Blind Faith

by Joe McGinniss

  Felice moved into a condominium on the beach and soon found, apparently, that she was as desperate for Rob’s company as he was for hers. Disregarding her attorney’s instructions, she called him. Disregarding Ray DiOrio’s instructions, Rob came running when she called.

  Through much of the week that followed, they were inseparable. Much to the displeasure of the boys, she was even spending time at the Marshall house. She was there, in fact, on the afternoon of Friday, September 21, sitting around with Rob and an old college friend of his, Paul Kennedy, who had also become a frequent visitor.

  The three of them were having a drink when the phone rang. It was a Detective McGuire from the prosecutor’s office. This was Rob’s first contact with anyone investigating Maria’s murder since the morning it had happened, when they’d taken him to Bass River to give a statement. McGuire said he wanted to come over and speak to Rob.

  “We were just on our way out,” Rob said.

  But McGuire said he was calling from a phone booth only a few blocks away and could be there in five minutes. It wouldn’t take long. Just one point had come up on which Rob might be able to assist him.

  “Well, all right,” Rob said. “Come on over.”

  As soon as he hung up, he called Paul Kennedy into the kitchen. He told Paul to take Felice for a ride. Go to the mall. Buy something. Anything. But quick. He didn’t think it would look good for the police to come and find Felice sitting around the house. But Felice wouldn’t budge. “The hell with that,” she said. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  There were two detectives, actually—McGuire, a cheerful, burly young man, and Murray, short, trim, well dressed, also young. Very pleasant men, both of them. McGuire and Felice were already acquainted. He’d been the one who’d brought Felice in for questioning the day of the murder. Still, it was Rob who acted as host, offering drinks (they politely declined while Rob freshened up his Cuba Libre), calling Roby down to meet them, showing them a bit of the house.

  Then they stepped into the family room, still very casual and friendly. “Really sorry to bother you on short notice,” McGuire said, “but we were in the neighborhood and, ah, certain names have come to light in our investigation and we thought maybe you could assist us in identifying these people.”

  “Anything at all, gentlemen. I’m as eager to get to the bottom of this as you are.”

  McGuire took a small notebook from a jacket pocket and flipped through it. “Ah,” he said. “Here we go. Are you familiar with a fellow, or have you ever heard the name Ernest, or Ernie, Grandshaw, from Shreveport, Louisiana?”

  Later, in his official report, the way McGuire described it was that Rob seemed “visibly shaken” by mention of this name, “like a fellow who had just heard some very bad news.”

  He became pale and the hand holding the drink began to tremble. There was a difference in recollection about whether or not he actually spilled it, but, McGuire said, “his hand action was such that I thought he was going to.”

  In any case, quick as a wink, the gracious-host mask was gone. “As you are probably aware, gentlemen,” Rob said, in a much more somber, even officious voice, “I am being represented in this matter by Mr. DiOrio. He has advised me, in fact instructed me, not to answer any questions that might be put to me by anyone. And that, I’m afraid, includes even representatives of the prosecutor’s office.”

  Rob put his drink on the nearest flat surface. His hand was shaking so that the glass rattled as he set it down. He seemed also to have suddenly developed a tic. His thin lips, pursed tightly now that he’d stopped speaking, twitched irregularly to one side.

  “How about L’Heureux?” McGuire said. “A Ferlin L’Heureux, also of Shreveport?”

  “Gentlemen, as I’ve just stated, my attorney, Raymond DiOrio, has instructed me not to answer any questions concerning any aspect of any of the circumstances surrounding the death of my wife. And I really don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be here persisting with such questions after I’ve informed you of this. And before this goes any further, I would need to consult with my attorney. Until such time as I’ve had that opportunity, I’m afraid I’m going to have to terminate the interview.”

  McGuire nodded affably. “That’s fine,” he said. “Just thought we’d ask.”

  After they’d left, Roby approached his father and asked, “Dad? What was that all about?”

  Rob seemed highly agitated, almost frantic. “Nothing. It was nothing. I don’t know.”

  “Why would they be asking you about people in Louisiana?”

  “Goddamn it, Roby, I told you—I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know them, do you?”

  “Of course I don’t know them. I’ve never been to Louisiana in my life. Felice, let’s go. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go over to your place.”

  The bill that Rob eventually received from Raymond DiOrio—a bill for $4,750—specified September 16, five days before the visit from McGuire, as the last date on which DiOrio had worked in Rob’s behalf.

  Thus, the morning after he’d been asked about the two names from Louisiana, when Rob decided it would be useful for him to consult with an attorney, it was to the home of a criminal lawyer named Carl Seely that he went. Seely lived in a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia, and practiced in Pennsylvania as well as in New Jersey. He did considerable work for individuals believed by prosecutorial agencies to be associated with organized crime.

  It was, Seely later said, “through mutual friends” that he had been recommended to Rob as DiOrio’s successor. Neither Rob nor DiOrio ever spoke with much clarity about the circumstances that had caused them to decide to sever their professional relationship after little more than a week, but in any event, it was to Seely’s home that Rob traveled on Saturday morning, September 22, and it was Felice who drove the car.

  At the conclusion of a lengthy conference, she drove him back to Toms River. They stopped for dinner at a Mexican restaurant on the way. Then they spent the night together at her condominium on the beach.

  * * *

  They were still at the beach the next afternoon when the phone rang at the Marshall house. Roby answered.

  “Robert Marshall, please,” said a voice with a thick Southern accent.

  “Senior or junior?” Roby asked.

  “Senior.”

  “He’s not here,” Roby said. “May I take a message?”

  “Yeah, you can take it,” the man at the other end said, “but you better be sure he gets it damned fast.”

  “Okay. I think I know where to reach him.”

  “You tell him to call Ernie Grandshaw in Shreveport right away. Tell him it’s urgent. Real urgent.” The man left a phone number and hung up.

  Roby called Felice’s number at the condo but reached only her answering machine. He left a message. “Dad. This is Roby. A man named Ernie Grandshaw just called from Shreveport, Louisiana. He said you need to call him right away. It’s very urgent.” There was a pause. Then Roby continued. “Dad? What’s this all about? You just told the police you didn’t know anybody in Louisiana.”

  Rob got the message in late afternoon, as he and Felice returned to the condo from a long, hand-holding walk along the beach.

  Already, the day had been difficult, for it had been the occasion Rob had chosen to explain to Felice that his financial plight was, in fact, considerably more serious than he had first led her to believe. Debtwise, he confessed, he was in worse shape than he had wanted her to know. Much worse shape.

  So when he received the phone message, he did not accept it with tranquility. He quickly told Felice a story about having made a big bet on a basketball game with a fellow from Louisiana—damn, it had just slipped his mind when McGuire had questioned him on Friday—and having had to send money down there to pay it off. That, he said, must be what the call was about. Something to do with that silly bet he had made. Then he jumped into his car and drove back across the bridge at high speed.

  “Roby? Roby!�
� he shouted as he ran in the door. “What time did that call come in? What else did he say?”

  “Dad. I thought you didn’t know any Ernie Grandshaw in Shreveport.”

  “Never mind that. I just met him once. It’s not important. Listen, Roby, I want to know exactly what he said and how he said it.”

  “All he told me was the message I gave you. But, Dad—”

  “Listen, Roby, I met this fellow once a long time ago, way back in the spring I think it was, at some big party, some wedding reception or something. He was a big sports fan. Basketball fan. There was a game on the TV over the bar, an NBA game, the playoffs. We made a bet, just to keep it interesting. He won the bet and I wired him the money to pay it, that’s all. That’s the only time I ever saw the fellow in my life. I really don’t know why he was calling or why he’d want me to call back.”

  Roby was staring at his father, his mouth open. Things weren’t making sense. He didn’t like it. He felt scared. “Dad,” he said. “You’ve never watched a pro basketball game in your life. I bet you couldn’t even name two teams in the NBA.”

  Rob didn’t answer. He went to his office and closed the door. He was on the phone for hours, late into the night.

  Among those he called was Gene Leahy. “You may be hearing,” he said, “that I sent some money to Louisiana. This was to pay off a bet on a basketball game—that’s all it was. I bet a fellow three thousand dollars on an NBA game and lost, so I wired him the money.”

  That struck Gene as odd. He’d never known Rob to have any interest in basketball. And even if he had, why would he bother—in the midst of everything else that was going on—telling Gene that he’d paid off a bet to somebody in Louisiana?

  The following Wednesday, September 26, it was announced that a grand jury in Ocean County had indicted a Louisiana hardware store clerk on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the death of Maria Marshall.

  The news jolted even those in Toms River who’d felt themselves to be at the very nerve center of the gossip network. Louisiana? This brought a whole new dimension to the story. It was a bizarre twist that suddenly gave the death of the Toms River East swim team Mother of the Year an exotic allure that her life had never possessed. Louisiana? Roby Marshall said, “I couldn’t even find Louisiana on a map.”

  Just as startling, to those very few, like Roby, who had any awareness of the events of the preceding week and weekend, was the name of the man who’d been indicted. For it was not Grandshaw and it was not L’Heureux: the man indicted was named Andrew Myers, and he was being held in Shreveport on $1.5 million bail.

  He was forty-seven years old, the newspapers said, and he lived in a suburb of Shreveport called Bossier City. He worked at the Caddo Hardware Store in Caddo Parish. He lived with his wife, Vivian, and her daughter from a previous marriage in a one-story ranch house with a neatly kept lawn.

  As one newspaper reported:

  The bewilderment at the Imperial Lanes bowling alley in Bossier was typical of the reaction of Myers’s friends, neighbors and employer when they learned that he had been arrested.

  “It was on the six o’clock news that he’d been arrested, and then that night Vivian was here bowling,” recalled Barry Aitken, standing behind the counter at the lanes. “We’re all shocked. We don’t know what to think.”

  The news of Myers’s indictment was only the latest in the series of shocks suffered during the previous week by Rob Marshall. First had been McGuire with his names. Then had come the call from Louisiana. And then, just two days later, Felice had informed him that their relationship was over, that she never wanted to see him or hear from him or have anything to do with him again. She had said it was obvious that he had lied to her about Louisiana, and about how bad his financial troubles really were, and since she had always felt that their relationship was based upon mutual honesty and trust, she did not feel she could continue it. (She did not specify, at that time, that this was an action she was taking upon the advice of counsel.)

  Rob drove to Red Bank Thursday afternoon and sold his boat to Joe Moore for six thousand dollars, so he’d have some money to give to Carl Seely. Later, he called home and spoke to a housekeeper, asking for Seely’s telephone number. Then he called each of his sons. And that was the last that anyone who knew him heard from, or of, Rob Marshall until the next morning, Thursday, September 27.

  9

  Sal Coccaro, an early riser, heard the news on the radio at 6 A.M. Rob was in satisfactory condition at Point Pleasant Hospital following an overdose of sleeping pills. Sal drove immediately to the Marshall house and, for the second time in less than three weeks, found Roby and John stunned and dazed.

  “He called me last night,” Roby said. “I knew something was wrong. I could tell from the sound of his voice. Jesus Christ, why didn’t I do something? This is my fault! I could have stopped him.” Roby slammed a fist into the wall.

  “Knock it off, Roby,” Sal said. “Don’t even start with that blame stuff. You’ve got enough real problems without creating unnecessary ones. Not one thing that’s happened since September 7 has been your fault, or Chris’s, or John’s. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to suffer the consequences, but for Christ’s sake don’t make it worse for yourself. Now let’s get in the car and drive up there and find out what the hell is going on. What the hell’s he doing in Point Pleasant, anyway? How come he’s not in Ocean County?”

  While John Marshall sat in absolute, frozen silence throughout the fifteen-mile drive, Roby explained that his father had called him at work the night before.

  Roby was working nights at Feet First, one of the shoe stores at the mall, while taking classes at Ocean County College.

  “He was up in Monmouth County,” Roby said. “He was calling from Red Bank. He said he was up there on business and would be spending the night. But he didn’t sound right. He was all flat and lifeless. And he said, he said—‘I just wanted to hear your voice.’ That should have told me something. In fact, it did. It scared the hell out of me. I almost called you. But then I said, no, no, come on, Roby, don’t freak out. You know, I didn’t want to seem hysterical. See, it was my fault. If I had called you we could have done something!”

  “Roby, calm down,” Sal said. “If you had called me I would’ve told you, ‘Roby, don’t freak out, don’t get hysterical.’ Listen, I go to bed at ten o’clock at night. I sure as hell wouldn’t have gone driving up to Red Bank just because you told me your old man sounded ‘flat.’ The point is, he’s alive. He’s in satisfactory condition. And in five minutes we’ll be there, so give your brother a hug and give my ears a rest. I can tell I got a long day ahead.”

  Rob was awake and alert in an emergency room bed. Both Roby and John broke down completely as soon as they saw him. Less than three weeks after losing their mother, now they had somehow to cope with this.

  Once he saw that Rob was in no imminent danger of death, Sal Coccaro let his temper rise. “Why, Rob?” he said loudly. “Why? How could you do this? Look what you’ve done to these boys!” A nurse ran in to tell him to lower his voice.

  “I thought it would be easier on them,” Rob said weakly. “It would spare them having to go through a trial.”

  “What do you mean, a trial?” Sal said. “What the hell are you talking about, a trial? Does this have anything to do with that guy they nabbed down in Shreveport?”

  “Myers?” Rob said. “Not him. He’s not the problem. The problem is Grandshaw. And, Sal? You don’t know the worst of it. That night—the night of the murder—Grandshaw was there, in the casino.”

  “What do you mean, he was there?”

  “He’s an investigator,” Rob said. “A private detective. From Shreveport. Myers is just the guy who recommended him. I hired Grandshaw because there was some money missing. Sal, you know how Maria and I always kept a separate account just for casino winnings? Well, there was three thousand, maybe thirty-five hundred missing from that account and I thought Maria had taken it a
nd she kept denying it, so I hired this Grandshaw to look into it.” Rob paused. Sal Coccaro, Roby and John were staring at him expressionlessly.

  “He was up there that night. At Harrah’s,” Rob continued. “And the worst of it is, I gave him eight hundred dollars in cash right there in the casino. Now the prosecutor’s office is going to try to build a case that I hired him to—to kill Maria, for some reason.”

  He paused again. There was silence in the room.

  “Of course—” he said. “Of course, that’s not true. I loved—I loved Maria.” He looked at Sal Coccaro. “She was the mother of my boys, Sal. I could never take her away from them. I could never do a thing like that.” Then he began to cry.

  A few minutes later, he recounted the details of the suicide attempt. He had been distraught, he said, since Tuesday, when he’d gone to Felice to confess to her that he’d lied on Sunday and that he really did know an Ernie Grandshaw from Shreveport. Ray DiOrio, he said, had told him at their first meeting not to say anything to anyone and so, on what he considered the advice of counsel, he’d lied to her. She had not been willing to forgive him, he said, and had told him she was ending their relationship. This had shaken him deeply, he said, because she was really all he had to live for, except for his sons.

  He had gone to Red Bank to sell his boat to Joe Moore for six thousand dollars because he needed the money to pay his new lawyer, Carl Seely. But as the day passed he had grown increasingly morose and eventually had decided to drive to the Best Western in Lakewood, scene of so many passionate trysts with Felice, and check into their special room, room 16.

  There, he’d dictated brief, final messages to his three sons and a much longer, more general testament to Gene Leahy, in which he’d explained all that had led up to that moment. After putting the cassette in an envelope and leaving it at the front desk to be mailed, he’d returned to the room and had emptied fifty Restoril sleeping capsules into a glass of Coca-Cola, intending to drink it and end his life. Instead, after stirring the mixture with his finger and then licking his finger and finding the taste unpleasantly bitter, he’d lain back on the motel bed—scene of so much unbridled lust in the past—and had fallen asleep.