The Girl Next Door cr-3

by Brad Parks

  Were Jackman and Papadopolous somehow in on this together? Was that why there was no dented SUV in Jackman’s garage-because Papadopolous was actually the owner/driver of said vehicle?

  In my one prior run-in with Papadopolous, he certainly acted like a man with something to hide, throwing me out of the diner because I was a reporter. Here I had thought the golf-club-wielding Jackman fit the profile of a killer. But I had to admit a short-tempered Greek guy-the kind of guy who wanted to corporally remove me from his restaurant-might be just as capable of violence.

  But why would they both want Nancy dead? And how would they have discovered their mutual desire for her termination? Was Nancy also causing problems for Papadopolous in some way I had yet to discover?

  All I knew was that I didn’t know enough.

  I now really needed to track down Nikki Papadopolous, who might be my only source on whatever was happening between her father and my ex-publisher. Finding her would obviously require some finesse, inasmuch as I didn’t want to alert her daddy to my presence.

  I eased out from behind my spindly little tree, casting one quick look at Jackman and Papadopolous, who were still engrossed in their collusion. I rounded the corner and jogged up the front steps, aware I would have to avoid the left side of the restaurant when I entered. Luckily for me, the office was on the right side. Nikki and I might be able to talk there without her father being the wiser.

  Entering the second of the front doors, I found a woman at the hostess stand whom I recognized as being Jen the Waitress, Nikki’s friend. I positioned myself so I couldn’t be seen from the Jackman-Papadopolous table.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling pleasantly. “Just one today?”

  “Actually, I was here to see Nikki. Is she around?”

  Jen smiled again, but this time in a way that suggested it perhaps wasn’t unusual for young men to come there and ask for Nikki.

  “Sorry, she’s not around right now. It’s her day off. You’re the reporter who was here the other day, right?”

  “That’s me.”

  She pointed toward the left side of the restaurant and said, “Is it something Gus can help you with? He’s just back there.”

  Gus? Who was Gus? Then it dawned on me that she was gesturing toward the diner owner. Of course his name was Gus. What else would a guy named Gus Papadopolous do in New Jersey other than own a diner?

  “That’s okay, actually,” I said. “He, uh, had some anger-management issues the last time I tried to chat with him.”

  “Yeah, he has those a lot. Once he goes off about something, there’s just no talking him down.”

  Noted.

  “Actually,” I said. “Would you mind giving me Nikki’s number? She left a message for me at the office, I just forgot to write her number down”-or, rather, Tina never gave it to me, but I didn’t want to get lost in details-“and I feel rude not calling her back. Do you have it by any chance?”

  Jen glanced back toward Gus’s table for a second. “Yeah, sure,” she said, took a phone out of her pocket, pressed some buttons, then dictated ten digits to me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m Carter Ross, by the way.”

  I extended my right hand. “Jen,” she said, shaking it. “Jen Forbus.”

  “Thanks, Jen Forbus,” I said. “You’re a real sweetheart.”

  She smiled and I gave her a quick salute as I departed. I walked around the corner toward the pizzeria I had visited the day before-I was still starving, after all-and gave Nikki a ring. We established she would meet me at the pizzeria, and before long I was shoveling the first of two slices into my mouth.

  I was finished with both slices-and a life-giving Coke Zero-and was starting to get tired of sitting there by the time Nikki arrived. Then I saw her and realized it had been worth the wait. She was wearing a light green, knee-length summer dress made out of some gauzy floral-print fabric. It was wrapped around her and secured at her waist with a little spaghetti string. I had untied that string with my eyes at least twice in the time it took her to cross the restaurant toward my table.

  “Hi, there,” I said, feeling the smile overtake my face as I rose from the booth.

  “Hey, there, handsome,” she said, and I accepted a kiss on the cheek. She was lightly perfumed and freshly made up. Her dark hair-which she wore up while at work-was now down just below her shoulders. She looked nothing short of fabulous, and I wondered if the effort had been on my account. One way to find out.

  “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” I said. “You look like you’re about to go out on a date or something.”

  “Oh no,” she said quickly, then added, “It’s just so nice to wear a dress on a hot day.”

  So it was for me. But we were pretending it wasn’t. I could play that game. I could play it all day and all night if she wanted.

  I tried to remind myself I was there for, you know, business purposes; that she was the daughter of the man who might have helped murder Nancy Marino; that this was potentially an important interview.

  I needed to keep my wits about me. I needed to be like those guards at Buckingham Palace. They don’t let anything distract them from their duty-not goofy, picture-taking tourists; not those ridiculous fur hats they wear; not even beautiful Greek women.

  Then I got another eyeful of that summer dress and realized the British Royals would be toast under my watch. I gestured to the opposite side of my booth and said, “Have a seat.”

  * * *

  She sat. I smiled. She smiled. It could have been awkward, but wasn’t. I have come to believe human interactions are at least partially governed by things we barely understand, things that determine-without our active participation in the process-whether we’ll be able to get along with someone or whether it will always be a struggle. There was no struggle with Nikki. It was easy.

  “You want anything to eat or drink?” I asked.

  She laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” she said, “I just spend all day asking people that question.”

  “Oh right,” I said, and I was tempted to pass the next several hours just studying her face and making delightful small talk. But I forced myself to stay on task. “So you called me about something?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said, clearly a little distracted herself. “My dad interrupted us yesterday before I had a chance to tell you something about Nancy. And I don’t know if it even matters anymore or not. But I thought you should know.”

  “Okay.”

  “This guy came in last week and was asking my dad a lot of questions.”

  “About Nancy?”

  “Yeah. They went into a booth in the back of the restaurant, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I just saw my dad getting pissed off like he always does and waving his hands in the air a lot. I asked him what it was about later and he said, ‘Nancy.’ And I was like, ‘What about Nancy?’ But he was just fuming about affidavits and subpoenas and stuff like that.”

  “So your dad was going to have to give an affidavit or else he’d get subpoenaed?”

  “Something like that, I guess. Yeah. I’m not a lawyer or anything.”

  Neither am I, of course. But I’ve learned enough about the law to know that whenever subpoena power is involved, things are usually pretty interesting.

  “So who was the guy?” I asked.

  “Well, I didn’t know. He just came and left. But then I saw this business card tacked to the bulletin board in the office. I made a photocopy for you.”

  She pulled a folded sheet of paper out of a small green clutch she was carrying. She handed it to me, and I unfolded it to see contact information for Peter Davidson, regional director of the National Labor Relations Board. It had an address in Newark and a phone number with a 973 area code.

  “National Labor Relations Board?” I asked. I knew the NLRB was a federal agency, but I was only vaguely familiar with it from articles I had read. Usually, the NLRB was called into negotiations that had
become huge pissing matches between labor and management-sort of like what the Newark Eagle-Examiner had going with IFIW-Local 117.

  But I was still confused. “What would the NLRB want with your dad? You guys aren’t unionized, are you?”

  She shook her head.

  “So, uh, okay, I don’t get it,” I said, intertwining my fingers on the back of my head.

  “I tried to pump my dad for information, but he told me it was nothing to worry about. He’s not the kind of man who likes to unload his problems on other people, even his own daughter. Especially his own daughter. I asked him two or three times, and he just patted me on the head and said, ‘Eet’s fine, eet’s fine, no troubles.’”

  But there were troubles. There had to be. And maybe they were substantial enough to turn Nancy Marino into the kind of obstacle that made Gus Papadopolous every bit as interested in her removal as Gary Jackman. All I knew was feds just didn’t waltz into your place of work and threaten you with a subpoena unless there was trouble somewhere. The trick was figuring out where.

  Or maybe, at least for now, the better question was when it started.

  “You said the guy was here last week,” I asked. “What day?”

  Nikki cast her eyes upward and found the answer swirling in an old ceiling fan. “Monday,” she said. “It was Monday.”

  A timeline was assembling in my head. On Monday, a representative from the NLRB waltzed into the State Street Grill to talk about something that had Gus Papadopolous waving his hands in the air. On Tuesday morning, the black SUV began stalking Nancy on her paper route-at least according to Mrs. Alfaro’s memory. By Friday, Nancy was dead.

  So Gus was involved. He had to be, right?

  But did that mean Jackman wasn’t involved? Maybe yes. Maybe no. But if it was no, why did I keep seeing them together?

  It was, potentially, a brilliant bit of criminality: any prosecutor could tell you nothing weakens a murder case like having two suspects, each of whom has an equally strong motive. In the absence of good physical evidence-which this case was unlikely to have-each suspect ostensibly guarantees reasonable doubt for the other, because each defendant’s attorney can argue, hey, it wasn’t my guy, it was the other guy. Unless the prosecutor can find some kind of reasonable link between the perpetrators-e-mails, phone calls, payment of some sort-and charge them together, there’s pretty much no case.

  I suddenly wished I had snapped a quick cell phone picture of the two of them sitting at that booth. Not that it would truly prove anything-given enough time, I’m sure they could concoct a reasonable cover story-but it would at least establish that the men weren’t total strangers.

  Or, for all I knew, they might have another tie. Maybe one everyone-or at least Gus’s daughter-knew about already. I focused on Nikki and tried to act nonchalant.

  “Hey, this may seem like a strange question, but does your dad know a guy named Gary Jackman by any chance?” I asked.

  “Uh, I don’t know. Who is he?”

  “He’s the publisher of my newspaper, which sort of makes him like my boss.”

  Or ex-boss. But let’s not quibble.

  “Gary Jackman,” she said, pondering it more deeply. “I don’t think so. But it’s not like I know all my dad’s friends, you know? He does a lot of stuff with the Bloomfield Chamber of Commerce, so he’s always bothering people about that. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, I’ve just seen them together a couple of times and I was just … curious.”

  Nikki shrugged and smiled sweetly. Then she asked me a question no guy could resist coming from an attractive woman: “So, you want to get out of here, grab a drink or something?”

  And I know that I should have been like those boys at Buckingham. I know it was entirely possible that she wasn’t as innocent as she appeared. I know she might well have been an enemy agent sent to seduce me, pry information out of me, and then kill me with some exotic, undetectable poison, like a girl in a Bond flick.

  But perfume has a way of clouding my judgment. Besides, doesn’t the enemy agent end up falling in love with Bond despite herself?

  “I don’t know, Nikki,” I teased. “What would Gus think about me having a drink with his little girl?”

  She grinned. “I don’t think Gus is allowed to have an opinion on the matter.”

  “Then let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  Soon, we were riding in my babe-magnet Malibu on our way to a trendy bar in Montclair, the kind of place with low couches and lower lighting where we could spend a little time getting acquainted. We swapped our stories-you reach a point in singlehood when you’ve got your standard first-date material pretty well down-and the hour grew late. We drank but not excessively. Just enough to have a nice little buzz. It was all quite enchanting.

  I found it pleasant talking to Nikki, who laughed easily and told fun stories. She had wanted to be an actress and did the New York audition thing for a while until she concluded they didn’t want someone who looked, as one casting director put it, “so ethnic.” After that, she returned to school and studied restaurant management and was being groomed to take over the family business.

  We were from somewhat different sides of the track-me with my Wonder bread background, she with her pitas-but that didn’t seem to matter. I found her refreshingly uncomplicated as compared to game-playing Tina. And maybe Nikki was just a rebound from Tina. But even if that was the case, any basketball coach could tell you rebounds have helped with a lot of ball games. And it was becoming obvious where the evening was heading.

  It started with a little hand-patting, which turned into hand-holding. Then I might have started idly stroking her forearm, which she must not have minded because she suddenly scooted quite close to me on the couch we were sharing. She got up at one point to visit the ladies’ room, and when she returned, she gave me a kiss on the lips-no tongue, but it was still meaningful-then snuggled herself against me. The smell of her was at least as intoxicating as the drinks we were having.

  One thing I enjoy about being a grown-up is that, at a certain point in time, you stop needing quite so much pretense with the opposite sex. When you were in high school, you had to lure a girl out to the park with the ploy that it was the best place to see shooting stars. When you were in college, she came back to your dorm room because you wanted to show her your fish tank. But then sometime in your twenties, all that subterfuge-which never really fooled anyone anyway-becomes unnecessary. So when last call went out sometime short of midnight, I suggested we head back to my place, and she accepted. Just like that.

  Before long, we were back in Bloomfield. I turned the Malibu into my driveway. My garage is detached-in the way all garages used to be-and it has become something of a repository for things better left unseen by hot dates. Plus, it’s a bit of a tight squeeze. I didn’t want her having to crawl past my lawnmower and my Weedwacker on her way out.

  I pulled up short of the garage, hopped out of the car, and hurried around to open Nikki’s door for her. Then I took her hand and escorted her down the driveway, rounding the corner of the house toward the small set of brick steps that led to my front door. We were walking single file-the path wasn’t wide enough to go side by side-and I was in the lead.

  It was only later, when I replayed everything in my mind, that I realized this was about the time I heard a car engine coming to life. At the time, with my mind clearly on other things, I can’t say I really paid much attention. There had to be at least fifty houses on my block. One person starting their car-even at a late hour like this-was not unusual.

  But yes, a car had started somewhere. And I became aware it was traveling rather speedily, but, again, that didn’t concern me. Everyone drives too fast in Jersey. Even if I had thought about it, and I’m quite sure I didn’t, I would have assumed it was some kid heading home from his girlfriend’s house, fired up by a success or dejected by a failure.

  The first thing that I noticed for sure was the headlights. They were big and br
ight and closer to eye level than headlights should be.

  The second thing I noticed was that those headlights were coming right at us. Nikki was saying something about how she liked my little house when the SUV veered off the street, using the neighbor’s driveway like it was a highway entrance ramp and hurtling across my front yard. I felt my eyes squinting involuntarily as those big headlights suddenly bore down on us.

  Then instinct took over. I released Nikki’s hand, pivoted, and plowed myself into her, shoving us over the foundation shrubbery next to the front steps. There was no real time to make it gentle or pretty. I just tackled her as hard as I could, hoping I had enough momentum to get us both out of harm’s way. We crashed through the shrubs, and most of my weight landed on her. The scream that was starting to escape from her mouth turned into a grunt as I knocked all the wind from her lungs.

  I felt the rush of air and exhaust as the vehicle missed us by a few feet. I heard the roar of its engine and the small shriek of its tires as it jumped back over the curb and onto the asphalt. But I didn’t see anything. My head was down.

  By the time I looked up, the SUV was gone.

  He arrived at Carter Ross’s house at a quarter to six in the evening, just to have a look around. He was ready with a cover story in case Ross saw him, but that proved unnecessary. The reporter wasn’t at home.

  So he treated himself to a quick but full surveillance of Ross’s domain. He eyeballed angles and imprinted the layout of the property in his head as best he could. He noted the detached garage. He studied means of access and egress-a front door and a back door, nothing on the sides. He looked for signs that might tell him what Ross’s patterns were.

  He was searching for vulnerabilities, of course, for potential ways Ross might be attacked. He quickly concluded Ross entered and exited exclusively through the front door. The back door, which opened onto a small deck, simply wasn’t as convenient to the garage. And it didn’t seem to be used frequently-the grass in the backyard appeared undisturbed, as if no one had walked on it in several days.

  That was good. He wouldn’t have to use his gun. Ross would be an easy target for the Escalade. He paced off a few distances, counting the seconds it took to walk them, coming up with a likely range of times. It was the same sort of mental preparation he had made for Nancy Marino, and he expected the same results.