The Same Mistake Twice

by Albert Tucher

  But the trip was too short to destroy her nerve completely. She parked three doors away from Grogan’s home. For want of a better idea, she decided to sit in the car and watch the house.

  The front door of the neighboring home opened, and two men in suits and two women in Sunday dresses filed down the front steps. Diana would have recognized them even without their Watchtower magazines. One of the men and the two women were black, while the remaining man was white. That level of racial integration stood out in Driscoll.

  The black man rang the bell at the Grogan house. A blond woman of about fifty opened the door.

  Oh boy, Diana thought.

  Even a vacuum cleaner salesman would have wilted under the woman’s glare. The conversation was brief. The four missionaries retraced their steps to the sidewalk. Diana didn’t know what she hoped to learn, but she decided to watch a little longer.

  Ten minutes later the woman came out and unlocked a new silver Camry in the driveway. She climbed in and drove off. Diana kept watching. Just a few minutes later a balding middle-aged man left the house. He got into the other car, a self-effacing dark blue Chevy Malibu. When he left, Diana gave him a small head start and followed.

  As she drove, she wondered why she still cared. The man was obviously John Grogan. He was alive, and the woman was his wife. Diana should have peeled off and gone home, but instead she stayed behind the Malibu.

  John Grogan drove several miles south on Route 15 and signaled a right turn into the parking lot of the no-name diner. She approved. It might work better to brace him here rather than at his job. She parked and followed him inside.

  He took a two-seater booth without waiting for the hostess. He was probably a regular customer. When Diana slid in across from him, he looked up at her with panic in his eyes.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  She knew his voice immediately. She remembered what he had put her through ten years earlier and decided to make him squirm a little. She studied him without speaking.

  “Well?”

  “I guess your wife doesn’t cook.”

  “What on earth is that to you?”

  “I really wanted to see if you’re still alive.”

  “Is that some kind of sick joke?”

  “No.”

  “Are you the one who put the cops on me?”

  “Cops? What cops?”

  But she knew. Tillotson had worked fast, and now she was back on his hook.

  “Two detectives came yesterday. They gave my wife some ridiculous story about burglaries in the neighborhood, which she didn’t buy for a second. Then they got me alone and asked me…oh.”

  “Right. That was me they were talking about. I’m going to ask you the same thing. Who kept paging me ten years ago? I called back, and nobody said a word.”

  “Maybe my wife. She was obsessed.”

  “I guess it wore off.”

  “Or she filed it away until she needed it again. So I don’t need you stirring that whole business up.”

  “Looks like I won’t have to bother you again,” she said. “Just one last thing. Did you ever give that number to anybody else—a friend, maybe?”

  He made a face. “Talk about tacky. No, I never did that. That cop asked the same thing.”

  That was interesting. Who had written the number down? Had Grogan’s wife given it to someone? But why would she have done that?

  Or maybe someone entirely different had done it. This detective work was difficult stuff.

  “Does she have male friends?” she asked him.

  “Rebecca doesn’t do friends.”

  “Could she have been stepping out with somebody?”

  He stared at her.

  “You’re good. I was asking that myself. I couldn’t believe it, but it would have explained some things back then.”

  “Like what?”

  “She would go out at odd times. And a couple of times guys called the house and apologized for getting the wrong number.”

  “Guys, plural, or guy?”

  “I’m not sure. I took one call, and my son took at least one more.”

  “So it was okay for her to cheat, but not you?”

  “Now you’re catching on.”

  “You have any idea who the guy could be?”

  “No clue. I would say somebody at work, but you’d think he would know what she’s like.”

  “How did you end up married to her in the first place?”

  “She knows how to be charming. It lasts as long as she needs it to last, and then you never see it again. I sometimes wonder if I ever did. See it, I mean.”

  “Why don’t you get out?”

  “Not an option.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s not go into it.”

  Diana glanced at her watch. She couldn’t think of anything else to ask, and she wanted to work out before her afternoon dates. She slid out of the booth.

  “Let’s not do this again,” he said.

  “I hope we won’t have to.”

  She took three steps toward the exit, but then something stopped her. Her hooker’s radar was pinging, and she always paid attention to it. It usually meant that someone connected with her professional life had come into range.

  She turned in a circle, trying to look casual about it.

  There. In the last booth sat a young woman. Diana must have seen her as she disengaged from John Grogan, but recognition had come with a time lag. She couldn’t blame herself for that. Diana hadn’t seen this young woman in ten years, and the changes were startling even for that length of time.

  Diana retraced her steps, ignoring John Grogan as she passed him. She didn’t ask herself where she was going or why. Her feet said go, and she trusted them the way she trusted her radar. She slid into the seat across from the young woman. Apparently, this was a day for butting in.

  “Anne-Marie,” Diana said.

  The young woman wore a light gray jumpsuit of the kind that would have the name of some contractor lettered on its back. Voluminous pockets up and down each side of the suit sagged with the weight of tools, paperwork, and personal effects. Diana remembered this young woman with mousy brown hair to the small of her back, but Anne-Marie now favored a short cut that would stay out of her way and need little maintenance.

  Her face had been unreadable ten years earlier, and it still was, but with a difference. Ten years ago she came across as emotionally dead. Today her guarded expression looked like a choice. Her brown eyes didn’t flinch, and Diana caught herself nodding as if paying a compliment. She had played the stare-down game with some scary people, and she could tell that Anne-Marie did it as well as any of them.

  “You’re out,” said Diana. “How did that happen?”

  “I guess you really weren’t paying attention.”

  “Not everything is about you. You never did understand that.”

  “One thing I do understand,” said Anne-Marie. “The victim makes a big difference. If you have to kill somebody, pick a grown man who exploited a vulnerable young girl.”

  “Ten years still strikes me as a little light.”

  “I pleaded to manslaughter. That comes with a chance for parole. Which I got, with a little help.”

  “Who would help you?”

  “You mean, because I’m a little deficient in the friends department? Yeah, well, Deborah Leavitt and Pamela Krol spoke up for me at the hearing.”

  “That’s two names I haven’t thought about in years. Three, counting you. Why would they want you to get parole?”

  “Not out of the goodness of their own hearts. They’ve been egging me on to pay you another visit.”

  “Oh? Do we have a problem?”

  “I told them to do their own dirty work. I like parole, compared to the alternative.”

  Diana studied the other woman, but there was just no way to read her.

  “Okay, then.”

  Diana got up again, and this time she made it outside without getting dragged bac
k into her past. She didn’t plan to come back to this diner. Who knew that such a mundane place could be so fraught?

  She noticed a van parked in the corner of the lot. The lettering on the side panel read “ABC Plumbing.” That was interesting. It suggested that Anne-Marie had put her prison time to better use than many convicts.

  In the car Diana told herself to file Anne-Marie and the other two names away for later and get back to business, which was considering what she had learned from John Grogan. Rebecca Grogan didn’t look like anyone’s idea of something on the side. What if Rebecca’s meetings with the other man had been for a different purpose?

  She wished she could just confront Rebecca Grogan, but she had the feeling that she needed some heavy-duty ammunition before she tried that tactic.

  Where to find it, she had no idea.

  Chapter Four

  Diana decided to make a quick stop at home for her gym bag. She still had enough time for a workout before her next date. If her brain could do nothing but race in tight circles, she might as well turn it off for a while and grunt under the weights.

  But she found a message from Tillotson waiting on her answering machine.

  “Call me.”

  His tone left no room for negotiation. It was time for her emergency plan. She went to the phone on the kitchen wall and lifted the handset. There was no point to going out and using a pay phone for this call. Gary Rennert knew everything about her.

  “It’s Diana Andrews.”

  He never spoke when listening would do the job. She pictured him the way she had seen him almost ten years earlier—average height and build, average amount of hair graying the average amount for a man in his late forties. Eyes that penetrated much deeper than average.

  “The way I remember it,” she said, “I have a couple of favors in the bank.”

  “That depends.”

  She told him.

  “That,” he said, “will put me in the black, as far as favors go.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Okay. I can handle them.”

  He hung up before she could thank him. She pressed the plunger and dialed Tillotson’s number.

  “You have my list?”

  “I’m working on it. But I may have something for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “If that pager was involved, there’s a good chance Gary Rennert was too.”

  “Thanks. I really want to mess with the kingmaker of Sussex County.”

  “Sorry. But it’s like you always say—follow the evidence wherever it leads you.”

  “You don’t have to enjoy this so much,” he said.

  “I’m not enjoying it at all.

  “Why do you think he’s involved?”

  “Nothing specific, just a numbers game. He sent a lot of work my way back when I was starting out. You know, guys who needed to be entertained. He would give them my pager, but they didn’t use it unless they had to change their plans.”

  “This is not good news, hearing you work for him. How did I miss that?”

  “I did work for him. After a while I started getting enough business on my own, and I was less available. At some point he stopped calling.”

  “I assume he knows to expect me.”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference if he didn’t. But if any of those men he sent me are out of circulation, he’ll know.”

  Tillotson’s breathing sounded frustrated in her ear.

  “Well, if I gotta, I gotta.”

  He hung up.

  Chapter Five

  Tiptoeing around Rennert should keep Tillotson busy for a while, but what should she do? One moment she had no idea. The next, she had a plan.

  “A guy at work,” was what Rebecca Grogan’s husband had said about a possible lover. Who had made all those calls from the home number, if Rebecca went to a job every day?

  Diana started the trip back to her car. The Driscoll Public Library wasn’t far, but she felt too impatient to walk. She parked in the rear lot and circled the building to the front entrance. One of the library’s two public access computers was free. Diana called up Yahoo and tried some searches.

  First she found out that Rebecca Grogan worked as a hospital financial administrator, which probably let her keep nine to five hours.

  Next, Diana tried combining Grogan and the town of Driscoll. Two clicks, and she had a possible answer to the mystery pages. Two years earlier, one Tracy Leblanc had married Dexter Grogan, son of John and Rebecca Grogan. Dexter was unlikely to be much older than his mid-twenties, which made him a teenager at the time of the harassing calls. During the summer vacation he could have had time on his hands and a shortage of adult supervision.

  Someone cleared a throat behind her. Her time must be up. Diana slid out of the molded plastic chair and moved to the window that looked out over the library’s rear parking lot. She had made a little progress, but how could she verify that young Dexter had made the calls? Would she have to turn her discovery over to Tillotson and hope he was impressed?

  Then she realized that she hadn’t searched for Dexter Grogan alone. She was annoyed with herself, because she would have to wait for the computer again. Was it time to acquire her own PC? Using it for business would be like keeping a file of evidence for the cops, but it might help her in other ways.

  The latest Ann Rice novel had finally come off the reserve list. She sat for an hour, pretending to read the book as she considered what she had learned.

  Dexter, not John Jr. It told her something about the Grogans’ marriage. Dexter was probably named after someone from Rebecca’s family. Diana was ready to bet that John had given up on a legacy out of prudence.

  The computer became free again. She sat at the keyboard and resumed searching.

  In 1988, nine years earlier, the Driscoll High School football team had gone ten and two behind the passing of quarterback Don Rennert and the scoring of wide receiver Dexter Grogan.

  Oh, she thought. I’m not sure I like that.

  Maybe Gary Rennert’s son and Rebecca Grogan’s son were only colleagues on the field, but Diana hoped that ten years of hooking had taught her something about men. Young male athletes tended to bond fiercely. When had the two boys become friends? Could the Rennert boy have been involved in making the calls to her pager? If he had, his father probably knew about it. Gary Rennert made a good living from knowing things.

  In which case, Diana might just have warned him that an old problem was coming back to life.

  She decided to get a look at Dexter Grogan. His unusual first name helped her search for him. He and his wife lived in Lakeview. Their address looked like a step up from his parents’ circumstances. Someone was helping the young couple, or Dexter was doing very well on his own.

  She cleared her search history and left the library. It was time to visit Lakeview.

  The younger Grogans lived in a neighborhood that she knew well. Two doors away lived a client whose name would end up on Tillotson’s list if she didn’t solve this case. The client was at work, she hoped.

  Diana didn’t envy people who lived here on raw properties carved out of the forest. Her rented Cape Cod fit her just right, while the houses in this neighborhood looked bloated and soulless.

  A new Maxima sat in the Grogans’ driveway. Diana watched the house for a moment and wondered what her story should be.

  She climbed out of her car and approached the house. Still wondering what she would say, she rang the doorbell. A young blond woman pulled the door open almost before the chimes had stopped.

  “You’re not the plumber.”

  The young woman’s voice sounded ragged. She started to close the door.

  “Like me to take a look?”

  Diana knew she had a tendency to blurt. Sometimes it even helped.

  “Are you a plumber?”

  “I know a little about it.”

  “Why would you want to help me?”

  “Maybe you’ll listen to a proposition I have for you.”<
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  “I doubt I’m interested in buying anything.”

  “All you have to do is listen.”

  “And who are you?”

  “I’m Diana.”

  The woman stared at her for a moment. Diana tried to look trustworthy. She already looked female, which might help.

  “Well, Diana, this is the second day in a row the damn plumber has stood me up. At this point I’ll take a serial killer with plumbing skills. Come on in.”

  The young woman led Diana to the stairs, straight ahead. They climbed to the second floor. Diana took a quick look in both directions and counted six bedrooms.

  “Big family?” she said.

  “That’s the plan.”

  Not “my plan.”

  The bathroom was huge. Diana sized up the fixtures. Good. Everything was Kohler, and she had learned on Kohler.

  “The faucet is messed up,” said Tracy. “You have to turn it a hundred times to get hot water. I couldn’t get it to work at all this morning.”

  “What about the other bathrooms?”

  “This is my bathroom, with my tub.”

  Diana was getting the idea. It was the principle of the thing. No one else cared enough about Tracy’s bathroom to get it working.

  “I think I know what your problem is,” said Diana.

  She didn’t plan to explain how she knew. She had a regular client, a plumber, who always had her come to his shop for a two-hour date. He spent most of the time demonstrating his new toys, while she smiled and pretended to find it all fascinating.

  “Where’s the shut-off?”

  “That much I know,” said Tracy.

  Five minutes later she returned. Diana unscrewed the face plate and nodded.

  “The fixture is roughed in too far. I can adjust it a little for a better grip, if you have a wrench.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  The young woman returned with the tool. Diana did what she had to do and reinstalled the face plate.

  “That’ll hold temporarily, but you need an extension. Kohler makes them. Go turn the water on, and I’ll make sure the fix worked.”