The Question of the Dead Mistress

by E. J. Copperman

  “What do you think happened?” Ms. Washburn asked the question I felt Monroe had been quite clear, if baseless, in answering more than once before.

  But his answer was not the one I’d expected. “I think that if the ME’s report comes back that Fontaine was killed somewhere else and moved to High Street, it doesn’t rule out his wife as the killer. It just means she had help.”

  I had considered this previously but had no expected response to the question I asked. “Who do you think was abetting her?”

  Monroe’s eyes narrowed. I believe it was possible he was trying to conjure up the correct definition of the word abetting. “The guy who’s been abetting her for two years,” he said with an edge of triumph in his tone. “Her lover, Leon Rabinski.”

  “Leon Rabinski is vice president for development at Fontaine and Fontaine Real Estate. He’s essentially the second-in-command,” Ms. Washburn said. She was looking at her computer display in the Questions Answered office and reading from the company’s website. Still feeling that Ms. Fontaine’s question was chiefly her responsibility, she had walked directly into the office and begun her work. I had the utmost confidence in Ms. Washburn’s abilities and saw no reason to step in ahead of her. I was looking into some other aspects of the question, including the death of Melanie Mason and her connection to Brett Fontaine. Just to be certain, I was also trying to discern if Melanie had somehow intersected with William Klein as well, but my research was in its very earliest stage at the moment.

  “Development?” I asked. “As I understood it, Mr. Fontaine owned a few apartment buildings and rented them out to Rutgers students. What does the vice president of development do?”

  “According to the About Us page on the website, he is responsible for finding appropriate properties for the company to acquire,” Ms. Washburn answered. “But Brett Fontaine appears to have been the face of the operation, because prospective tenants are directed to him by phone or email if they’re interested in renting an apartment near campus.”

  I felt myself stroking my chin, which required shaving. “I doubt such information would be on the company’s website, but have you found any indication that Leon Rabinski was somehow romantically involved with Virginia Fontaine?”

  “It’s not the kind of thing a person with a working brain posts on Facebook,” Ms. Washburn noted. “There are no Instagram pictures of them together or Pinterest posts that even hint they ever met each other. I’m going to keep looking. Should we call Ginny and ask her about this?”

  I shook my head, glad Ms. Washburn was still looking to me for advice. “I don’t think there would be a point. If she were having an affair with Leon Rabinski, I believe Ms. Fontaine would surely lie about it. Besides, she is planning her husband’s funeral.”

  “You’re right,” Ms. Washburn said. “That was kind of insensitive of me, wasn’t it?”

  The thought had not occurred to me. “I just meant she was probably quite busy and would not answer the phone,” I told her.

  “Either way.” Ms. Washburn turned toward her screen and began working the mouse attached to her computer. She looked distressed. I did not know if I should do anything to relieve whatever feeling she was having, or what it was I would do if I were sure such a thing was appropriate. I chose to get back to my own research largely because it was the job I had agreed to do, but also because I decided Ms. Washburn would be more cheerful if we were showing some progress in answering Virginia Fontaine’s question.

  Without being excessively detailed about my process, I spent seventy-three minutes delving into two aspects of Brett Fontaine’s murder: the idea that the body had been posed in front of the home on High Street and Mr. Fontaine’s friends and business associates.

  Since Virginia had mentioned the name, I began with a look at her late husband’s friend Peter Belson. He was currently working for a chain of three car dealerships in Bergen County as director of advertising. Belson had graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University at the same time as Brett Fontaine with a degree in communication and had worked as an advertising consultant on a freelance basis before starting his current job seven years earlier. He was married with three children and lived, if my information was correct, in Paramus.

  It took only a few passes to find a telephone number for Belson, although I could not be certain if it was a landline at his home—which in the current climate would probably have been disconnected or fallen into disuse—or a cellular telephone. Once I had the number and had confirmed it was Belson’s however, I was reluctant to use it. I do not like speaking to people I have not met and am especially reluctant to do so on the telephone. Even though I miss a good number of visual cues in a face-to-face conversation it is somewhat reassuring to know they are there. I might notice some of them. With a telephone that is not a possibility.

  My dilemma was postponed but not solved when Ms. Washburn broke the relative silence (there had been the sound of computer keyboards being used and chairs being shifted). With no prior indication, she said, “Samuel, I think I’ve found something.”

  Normally I would have suggested that Ms. Washburn would know if she had found something or not, but I was relieved to stop thinking about calling Peter Belson and was trying to be especially sensitive to Ms. Washburn’s feelings, which is not easy for a person like me. First I have to determine what those emotions are, then try to imagine how it feels to have them, and finally decide how best to deal with them. It can be mentally exhausting.

  In this case I looked at Ms. Washburn. “What have you found?” I asked. It seemed she’d been waiting to be asked so I provided the stimulus for a response.

  “I was looking for a connection between Virginia Fontaine and Leon Rabinski but I didn’t find one,” she said. That seemed to be the opposite statement to what I had asked. I decided, however, that Ms. Washburn surely must have more to reveal because I have noticed her judgment many times in the past and she is not the type of person who would make a declaration with no facts to support it. I waited and she continued. “But I stumbled over something that might give some weight to Virginia’s original claim.”

  It took me a moment to consider that. “The idea that her husband was involved in an extramarital relationship with a ghost?” I asked. That hardly seemed possible. I have been clear about this subject: There are no ghosts.

  “Exactly. I looked into Leon Rabinski’s background and I found that he graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson the same year as Brett Fontaine.” Ms. Washburn looked at me, but I was irritated with myself for not having found this piece of information when I was researching Peter Belson.

  “I imagine there are several hundred people in the graduating class at that university,” I said. (In fact, research has shown that more than 3,000 people are in a typical commencement at Fairleigh Dickinson University.) “Is that fact significant?”

  “It is when I found that Leon Rabinski and Melanie Mason were married six years ago, three years before she died,” Ms. Washburn said.

  twelve

  “Melanie was the most amazing woman I ever met.” Leon Rabinski smiled softly at the memory of his late wife. “She was so alive, so energetic and enthusiastic, that for three weeks after she passed I was sure it was all a mistake and I waited for her to come walking through the door.” Rabinski looked toward the entrance of Fontaine and Fontaine Real Estate, a rather disappointing office in a nondescript office building in New Brunswick, as if this were the door he had been discussing. I assumed it was not.

  Ms. Washburn and I had intended to visit Brett Fontaine’s place of business anyway, but the revelation about Rabinski’s marriage to Mr. Fontaine’s college girlfriend had accelerated our interest in the office. It was as plain and indistinct as such businesses usually are. Real estate agents do not often bring clients to their places of business, preferring to view properties in person and signing documents in the clients’ homes. There is no reason to have an
especially aesthetic workplace.

  “Did you meet your wife at Fairleigh?” Ms. Washburn asked. New Jerseyans often abbreviate the name of Fairleigh Dickinson University as a kind of insider shorthand. I have never heard it questioned.

  “Actually, no,” Rabinski answered. “I met her at a party at Pete Belson’s apartment ten years ago. Fairleigh’s a pretty big campus and you don’t get to know everybody in the place or even everybody in your class.”

  “But when you met her at Mr. Belson’s place, you hit it off right away?” Ms. Washburn said. I disagreed with her choice, giving the person being interviewed an answer instead of insisting on his own account of the event. But I was allowing her to do most of the questioning. I was finding it difficult to restrain myself but I did trust Ms. Washburn. To this point she had not made what I considered to be a major error.

  “Sort of,” Rabinski answered. “She was so beautiful I figured I didn’t have a chance with her so I didn’t really do much except stand around and talk to her. She told me later she liked that and thought I was funny. In a couple of weeks we were dating. Go figure.”

  “She died in an automobile accident?” I said. I had not agreed to remain entirely silent; Ms. Washburn had not asked me to do so. But her expression indicated some impatience. I later asked and she told me it was not about my asking a question but that she thought my manner would especially upset Rabinski.

  Indeed, he almost winced at the memory. Then he nodded. “Yeah. She was driving on Route 22 in Union and a guy in a truck came around one of those crazy ramps they have there. I don’t even think he’d been drinking; he just didn’t look. Mel’s car was pushed and hit by a BMW, then went up in flames. Everyone else walked out without a scratch.” He shook his head at the idea. “Ruined my life and nothing happened to that truck driver at all.”

  Ms. Washburn’s tone was certainly gentler than mine had been, I see in retrospect. “So you had a happy marriage.” It was stated as a fact, not posed as a question, and Rabinski did not respond. He accepted the information and confirmed it by not challenging the speaker. Ms. Washburn did not lean forward, did not suggest through her body language that she was about to ask a more personal question than before. “Were you aware that your wife and the man you work with were involved years before you met her?” That was as sensitive a way to ask an insensitive question as I could imagine, so I took note of Ms. Washburn’s style.

  As fitting the tone, Rabinski did not seem at all offended. “Of course I knew. We laughed about it. Mel never told me much about that time but when she found out I worked with Brett she was kind of stunned for a minute.” He meant she was stunned for a moment, but I thought it counterproductive to intrude on the conversation. “She said they stayed friends, sort of, but I noticed when they saw each other at business parties and such, she made sure to be on the other side of the room. They said hello and that was pretty much it.”

  I thought it would be time to ask Rabinski about the rumors Detective Monroe had alluded to, that he was having an affair with Virginia Fontaine. But Ms. Washburn obviously wanted to take the inquiry in another direction, one I would not have pursued on my own.

  “Forgive me for asking,” she began, “but sometimes when a loved one passes away so abruptly, there’s the feeling of unfinished business, that things were left in the middle and not at the end.” Despite her asking for forgiveness, she had not asked Rabinski anything.

  “I know what that feels like,” Rabinski said. “I spent months rehearsing the conversation I thought we were going to have when she got home. I kept thinking, I guess, that if I got it right Mel would come back and I could talk to her again.”

  That seemed to charge Ms. Washburn’s interest. “Did you ever try to talk to her again?” she asked. “A lot of people in your situation do that. They seek out someone who says they can reach to those who have left us and pass messages. Did you do that?”

  Rabinski’s mouth turned to one side as if he were chewing on an especially tough piece of meat. “You mean like mediums and that?” he said. “People who take your money and pretend they can talk to the dead? No, ma’am. I was devastated, but I wasn’t crazy.”

  “So you’ve seen no sign of your wife since that night,” Ms. Washburn continued. This was the ghost theory she was trying to pursue and I thought it particularly pointless.

  “Of course not,” Rabinski said. “Now, if that’s it, I have to lock up the office and take off. I have a couple of appointments before I go home tonight.” He stood up to signal that our conversation had ended.

  I saw no other choice. “Are you having an affair with Virginia Fontaine?” I asked. It seemed the most likely way to obtain a direct response.

  Ms. Washburn’s expression indicated I had been socially inappropriate. I did not see how. Rabinski and I were not friends or even acquaintances. I was here to ask questions and receive information. I was asking the most pertinent question to the matter we were researching. Sometimes even Ms. Washburn interprets things in ways I fail to understand.

  “What?” Rabinski was not, it should be noted, asking me to repeat the question because he had been unable to hear it. He was expressing some level of outrage, assumedly at me for asking such a personal question, but I saw no reason to respond and simply waited for him to continue. “Get out of my office.”

  That was not an answer to the question. “It is an important point,” I explained. “If you are seeing Ms. Fontaine that might shed some light on a possible motive for Mr. Fontaine’s murder. If you are not, we will know there is a definite flaw in the thinking of someone involved in that question. Do you understand?”

  “I said get out,” Rabinski responded. “And don’t come back. You’re not cops and I don’t have to talk to you.” He pointed to the door, as if our continued presence was evidence that we did not know how to leave the office.

  “Thank you for your time,” Ms. Washburn said, standing up and walking toward the door. “Sorry if we upset you.”

  “Just get out,” Rabinski repeated. He wiped his face with his left hand although it had not seemed especially damp with perspiration.

  I rose from my chair and followed Ms. Washburn to the door. Then I turned and looked at Rabinski, who had now covered his eyes with his palms and was inhaling deeply.

  “Now that Brett Fontaine is dead, are you president of the company?” I asked.

  Ms. Washburn led me out of the office before Rabinski could answer.

  thirteen

  Ms. Washburn spoke very little during the drive back to the Questions Answered office, which took twelve minutes. This was not unusual, but she continued her relative silence even after we resumed our workstations, and that was not what I had expected. I decided she was deep in thought. I am often fairly uncommunicative when a question is consuming my interest.

  She worked at her desk for thirty-two minutes while I attempted to make some sense of the succession of ownership at Fontaine and Fontaine Real Estate. The business listing with Middlesex County filed at its inception indicated that it had been owned jointly by Brett and Virginia Fontaine, but there were additional papers filed only six months ago redistributing the ownership equally to Brett Fontaine and Leon Rabinski with no mention of Virginia. There was no need at that time to explain the change in ownership and none was offered.

  I had struggled to find additional documentation when Ms. Washburn broke the silence in the room by saying simply, “Samuel.” My natural response was to look in her direction and I saw that Ms. Washburn was walking toward my desk. “I have a thought about the way we’re looking into Ginny Fontaine’s question.”

  Since Ms. Washburn had been the lead researcher on the question and since I have always held her intelligence to be very high, it occurred to me that she was placing more emphasis on her current notion than usual. I nodded for her to continue because I wanted to communicate my interest in hearing more.

 
“I think maybe we should start interviewing people involved separately,” she said. “It could make more efficient use of our time and we could choose our subjects based on our strengths. There’s no reason for both of us to be there every time we talk to someone about this question.”

  To split up the work would be a break in protocol. For one thing, I do not drive very often so any interviews I conducted would require a ride to and from the venue assuming it was not within walking distance. But more interesting to me was Ms. Washburn’s impetus for suggesting her strategy precisely at this moment.

  “Surely that has always been the case,” I answered. “What has raised this issue now?”

  One thing Ms. Washburn has never done is to lie to me. But I could tell when she suddenly found a pen on my desk fascinating enough to watch it intensely that she was uncomfortable answering my question. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” she said.

  That was not an adequate response. “But you did not say anything to me,” I answered. “Is there a reason on this question that it is better we split the interviews?”

  Ms. Washburn squinted for a moment, almost as if wincing in pain. “I don’t want to say this the wrong way, Samuel, because I don’t think it will sound the way I mean it and I really don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  My feelings? There was something about this issue that would in some way embarrass or wound me and Ms. Washburn was attempting to shield me from the pain. What could that point be?

  It came to me in a moment, all at once. “You felt that I was a liability at the interview with Leon Rabinski,” I said, almost forgetting I was talking to Ms. Washburn. Neurotypicals tend to call this thinking out loud, as if such a thing were possible.