by Arthur Day
“Thank you for agreeing to talk with me,” Buckmaster began. “I will try not to waste your time. As you undoubtedly know a scion of the Pease family was murdered a few days ago. I believe you talked with Dianne Vargas, a PI who is helping us out, and told her that Jacob Warren had called to find out about Pam Pease. If you could I would like to know exactly what you and he talked about.”
Jessica took a tablet from a briefcase on the floor beside her seat and scrolled a little. “Let’s see. He called last week at 11:15 in the morning to the Senator’s main office in the State Office Building across the way. I took the call because his interns Midge and Brandon were both on their phones with constituents. He identified himself and asked to speak with the Senator. Well we get lots of calls this time of year and most of them from people who either like or hate whatever legislation we are working on but there are some cranks and a few loonies and worse out there so we seldom put the call through unless we know the person on the other end of the phone.” She paused and glanced again at her tablet. “I asked him his name, address and telephone number and a brief message about why he needed to talk with the Senator. He said his name was Warren and that he knew the Senator and was friends with Mrs. Julia Pease and was trying to reach her daughter Pam.” He said that he had called Mrs. Pease but his call had gone to voicemail and had not been returned. He said he was concerned and so was trying to reach Pam to make sure that her mother was okay and that all was well with Pam.
“He used the words Mrs. Pease?” Buckmaster thought that was somewhat formal for someone who claimed to be a friend.
It was apparent that Jessica thought so as well. “Yes, so I told him that we did not give out personal information over the phone for security reasons but that I would pass along his request when the Senator got back to his office.”
“And?”
“Warren got upset, said he would report my conduct to the senator the next time he saw him and that he hoped I had my resume in order.” It’s not unusual for people to try blustering their way to the Senator when their initial request does not work.” She sighed and put the tablet back into her briefcase. “I think every member of his staff has been threatened with firing at least five or six times a month. If we paid any attention to them we’d all be committed to the Institute of Living.”
Buckmaster grinned. “As in my profession, you need a thick skin and the ability to separate important from unimportant. After that didn’t work what happened?”
Jessica frowned, and it turned her face into an evil mask. “Usually that does it but with Warren well he just kept talking about the good times with the Pease family and how he knew Pam would want to hear from him, particularly now that she was divorced. It sounded like he was reading off a card maybe for someone else. I interrupted, told him that he would need to contact Pease personally and the senator would not be able to help him. Suddenly he shut up and the silence lasted so long I thought he had finally taken a hint and hung up but then he started in on how he and Pam had spent summers up at Lake Compton and she was probably there now, and I asked him if he knew so much why bother calling the Senator. He hung up.”
Buckmaster leaned forwards and rested his arms on the table. “He never asked where he might locate her now? He seemed to know and was trying to confirm?”
“That’s the way it seemed to me. It was a busy day. Once he hung up I filled out a message slip with the information and went on to my next task. Frankly, I thought no more about it until Vargas brought it up the other night.” She rose from the table. “Sorry sheriff. I have to go. My life is not my own here. I’m sure you understand. Good luck on your case. I hope you catch whoever did this and string him up by his balls. I never met Pam Pease, but I have met her mother and she is a delightful human being.”
“I understand,” Buckmaster told her and stood to one side as she hurried out of the little room.
McCAAL
Damn that woman, man, whatever she believed herself to be. I threw my phone onto the seat beside me and drove down the drive towards Julia Pease’s house part way around the lake. This problem with Dianne, for that is what I considered it, was not working out well. She would not return my calls. She had not come back to the Lake in several days and when I had driven to her place she hadn’t been there. If she didn’t want to be found, I knew, she would not be and that was maddening because I thought we were making progress in tracking down Jacob Warren and her skills would have made the search that much quicker.
I had messaged her about my meeting with Buckmaster and the possibility that Julia might know of Warren. The least she could do would be to acknowledge my message. I simmered as I turned onto the paved road leading towards the lake road. If she wanted to be a woman that was fine with me, at least in theory. Until now, it had been a fact. Women had vagina’s and that was how life was. I had to admit that I had never envisioned sex with a man or a chick with a dick. I had been happy in the army and later in New York with Pam. I did not consider myself homophobic, but I had never been exposed to people who were Tran. They had their lives and I had mine and never the twain shall meet.
I had paid little attention to the LGBTQ protests and marches, regarding them as more of a nuisance than anything else. Now Dianne had come into my life and my discovery of her sex had trampled on a lot of my assumptions of sex and morality and religion. During my childhood the roles of man and woman being fruitful, and multiplying had been drummed into me. It was a sin to love another man. The Bible said so. The priest in the church my parents attended said so. I had believed them. During my time in the army though, I had become friends with a man who was gay. Don’t ask, don’t tell was the policy but his friend had told me anyway and I had found it hard to be around the man when we dressing or showering. That had made me feel guilty, but I could not help my feelings.
I drove down the Lake Road consumed with my thoughts about Dianne and what I should do and what I could do and what she would think of what I thought and whether we could have the same easy friendship and partnership at least until Pam’s killer was caught. After that had happened I was not sure what might follow. Did I love her? I supposed I did because I was tortured by thoughts about what I should do. Perhaps, I thought, I could do nothing immediately. The next move would have to be Dianne’s if she made one at all and maybe she’d already made her decision by taking off and not responding to my calls and texts. That thought was not a pleasant one. If she didn’t want to see me anymore she could at least have the decency to tell me face to face. True, she owed me nothing, but I wanted at least that much respect. It was not as if I was going to gun her down in the street like a mad dog.
“Damnation.” I pounded his hand on the steering wheel as I turned into the little drive leading down to the Pease cottage.
Julia Pease greeted me at the door. “How wonderful to see you again Michael. I hope you bring good news. Lord knows I could use some.” She turned and disappeared inside the house and made a bee line for her favorite chair. I followed, marveling at the spirit and intelligence in this woman who had been through so much.
“Now. What can I supply? Tea or coffe? It’s getting on noon so maybe a beer?”
“Thank you but I’m fine at the moment. We are making progress and that’s why I called to see if you were free.”
Julia laughed softly. “Michael I’ve been free for years and years. Once your children are grown there’s just you and your husband and now it’s just me. In a complete philosophical contradiction, I find myself running out of time but have nothing but time.” She looked at me as if I had made her day a total success. “Tell me all,” she commanded.
“We found out that a Jacob Warren called your friend Senator Mazzumo and was asking about Pam.”
Julia looked surprised. “Ed Mazzumo? Why on earth would he do that I wonder? I doubt Ed even knows Jacob let alone be able to answer questions about Pam although he knows me so there would be an indirect co
nnection I guess. Let’s see, I met Ed when he was just a young lawyer starting out with a new wife and working for the Hartford Insurance Group. I guess insurance companies have to keep a bunch of smart lawyers busy. Carl owned a big block of the Hartford stock so he would go to shareholder meetings and even meet with the executives once a year or so. That’s how we met Ed. Pam was down in New York by then, but I don’t think Ed ever met her. He knew about her, of course, since we got to be friends and we were proud of what our little girl had grown to be.” She smiled at the memory and then became at once solemn and sad. “I do ramble on, a fault of old age I suspect. What do you need to know?”
“What can you tell me about Jacob Warren?”
“Not a hell of a lot unfortunately. We were living in Rockmarsh and Pam was living in New York and had just started her job in that publishing company whose name I can’t remember off hand. She would call once a week or so and if she got busy and forgot I would call her. I guess that made me a clingy mom, but I worried about her in the big city. Sometimes she would rent a car and drive up to be with us for a weekend. We always looked forward to her visits.”
“Is that how you came to know Jacob?” I asked softly not wanting to make waves where none were required.
“Yes. She was with us one weekend and during Saturday night dinner she mentioned that she had met a man. We were both excited and apprehensive. There are all kinds of men in this world, not all of them good. Carl had business in the city and told me that he could check on the guy. When our daughter told us that she and Jacob had become friends we wanted to know all about him. We asked her lots of questions, probably too many and she was turned off and didn’t give us the answers we wanted but from what she told us he was a publishing genius who worked for her firm and made a great income and huge bonuses. He was good looking and attentive and said that he loved her, but she wasn’t sure that she loved him. Of course, we wanted more details and asked when we could meet him. Carl said that we could meet him in the city if that would be better. On his own ground, I guess he thought. Carl was good that way. So that night we got the impression that he was a paragon of virtue, strong, intelligent, and handsome. The way she felt about you when you and she fell in love. Anyway, she went back down to her job and we waited to hear more about this Jacob. We thought Pam needed her space and we didn’t want to push too hard and force her away. If Jacob was everything she bragged on him then we would be happy for her. If not, I hoped that her own good judgement would guide her. She was her own woman and would make her own decisions.”
I noticed that during this Julia’s hands had started to wash each other with increasing frequency. I smiled at her hoping she would be encouraged and continue. There was really nothing I could say or even wanted to say. We were walking through the fog of her memory both good and bad and I would have to make a judgement on that when Julia had finished. The room had had gotten much warmer in the past few minutes. Perhaps it was the sun through the windows but then again maybe not.
“We were trying to be sensible about the people she met. Carl was more aggressive than I was and wanted to get this Jacob investigated but I thought that would be a disaster if he or Pam ever found out. We argued, and I won.” Julia smiled briefly at the memory of the behind-the-throne power of the lady of the house and then looked at me with an uncompromising sadness. “Had we known that you would become part of our lives we might have reacted differently, but no one can see the future can they?”
She sighed. “Anyway, a few weeks later Pam came back up from New York by herself. No Jacob. She seemed depressed and we spent a very quiet weekend mostly just sitting around without saying anything. We asked her how she and Jacob were getting on and she replied that everything was fine, something that I doubted considering her mood. I was scared to press her and scared not to. Does that make sense?”
“All kinds of it,” I replied softly. I thought back to a life full of ups and downs, feelings exposed and feelings hidden, emotions leashed until the moment they exploded. We are what we are and often what we hide from others is more important that what we show them and much more destructive.
“Anyway, with the weekend winding down, I asked Pam if she and I could take a walk, nothing special, just around the block or something like that. She agreed, and we left the house. I pressed her about Jacob. I told her that her father and I didn’t always agree, and God knew we had gone through rough times as well as good times. All couples do, I think. We survived,” she looked me in the eye “and some do not more’s the pity. She told me that her boyfriend was a very private man, very quiet and that she had spent the night with him the week before. This, I knew, was territory that was even more dangerous. I looked at her questioning or maybe just seeing if she wanted to go into detail. She said nothing for a while and we continued our walk passing by houses and the people in them that I knew well.”
“Some were friends of ours,” Julia threw out as a non-sequitor.
“After a bit, Pam took me by the arm and said that Jacob had been a good lover, that he had treated her gently and continued to give pleasure after he climaxed for a long as possible but while they were joined he kept whispering to her that she was his, that he would never give her up, and that they were destined to spend their life together. That was not what Pam was feeling and, afterwards, she told him that what he felt about her was not what she felt about him. She held my arm close to her and whispered that the look in Jacob’s eyes had scared the bejesus out of her. I think that, days later, she was still scared of what she saw and what she felt. ‘He didn’t want a friend or even a wife,’ she said. ‘I think he wanted a possession, like his apartment or his bank account.’ What she was talking about scared me in turn and, when Carl came back from the store, I took him aside and told him that I thought things were not good with Pam.”
A clocked chimed softly somewhere deeper in the house. Julia looked at me with concern. “I think I have gone on far too long about ancient history. Would you reconsider that beer and maybe a sandwich to go with it?”
“I apologize, Mamma. It is I who have kept you. Don’t feel that you have to say anything more if you are tired.”
“Stuff and nonsense. If sitting here talking with a friend is too much, then I should simply stay in bed.” She looked at me out of the corner of one eye “You would be sitting by my bed if that was the case if I were a betting person.”
She had me there. I grinned and nodded my head in appreciation of her perception. “Did you ever meet Jacob?”
“Once. As I said I told Carl about my fear for Pam and this man. He thought it might be because we never met him and only knew him through what Pam was telling us. Perhaps that description was a little self-serving. We didn’t know so I called Pam and told her that we were coming down to the city and would like to take her and Jacob out to a restaurant of their choosing. She was hesitant. Then she finally said that she would ask him and let us know what a good day would be.”
Carl reserved a suite for us at the St. Regis and we met them, as arranged at 21, one of my favorite restaurants. My first impression of Jacob was dark and silent. He followed Pam over to our table, nodded to us, helped her into her seat and then sat himself. During all these preliminaries he had not smiled nor even looked at us directly.”
“I don’t know what to tell you Michael. The dinner was a quiet affair. Pam did most of the talking about her job, about meeting Jacob, about his job. He nodded and smiled occasionally and remarked that Pam was a wonderful person and he pleased he was to meet us for surely we had much to do with the personality that she had. Pam went on about one of Jacob’s projects. He was building a miniature of the George Washington Bridge out of matchsticks with the Hudson River and the Jersey and New York shores out of paper mache. and had been working on it for months. He told us that he didn’t like to give up on anything once he had started it. There was no talk about their future, whether they planned to marry and have a family, or
even become engaged. Watching him sit across from me, seemingly disinterested in the whole evening I was glad that they had not entered into any formal arrangement and even happier when, a few weeks later, she came up to Rockmarsh with you and declared that you two were going to get married. Carl was also relieved. He thought that Jacob was emotionally detached and would have made Pam very unhappy. I think it was with this feeling that we threw that big wedding for you and Pam. I’m just sorry that it didn’t work out in the long run and now there will be no second chances.” Her hands were tying themselves into knots again. She seemed to deflate like a leaking balloon and looked every one of her years.
I got up, knelt in front of her chair and put my arms around her. She hugged me in return and stayed that way for what seemed like an hour but was only a few seconds. Julia looked at me with tears running down her cheeks. “Thank you, Michael. That meant a lot. Now go find the bastard who did this.”
Once out in my car, I called Buckmaster on his cell phone and relayed my conversation with Julia. He agreed that we needed to find Jacob and bring him in for questioning and that he had put out a BOLO and alerted the Hartford police and the state police.
Driving back to my house in Mays Corners, I tried to figure out what Jacob Warren would do in this situation. Black had said that he was good at keeping secrets and had a bad temper. Julia had said that he had been very uncommunicative during their dinner but had seemed to like Pam maybe even love her. Julia found it hard to read him. So a few days later suddenly Pam tells him that she met someone else and that she does not want to see him anymore. If Jacob’s temper had gotten the best of him then Pam had not said anything. Somehow, I did not think that Jacob was the type of person who would accept disappointment and simply walk away quietly. He seemed the type to hold a grudge.
