand for trucks to deliver vast amounts of food and material increased exponentially in the fifties as people who had manned the factories during the war did not consider going back to the farm from where many of them came. The local grocery store turned into supermarkets. The blacksmiths and cobblers lost out and Woolworths and other department stores came into being. The population was turning urban and that was not going to change. Aside from a few people growing tomatoes and corn in their back yards, the cities needed trucks that could get large amounts of food and materials and deliver it to towns and cities throughout the Northeast. Pease Xpress was one of the companies that filled that gap. But Carl took his father’s idea a step further and invested in transcontinental rigs with two drivers switching on and off. This was an increasingly crowded field, but he took a page from Commodore Vanderbilt’s book and lowered prices until competitors left the field. Then he would buy their trucks for fifty cents on the dollar or less in some cases and his business would expand. All legal and above board but Carl was obsessed by the thought of smuggling and the profits it could bring.”
“Well he certainly wasn’t the first to dip his hand in the cookie jar,” Buckmaster remarked “but how does that tie in with our current problem?”
Monooson held up a finger and continued somewhat pedantically. “As I said, Carl liked to live large. He and his family lived in a mansion in Hartford. He had another in Florida and a house on the family compound at Lake Compton. They drove Cadillacs and he was driven by limo from his house to his office each day. His wife bought furs and jewelry as most of us would buy blue jeans or t-shirts. So why risk all this by smuggling, you ask? Another vice unknown to his wife and daughter also demanded money. Carl was a gambler and loved to be with whores. It took me quite a while to put this together and I can’t yet prove all of it, but it went something like this.”
“Carl loved horseracing. He owned a stable and several good-looking thoroughbreds but he wanted more and although off-track betting was still illegal in the state at that time, anyone could get action if he had the money and Carl did and was on first name terms with his bookie. From what I can learn of the man he liked the feeling that he could, figuratively speaking, stand on the edge of a cliff and defy the odds. Not only that but he was a sexual predator. Talking with his wife I understood from what she said that they had a fairly normal sex life for a married couple of that time. Carl, though, wanted a lot more than a quick roll once or twice a month and some of his fantasies were quite perverted. He liked underage girls from what I could learn. Very illegal. Not only that but he liked rough sex. A whore might end up black and blue from a night with Carl but a thousand dollars richer. That, at least, was the situation according to one woman I interviewed who apparently had been one of his “girls” at that time.”
“A dangerous combination,” remarked Buckmaster looking across at Nicole. He had saved her decades before as a young cop on the beat when someone had tried to rob and then rape her. She would have some knowledge of sexual predators.
Nicole nodded. “I’ve talked with girls who are in that position. As long as the john stays away from the face and just slaps the girl around some they will put up with it as long as the money is good. Some perverts can’t get it up unless they are inflicting pain. If they are rich enough they can get away with it.”
“This dark side of him must have had some effect on his family even if they didn’t know or didn’t want to know,” Buckmaster said.
Monoosan nodded. “Sure. I can’t prove it yet but I’m pretty sure that Julie knew what was going on. Whether her daughter Pam knew anything is hard to say but she probably sensed at least that there was trouble between her mother and father. I don’t have any children, but I have talked with many of them over the years. They know much more than they will tell and feel much more than they know. What I do know is that in 1997 he suddenly changed into a new man. He gave up the ponies, paid off thousands of dollars in gambling debt and stopped seeing the whores that he used to visit regularly. When someone gives up bad habits and becomes a straight arrow, I have to wonder what caused him to do so? People, once they have settled into a pattern, a routine for their daily lives, they observe Newton’s First Law in that they remain in motion with the same speed or routine unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. A traumatic accident or serious illness from which a person recovers when they are not supposed to do so would be a couple of examples of this. When I talked with Julie about this she thought that her husband had finally ‘come to his senses’,” Monoosan used his fingers to show quotation marks. “I think something far more powerful and even terrifying took place that had Carl Pease backing up as quickly as possible. Someone or something put the fear of God into him. It was about the time that Bitsy Worth committed suicide”
“And you think that Pamela might have known or been exposed to whatever caused her father to become a model citizen?”
Monoosan shrugged. “The very question I was going to ask her, but she disappeared a couple of weeks before we had arranged to meet. All I know is that her father died shortly after his conversion to being on the straight and narrow. I wondered if whatever happened with Carl involved the Worth family. The two families are directly related through old Ephraim Pease. His granddaughter married a Worth and the two families had camps only one hundred yards apart at Compton but that is for another time, I’m afraid.”
“His death does seem a bit of a coincidence,” Buckmaster said
“Indeed,” replied Monoosan. “I really must get that bus. If I miss it I will have to spend the night at that motel by the Trailways station, not something I look forward to.”
“Of course,” Nicole told him as she got out of her chair.” I’ll be glad to drive you. Thanks for sharing with my husband what we discussed in the diner.”
“Yes. Thank you, Mr. Monoosan. In something like this I never know what will provide the information I need to find Pam. I appreciate that you shared your research with us. I’m sure you don’t do that as a matter of course.”
Monoosan gave a thin smile. “Your wife was quite persuasive. “If you locate Pam I would appreciate you letting me know. I have other questions for her beside the obvious one and that interview could wrap up my research.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced a white card that he handed to Buckmaster.
When the front door closed behind him, Buckmaster turned back to the living room fingering Monoosan’s card thoughtfully. Could this be the break he needed? He would pull up the police report of that accident and go through it word by word. Also, a man of Pease’s stature probably had a lot written about him online that might help as well. First, though, he would need to see if her mother had a spare key and get Julie’s permission to search Pam’s Rockmarsh apartment. It seemed less and less likely that she had vanished on her own free will. Her apartment would be the place to start.
DOUGLAS WORTH
The apartment was in an upscale development called Ivory Gardens that boasted a tennis court, swimming pool, and gate guard. It ran part of the way up a hillside just outside of Rockmarsh and had several small streets that branched off the main one, Kenyon Drive. Doug Worth turned right onto Nile Way and stopped in front of number 101.
The bitch lived in style, he thought. The block of buildings was done in stucco and beam to look like some kind of fake English style homes. There were parking spaces across the street. He pulled into one marked VISITORS.
He sat for a minute thinking over what he had discussed with his father about this woman. He had invited Doug over and had been sitting in his chair in the living room when he arrived looking even crankier than usual if that was possible. Daddy Bigbu
cks is what Doug called him and as far as he could tell the only time his dad was happy was when he was screwing somebody into the ground. Bigbucks gave Doug just enough allowance to get by and when Doug asked for more Bigbucks sneered at him and told him to earn it. Like he should be some kind of fucking wage slave. Anyway, Bigbucks was sitting there waiting for Doug and he gestured towards a chair across from him. There was already a glass of Old Forrester waiting for him. Good thing too. He knew he was going to need that and more by the look on his father’s face.
“’bout time you showed up. What took you so long?”
“I stopped on the way to get a piece of ass,” Doug replied. He wasn’t about to take any shit from his father. When Bitsy and he were growing up his father was not there so as far as Doug was concerned Bigbucks had no claim on him.
“Never mind. I want to talk to you about your cousin Pam.”
He’d never really gotten to know Pam. He’d seen her sometimes up at Lake Compton, but that family stuck to themselves and the Worths did the same. She had been a nice girl, a bit on the quiet side, but pretty. She had a smirky kind of smile that made Doug want to wipe it off her face with his fist, but he contented himself with sticking a knife into the tires of her bicycle. They would have to go all the way to Junctionville to get new tires. “What about her?” He picked up his glass, drained it, and held it up towards his father. Worth raised a hand and his butler or manservant or whatever you want to call him took the glass and brought it back full a moment later. Nothing like well-trained help.
“You and she are cousins. You should get to know her better.”
“What for?”
“Because I want you to.”
“I already got a woman who’ll do me when I tell her to and stay the hell out of my way when I don’t.”
“You always were a miserable little creep,” Bigbucks said.
“Boo hoo. I feel so bad now. I think you hurt my feelings.”
“You don’t have any you fat shit. The only things you ever cared about were money, women and booze. I had to bail your ass out of a half dozen schools and then you graduated to the adult world and I had to bail you out of prison.”
“So what?”
Bigbucks smiled and Doug knew something nasty was coming down. Worth almost never smiled.
“So, I want you to get to know Pamela Pease. She has called you about me so don’t lie and say you don’t know her. I want you to pretend you are a gentleman and a scholar, or at least a gentleman,” Bigbucks sneered. “Use some of that expensive schooling if you haven’t forgotten it all. Become her friend if possible or at least someone she likes.”
Doug stared at his father. “What’s in it for me? Sounds like I’ll be wasting a lot of time on this woman.”
Bigbucks actually laughed and that resulted in a fit of coughing that brought Lowell back into the room. “That’s my boy. Get right down to it. Depending on how it goes, a big increase in your allowance and a big chunk of change when I die.”
Doug smelled a huge ugly rat. “All this just to be friends with a relative? C’mon dad. You wouldn’t loosen your purse strings just for that. You’ve always said you hated your relatives and that they were a bunch of money-grubbing losers. You want something, and it has nothing to do with making the world a better place. What is it you want from this Pam person?”
“Justice.” Bigbucks looked away as if to gather his thoughts but the old fart was probably just peeing himself. “You remember the death of your sister, don’t you?” He asked squinting at Doug like some old pirate.
“Sure. I was pretty young then. I don’t remember if you found out why she did it.”
“We never really knew. Your mother found Bitsy in her bedroom. Somehow, she had gotten hold of your mother’s sleeping pills and taken about half the bottle. We called the ambulance, but it was too late. They couldn’t revive her. It almost destroyed your mother. She felt guilty that Bitsy had used her pills, pills that she thought were secured in a locked cupboard in our room. She shut herself in her room and refused to speak to me or anyone. I didn’t want you involved for obvious reasons, so I called a friend and asked if he could invite you for a round of golf. There was the funeral of course but at least you were spared the horror of that morning.” Bigbucks actually looked saddened by the memory of his daughter’s death, the old faker. We sat like that for a while, haunted by memories and wishes for what might have been, separated from the present moment by a reality that neither of them could escape. Doug remembered playing golf with his cousin and then coming home to the police, ME and various friends and relatives walking in and out, some crying, all of them looking as if life would somehow never be the same.
“So, it was ruled a suicide?”
“Yes. Overdose of barbiturates.”
“Did she leave any note or anything like that as to why she did it?”
“No.” My father shook his head.
Doug finally had some facts that filled out gaps from that day but found that he was no happier and not very much wiser than he had been before. He should have been careful what he wished for. He felt that somehow Dad wasn’t telling him everything he knew but Doug wasn’t certain that he wanted to know whatever it was. He was old enough to realize that learning more about Bitsy might change the memory he had of her, the times they had played together and then the times he had played with her as he got older and she did not. Would knowing any further details about her death make the memory of her any better, her smile as they walked into town together, or the look in her eyes when she watched a hummingbird delicately nose into a flower. Of course, he had no way of knowing but he knew that he could not move forward until his morbid curiosity about her death was satisfied.
“So Bitsy committed suicide but no one knows why. No note or anything but I get the feeling that there is something else, something that you’re not telling me.”
My father frowned and looked sideways at his son. “And what would that be? She died a quiet death at a young age. What more is there to know?”
Doug could be as stubborn as anyone else in the family often to his own detriment. “If I knew that I wouldn’t have to ask but I just get the feeling that what you told me was somehow incomplete.” He shrugged, suddenly miserable and not knowing exactly why. “We were close, Bitsy and me. We shared secrets that we never told you or Mom. Maybe because of Bitsy’s disability we were even closer than normal siblings. We seldom fought. I hated her expression when she wanted to do something, and I didn’t, or she said something that I thought was wrong. Even when I went away to prep school I knew when something bad had happened to her. One time she cut her hand on a piece of glass and I woke up in the middle of the night certain that she was in pain. You might remember that one night when I snuck down the dorm corridor to use the pay phone and find out what had happened. I was in tears, terrified that something had happened to Bitsy. When she died I knew something had happened. I felt a big black hole open in my head. I think I shot at least twenty strokes more than my normal score.” Doug ran out of words and sipped at his drink as a way to avoid looking at his father to see his reaction.
He sighed… “There are some things in this life that no one should see and other things that none of us should know about. Are you sure you want to hear the rest of it?”
Doug wasn’t but he was sure that whatever it was that his dad hadn’t told him it couldn’t be any worse than what he already knew. “Yes.”
“Your sister was pregnant when she died. I could never prove it, but I know your Uncle Carl did it, God curse his soul in Hell and all his kit and kin and that includes his precious daughter. She’s walking around so high and mighty while your sister lies rotting in the ground. Pam should join her cousin. If you won’t do it find somebody who will.”
Doug sat in the car thinking about this as the engine ticked over. He had talked with Pam on the phone. She seemed a perfectly nice wom
an. At least she had a pleasant voice. She asked about his father and how he was doing and what kind of chronic illness he had. When Doug asked her why she wanted to know all that she said she was considering helping him out for a while. He didn’t think that was such a great idea. He told her that his father could be difficult and that even trained aids had trouble with him. She thanked him, and they hung up. Doug learned later that she had worked with him for a while and then they had a big fight and she quit. He was not surprised.
He wondered what he was supposed to say to her. He had called her on the phone and they had chatted for a minute and he had asked if he could stop by for a visit seeing as how they had a shared history with his father. She hadn’t seemed overly enthusiastic but said okay and gave him directions to her place.
He walked into the small lobby with its rows of mailboxes and pushed the button under her name. “Come up,” a female voice said. He took the elevator up one floor and walked down to the end unit. The woman who answered the door was of medium height, slim, with a narrow but attractive face and graying brown hair hanging down around her shoulders. She was certainly different from the girl he remembered. So much for childhood memories. They are like looking at yourself in the crazy mirrored hall in a carny. She looked really fit. “You must be Doug.”
He found himself in a huge living room. There was a gas fireplace at one end with a couple of beige colored chairs in front of it. Along the opposite wall under the picture window was a light green sectional couch that looked expensive. A couple of colorful photos of sunsets and mountain views hung on the walls. All very nice. Past the fireplace a doorway led to what was probably the dining and kitchen area. Pam gestured towards the two chairs.
“So, what brings you here?” she asked in a tone that mingled formal politeness with a smidge of human curiosity.
