What You Want to See

by Kristen Lepionka

  “It just wasn’t what Dad wanted. We knew it. Even before the divorce stuff started, he wouldn’t have given her half, wouldn’t have given Nate more than he gave us.”

  The more I looked at them, the more they looked the same. Even the timbre of their voices was similar. “Okay,” I said, “so she destroyed your dad’s will so she would get half of the estate.”

  “More than half, with the money Nate was getting. Not to mention the life insurance.”

  “Which wasn’t fair,” Paul said again. Or maybe Georgette had said it the first time. “And she wanted to stay in the house. Meanwhile, she was selling off everything that wasn’t bolted to the wall.”

  “And we were not going to stand for that.”

  “Not a chance. Dad would’ve wanted the house to come to us.”

  “So we hired a private investigator.”

  That was unexpected. I put down my pen. “And here I thought I was your first,” I said.

  Paul laughed. “In this family, we hire private investigators like most families hire nannies. But you are the first lady detective I’ve ever talked to.”

  I did not mention to him that most families didn’t hire nannies either. I said, “Okay, so you hired an investigator to track down the missing property that she’d sold.”

  Paul nodded. “That was one of the angles. But—oh, it gets better. This guy went deep.”

  “Richland County,” Georgette said, with more than a little distaste. “Some godforsaken place called Bellville.”

  “That was the clincher.”

  “Bellville?” I said.

  “She was from there. Born and raised. And married, it turns out.”

  “She was already married to some backwater HVAC technician when she and Dad had their little ceremony!”

  The siblings sat back and looked at me, pleased. Easy to figure why. I said, “Which nullified the marriage.”

  “Bingo,” Paul said. “And therefore the intestate law giving her half the estate. Of course, there was nothing we could do about the life insurance money—the policy listed her by name, so she got that. Seven-fifty, that’s how much she walked away with. We had her over a barrel about the marriage though, honestly, so in the end she took it without much of a fight.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” Georgette said. “We had to file eviction proceedings in court and get the sheriff to physically remove them from the property. Oh, and she did not go quiet into the good night. Screaming in the yard like we were the ones who did something to her.”

  I couldn’t shake the image of Marin Strasser calmly flipping through her magazine in Stauf’s the other day. The picture of elegance. She’d looked like someone who had never screamed at anyone over anything. “Know where she went after that?”

  “We got a restraining order against her during the eviction, preventing her from coming here. So at least she knew enough not to do that. But she called all the fucking time, different numbers, different tactics. She moved all over. Miami. Nashville. And so on.” The corner of Paul’s mouth twitched.

  “That’s why I was so, you know,” Georgette said, “brusque with you on the phone.”

  “So much for over a barrel,” I said. “What did she want?”

  “Over a barrel with the will,” Paul said. “But remember, the trust for the baby Jesus. Locked down till he turns thirty. She was just bound and determined to get around that.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  He held out a hand and tilted it back and forth. “Sometimes, in very specific circumstances. Not in this one. But she sure did try. She’d call and say hey, your half brother needs a bone marrow transplant—oh, and money to pay for it, preferably in cash. She’d say they’ve got robbed at gunpoint, she’d say their new house burned down and they’re homeless, she’d say Nate was having psychological problems because he missed us.”

  “Which,” Georgette said, “I mean, come on. He didn’t.”

  Her brother went on, “The last time was, what, five years ago? She said Nate had been arrested and she needed money for a lawyer.” He paused briefly, one eyebrow raised. “As for why she thought that would compel us to act when the threat of a bone-marrow transplant didn’t, I have no idea.”

  “Maybe he really did have legal trouble this time.”

  Georgette and Paul shrugged.

  “Do you have a more recent picture of him? More recent than this, anyway,” I said, holding up the tarnished locket. “Assuming you didn’t burn them all.”

  “Burning photographs, how gauche,” Paul said.

  Georgette got up and rummaged around a bookcase for a while before pulling out a burgundy photo album. “I wouldn’t turn my nose up at burning some of these.” She sat back down and flipped through pages, the album spine cracking. “This looks like a school picture. From high school. He’d be twenty-five or so now.”

  She handed me a five-by-seven print of the little boy from the locket all grown up. Sandy blond hair, blue eyes, and cheekbones that could cut glass, just like his mother. He was sharply good-looking, the baby fat and youthful innocence gone. His features had an intensity, even smiling in front of a swirly blue backdrop on picture day. “Mind if I keep this?”

  “Knock yourself out.” Georgette continued flipping pages in the photo album. “Oh, God. Here. Look. This is classic Marin. This was Easter dinner, for God’s sake.” She passed the album over to me, tapping a page with her fingernail.

  The image showed Marin in a strapless black dress and stilettos, her hair nineties-puffy and platinum blond. She stood with a portly guy in a tweed jacket. He looked happy, the kind of happy you feel when you get away with something. Marin smiled seductively, though it wasn’t clear at whom. They were standing on a familiar-looking sidewalk with a brick arch in the background.

  “Where was this taken?” I said.

  Georgette glanced over my shoulder. “Oh, that’s Grandmother’s house. Or was. Down in the city, Victorian Village. Aunt Agnes got it when she died. Dad’s sister. Crazy Aunt Agnes.”

  I stared at the setting some more. “On Dennison?” I guessed. Where Marin had been shot. I’d seen that house recently—I knew it.

  Georgette nodded, her eyebrows going up. “Yes. How did you know that?”

  “Lucky guess. She still lives there?”

  Another nod. “Unless the Martians in her shower got her, since our obligatory Christmas visit,” Georgette said, and she and her brother laughed. “You must think we’re just awful,” she added, in a way that said she didn’t feel the least bit bad about it.

  ELEVEN

  Every time I walked into Grant Medical Center, I tried to hold my breath from the door to the elevator. The hospital smell in the air—sanitized linens and rubber gloves—was like a time capsule that opened itself up and unleashed the memory of the night my father died.

  I’d been in New York for ten days on a case when it happened. Three in the morning and I was dreaming about him: a wren had flown into the picture window on the front of the house, and we were burying it in a Crown Royal bag. And then the girl from the bar was shaking my arm. “Hey, um, hey you,” she was saying. She didn’t know my name, but I didn’t know hers either. So we were probably even. “Your phone’s been ringing nonstop.”

  I opened my eyes to her messy-chic Williamsburg loft, pink and white Christmas lights crosshatching the ceiling. I hadn’t been asleep long enough to be hungover. “What?”

  “Your phone,” she said. “It keeps ringing.”

  “Sorry.” I heard it then, the muffled sound of crickets chirping. I got out of her bed, held an arm over my tits as I looked for my stuff. What had I been wearing? There—my leather jacket on the back of a desk chair. I fumbled through the pockets as the chirping stopped, then started up again a few seconds later. When I finally got the phone out, I saw that it was Andrew and I knew. I knew what it was going to be. Even though there were any number of emergencies Andrew might be calling me about, I knew it was only one.


  My father had been shot twice, once in the arm and once at the base of the throat, just above the collar of his Kevlar vest. A third bullet had glanced off the vest but it didn’t matter. He and Tom were helping a gang task force in the housing projects at Poindexter Village and had chased a guy from the row houses over to the playground, when the suspect stopped, turned, and fired. He was in surgery. The prognosis was grave. I flew back on the earliest flight I could get, drank a Bloody Mary on the plane while paging through the seat-pocket magazine without seeing it, the fingers of my right hand crossed and balled into a fist—my version of praying.

  The flight was only ninety minutes but time had stopped passing. When I landed, I ran through the airport and spent fifteen minutes waiting for and then riding the parking shuttle, thumbing my phone for updates, and then I couldn’t remember where I had parked my car. The lot seemed to stretch on to the horizon. It was February and bitterly cold and I almost gave up and called a cab. But then I found it, and for a split second I felt a surge of complete happiness, like this was what I had come to do.

  Then I remembered, and I threw up on my own fender.

  At the hospital, everyone was still waiting. My mother was surrounded by my father’s friends, a pale, drawn figure in a sea of broad shoulders and CPD jackets. I went to her and reached out but she was overwhelmed, everyone reaching out to her all at once. Andrew grabbed my arm, told me there was no news yet. We looked at each other and neither of us knew what to say. The inside of my mouth was on fire from chewing two handfuls of Altoids in the car to cover up the taste of vodka and vomit. Matt hugged me halfheartedly and then, gripping my shoulders at arm’s length, said, “Jesus Christ, Roxane, it’s seven in the morning.”

  “Hey, leave her alone,” Andrew said. “She had to get on a plane to get here.”

  Matt shook his head and walked away.

  “Self-righteous fuck,” Andrew said. He looked tired but his eyes were clear. I thought of the drink I had on the plane and clenched my jaw so tight my sinuses throbbed. “Here,” my brother added, steering me toward an empty seat amid the people waiting in Grant’s emergency room. “Why don’t you sit. I’ll get you a cup of tea. Or”—dropping his voice to a whisper—“if you want to straighten out—”

  “No,” I said. “Just tea.”

  Andrew squeezed my arm and walked away.

  I stared at the dirty industrial carpet between my feet for a long time. Then I glanced up and saw Tom on the other side of the room. He met my eyes, his face full of guilt. There was blood on his shirt. My father’s blood. We were looking at each other like that when a sliding glass door opened and the doctor came out and walked grimly past me, and the before part of our lives was over, just like that.

  Today, I made it nearly to Arthur’s room before I had to take a breath. When I got to his doorway, I looked in and saw him still unconscious, still hooked up to a symphony of beeping machinery. Bobby Veach—the pressman who’d been in the office the night of the shooting—was sitting at his bedside. When Veach saw me, he immediately got up.

  “I was just leaving,” he said. He was wearing a polo shirt with the same nylon gym shorts. He was probably one of those guys who wore shorts even in the winter.

  “You can stay.”

  “No, I should go.”

  He brushed past me into the hall and I followed him. “I’d like to talk to you, actually,” I said. “We didn’t really have a chance the other night.”

  “Sorry.” He looked at me over his shoulder but kept walking. He was in a curious hurry to get away from me. “I gotta get home. Sorry. Later, maybe.”

  We’d made it back to the elevator, which stood open as if waiting for him. I thrust another business card at him before he stepped in. “Call me,” I said, “later.”

  He nodded vaguely and shoved the card into his pocket and didn’t say anything else.

  I went back down the hall to Arthur’s room and sat down in one of the chairs next to his bed. I wanted to think that his color looked better than it had the other night. But he kind of looked the same. “Arthur,” I whispered.

  His eyes fluttered, stopped, and then finally one opened.

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and said, “Hi.”

  He closed his eyes for a second. “Roxane.” After clearing his throat, he added, “Janet told me … what you did. My daughter…”

  I waited to see if he would finish that thought.

  “… Somewhere.”

  “Your daughter’s here somewhere?”

  Nod.

  “Well, good,” I said. “I’m glad someone is around for you. Bobby was just here too, from the print shop.”

  He nodded faintly. “Good guy, Bobby … hard worker. Been with me a long time.”

  “Listen, are you up to answering a couple questions?”

  His eyes closed halfway and for a second I thought he’d gone back to sleep. But then he nodded.

  “The police were telling me about something they found. Something that makes it look bad for you. What didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t.” He cleared his throat. “Why would I. I told you everything.”

  “Please think, what are they talking about?”

  “No idea.”

  I changed tactics. “Arthur, did Marin know Derek, the guy who works for you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “What’s going on at the shop that the police are so interested in?”

  “I told … them. Everything.”

  “But tell me, Arthur. What’s going on?”

  He looked away from me, his gaze settling on the wall. “They wanted to buy the print shop.” A tear squeezed out of the corner of his eye. He whispered, “Now that poor girl died.”

  My stomach twisted. “I know. Who wanted to buy the print shop?”

  “It’s not for sale.”

  His voice was going fuzzy, and I knew I needed to hurry up and ask the rest of my questions before he passed out again. “Did Marin ever talk about someone named Agnes Harlow?”

  He swallowed wetly, shaking his head.

  “William? Nate?”

  “Who … no.”

  “Did she ever mention having a son?”

  Here, Arthur’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “No … no family. Don’t you believe me?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”

  “The police don’t believe me. Marin. Everything.”

  Based on what I’d learned about Marin in the last two days, I believed Arthur more than ever. I just wished I knew what everything referred to. “I’m going to figure this out. Why this happened, just a few days apart. Can you tell me anything? About the print shop, about Derek, or Leila Hassan, maybe?”

  He gripped my hand, then let go as his breathing began to slow. “Leila … Marin liked her. Friends…”

  “Arthur, tell me about Leila.”

  But he didn’t respond. Not then, and not at any point in the ten minutes I continued to sit there.

  * * *

  I left the hospital with something needling me, like an itchy tag sewn into the back of a shirt.

  I checked.

  That wasn’t it. I’d already cut the tag out of my shirt.

  After I got back in the car, I consulted my list of scribbled notes and drove to Leila Hassan’s corner of the Short North, parked illegally, rang the buzzer, no response. A UPS notice with her name on it was stuck to the building’s front door, dated Wednesday.

  So she hadn’t been home in a while.

  Inconclusive.

  I could fill the rest of my notebook with questions: What was going on at the print shop, and who had wanted to buy it, and why; what did any of it have to do with Marin; was my own client even telling me the truth?

  * * *

  Victorian Village was alive on this sunny Saturday afternoon, the park full of joggers and people lounging on the grass. I parked by the tennis courts and walked up to the house in the picture Georgette gave me. Cra
zy Aunt Agnes’s house. It was a shingle-style Victorian, like most of the homes on the street. Hunter green, with a hulking brick arch over the front porch. I realized I’d knocked on the door on Wednesday to no response, also like most of the homes on the street. I sauntered casually around the house, counting the rooms. It was a massive property. Eight bedrooms, maybe more. There was a two-story garage in back, space for three cars plus maybe an apartment upstairs. A carriage house. It was that kind of neighborhood.

  This place was likely worth more than half a million dollars.

  No lights on, no cars in the garage, no signs of life.

  Not even when I abandoned my casual search and walked right up to the front windows and squinted through a gap in the heavy drapes into what looked like a sitting room. Despite the darkness inside the house, I could make out the buxom curves of a vintage divan, the horn of an actual Victrola, a brass lamp with a fringed shade. It was like peering into a display at a historical museum.

  Frozen in time.

  I knocked on the door again but didn’t get a response this time either. The house sounded hollow and empty, decidedly unlived-in.

  Next I tried to see into the back of the property through the locked gate that sealed it off from the street. There wasn’t much yard to speak of back there, and what was there was a landscaping project gone to seed: a scummy pond with a dried-up waterfall; several square planters filled with medium-size hardy palms and the dead remains of tall exotic grasses; a wrought-iron patio set given over entirely to rust, its table umbrella fallen over and stuck under the legs of a chair. I stepped back over a bush and checked through the windows on the other side of the porch, taking in a dining room with a table that would seat twelve people. There was a china cabinet off to the side, its shelves stacked with ruby Depression glass.

  I walked back to Buttles and strolled through the alley toward the house, pretending I was Marin Strasser, a con artist full of booze and duck confit or whatever they served at the Guild House, pissed off about the fact that my fiancé-slash-easy-mark had discovered my scam. Marin’s blood was still visible in the gaps between the cobblestones, just slightly, four or five yards from the carriage house.