The Question of the Dead Mistress Read online

  But before we opened the car doors, I said, “I have noticed that you are somewhat less animated than usual. Are you concerned about your safety?”

  Ms. Washburn, who had been reaching for the door handle on her side, stopped and turned toward me. “Sure I’m concerned,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s changing the way I’m acting. I’m just tired, Samuel.”

  “Was the bed not comfortable?” Ms. Washburn had indeed spent the night in my attic apartment, protesting all along that she, as the guest, should be on the sofa in the den. But Mother and I had prevailed in that argument. I had slept on the sofa with only a slight difficulty relaxing. It had never occurred to me that Ms. Washburn might not have slept well.

  “No, it was fine,” she answered. “There’s a lot going on right now and I have trouble turning my mind off at night. Do you understand what that means?”

  I smiled. “Better than most, I imagine.”

  Ms. Washburn smiled in return. “Then I don’t have to explain further.”

  “I suppose not. Why don’t we go inside and see what we can find out. Perhaps we can answer this question today and you can return to your apartment.”

  We entered the building, a roomy, modern facility that offered a noticeable contrast to the building in which Detective Monroe worked on a daily basis. When Ms. Washburn explained our request to the officer behind the desk in the reception area, we were directed to the Motor Vehicle division. That unit would have kept records of traffic incidents rather than crimes.

  There, Officer Joanna Johnson said most records for Rt. 22, being a state highway, would be kept by the New Jersey State Police, but copies of those reports pertaining to the municipality in question would be retained. I told her the date and location of the incident that claimed Melanie Mason’s life and she did a search on her desktop computer.

  “That accident was investigated because of the loss of life,” she reported. “But it was pretty straightforward. No indication of foul play. The driver of the other vehicle walked away with minor injuries. It was the fire, not the impact, that killed that woman.”

  “May we get a copy of the incident report and any subsequent filings on the collision?” I asked.

  “It’s public record. Printing out now.” She pointed to a printer in the enclosed space behind her where other uniformed officers were milling about with their work of the day. One was pouring a cup of coffee for himself. Officer Johnson stood and pressed the security code into a keypad to open the door, then walked in and picked up the pages from the printer tray. She brought them back out to the area where Ms. Washburn and I stood.

  I briefly scanned the top page she handed to us for the name of the police officer who had first arrived on the scene of the incident. “Is Officer Palumbo still stationed here?” I asked.

  “Yeah. That’s him right there.” Officer Palumbo was the coffee drinker among the group.

  “Can we speak to him?” Ms. Washburn said.

  Officer Johnson considered the question. “In what capacity are you guys here, again?” she asked. “Are you private investigators or something?”

  Before I could explain Ms. Washburn said, “We’ve been asked by a member of the family to look into it. Nobody thinks anything was wrong with the report. We’re just looking for a little extra detail than we’re going to find in the document.” Given that the report we’d been handed was only two pages long, I believed Ms. Washburn’s assessment was valid, even if we had not been employed by any member of Melanie Mason’s family.

  The officer took a moment to think and said, “I’ll ask him.” She did not wait for a response and returned to the glass-paneled area, where she walked to Officer Palumbo and spoke briefly to him, once pointing in our direction. Palumbo took on a neutral expression, shrugged, and followed her out into the waiting area.

  “I’m Nick Palumbo,” he said, not extending a hand to be shaken. “That accident was a few years ago, wasn’t it?”

  “Three years,” Ms. Washburn answered.

  Officer Palumbo appeared to be focusing more favorably on Ms. Washburn than on me. I had seen this happen before when she and I had encountered male interview subjects. He smiled. “I don’t know how much I can help you. It was pretty routine and I’m not sure how much I remember that isn’t in the report.”

  “Is there somewhere we can sit for a moment?” Ms. Washburn asked. She smiled back at Palumbo in a way I had also witnessed before. Quite often we were able to get more complete information from the person we interviewed after she had done so. It was not a smile she had ever shown me personally.

  Palumbo led us to a separate waiting area where there were seven seats, none of which was occupied at the moment. He sat next to Ms. Washburn and I sat on her opposite side. “We haven’t had a chance to read the whole report yet,” Ms. Washburn said.

  “I have,” I interjected. “And there are a few questions I would like to ask.”

  Officer Palumbo scowled a bit, taking his attention away from Ms. Washburn. “Like what?” he asked.

  “With only a wedding band, how was it possible to positively identify the body?” There was little point in leading up to the most important question I would ask. It was better to divert Officer Palumbo from his scrutiny of Ms. Washburn.

  “There were a few other items. You’ll see them listed in the report.” I had in fact noticed that section and had been unimpressed. Among the evidence Palumbo was citing were the ashes of a paperback book and the melted remains of a cellular phone so badly burned even the manufacturer could not be identified.

  “Yes, I saw those,” I said with what I hoped was a pleasant tone in my voice. “They wouldn’t conclusively identify Melanie Mason.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “But there was a fingernail that apparently held a shade of polish Mason actually made herself. She didn’t sell it and she didn’t give it away; she kept it all for herself.”

  “That is persuasive but hardly definitive,” I suggested. “There are scenarios under which the fingernail could have broken off days before. How could you be certain the woman in the car you finally recovered was Melanie Mason if such utter destruction was visited upon the body?”

  “Let me ask you a question, Mr. Hoenig.” Palumbo had ceased examining Ms. Washburn’s face and focused his gaze upon me with a much different expression upon his face. “If that woman wasn’t Melanie Mason, who was she? No other woman of that general age or size was reported missing in this county for weeks before or after the accident. If Melanie Mason was somewhere else, why didn’t she come forward and let us know she wasn’t dead? She would have had no money, no car, her bank accounts and credit cards would have been canceled, her marriage would have been basically over. How come we haven’t heard about the missing woman or Melanie since then?”

  Ms. Washburn, who had initiated this conversation but had looked slightly perturbed when Palumbo was staring at her, cleared her throat. “Those are very good questions, Officer,” she said. “But I think what my colleague here is saying would be that you have circumstantial evidence to show that Melanie Mason died in that car crash. Was that enough, in terms of procedure, to close the case and decide against investigating any further?”

  Officer Palumbo put his hands down flat on his thighs and produced a slapping sound that I’m not sure was his original intention. He looked at me still, not Ms. Washburn. “Are you saying that I didn’t do my job?” he demanded.

  “I am suggesting no such thing,” I answered. “Obviously you have done and continue to work as a police officer in the borough of Union. And as you pointed out, the investigation of the incident was left to the State Police and not this department. I am attempting to answer a question and Melanie Mason’s death is somehow central to the research Ms. Washburn and I are doing in the pursuit of that answer. What I am trying to understand is how certain those who investigated the collision—from the time yo
u first arrived on the scene to the time the State Police decided to discontinue questioning the incident—were in determining that Melanie Mason is indeed dead.”

  Palumbo squinted at me like Clint Eastwood in many motion pictures. “Do you have any evidence that she isn’t?” he asked.

  “Last night I had a conversation with a woman who said that she is the ghost of Melanie Mason,” I told him.

  The officer blinked twice and blanched a little. “It happened to you too?”

  twenty-two

  “He had a conversation with the ghost too?” My mother settled into what she calls her easy chair in our living room after we finished lunch. I saw no feature or quality that made this particular piece of furniture any less difficult than another but I have learned not to question Mother on such terms, largely because the answers to such queries are usually not as interesting as the words she uses themselves.

  Ms. Washburn and I had come back to the house to eat and would have left immediately afterward, as I usually do, if not for Mother’s intense interest in the question Virginia Fontaine had asked. She had insisted on hearing all the details and then ushered us into the living room to sit down “and rest my knees,” which were not supposed to hurt anymore.

  “Officer Palumbo said he had been at the gravesite himself only once before and had heard the voice of Melanie Mason speaking to him,” Ms. Washburn explained. She and I were seated on the sofa and Reuben Hoenig, wearing socks but no shoes, was scratching the sole of his left foot and listening from the overstuffed chair to Mother’s left. “He said she had told him she was at peace and that he shouldn’t worry about her. The officer said he never mentioned the conversation to anybody before today because he was afraid the other police officers would think he was crazy.”

  “Why was he there in the first place?” Reuben asked. “What was he doing at this woman’s grave?”

  It was a question I had asked Palumbo myself earlier in the day. “He said the case had bothered him because it was such an unlikely accident, one that should not have resulted in a flaming car and a dead woman. Palumbo told us he had gone to Melanie Mason’s funeral and had then come back to the gravesite three weeks later seeking closure. In the words he supposedly heard the ‘ghost’ speak, he said he thought he had found it.”

  “So he didn’t get a note like you did,” Reuben said, still concentrating on his foot.

  “No.” I saw no need to elaborate, but it did raise an interesting question: How did the person pretending to be Melanie Mason’s ghost know Officer Palumbo would be visiting at that time? Ms. Washburn and I would have to discuss that later. I found myself feeling uncomfortable discussing my work with Reuben.

  Mother sat back and put her hand to her mouth in a gesture of pity or empathy. “The poor man,” she said. “I’m glad that made him feel better.”

  Her sentiment made no sense. “The words he heard were lies,” I reminded her. “There is no ghost of Melanie Mason. We found the technology that had been used to carry the sound from another location to the area of the headstone. Officer Palumbo no more heard the spirit of a dead woman than I did last night.”

  Mother looked especially concerned. “You didn’t tell him that, did you, Samuel?”

  Ms. Washburn looked away. I did not understand why she did that.

  “Of course I did,” I said to Mother. “He is an officer of the law and an investigator of crimes. Letting him think he had heard a supernatural spirit when he clearly had not would have been a disservice to him and the badge he wears.”

  “Janet,” Mother said wearily.

  “I couldn’t stop him, Vivian.”

  “What did the officer say?” Reuben asked.

  “He suggested I was lying,” I told him. “I don’t understand how he might have come to that conclusion. I never lie and I certainly couldn’t have been dishonest about the existence of a mythical supernatural creature. His suggestion was completely insensible.”

  “How did that go?” my mother asked Ms. Washburn.

  “About how you’d expect.”

  Mother closed her eyes for a moment. “Samuel,” she said slowly, “you simply can’t go around telling people that what they believe in their hearts is foolish.”

  “I don’t believe I used the word foolish,” I said. “The suggestion was something more like unrealistic.”

  “Did you tell him about the speakers and the antenna?” Reuben asked me. He stopped scratching the sole of his left foot and began on the sole of his right foot. I considered suggesting a strong foot powder but did not know if such a comment might be considered inappropriate. Certainly scratching one’s foot in the company of others couldn’t be thought of as polite, but the situation had never arisen in my presence before.

  “I did. Eventually I believe Officer Palumbo realized I was speaking from a position of factual evidence. He said there was nothing he could do about the false voice of Melanie Mason because the cemetery is not within his jurisdiction and neither is the accident. It still falls under the purview of the State Police after three years.”

  “What could he do?” Mother said. “Because I know for a fact you didn’t walk away from that conversation without him promising to help you somehow.”

  Reuben put both his feet back on the floor, which helped me focus on the conversation. “He agreed to look into sales of such sophisticated wireless transmission and reception equipment between the time Melanie Mason died and the time he believed he heard her voice at the gravesite,” I said.

  Mother smiled. “I’m never not proud of you, Samuel,” she said.

  It made me feel better that Mother did not seem to consider me an embarrassment, as I had thought she did a moment before. But my reading of Ms. Washburn’s mood was less positive and less definitive. I had been having great difficult predicting her reactions for two days.

  “So what’s our plan now?” she asked me.

  I thought it would be wise to defer to her judgment. “This has been chiefly your question to answer from the beginning,” I said. “What do you think we should do?”

  Ms. Washburn did not smile broadly but it was unquestionably a more satisfied expression on her face. “I think you had a good idea when you suggested we retrace my steps the day I was tailing Brett Fontaine,” she said. “Let’s drive the route now and see if we can find a likely place he was killed before they dumped his body on High Street. Maybe we can figure out how he did it.”

  “I believe that is a very good plan,” I responded.

  Ms. Washburn’s face did not lose any of its pleasure when she said, “Of course you do. It was yours.”

  “Olive oil,” Ms. Washburn said. “You think there was olive oil being used at the place Brett Fontaine died.”

  “The evidence would certainly suggest that is the fact,” I agreed. “Detective Monroe bore out that theory.”

  We were in Ms. Washburn’s Kia Spectra at Brett Fontaine’s former home, now the sole property of his wife, Virginia, in Highland Park. Ms. Washburn had said it was not worth our time to question Virginia again in the matter until we had more evidence that would pertain directly to her. She was, after all, still Monroe’s prime suspect in her husband’s murder. I usually believe it is always better to talk to each participant in the question as often as possible, but given the strange mélange of facts we had gathered so far, I agreed that Virginia did not seem to be at the center of the question (speaking metaphorically) but somewhere to one side of that point. If such an image is appropriate.

  “Let’s look for places that deal in olive oil, then,” Ms Washburn said.

  “Where did Mr. Fontaine go first that day?” I asked.

  “He went to his office,” she said, starting the Kia Spectra’s engine. “Should I drive extra slow?”

  “I don’t believe that should be necessary,” I said. “You were driving alone that day and could not possibly h
ave noticed every building you passed. With me in the car it should be possible to analyze our surroundings in real time. Drive as you would to avoid being spotted as you followed his car.”

  There was no need for a Global Positioning System device today. Ms. Washburn had driven this route before and we were traveling over territory that was not at all foreign to her. She proceeded from memory toward the building which housed the office of Fontaine and Fontaine in New Brunswick, a short drive from where we had begun.

  The buildings we passed in Highland Park were first residential structures but became more commercial when we reached Raritan Avenue, the commercial center of the borough. I scanned the storefronts and occasional office buildings as we went, but the only one that might have regularly dealt in olive oil was a pizzeria just before Ms. Washburn took the car onto the Albany Street bridge, the most direct route into New Brunswick, the Middlesex County seat.

  “Should we even be paying attention to buildings we just pass?” Ms. Washburn asked. “He couldn’t have been killed with several blows to the head while he was in motion in his car. It had to be when he stopped.”

  “Astute reasoning,” I said. “How many times did Mr. Fontaine stop in his travels that morning before the car he had been driving headed to High Street and you discovered his body?”

  Ms. Washburn, breaking with our established behavior of speaking only when the vehicle was not in motion, said, “Three times. Once at his office, then at a bodega to get a cup of coffee, and then at his first rental property on Wyckoff Street.”

  I chose not to continue with her pattern and waited until we had stopped. “It is possible any of those could be the spot where he was killed, although the office seems the least likely, especially given the presence of olive oil. That would not be a typical element found in a real estate company’s headquarters. Still, we need to consider each one as we reach it, and to evaluate the areas surrounding each.”