Whittaker 03 The Secrets We Keep

by Donna White Glaser

  “I’ve got a guilty kid story, too,” I said. “But you go first.”

  “Okay, well, last September some school funds were stolen from Jefferson High School. At first, they thought it was a couple of kids, but then they pin-pointed a teacher’s aide. I had to call some friends with JHS kids to find out those details, but I can’t see how it would tie in with Trinnie, unless she was the aide.” Holding a finger up to tell me to hold my comments, she went on.

  “The next possibility is a fifteen-year-old mentally disabled boy. He’d been sexually abused, but couldn’t tell anyone by whom. It got a lot of media attention, because of his disabilities.”

  “Why couldn’t he identify his abuser?” Eli asked.

  “The paper said he was frightened and would get hysterical when interviewed. Did Trinnie ever work in a school or with handicapped kids?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “She worked in an office. Accounting or something with finance, and it wasn’t a school. I guess I could call Paul tomorrow and find out for sure.”

  For a moment, guilt flushed over me. Despite following orders I still felt like I’d been neglecting Paul. I hadn’t even called to see how he was doing. Chad hadn’t said I couldn’t call.

  “Tomorrow?” Beth broke into my thoughts. “Tomorrow is the Fourth of July.”

  “I’d forgotten all about that,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “How could you forget the Fourth of July?” interjected Eli. “You have something against the birth of our nation?”

  “Ok, focus, you two,” Beth said. “The last incident has some real possibilities. A twelve-year-old boy got killed in a hit-and-run. It was spot-lighted on Channel 18’s ‘Wanted Criminals.’ I couldn’t get a video copy of the feature, but the incident was covered in several articles. I’ve got copies of those. And guess who Channel 18 interviewed about it?”

  “Who?”

  “Judge Fochs. Only he wasn’t a judge then; he was a prosecutor. It was right when he was running for election. I replayed that part twice. He was talking about sentencing, and trying to get the person to turn himself in.”

  “Or herself,” I said. “What else did it say?”

  “The boy, Gary Westcap, was out pretty darn late for a twelve-year-old. It was after midnight on a Friday night. His mother said he snuck out of the house, and went to a party somewhere. Can you imagine? Twelve years old and going to parties. We’re going to need to put AA in middle schools if this keeps up. Anyway, he was riding his bike back home and was hit from behind by a car. Here’s the truly awful part—he laid there for a while. They said he might have been able to make it, but whoever hit him just left him laying there in the ditch. He bled to death.”

  “Any witnesses?” asked Eli.

  “No. The story was top news for about three weeks and then nothing.”

  “I remember it. Happened last summer, didn’t it?” I said, thinking about guilt and a kid and drunk drivers.

  “Late August.”

  Trinnie had been back out drinking by the end of summer. It fit the time frame. Could she have hit the boy, leaving him to die in the road, hurt and alone? It didn’t sound like the Trinnie I knew, but drunks are ruled by their addiction… and by fear. It wasn’t impossible.

  Proving we were all thinking along the same lines, Eli said, “Wouldn’t she have put something about that in her Fourth Step list?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Beth said. “She certainly should have. But she was doing this step alone. And drunk.”

  “Maybe that’s the only way she could face it.”

  “Then, if this is what Fochs was blaming her for, why didn’t they make an arrest?”

  Beth said, “Maybe it’s not connected with this. Or maybe they didn’t have enough evidence.”

  “Or maybe he’s an old friend of the family,” Eli said.

  “I’ll try and figure out a way to ask him about it tonight.”

  “Is he still meeting you here?” Beth said.

  “As far as I know. But we have time; I set it up for 9:00. It does seem like quite a coincidence that her old family friend would be running the investigation of a hit-and-run that Trinnie may have committed and then blamed her for something entirely different.”

  “He admitted being friends with Trinnie’s father,” Beth said. “And she helped him campaign for the District Attorney’s office.”

  “We could be looking at a bribe or a cover up.” Eli shook his head. “He sure sounds like someone a rich family might turn to if they have a problem child.”

  “But if he was bribing her, why kill her?”

  “Maybe she was running out of funds. That would explain why she ripped off Paul. Maybe she decided to call the boy’s parents and confess?”

  “And if the secret was out he’d not only lose his cash-cow, but he’d be exposed as rigging the system.” Beth’s voice sounded dry and brittle.

  A horrible scenario, but it fit.

  Parties getting a head start on the holiday weekend chattered loudly all around us;I remembered the feeling. I wondered how many more accidents or domestic fights or rapes would result from the night’s parties.

  Sighing, I listened as Eli filled Beth in on our church group. Eventually, I shared my conversation with Bee-Bee.

  “Here are some familiar faces,” Beth commented as the bar continued to fill. I followed her glance toward the back of the bar and saw Tyler. Bill was with him again. They held bottles of beer, scanning the crowd. Nearby, a shock of grey hair stood out from the mob, and I caught sight of Judge Fochs.

  I ducked. “Damn—he’s early.”

  “Just be careful,” Eli said.

  “And don’t accept any drinks from him,” Beth hissed.

  Plastering on a smile, I pushed through the growing crowd to where I’d seen Fochs. As I got closer, I realized I’d have to walk past Tyler. Luckily, his back was to me as he signaled for another beer. Bill nudged him, but I scooted past before he could turn.

  Fochs sat nearby at a round table only slightly larger than a dinner plate. Saying hello, I settled myself on a chair opposite him. He shot a glance over my left shoulder making me wonder if I was intruding on some lady’s turf. It’d be just my luck to get into a bar brawl with a judge’s girlfriend. I didn’t see any likely candidate for jealous, rampaging female, but I did catch sight of Caleb Gibson again. Didn’t they card here? He looked like he was approaching Tyler and Bill, but veered off at the last moment. From the glare Tyler treated me to, he wasn’t happy about my interest, and I wondered if he’d signaled the teen away. In the meantime, I lost sight of Caleb.

  The judge reclaimed my attention. “How are you this evening, my dear?”

  “I’m good, Judge. Thank you.”

  “I thought we agreed on Jonathan,” he chided. He took a sip from a half-empty glass of amber liquid, peering mischievously over the rim.

  Conversation was going to be a problem. The noise level was such that we were going to have to lip read or shout into each other’s ears. Either action would put me about two inches from his face and, frankly, I’d never been that close to a judge before. Nor wanted to. Plus, the smell of whiskey—strong enough to give me a contact drunk—suggested this wasn’t the first glass he’d hoisted this evening. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked way more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. I decided to plunge right in.

  “I was hoping to ask you about an incident that happened last August when you were the D.A. It got a lot of media attention, so I’m sure you’ll have no problem remembering it.”

  His usual poker face held firm, almost frozen, in fact. The pause between question and answer went on about three heartbeats too long. Across the room, I saw Caleb leaving the club.

  “Is this really the time and place for that conversation, Ms. Whittaker?”

  “I thought we’d agreed on Violet?” My turn for fake playfulness. “I’m just looking for background on a hit-and-run accident. You seemed like the appropriate person to ask. Unless, of course, th
ere’s someone else you could refer me to? A reporter, perhaps?”

  His mouth smiled; his eyes didn’t. “Which accident might that be?”

  THIRTY SEVEN

  “Last summer, a car presumably driven by a drunk driver struck a young boy who was riding his bike home late at night. He was killed. There was a lot of public outrage over it. Rightfully so. In fact, a couple of news shows interviewed you at the time. I was wondering if the case had ever been solved.”

  “As far as I know, it hasn’t.” Lifting his glass, he signaled the bartender to bring him another drink.

  As far as he knew? Despite the alcohol, he remained wily enough to avoid a direct answer.

  “Were there any suspects?” I persevered.

  “It’s still considered an open case. I regret I can’t comment on it any further.” He didn’t look regretful. He looked prissy and more than a little smug.

  I decided to go for broke. “Was Trinnie a suspect?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because she indicated that you’d blamed her for something. I wondered if it involved this incident.” Hopefully, he’d miss the apparent unrelatedness of the first sentence to the second.

  “Indicated how?” he asked, eyes squinting into slivers.

  The bartender arrived with his drink, creating a welcome diversion. If I admitted I had Trinnie’s Fourth Step, he could ask why I hadn’t turned it over to the police. Not a bad question, either.

  After shooing the bartender off, Fochs downed half the liquid, then leaned toward me. “Indicated how?” His voice had taken on a spiky edge.

  Neither the accusation of Trinnie’s involvement in a child’s death and, worse, my insinuation he’d had knowledge of it, seemed to bother Fochs as much as figuring out the method Trinnie had used to disclose the information to me.

  Did he know about Trinnie’s list?

  When it became obvious I wasn’t going to answer, he slugged down the rest of his drink. Leaning back, he signaled to the bartender again.

  “I hope someone’s driving you home, Judge,” I blurted.

  Finally got to see a little emotion out of him. A lot of it, actually… and all of it rage.

  His knuckles whitened on the glass, ice tinkling merrily against the sides as his hand shook. He set the glass down so hard I jumped, expecting it to shatter.

  “Exactly what are you suggesting?” Fochs’s words slid through paper-cut-thin lips.

  My heart thudded dully as a new suspicion bloomed. Maybe Trinnie hadn’t been the driver, after all?

  “I only meant that you’ve had quite a bit of alcohol in a short amount of time. A man in your position… I would imagine there are a few cops who would be happy to pull you over.”

  He took a deep breath. Then, another. When he finally spoke, he said, “I’ve heard enough. I will say, though, that I cannot understand what you hope to accomplish with this line of questioning. I advise you to take care.”

  I swallowed. Vindictive, possibly-murderous judges could be worrisome things to have in your life. “Take care?” I repeated.

  “Slander, of course.” He smirked. “Even if Trinnie is dead, her family will do what they need to do to protect her memory… and their good name. Of course, as George’s closest friend, I share that duty.”

  “I don’t think the family has been too worried about Trinnie or her memory.”

  “All families have their weak links. Even yours.” With a nasty smile, he nodded over my shoulder.

  Turning, I found myself confronted with the sight of Tyler practically groping my sister. His arm wrapped around Kris’s neck, beer bottle dangling between her breasts. She and I made eye contact, and we both bristled. Comical, really. Except for our different coloring, our mannerisms created mirror-images.

  What would have been a minor drama erupted into a major one as Shelly from the church’s marriage group pushed through the mass of partiers. She landed on Tyler like a coyote on an old goat. For the next few minutes, our end of the bar became an impromptu mosh pit with Shelly, Tyler, and Kris making up the violent, thrashing center. Two brawny bouncers waded in, latching onto Tyler and my sister.

  Tyler’s friend, Bill, herded Shelly up against the bar where she bent at the waist, winding her arms around her head like a turban. Keening and crying, she rocked herself, shutting out the world.

  Kris wasn’t into passivity. Dangling from her bouncer’s grip, she alternated between biting and scratching him, and trying to kick Shelly in the head. The bouncer added to the general confusion by bellowing and cussing whenever she scored a hit. Kris’s last foot thrust skimmed the crown of Shelly’s head.

  “Leave her alone!” Tyler yelled at Kris. Bouncer Two must have decided he was under control—or maybe just less dangerous than Kris—because he let Tyler shrug out of his grasp and went to help his buddy. Moving to Shelly, Tyler tried to wrap his arms around her. She slapped him off, and he had to settle for patting her on the back and murmuring, “It’s okay, babe. It’s okay.”

  At the sight of Tyler consoling what I now realized was his wife, Kris upped her repertoire to screaming and spitting. They hauled her outside.

  Maybe I should have gone with, but just then I couldn’t stand the thought of being anywhere near her. Of course, Jonathan Fochs had disappeared.

  Elbowing his way through the laughing crowd, Eli made it to my side. I avoided his eyes, knowing sympathy, no matter how well intended, would undo me. Shelly was still crying, and Tyler was still patting. They began to develop a pattern. About every fourth or fifth pat, she’d shrug his arm off. He’d wait until she began to wail and recommence patting. Ignoring him and his patting tic, I knelt in front of Shelly, taking her hand.

  “Come on, honey. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  “Letty?” She looked confused at my appearance in the club.

  “Come on,” I repeated. “Let’s go wash your face.” I didn’t know what washing your face did, but it’s something my mother always made me do, and it generally comes in handy with hysterical females.

  “Like hell,” Tyler asserted. “We’re going home.”

  “You go to hell, you cheating bastard!”

  “All right, you two! Outta here!” Chet materialized out of the mob surrounding us.

  “I’m not leaving. That bitch out there is trying to kill me,” Shelly wailed.

  “No, she ain’t. The cops are dealing with her. I’ll send them in here for you, too, if you don’t get out. And you?” he pointed to Tyler. “You stay out. You’re done. Don’t come in here again.”

  I kept pace with Shelly; Beth trotting along her other side. Once outside, Tyler speed-walked away from us toward a green Ford F150. We steered Shelly to Beth’s car while the couple screamed at each other across the blacktop.

  “Shelly! You come home right now.”

  “Shut up, you… you adulterer!”

  As Beth bundled our charge into the backseat of her Mustang, I scanned the lot for Eli. He was close by, heading for his own car. Catching my eye, he held up the universal thumb-and-pinky-to-the-face call me sign. I nodded, then piled into the front seat.

  Beth roared off into the night.

  It’s an undeniable sign of aging when hysterical, romantic dramas cease to be entertainment. Shelly moaned, thrashed, and wailed in the backseat for several long miles. I handed her a travel pack of tissues, then left her alone until she subsided into the sniffing, nose-blowing, hiccupping stage.

  “How come you call him TJ?” Stupid question really, but I wanted to start simple.

  “His daddy is Tyler, Sr. The whole family calls him TJ, so I did, too. Then, back when we had the baby over to Mayo for testing, he told me he wanted to be called Tyler. Just out of the blue, like that. Now I feel like I don’t know him at all.” The last statement escalated into a thin squeak.

  “What got you so upset the first night at Couples Corner?”

  “I hated hearing about Trinnie. I don’t care what Bee-Bee says, I think Tyler had a
n affair with her, too. I saw the way they looked at each other.” She sniffed, then blew her nose. “And they were texting each other back and forth. Plus, that’s when Tyler really started getting weird. There were a lot of phone calls where he’d hang up whenever I walked into the room. Zoe was so sick, and the medical bills started flooding in. He just… He just stopped caring.” She dissolved in tears again.

  The rest of the ride was spent in alternating cycles of questions and crying jags. The information we gathered was mostly repetitious, but served to establish that Tyler had been acting out of character for over a year, with the last couple weeks escalating into even more dubious behavior. Shelly believed his recent conduct was due to hooking up with Kris, but she admitted she really didn’t know how long they’d been involved. I had other suspicions, and imagined Beth did, too.

  After roaming around town for more than two hours, we finally dropped Shelly off at her home. Beth and I tried hard to get her to go to a friend’s house or a hotel, but she was too deep into her misery—or too used to it—to make a smart decision. She also insisted Tyler would never hurt her. Short of kidnapping, there wasn’t anything we could do.

  Beth waited until Shelly let herself into the small, 60s-style A-frame. We saw a Tyler-shaped shadow move past the window toward the front door. We waited, hoping Shelly might change her mind, but the porch light winked off. Beth sighed, then backed out.

  “So, what do you think now about Tyler and Trinnie hooking up?” I asked.

  “They could have, but an abrupt personality change, mysterious phone calls, and sky-high debt could all point to something else.” Glancing over, she waggled her eyebrows at me.

  “Drugs,” I said. “I think you’re right. And I don’t think he’s just using; I think he’s dealing, too. Maybe it started with needing money for the baby, but if he was under all that stress it would be so easy to numb out for a while. I think he’s dealing to Caleb, too.”

  “Makes sense. By the way, how are you going to explain what just happened to the judge?”