The Question of the Dead Mistress

by E. J. Copperman

  That seemed oddly uncharacteristic of Ms. Fontaine. “At her husband’s memorial service she decided to answer questions about his murder,” I said.

  It had not been intended as a question but Ms. Washburn apparently thought it had. “I guess she saw me and thought I was there for a reason, because I was,” she said. “Anyway, she said Peter had been at the service sitting with some of Brett’s family. He got to know some of Brett’s younger cousins when they were in college.”

  “Did Ms. Fontaine give you any contact information for Peter Belson?” I asked.

  “She did.” Ms. Washburn stood and walked to my desk. She sat in Mother’s armchair because she knows I don’t mind when Mother is not present. “This is easier than turning my neck every time we want to talk.”

  I thought it was just as easy to converse without looking at each other but that is one of the “quirks” the neurotypicals feel make me a person with a syndrome. In Ms. Washburn’s case, I think she simply wanted to ease the tension in her neck.

  “Virginia gave me a phone number and address for Peter as well as for a high school friend who wasn’t there, Debbie Sampras, who Virginia said Brett kept in touch with. She said she doesn’t think Debbie had anything to do with Brett’s death, but she might know more about his possible affair with Melanie Mason.”

  Ms. Washburn’s mention of the deceased woman as a possible lover for Brett Fontaine tried my patience. I wanted to say that was a ridiculous waste of time, but I knew Ms. Washburn believed in such things and had been taught to be tolerant of viewpoints other than my own no matter how absurd or based in fantasy they might be.

  Besides, I enjoyed kissing Ms. Washburn and wanted to be able to continue.

  “Perhaps this is where we should divide our efforts,” I suggested. “If you will contact Debbie Sampras, I will get in touch with Peter Belson. Did Ms. Fontaine provide an email address for him?”

  Ms. Washburn smiled but not in a delighted way. “You don’t get out of it that easy, Samuel. No, Virginia didn’t give me an email; you’ll have to call Peter Belson on the phone.” She seemed pleased at my discomfort at the idea. I’d seen that look before; it comes when Ms. Washburn believes she is helping me to “broaden my horizons.”

  “I will do so.” If I did not show my dread of the phone call, it might convince Ms. Washburn that I had indeed made a leap and therefore was not in need of more “help.” “But I take it Ms. Fontaine did not give you any information on the man who called himself Patrick Henry?”

  Ms. Washburn shook her head. “I didn’t ask about him because you were talking to him at that moment. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t want to tell you who he was. He said he was Brett Fontaine’s brother, but Virginia never mentioned a brother, not even on her client intake form.”

  “Perhaps we should ask her now.”

  Ms. Washburn frowned. “I don’t want to tell her we don’t know who he is,” she said. “It’ll make us seem less competent than we really are, and I’ll bet there are other ways to find out.”

  That seemed a reasonable concern given our lack of progress on the question to this point. It was best, then, to move to the next point.

  “Did Ms. Fontaine have anything to say about the eulogy the man in jeans delivered?” I asked.

  “She was pretty shaken. I didn’t ask her about it.” Sometimes I think Ms. Washburn’s concern for the feelings of those we encounter in answering questions slows the process down but she always manages to get the information eventually. And I do have to admit that she knows when I am alienating a subject because I am not terribly concerned about his or her emotions. “But I have a hunch.”

  Before I could ask to what she was referring, Ms. Washburn stood and walked to her desk. She sat down and began punching keys and moving the mouse attached to her computer. I went back to the search on cemeteries because it seemed the best way to solve one of my own problems at the moment. Ms. Washburn’s hunches usually proved to be useful. I would wait until she had confirmed or denied the one she was clearly trying to verify now.

  Her search took less than three minutes, which I assumed meant it had been successful. If the evidence was proving her wrong, Ms. Washburn would probably have continued looking in order to confirm that she had guessed incorrectly.

  “Here,” she said, pointing to her screen, which I could not see from where I sat. “I was right.”

  The idea here, from Ms. Washburn’s point of view, was to demonstrate to me how intelligent she was (which I already knew) and to convey information at the same time. I walked to her desk and took up a position behind her chair so I could see what she was doing on the screen.

  “I looked up the college yearbook for Fairleigh Dickinson the year Brett Fontaine graduated,” she said. Indeed, the screen showed young men and women, dressed identically in the cap and gown associated with a commencement ceremony. “See anybody you recognize on this page?”

  I scanned the faces. I am not especially skilled at analyzing facial features because I try to avoid looking at faces when possible. There are also some studies that suggest those of us with a difference in our neurological systems tend to look at faces in ways that most people do not. So trying to find a photograph depicting a face that might be similar to another I had seen was a very difficult task for me. I studied the page for fourteen seconds.

  Ms. Washburn understood. “I’m sorry, Samuel,” she said. “I forgot because I was trying to show off. Look at this picture.” She indicated one of the photographs and enlarged it on the screen.

  The photograph was approximately twenty years old but after some observation the face was recognizable. “That is the man in jeans,” I said.

  “I think it is.” Ms. Washburn, proud of her achievement, was smiling widely.

  “But the name beneath the photograph is Anthony Deane,” I noted. “Is he a half brother of Brett Fontaine, or a brother who was adopted by another family?”

  “No. Let me show you something.” She called up a second screen with an image of another graduate from what I assumed was the same yearbook. His was a face I had seen only in photographs at that day’s memorial service.

  “That is Brett Fontaine,” I said.

  Ms. Washburn nodded. “Now look at the list of affiliations under each of their names.” She positioned the two photographs side-by-side on her display.

  “They both belonged to something called Sigma Pi.”

  “That’s exactly right, Samuel. I’m guessing they were not related by blood. They were fraternity brothers.”

  sixteen

  “We were all brothers at Sigma Pi.” Peter Belson sat behind his desk at Rt. 4 Chevrolet in Paramus and smiled into his web camera. “Brett, Mike, and me. There were maybe sixteen or seventeen others, but we mostly hung out by ourselves.”

  I had arranged this FaceTime chat, as such a conversation is called, with Belson once Ms. Washburn had left to interview Debbie Sampras, Brett Fontaine’s high school friend. Debbie lived in Spotswood, which was considerably closer to the Questions Answered office than Paramus, and Ms. Washburn owned and operated a car. I did neither and Mike the taxicab driver had told me when he drove me to the office this morning that he could not be called upon to take me to Bergen County today, “not if I want to keep making a living.” He might be back in time to drive me home, he said.

  Belson had seemed content to communicate this way, telling me on the phone that he would have to “duck out” if a potential customer wanted to be shown a vehicle or if one of his sales staff needed advice or permission to make a deal. He preferred the flexibility and I was unable to travel the distance, so this was the best way to conduct our business. Although his title was director of advertising, he had told me he was also a “floor representative,” or a member of the sales force.

  “Why was that?” I asked. “Were you not friendly with the other members of the fraternity?” The
question was probably not relevant to the question I had to answer, but it might shed some light on the type of relationship the three men had.

  “Oh, we were friendly enough,” Belson answered. He was a man in his late thirties with short hair that was graying but not receding. He wore a business suit and tie which he repeatedly pulled at and a wedding ring on his left hand that he occasionally turned on his finger as if to remind himself it was still there. “We just got along really well and the other guys were basically okay. I haven’t kept in touch with any of them except on Facebook.”

  “But you did keep in touch with Brett Fontaine and Anthony Deane,” I said. I thought I was presenting the information as a statement, but Belson seemed to think it was a question.

  Before I could finish by asking when he’s last seen either of his fraternity brothers—a title I felt was deceptive if not blatantly incorrect—Belson said, “Well, I kept in touch with Brett. I haven’t seen Tony probably in two years. We just didn’t have that much to talk about once we weren’t in college anymore. You know, again on Facebook we’d run into each other and ask how things were going but that was about it.”

  “How often did you see Brett Fontaine, then?”

  “Actually see each other, be in the same room? Maybe once or twice a year, not that much. With social media and cell phones we kept in touch, but I live up here and Brett was down there … ” He did not complete his thought.

  “Anthony Deane suggested that you started a rumor about Mr. Fontaine’s college girlfriend being a ghost,” I said. The statement was intended to take Belson by surprise.

  His lack of an emotional reaction indicated it did not. “I never said that,” he said. It seemed he’d been expecting me to bring it up. “I said that Mel was haunting Brett, but I didn’t mean it literally. He just never stopped asking about her. She died in a car crash and he wouldn’t shut up about her, him with a wife and everything. It seemed a little weird, to tell you the truth.”

  Had he not been telling the truth until that last point? That was a common expression but I never knew if it was being used literally or figuratively. I assumed in this case Belson was trying to establish a rapport with me and used the phrase in that context.

  “You knew Mr. Fontaine and Melanie Mason when you were all in college,” I said, not letting Belson speak before I added the question, “Why did their relationship end?”

  He sat back in his chair and seemed to look out over the dealership, which I could not see. “Oh, why does any college love affair end?” he asked. I was hoping he did not expect an answer, since I had none and did not wish to research the subject. “Brett and Mel were the tightest couple around for a while but then he decided that was it and he called it off.”

  “And he did not explain how he made that decision?” Romantic relationships have always been a source of endless confusion for me. I have never understood how they begin, what forces in a person make them continue, and why they end. Until Ms. Washburn kissed me the first time I had considered the prospect somewhat intimidating. Letting a person into the most private aspects of one’s life seemed incredibly inconvenient and potentially embarrassing. How Brett Fontaine, or any other person, could engage in a relationship to that point and then decide it should end appeared to hold no rational basis.

  “He said he got tired of her, that she was always asking him questions,” Belson answered. “If I remember—and it’s been a long time—Brett said Mel had started to criticize everything he did and it was making him crazy.”

  I assumed he did not mean the relationship was literally driving Mr. Fontaine into a state of mental illness, but that he was using the expression to convey a certain frustration or anger that arose within it. But the idea of being asked questions as a basis to end what had been, according to Belson, a satisfying relationship to that point was intriguing.

  Still, the romance between Brett Fontaine and Melanie Mason did not seem to hold significance to my question until much more recently. “You said that lately Mr. Fontaine had acted obsessed—that was your word, I believe—with Melanie Mason.” It was not meant as a direct question; I simply wanted Belson to elaborate on that point.

  He complied immediately. “Like I said, Brett started talking about Mel all the time. He’d text me and email me because like I said, we didn’t really see each other that much, and who has the time to talk on the phone, right?” I did not answer that question. “Strange questions about was Mel faithful to him when they were together, did she ever say what she really thought about him, had I heard anything from her before she died.”

  “Had you been in touch with Melanie in the years after you received your degree?” I asked.

  “No, not really. Once Brett broke up with her I really didn’t have that much contact. You know, at the time I thought maybe I’d ask her out myself but I thought Brett would get mad so I forgot about it. Then I heard she got married because Brett told me. I think he went to her wedding.”

  I made a note on the pad at my right hand to ask Virginia Fontaine if she and her husband had attended the wedding of Melanie Mason and Leon Rabinski. “Yes,” I said. “She was the wife of a close business associate of Mr. Fontaine. Do you know Leon Rabinski?”

  Peter Belson very visibly twitched his mouth and looked up and to the left, indicating he was trying to remember something. Some people believe it is possible to determine if a person is lying or telling the truth based on the direction of such a glance, but others indicate that excessive hand movement is more indicative of a person trying to distort the truth. “Rabinski? I don’t think so. He and Brett were working together? And he was married to Mel? That must have been weird.”

  Another aspect of romance that eludes me is the concept of jealousy. While a relationship is ongoing there is a logic to feeling angry at someone who seems to be trying to damage it. I still don’t entirely understand it, but I can at least imagine the concern about a threat to something the person in question uses to ground him or herself emotionally.

  But once the relationship has ended, there is no longer a connection (at least romantically) between the two people. Why one should feel threatened by a new suitor to one’s ex-lover is difficult to grasp.

  “But Mr. Fontaine had married as well, before Melanie and Leon Rabinski,” I pointed out. I’m not sure if I was asking to further my research into the question or to better understand the dynamic between two former romantic partners. “Shouldn’t each of them have simply accepted that the other had moved on to a more successful relationship?”

  Belson wrinkled his brow. “I’m not a marriage counselor and I’m not going to pass judgment on Brett and Ginny’s marriage. Wouldn’t you be weirded out if your ex married someone you were working with?”

  I didn’t see how some hypothetical situation with which I was unfamiliar should have a bearing on this interview. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. It was best to move on quickly. “Did Mr. Fontaine’s questions about Melanie begin before or after she died?”

  The tone of Belson’s voice and his facial expression seemed to indicate I had said or done something mildly inappropriate or at least surprising. “After,” he said. “As far as I can tell, immediately after. And it went on right up until he ended up dead too.” His voice choked unconvincingly on the last phrase.

  “Do you know of anyone who was angry at Mr. Fontaine?” I asked.

  “Someone who’d want him dead? Absolutely not. Brett was a great guy.” Belson’s eyes shifted to the left. He seemed to be paying attention elsewhere.

  That was not the picture that had been painted at the memorial service I’d attended. “Anthony Deane did not seem to express that sentiment yesterday,” I said. “Why did you choose not to attend the memorial service?”

  Belson continued to look to a spot off-screen. “I had to work. I’m sorry, Mr. Hoenig, but there’s a salesman waiting for me. I have to go.”

  “On
e last question,” I said.

  “No. I don’t have time.” And with that Belson disconnected the FaceTime session. I looked at my screen for three seconds.

  When Ms. Washburn is not in the office I have a tendency to speak my thoughts aloud. Some find it a distraction so I do it only when alone.

  “That was an odd conversation,” I said. “I wish I could have seen his hands.”

  seventeen

  “Debbie Sampras had been a friend of Brett Fontaine’s since high school,” Ms. Washburn said. “She said he never got over Melanie Mason and was obsessed with her since they broke up at Fairleigh.”

  Since she had returned to the Questions Answered office, Ms. Washburn had been typing her notes on the Debbie Sampras interview into her computer file for the Fontaine question. But she was telling me what she had learned even as she preserved the information digitally. I had given her the data I had gathered through my FaceTime conversation with Peter Belson.

  “The two stories don’t appear to intersect at any point,” I said, mostly so I could hear the thought out loud. “Belson said that Brett Fontaine was the one who ended the relationship with Melanie Mason, and that he’d known her even when she was married to Leon Rabinski, but did not become, as both Ms. Sampras and Belson put it, obsessed with her until after she had been killed in the vehicular incident on Route 22.”

  “Maybe he was obsessed with her the whole time but it came out after she was dead because he’d married Ginny and wanted to think he’d moved on,” Ms. Washburn suggested. She continued to stare down at her notepad—Ms. Washburn does not record interviews but takes extensive notes in a version of shorthand she created for herself—while she typed and spoke. I marveled again at her ability to multitask, something I would have found overwhelming or impossible.

  “If that is the case, why did he end the relationship at all?” I asked.