by Lynn Bohart
He took some deep breaths and had another sip of his drink. His hand was visibly shaking now.
“It wasn’t red paint, was it?” Giorgio made the statement for him.
He shook his head slowly as he swallowed. “No. But the drops led across the floor, all the way up to the big bookcase, which was pulled away from the wall. I could hear moaning or something coming from behind it. So I peeked around the corner and realized there were stairs. I really wasn’t a very brave kid, but my curiosity got the better of me. The light was on down below, so I crept down the stairs, afraid that my dad might be down there. But he wasn’t.”
A tear had begun to trickle down his cheek as he spoke.
“There was a girl,” he said, choking on his words. He coughed to clear his throat before continuing. “She was on a bed, tied to the bed post. And she was naked,” he said with a sigh. “She heard me and looked over at the staircase where I was peeking through the railing. She looked…she looked weird to me, until I realized that parts of her face and body had…had been stripped of skin.”
He paused as he gulped some air. Giorgio thought he might be sick.
“One of her eyes was swollen shut, and she had cuts and horrible bruises all over her body,” he said, continuing. “The sheet was covered in blood, and there was another piece of the chair down there. And then she spoke to me. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Help me. He’ll kill me.’ But suddenly, my dad was there, behind me.” Ron was taking in big gulps of air now. “He grabbed me by my collar and threw me up the stairs. I landed on the top step and cried out. But he came after me and grabbed me again. He pulled me into the workroom and held me up to his face. He was livid.”
Ron took a deep breath and paused at the memory, his whole body vibrating.
“He got so close I could smell his breath, and he was shaking he was so mad. He told me that if I ever told anyone what I’d seen, the same thing that had happened to that girl would happen to me. He put me down and I ran upstairs and into my room. About a half hour later, he came to see me. I just huddled in the corner of my bed, scared to death that he was going to beat me and peel my skin away. Instead, he closed the door and went over to where I kept my little pet turtle, Pepper. Pepper was the only pet my parents ever allowed me to have. He lived in this little bowl with rocks and a little house.”
Martinelli stared straight ahead as he spoke, as if living in the moment. Tears began to stream down his cheeks.
“My father reached in and grabbed Pepper, and then came over to my bed and held him out so that I could see him. And he said, ‘I want you to understand how serious this is. You are never to tell anyone about what you saw, or this will happen to you.’” Ron paused, and then in a monotone, he said, “And then he dropped Pepper to the floor and crushed him with his foot.”
Martinelli took a deep breath and hunched forward in the chair and groaned as if he was going to throw up.
A moment later, he stammered, “Oh God. I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forgive him.”
He disintegrated into tears and Giorgio just waited, feeling a mixture of sadness and rage
build inside him. But he had to let Martinelli play out the memory. It was a full thirty seconds before Martinelli regained his composure. He reached for a napkin to wipe his nose before continuing.
“All these years,” he said through sobs, “I convinced myself that what I just told you wasn’t real, that it was just a little kid’s nightmare. I told myself it never really happened. But I can’t fool myself any longer. My father really was a monster.”
“Mr. Martinelli,” Giorgio said through clenched teeth, controlling the anger he felt. “We need to know everything you might know that could help us.”
Ron looked up, his face swollen and red. “But I don’t know any more than that,” he said. “That’s the only time I ever actually saw anything.”
“You probably know more than you think you do. What was your relationship like with your father after that?” Rocky said.
Giorgio looked over at his brother. Rocky’s grim expression was a signal that the story had affected him as well.
“We were never close,” Ron said. “It was always about appearances with them. I was just the kid that made our family look normal.”
“Did you ever do things with your father – you know, father-and-son kinds of activities?” Rocky asked.
“No. Not really. I joined the Boy Scouts, but the nanny always took me. My parents would show up at the requisite awards ceremonies, and when I was in high school they came to a few football games.”
“Did your father have women on the side?” Rocky asked.
Martinelli looked over at Rocky with a haunted expression.
“He and your mother…” Rocky let the sentence lapse.
“No. There was no intimacy between them that I ever saw,” he said, finishing Rocky’s thought. “They were like automatons with each other.”
“How much do you think your mother knew?” Giorgio asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. They had such a strange relationship. I do know that when I was fifteen, something changed, though. I’m not sure why, but my father stopped going down into the basement. He had all his equipment removed, and he took up fishing.”
“Fishing?” Giorgio said, his heart rate increasing. “Had he been into fishing before?”
“No. Not that I know of. But suddenly he and Edmond would go fishing once a year.”
Giorgio’s ears perked up. “Did Edmond ever go down into the basement with your father?”
“Uh, yeah. They called it their man cave,” he said, the realization dawning on him. “Oh, God, they were working together, weren’t they?”
The glass of bourbon slipped out of Martinelli’s hand and fell to the floor, emptying its contents onto the rug. He turned toward the fire again.
“Ron,” Giorgio snapped, trying to get his attention. “We think your uncle is the one who had the evidence planted in Jimmy Finn’s locker.”
“Edmond?” he said, turning to Giorgio. “Why?”
“Did you know that Alex Springer was shot to death in his home a few days ago?”
“No. But why would someone kill Mr. Springer?”
“Your mother told us how your father hated Alex Springer because of the campaign he ran against your dad for the school board. And yet not too long after Lisa disappeared, your dad hired him to take over a major part of the company. We think Springer knew something and may have blackmailed your father in order to get the job. He sat on the building committee for the monastery, and so did your father. They both would have known about the well where we found Lisa’s body. Is there anything else you can think of that might have given Alex Springer leverage over your father?”
Ron shook his head slowly. “No. Nothing.”
“How about his son, Joshua?” Rocky asked.
Ron thought a minute and seemed to sit up straighter.
“Well, Joshua liked to hang out at the monastery,” he said. “In fact, he used to take all of his girlfriends up there to have sex. He had a favorite spot out in the garden; he kind of claimed it as his own. He even got mad one summer night when Pete Cameron got there before him. They got into a big fight about it, and Pete had to leave.”
“What are the chances that Joshua would have gone up there the night of the prom?”
Ron froze and stared at Giorgio. Then he murmured, “Every chance.”
Giorgio glanced at Rocky who merely arched his eyebrows. Joshua’s connection to the monastery provided at least a possibility for how Alex Springer could have blackmailed Royce Martinelli. Joshua Springer could have been up there that night and seen either Royce or Edmond Martinelli or both throw Lisa Farmer’s body into the well. But they’d never be able to prove it.
Ron began to rub his hand up and down the arm of the chair as he stared off into space. Giorgio could tell he was losing him again.
“Ron, we were at your uncle’s house earlier today. He confirmed that he
and your father had gone fishing the weekend Lisa went missing. They came home early for some reason. You said your father went into the study that night to answer the phone.”
He nodded, his eyes glazed over.
“And Lisa was in there behind the curtains, is that right?”
“Yes. Yes,” he said.
“Where did your father go after he left the study?”
He looked up, his face a blank slate. “Like I said, I don’t know for sure. He told me the next day that he had gone back to the office.”
“And his office was in Pasadena back then?” Giorgio pressed him.
“Yeah. Why?”
“The direct route back to his office would have been to go south on Lima to Sierra Madre Boulevard,” Giorgio said. “But you said you had to duck out of sight when he pulled up the street, to the north? Is that right?”
“Yeah,” Ron replied, still confused as to where Giorgio was going with this.
“Up the street,” Giorgio said, “in the direction of Lisa’s house?”
“Oh, God,” Ron said, sucking in air. He seemed to waver in the chair for a moment and then put a hand across his stomach. “I…think I’m going to be sick.”
He lurched out of the chair and stumbled from the room. Giorgio followed him into the hallway and saw him duck into a bathroom. There was the sound of gagging and a moment later the toilet flushed.
Ron Martinelli came back into the living room, wiping his hand across his mouth, his face deathly pale. He stood uncertainly in the middle of the room, breathing heavily.
“My father killed Lisa,” he said, his bleak eyes rimmed with red.
“Let’s stick with what happened that night,” Giorgio said. “When your father left the study, you said he made a phone call from the front hallway.”
Ron nodded.
“But he had his own phone in the study?”
Ron nodded a second time, wringing his hands. “Yes. We were one of the few families back then who had two separate phone lines.”
Two separate phone lines? That gave Giorgio an idea.
“So why would he stop to call from the hallway phone?” Giorgio asked.
Ron took a deep breath and a tear began to make its way down his cheek. “There’s only one reason,” he said. “She heard something, didn’t she? When he was talking to my uncle the first time. Then, because he saw Lisa behind the curtains, he had to hang up and use the phone out front.”
All three men were silent for a moment, and then Ron dropped into a nearby chair.
“Ron, when you were fooling around, had you gotten undressed?” Rocky asked.
He wiped the tear away. “Yes, pretty much.”
“Had she taken off her underwear?” Giorgio asked carefully.
Ron stared at him. The muscles around his mouth had begun to sag and his brown eyes had lost all luster.
Finally, he said, “Yes. When we heard my father pull into the driveway, I told…her to get dressed and hide behind the curtains, and then I ran into the hallway.” He started to shake his head slowly. “She probably didn’t have time to put them on. They would have been stuck in the sofa or were maybe even on the floor. Oh God, I can’t believe this,” he said, leaning forward and putting his head into his hands.
“Ron, do you know where your father and uncle went fishing that weekend?” Giorgio asked.
He took a deep breath, wiped his mouth and sat up. “No. But my mother might.”
Giorgio glanced at Rocky and nodded. He felt that they had gotten all the information they could out of Ron for the moment.
“Okay,” he said. “Please don’t tell anyone about this conversation until I’ve had a chance to check out some details.”
Ron looked over at Giorgio, his face ashen and his muscles slack. “Do you really think my father killed Lisa?”
“I don’t know. But I need to know one more thing. You drove your father’s car to the prom, is that right?”
Ron nodded.
“What car did your father use when he left again that night?”
“His car,” Ron said.
“And what kind of car did your father drive?”
Martinelli’s eyebrows curled up into a question. “A black Lincoln Town Car. Why?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
They were forced to wait until the next morning to pay a second visit to Claire Martinelli. Her big Bentley was just pulling through the gate when they came to a halt in front of it, blocking its departure. Giorgio got out and approached the driver’s side and ordered the driver back to the house.
“Don’t you dare, John!” Mrs. Martinelli ordered from the back seat.
“If you’d prefer,” Giorgio said through the open back window. “I can arrest you.”
“On what grounds?” she said with a sneer.
“For aiding and abetting a murderer.”
Her eyes opened wide, and she stiffened. “It’s all right, John. Take me back.”
Ten minutes later, they were situated in Claire Martinelli’s living room again. There was no offer of lemonade this time, and there was no sign of the maid.
“What do you mean by invading my home?” she blustered.
“Where were you going?” Giorgio said, ignoring her question.
“I was going out of town for a while. Obviously, things have gotten rather ugly over at the Pinney House. That reporter, Mia Santana, has been all over the news pointing fingers at us. And she’s been calling the house. I need to get away.”
“Gotten rather ugly?” Giorgio said angrily. “Is that what you call it? We found the skeletons of several mutilated bodies buried in the yard and in the basement during the time you lived there.”
“You don’t know that,” she spat.
“Mrs. Martinelli, let’s stop beating around the bush. You knew perfectly well what your husband was doing down in the basement. Down in the root cellar. Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you stop him?”
She held herself erect for a brief moment and then the tension released. Her rigid figure became lax and the ramrod back finally bowed in defeat. She dropped her hands into her lap.
“Yes, I knew. Or at least I suspected. I never saw anything firsthand. But I knew he wasn’t
down there making furniture.”
“What did you know?”
She glanced up at him, her face looking suddenly very old and haggard.
“Not much, really. We slept in separate rooms. I had the master suite at the corner of the house, closest to the garage. I was a very light sleeper and saw him on several occasions bring a girl into the house through the back door.”
“The girls came into the house willingly?” Giorgio couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yes, but they were either drunk or drugged. They hung on his arm as if they could barely walk. One night, I sat by that window, waiting for him to bring the girl out again. But he never did. Instead, hours later, I heard him come up the stairs and go into his bedroom. And then for several days, he was very busy in the basement. Neither Ron nor I, nor any of the servants were ever allowed down there. When it happened again, I slept during the daytime, and at night I’d sit at the window and watch, waiting for him to bring the girl out. Days went by, and then finally, I saw him carry something out of the kitchen…” she stopped and swallowed. “He buried whatever it was in the corner of the backyard.”
There was a long pause. The clock on the mantle ticked quietly in the background.
“What did the something look like?” Giorgio asked, nearly spitting at her.
“It was hard to tell,” she said. “It was quite dark. We only had a single light above the garage. But whatever he was carrying was long and heavy, and he carried it over his shoulder.”
“And you thought it was a body?” Giorgio asked.
She started to object, but then nodded, all sense of pride gone.
“And then what happened?” Giorgio asked.
“I know you think I’m a cold bitch, Detective,” she said sudden
ly. “But I actually married Royce because I thought I loved him. My father was a state senator, and I was brought up to know my place.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “Royce had an unusual sexual appetite. I…couldn’t make myself do the things he wanted me to do. He…he seemed unable to perform unless he could hurt me. Twist the skin on my arm or put pressure on a bone. I couldn’t take it. So we made an agreement. We would stay married, and I would allow him to do what he needed to satisfy his urges. But, when I saw this, well, I couldn’t put up with it. So I told him, ‘not in my house.’”
Giorgio couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. This woman’s answer to her husband murdering young women was to just tell him to do it somewhere else.
“And so he stopped?” Giorgio asked, feeling adrenalin pump through his veins. “Around the time Ron was fifteen?”
“Yes,” she said, contemplating the comment about Ron. “And as far as I know Royce never brought another woman into the house.”
“Nor buried anyone else in the back yard,” Giorgio said.
“No,” she murmured. “He started going fishing instead.”
She went very still for a moment, watching him. His hands had turned into fists in his pockets as he tried to control his anger.
“And you knew he wasn’t fishing?”
She stared at him. “I never asked,” she said with a slight turn of her head. ”I preferred not to think about it.”
He slammed his fist onto a table, making everyone in the room jump.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone!?”
She stiffened again. After a moment she replied, “Royce assured me they were girls he pulled off the street. They were prostitutes and drug addicts. In fact, he said he was very careful to select girls no one would miss, so the family name would never be drawn into his…fantasies.”
