French Fried

by Kylie Logan

“Hi, Fletcher.” I held my breath.

  “The senator wants to know how soon you can start.”

  It was unprofessional to let out a whoop of jubilation so I controlled it. But just barely.

  “Two weeks?” I suggested.

  “That will be . . .” I heard him hit a couple of computer keys. “Actually, she’ll be on vacation in three weeks, so four weeks from now would be perfect.”

  “For me, too,” I said without actually looking at a calendar.

  “She wants the pie for Thanksgiving,” Croft reminded me.

  “She’ll get it,” I told him, but actually, I think he’d already hung up.

  For a couple of minutes, I stood on the sidewalk and simply enjoyed the sensations that cascaded through me. Victory! I shuffled my feet against the pavement in a little happy dance.

  “Good news?” Declan asked when I pranced back into the restaurant.

  I wiped what there might have been of a smile off my face. “Nothing to worry about at the moment.”

  “Good.” He’d cashed out a customer while I was outside and he handed the man his change and slipped out from behind the counter. “Then we can get back to talking about what’s really important.”

  What was really important was if my car would make it to New York. If I was going to New York. I forgot to ask Fletcher Croft if the senator would need me in Newport or D.C., or if she’d be in New York City in four weeks’ time, and made a mental note to send him an e-mail as soon as I could.

  Then there was my wardrobe.

  I glanced down at the black pants I wore along with one of the yellow golf shirts usually reserved for the waitresses. In honor of the grand reopening, I was wearing one that night, too, and I looked at the picture of the Terminal embroidered over my heart.

  And my stomach did a funny little turn.

  Something that felt very much like guilt shot through me and turned my blood to ice water and I lifted my head and looked at Declan.

  “What?” I asked him.

  “What?” he replied.

  “Why are you staring at me?”

  “I wasn’t staring. We were having a conversation, remember? About Tony Russo.”

  “Tony.” A new thought flooded my head, temporarily drowning the thousand little details I’d have four weeks to think about. I raced out from behind the cash register and into the restaurant just as Muriel Ross and her husband got their plates of quiche and they picked up their silverware, ready to dig in.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I made a face. “There’s something floating in your water.”

  “Is there?” Ben smiled up at me. “I hadn’t noticed. It’s no big deal. You can have the waitress bring me another glass anytime she has a chance.”

  I whisked the glass off the table. “It’s a very big deal. Believe me. A very big deal, indeed.”

  • • •

  TONY RUSSO CALLED early the next day, and not to ask me out.

  He told me he was on his way over to Muriel Ross and Ben Newcomb’s house, and he didn’t ask me to go along, but he didn’t say I should stay away, either. I pulled up to the front of the spacious colonial just as Tony got out of his car and Gus Oberlin pulled his car behind mine.

  “Really?” Since Gus was officially on duty, he was better dressed than he had been the night of the fire. Which did not mean he looked especially good. Khakis, a white shirt that could have used a serious ironing, a tie decorated with . . . I bent a little nearer for a better look . . . coffee stains and a sprinkling of glazed donut crumbs.

  Gus glanced Tony’s way. “I can’t believe you invited her along.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Tony didn’t need to remind me, so I gave him a casual shrug, like it didn’t matter.

  But maybe it did.

  Because no sooner had we set foot on the wide porch where overflowing pots of yellow mums shared space with fat pumpkins than the front door flew open and Muriel Ross raced outside. It was early and she was wearing a pink chenille bathrobe that flapped open to reveal pale skinny legs, bony knees, and the hem of a blue nightgown that brushed her calves. Her hair stood up in crazy clumps and without her makeup, she looked older, frail, and as pale as a ghost. Well, except for her eyes. Those were swollen and red and tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Help him! Help him!” Muriel threw herself at Gus Oberlin, her words nearly lost beneath the ragged breaths she took. “Please, please, help him!”

  Gus handed her off to me and because I didn’t know what else to do, I hung on to Muriel when Gus and Tony raced inside.

  Her shoulders heaved. “He didn’t mean it,” she moaned. “I’m sure . . . I’m sure he didn’t mean it, but you see, he didn’t know . . . I don’t think he knew what else to do.”

  I didn’t have to ask who she was talking about, and I didn’t need to ask how serious it was; I heard Gus inside on his phone, calling for an ambulance.

  I tightened my hold on Muriel. “What happened?” I asked her.

  She hiccuped and choked and shook so badly that I piloted her over to a wicker couch and gently set her down in it. There was a matching white wicker rocker nearby and I pulled it over, sat down, and took her hand.

  “Muriel.”

  Like she’d forgotten I was there, she flinched.

  “Muriel, tell me what happened.”

  She closed her eyes and she didn’t open them again until we heard the scream of a siren in the distance.

  “Ben . . . !” She made to get up but I kept hold of her hand and kept her in place.

  “They’re going to help him,” I said. “You know they’re going to help him. Now, tell me what happened.”

  As I’ve found out is so often true when stress and panic and fear threaten to overwhelm a person, she glommed on to the simple question and grasped at the hold on reality it allowed her.

  “The phone rang.” Her voice was flat. Her eyes were blank. They didn’t see me, but saw only those minutes before I’d arrived with Gus and Tony. “Ben’s phone rang and he spoke to someone for . . . for just a minute, and then he got out of bed.”

  She scraped a hand across her cheeks. “I fluffed my pillow and turned over. I didn’t think anything of it. Maybe if I did . . . maybe if I would have . . .”

  The paramedics arrived and scrambled into the house, and Muriel watched them, each of her breaths shallow and fast.

  “When I realized . . . when I saw that he wasn’t coming back to bed, I got up and Ben . . .” Her voice snapped along with her composure. “He was packing his things. He was leaving!”

  “But he didn’t leave.” This seemed all too obvious, but I knew if I didn’t keep her focused, I was going to lose her. It didn’t help when Gus stepped out onto the porch.

  He was about to ask something, something painful. I could just about see the words form on his lips, and I stopped him, one hand in the air, and I kept talking.

  “Did Ben say where he was going?” I asked Muriel.

  She hauled in a shaky breath. “He said he didn’t know. He said it didn’t matter. He said you . . .” She registered Gus’s presence; she looked up at him, then away again, as if just meeting his eyes would cause more anguish than she could handle.

  “All he said,” Muriel whispered, “was that the police were on their way, that they knew.”

  By this time, Gus had a small notebook in his beefy hands and he sat down next to Muriel and wrote down everything she said.

  I looked to Gus for the go-ahead and he gave it with a nod.

  “What did they know?” I asked Muriel.

  Her slender shoulders rose and fell. “I asked him what . . . what he was talking about . . . and at first, he wouldn’t tell me. He was angry. I’d never seen . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut. “He was never like this. Not ever. Not since we met.”

  “In Cozumel.�
�� I thought mention of happier times might soothe her, and for a few seconds, I’d like to think it did. Her eyes cleared. The tears stopped falling.

  “I was on vacation. And so was he.”

  This time, there was no stopping Gus. “He wasn’t vacationing there,” he grumbled. “He was working at the Tropicana Hotel next door to the hotel where you stayed, Ms. Ross. He worked there as a bartender.”

  She shook her head so hard, those clumps of hair shifted and settled in a new position that made it look as if she’d faced a windstorm. “No. I would have known. Surely. He was there as a guest, just like I was. He was a successful man, not wealthy by any means, but well-to-do, surely and—” For the first time, she dared to look Gus in the eye. “Are you telling me my husband lied to me about that, too?”

  Neither of us failed to catch the significance of that one final little word.

  “It’s a possibility.”

  I was surprised Gus could be that tactful.

  Before he said something else and blew it, I took over. “How much did Ben tell you about his past?” I asked Muriel. “Do you know where he’s from?”

  “Well, New York, of course.” Her shoulders stiffened. “He’s from New York.”

  “And he never said anything about being in Ohio before?” I asked her.

  Her mouth puckered. “Why are you asking me these things? We have . . .” She glanced at the house and the two paramedics who rolled a gurney inside and she pressed a hand to her lips. “We have other things to worry about. We have Ben . . . poor Ben!” It wasn’t so much a statement as a mournful keening, and my throat clutched.

  “Tell us what happened to Ben this morning,” I said.

  From inside the house, we heard the sound of someone unzipping a body bag.

  “I told him he couldn’t leave,” she said, her voice suddenly as strong and assured as I’d heard it when she talked to the people she hoped would be her constituents. “I told him we had to talk, that he had to explain what was going on. I asked who called and when he said it was . . .” She didn’t speak Gus’s name, just glanced his way. “I asked Ben what he was afraid of. And that’s when he told me . . .”

  By this time, I wasn’t holding on to Muriel as much as she was hanging on to me for dear life. Her fingers clutched my hand until I was tempted to cry out from the pain. At least until I realized the pain I felt was nothing compared to hers.

  “He had been in Ohio before.” She hung her head. “He told me that, years ago, he’d gone to school at Ohio State. That’s when he also told me his real name. He wasn’t Ben Newcomb. He was Steve Pastori.”

  Gus and I exchanged looks, and really, I wanted to give him the classic I told you so, but I knew there would be time for that later. On Friday when I’d talked to both Tony and Gus about my suspicions, Gus had pooh-poohed the entire idea.

  Which is why I’d had to resort to collecting Ben’s water glass to get his fingerprints.

  “You’re right.” Muriel fell back and pounded one fist against the couch cushions. “You’re right. You’re right. You’re right. He had lied to me. Ben admitted it. He said he’d been hiding out all these years, moving from job to job and place to place, changing his name and his hair color. Hiding. Always hiding. He told me that back when he was in college, he did a stupid thing and he was wanted by the police, and when he got that call this morning . . . he was afraid they’d discovered something. He was worried that they knew too much. He said that’s why he had to leave and he didn’t want to involve me so he said . . .” Even now, she couldn’t believe it. Her breath caught. “He said he couldn’t tell me where he was going. I told him he wasn’t going anywhere!” she added in a rush of words. “I told him that surely we could work together to get everything cleared up, that nothing could possibly be as bad as he portrayed it to be. But he said . . .” The tears started flowing again and Muriel could barely get the words out. “He said that years ago, he’d bombed buildings. He’d killed people. And that he had to keep it a secret, and that Raquel Arnaud . . .”

  “She knew, didn’t she?” I asked her.

  Muriel nodded. “He said that as soon as he read about her in the local newspaper, he knew there might be trouble. They knew each other back in college, you see, and he was afraid that once she started doing her research for that seminar she was supposed to speak at . . . well, he said he was afraid she’d remember a little too much.”

  That explained it, then. The note, Leave the past in the past. The midnight visits to her house to try to locate her research materials.

  I knew that then, Rocky couldn’t have had any idea she was dealing with a man who was supposed to be long dead. Not until the day of the parade.

  “She called him,” Muriel continued. “That Saturday. After the parade. I knew something was wrong after he hung up the phone, but he said it was nothing, and there was no reason for me not to believe him. But this morning, he told me the truth. That the Arnaud woman saw him at the parade and she didn’t recognize him.” She shook her head. “She didn’t recognize his face because it’s been a long, long time and we all change, don’t we, and Ben, he said he’d had cosmetic surgery to change his looks. You know, when he was on the run from the authorities.”

  “But Rocky knew him anyway. How?” I wondered.

  “She said . . . he told me she said she never would have if she wasn’t knee-deep in all that research. She was thinking about the past, and suddenly, there it was, right in front of her. She told Ben it was the way he held his head, the way he laughed. She said she’d never forget those things about him and she didn’t think it could possibly be true because Steve was supposed to be dead. But she called Ben anyway. She said she had to.”

  “Did she threaten him?” Gus asked. “Blackmail, maybe?”

  Muriel gave her head another shake. “I didn’t know the woman. But I’ve heard she was kind and thoughtful. I don’t know. I don’t know. I only know that she told Ben that she had to see him, not to turn him into the authorities, but because he had the right to know that he had a child. They had a child. Together.” She looked up at me, her eyes blank.

  “Forty-some years ago,” Muriel said, “Raquel had Ben’s baby. And now that baby is a man and she wanted Ben to know. She said he had a right to know. She wanted him to have that connection, and he . . .” Her shoulders fell and she slumped in the chair. “He went to her house and . . . and you know, we use cyanide, at the furniture factory. He took some and . . . and he put it in her wineglass. He killed her to keep her quiet.”

  “He told you that?” Gus asked.

  Muriel nodded.

  “Did he tell you how he managed to fool everyone all these years? For all anyone knew, Steve Pastori died in a bomb blast.”

  A single tear slipped down her cheek. “He knew they were looking for him. He knew they were close. He paid . . .” She gagged and fought to catch her breath. “I can barely say the words. It’s too horrible to consider. He said he paid a homeless man to put on his jacket, some jacket he always wore. Ben said he sent the man into the building. The poor fellow never knew what hit him when Ben tossed the firebomb in there right where the man was standing. There wasn’t much left of that poor homeless man, and everyone thought Steve Pastori was dead. And he was dead. All these years. Until Raquel Arnaud brought him back to life again, and he knew he was in danger. That’s when he . . . he went into the office. And he keeps a gun in the desk drawer for protection. And he closed the door and—”

  The paramedics picked that moment to wheel out the gurney with the body bag on it, and even if she wanted to, Muriel couldn’t have said another word. She hugged her arms around herself, rocked back and forth, and sobbed.

  Chapter 21

  Something tells me it is not normal police procedure to show death scene photos to a civilian. Which is why when I walked into Gus Oberlin’s office at the Hubbard police station, I got only the briefest
of glimpses of pictures of Ben Newcomb lying on the floor, his arms splayed out and a gun in his hand, before Gus slid the photos under a file folder on his desk.

  Not to be deterred, I sat down in the guest chair in front of the gray metal desk. “What’s up?” I asked him.

  Gus shuffled some papers on his desk, and it didn’t fool me for a minute. He was the last person on earth I’d ever accuse of being organized; I knew he was just stalling for time. “Need to get the last of the details down pat,” he grumbled. “Thought maybe you could help.”

  “I’ll try,” I told him.

  Gus tugged at his earlobe. “I just don’t get it,” he said, and made a face. “How did you figure that Ben Newcomb—”

  “Was Steve Pastori?” It was later that same day, Saturday, and my brain had been going around and around about that exact question ever since I saw them cart the body out of Muriel Ross’s home. “It does seem weird, doesn’t it? Everyone thought Steve was dead.”

  “Except you.”

  “No,” I told him. “When I heard the story from Sophie . . . when I read those old newspaper articles, I thought Steve was dead, too. Who wouldn’t? Then I saw those pictures from the parade.”

  “Yeah, the pictures.” I’d e-mailed them to Gus and he’d printed them out, and these, he wasn’t reluctant to share. He pulled out the one of Rocky with her eyes bulging and her mouth hanging open, staring at the grandstand. “Muriel Ross sent this one,” he said.

  “Exactly.” I remembered every detail of the picture, but I scooted forward in my seat, anyway, so I could see the photo again. “That’s one of the things that caused Ben . . . er . . . Steve to panic and make his first mistake. Muriel e-mailed the picture, and I’ll bet anything that she’ll tell us that it wasn’t until after she sent it that she told Ben what she’d done.”

  “She’s already told me that,” Gus said.

  “Well, it makes sense. Ben . . . er . . . Steve . . . oh heck, let’s just call him Ben! Muriel thought she’d caught nothing more than a unique perspective on the parade, and she was right. It’s a great picture. But Ben saw something else, something he couldn’t take the chance of anyone else seeing. He saw the moment Rocky recognized him.”