Fresh Slices

by New York Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime

  “You can’t do that,” Sarah said.

  “Let’s see what’s in here,” he said, ignoring the order. He pulled out a large textbook and dropped it on the desk. Next came a few smaller books, some folders, and a thick notebook. Oliver examined one of the folders before digging deeper into the knapsack.

  “Stop,” Sarah said, putting her hand out to grab a hairbrush from the boy’s hands. “Oliver, you must stop.”

  “Oh ho,” he said. “What do we have here?” He held up the unmistakable pink box of a pregnancy test kit.

  Sarah stared at it. “Oh,” she said, and shrank back from the desk.

  “Well, well,” Oliver continued, in an excited voice. “Now what has Tessa been up to, do you wonder?”

  “I think we should put all that back, Oliver.” Sarah had regained her composure and began to repack the bag. She took the pink box from Oliver, who’d grasped it as firmly as a child with a special toy.

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious?” he asked.

  “Why should I be? It’s none of my business.” And then she stared hard at Oliver. “It couldn’t be Will . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Oh, no. That all ended before Christmas. Don’t you worry, Mrs. Armstrong. Will’s not our proud papa. But Tessa does have an appetite, if you know what I mean.” He winked. “The list is long, very long.”

  “Maybe Chaz,” Sarah said thoughtfully.

  Oliver’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”

  “Chaz. Could he be the father? That is, if Tessa is pregnant. The box, you must have noticed, is unopened.”

  “Who’s Chaz?”

  “He’s not a student?”

  “Nobody I know. Of course Tessa doesn’t limit herself to students. NYU’s a big place.” He paused. “There are . . . professors.”

  “Surely that’s not allowed,” Sarah protested.

  “Somebody should have told that to Dr. Findlay,” Oliver said with a snicker.

  Sarah was unusually tired the next morning. Had a possible pregnancy been the real reason Tessa had come to see Will? Despite what Oliver had said, Sarah knew friends covered for friends. Tessa and Will could still be in a sexual relationship.

  Although she wasn’t in the mood, she realized she should dress and get out of the apartment. It was too early to call Will and hope to put her mind at ease.

  WOMAN’S BODY FOUND IN PETER COOPER PARK, in big, black letters on the front page of the New York Post didn’t immediately catch her attention when Sarah left the Strand Book Store that afternoon. It was only after she saw the words, NYU Student in smaller type, over a blurred photo of the victim’s face, that she stopped to look and felt her stomach churn. Even in black-and-white, Tessa’s abundant red hair was unmistakable.

  “Tessa and I broke up before I came home for the holidays in December.”

  Sarah heard the truth in her son’s voice. Now, she had to tell Will the rest of the story, that Tessa Noonan was dead. There was silence at the other end of the connection.

  “Will? Did you hear me? Tessa—”

  “I heard you, Mom,” Will said in a quiet voice. “Are the cops sure it’s murder? It couldn’t be an overdose, or suicide?”

  Sarah looked down at the Post, the page open to the story.

  “No, honey, she was strangled last night. I’m sorry. If you went out with her, you—”

  “It was just for a short time, last fall.”

  Will explained how he had met Tessa in Spanish class, first semester. Yes, she’d lived in the apartment with him for a while, and yes, he admitted he’d given her money from time to time.

  “But, Mom, I couldn’t take it after a while. Sometimes she scared me. Nothing I did was ever enough for her.”

  After Sarah ended the call, she wished Will were coming home tomorrow. Suddenly, she wanted to hug him, hold her son close to her.

  She had to consult her map of the Village to find Peter Cooper Park. When Sarah finally saw it from across the street, she was surprised by how small it was. At the north end, a small section was cordoned off with yellow police tape. There were a few benches, some shrubbery, and a statue of what she supposed was Peter Cooper. There was nothing grand or imposing about the space, just a small, pocket park in the middle of a big city. It was an ordinary place to die, and being here made the fact of Tessa’s death finally real to her. She knew what she must do.

  “We appreciate your coming forward, Mrs. Armstrong,” the middle-aged detective from NYPD took the seat Sarah indicated. His partner, who looked nearly as young as Will, sat without speaking. The two had arrived at the apartment within an hour of her call to the local precinct. Sarah had waited for them with trepidation, fearful of any connection they would make between Will and Tessa. But she knew she couldn’t hold back the fact that Tessa had been in the apartment the morning of her death. It could be important in finding her killer.

  When she finished her narrative of the time Tessa had spent with her, Sarah indicated the purple backpack on the desk chair.

  “Oliver Castello— he’s a friend of my son’s— and I looked inside.” Detective Stamos raised his eyebrows, and she quickly added, “I’m afraid Oliver was curious. I re-packed it.”

  Remembering the iPod, she walked toward the table in front of the sofa. “And here’s something else.” As the detective unzipped the backpack, Sarah opened the table’s drawer.

  The iPod was gone.

  “So, you see the name Chaz has to be important.”

  Stamos nodded. “When you spoke to your son on the telephone, did you ask if he knew who Chaz was?”

  “No,” Sarah answered, shaking her head. She was still confused as to when the iPod had been taken from the apartment. “I just didn’t think of it. But I did ask Oliver, and he didn’t know him.”

  “Chaz,” Stamos repeated. He looked at his partner.

  “There’s that Chazz Palminteri, the actor,” the younger man offered. “He spells it with two z’s. I think it’s short for Charles.”

  “Yes,” Sarah agreed. “But, Charles. Maybe Carl? I don’t know.” And then she did.

  “Carlos.”

  “What?” Stamos asked.

  “Carlos is one of the doormen here. He’s young, attractive. The night she came here, I saw Tessa arguing with him.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know, but Oliver did suggest that Tessa was . . .” Sarah struggled with an adjective.

  “Promiscuous,” the detective suggested, and she reluctantly nodded. “If she was here regularly to see your son, she would have had the opportunity to get to know this Carlos. Maybe he called himself Chaz when he was off duty.”

  “I’ve seen the doormen take in dry cleaning and other deliveries. The super has keys. I suppose Carlos could get into one of the apartments with a master key.”

  “We can check that out with the building super.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Sarah said. “It could be the motive for whoever this Chaz is. You’ll find a pregnancy test kit at the bottom of the backpack.”

  Stamos stared at her. “The autopsy was done this afternoon.”

  “And?” Sarah asked, her heart hurrying.

  “Tessa Noonan was two months pregnant.”

  As she closed the door behind the two police officers, Sarah looked at her watch. It was after six, and she deserved a glass of wine.

  The Chianti made her feel warm inside, and she wished that Tom was in New York City instead of Tokyo, that they were meeting for dinner in that Italian restaurant with the red-checkered table cloths. Tonight, it was going to be hard to be alone.

  Will returned her call around ten.

  “What’s the latest, Mom?” he asked.

  “I was interviewed by the police earlier.”

  “Wow, what did they want?”

  “I called them. I had to tell them that Tessa had spent that last night here.”

  “Did they tell you anything about . . . well, you know, what happened?”

  “Not r
eally. They asked the questions. I gave them her backpack. I told you, she left it here.”

  “That old purple thing. She always had it with her. I’m surprised she left it.”

  “I think she was upset that day.”

  “Because you think she might have been pregnant?”

  “She was pregnant, Will. They did an autopsy.”

  “She was going to have a baby? No way. Does Caz know?”

  “Caz?”

  “Sorry. Oliver.”

  “Oliver?”

  “He and Tessa have been together since we came back from semester break in January. I told him she was trouble. I should know, right? But he was crazy about her. I can’t imagine what they were going to do. Tessa was a Catholic. I don’t think she believed in abortion.”

  “Will. Back up. Why did you just call him Caz?”

  “It was short for his name, Castello. He never liked the name Oliver, so we started calling him Caz.”

  “And everybody calls him Caz,” Sarah said slowly.

  “Well, no. Tessa didn’t.”

  “What did Tessa call him?”

  “She thought it sounded hip to call him Chaz. She always called him her own little Chaz.”

  THE SNEAKER TREE

  Terrie Farley Moran

  ON an intensely clear September day, my mother was laid to rest in Calverton Military Cemetery, out east in Suffolk County. At the gravesite, my Uncle Eric said Mom would always be there, patiently waiting for my father. My brother, Sean, replied that Mom waiting for Dad would be a first. A few chuckles and guffaws from the family broke the tension, allowing us to finally move to the waiting limousines for the long trip home to Queens.

  By the time we got back to our two-story clapboard in College Point, it was nearly three o’clock. Benateri’s on Fourteenth Avenue had a buffet all set up in our dining room, and the mourners scoffed down hot and cold antipasto and sandwiches stuffed with prosciutto, sopressata, provolone, and tomato. They ploughed their way through three different pastas, and then gradually went home to their own lives, leaving little more than green lettuce and black olives behind them.

  By dusk, we were down to family members and those friends of our parents that my brothers and I always called uncles and aunts.

  I was in the kitchen, wrapping wilted leftovers in aluminum foil, when I heard a quiet tap on the back door.

  “Bad day, huh? Just got off work. Want to make a MacNeil run? Visit our sneakers? I brought six friends.” And she opened the top of her beach-bag, showing off a six-pack of Coors Light.

  We weren’t legal, but Miranda Lantoni had only to open those blue eyes wide enough to match her glorious smile when she placed the six-pack on the counter, and then pout while she searched her pockets for nonexistent proof of age. Without exception, every male convenience-store clerk, young or old, would cheerfully sell her beer, and then, as she sashayed out the door, he’d hopefully remind her to come back soon.

  We hid the bag on the back porch, while Miranda paid her respects to my father. I left her to dazzle the family, and changed into jeans and a maroon sweatshirt, with big white letters that shouted Queens College. When I kissed my father, he tugged my long brown ponytail.

  “Not too late, Miss Cat. It’s been a long few days.”

  Miranda and I flew out the back door, grabbed the beer, and ran along Sixth Avenue to MacNeil Park, a hill of green jutting into the East River, overlooking a postcard view of the lights of Manhattan.

  In third grade, I hit my first homerun on a ball field at the east end of the park. Miranda and I smoked our first cigarettes in a corner of the playground, and to celebrate her twelfth birthday, Miranda kissed Dylan Mulligan on the rocks that led up to the promenade. Last June, done with high school forever, we tied the laces together on our ratty gym sneakers and found the perfect tree— old and wide, with a few dying branches midway up. We flung our sneakers high, aiming to wrap them around a branch, where they wouldn’t be obvious but we could always find them.

  We sat under the sneaker tree, hands on our knees, sipping longnecks and watching the planes take off and land at LaGuardia Airport, which pushed into the river just off Flushing Bay.

  As one plane began its climb, Miranda said idly, “One day I’ll be on that plane, flying to Hollywood, because some big producer will be making a movie about my life as a struggling, but finally successful, artist.”

  That was the game we’d played, since kindergarten. Where is the plane going? Who’s on it, and what’s their story? Since junior high, it had always been one of us on the plane, fulfilling a dream.

  Watching a plane glide in for a landing, I said, “Mom’s on that plane, coming home to tell us the heart attack was a cruel joke.”

  And Miranda held me while I cried, long into the night. The next morning, my father pounded on the bedroom door. “Catherine, get up. Come downstairs.”

  Ugh. I’m not going to school today. He can’t make me.

  Still, I got out of bed and threw on my robe.

  From the bottom of the stairs, I could see Dad and my brother Owen, glued to the television, watching smoke pour from each of the Twin Towers. Before I could take in what was happening, the south tower crumpled, and clouds of dust blotted out the smoke, leaving the screen filled with swirling gray grit.

  A faceless announcer cried, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God . . .”

  As the dust on the screen thickened, my father said, “MacNeil.”

  I pulled on last night’s jeans and a T-shirt, and the three of us walked to the park. The streets were crowded with silent people heading to the same place.

  The promenade along the East River and the hills above it were filled with onlookers. Everything was still. We looked toward lower Manhattan, past LaGuardia Airport, its runways littered with planes that did not move, and watched plumes of smoke and ash rise. Then, as if they stumbled on the way to heaven, the billowing gray columns made a left turn toward Brooklyn.

  I stood with my father and Owen in a small clearing above the promenade. I could see the tree where last night Miranda and I chugged longnecks and loudly sang Bon Jovi’s, “It’s My Life,” as if to defy death. I looked for our sneakers, but couldn’t see them from this angle. A woman standing a few feet from us dropped to her knees and began to pray. Others joined her. My father, tears running the gauntlet of his wrinkled face, said, “Thank God your mother didn’t live to see this day.”

  After a while, Miranda found us.

  “First your mother, now this. Tragedy everywhere.” She pulled a pack of Parliament 100s from her pocket, glanced at my dad, and hid the cigarettes behind her back.

  We linked arms, walked to the sneaker tree, sat on the ground, our eyes searching until we saw our sneakers.

  Miranda mused. “Do you think they’ll last longer than we do?”

  “With all that synthetic material, those sneakers’ll outlast plastic bags.”

  Miranda stuck an elbow in my ribs. “Let’s come back every year until we die or they fall. In honor of your mother, we’ll come on September tenth, just like last night, longnecks optional.”

  “Optional? Sure. By the time we’re legal, we’ll most likely move up to wine.”

  We sat for a while longer, then Miranda went off to wait tables at Joey’s, on the Boulevard. I went home with Owen and my father. We were relieved to find Sean there.

  THAT day was the end of anyone outside the family remembering that my mother had died. During all the days and weeks and months ahead, every conversation focused on the World Trade Center. When someone said, “Where were you?” they weren’t asking if I was in the kitchen when Mom collapsed on the floor. When classmates asked if I’d lost anyone, they were only interested in the September eleventh deaths. A September seventh death didn’t count.

  People didn’t talk about anything else. Everyone was grief-stricken, remorseful, angry, and vengeful, while I was completely numb.

  I wanted to shout, “What about my mother? Doesn’t her death count? How did
she get lost in some terrorist plot?”

  During that first year, Miranda was the only friend who seemed to understand that I was hurting. She’d call or pop up, and do her best to make me laugh or let me cry, whichever matched my mood.

  One Saturday, that first winter, we visited our sneakers and sat on a pile of old dried leaves, watching a powerboat do spins in the middle of the river. We were kidding around about some nonsense from back in grammar school, when suddenly Miranda got serious.

  “What happens if someone you love does bad things? I mean, what do you do?”

  “Ally boosting cars again?”

  Miranda’s brother had some bad habits. Cost the family in the past.

  “Nah, Ally’s doing good. It’s Mike.”

  Miranda always loved her boyfriends for the first few weeks, and then the sizzle faded. Mike had been around for months, so I was surprised that Miranda cared what he did.

  “Drugs?”

  “Nothing illegal like that, it’s just— ” She rolled down her green turtleneck, and I saw marks on her throat. Fingerprints?

  “He do that to you?” I clenched my fists.

  “I sort of asked for it. He caught me with some soldier, at Hector’s going-to-Afghanistan party. I was just flirting. It wasn’t serious.”

  “This,” I pointed to her neck, “is serious.”

  “He can’t stand the thought of me being with another guy.”

  “That ain’t love. That’s possession.”

  Miranda shook her head, as if to end the conversation.

  By spring, Mike was gone. Unfortunately, he was followed by a string of jerks. The lazy ones mooched money. The possessive ones shouted threats and waved their fists. The peacocks strutted Miranda around town like arm candy. She may as well have been a cashmere jacket. Guys came. Guys went.

  WE were under the sneaker tree, marking the third anniversary of my mother’s burial.

  “Here you are, livin’ large, and we’re still drinking longnecks. Never did move up to wine.”

  “Me, livin’ large?”

  “Wearing big-girl suits and high heels to that paralegal job. You got it going on. I’m following you to the high life. Got a new job. Day bartender at Izzy’s Place. I’ll save up money for art school, no problem. Your mom is smiling down on us. You helping folks with legal stuff, and me wearing tight sweaters to rake in those tips.”