A LONG TIME DEAD
I saw her standing in the check out line. There was no grocery basket in front of her. Her total purchase was a clear plastic container of tossed salad. Salad for one told me all I needed to know about the young woman.
"Stella is that you?" I asked from three people behind. I was a little uneasy in the asking. I would be terribly embarrassed were she not to recognize me. Even worse if it weren't really Stella. I hadn't seen Stella in ten years, I could easily have been mistaken about the woman.
"Mr. Thomas?" I don't know how she meant it but it came out a question.
"I'll be Stella, I haven't seen you in ten years." I said it as warmly as I could. I really was happy to see her.
"I know, the last time I saw you was..." Her voice trailed off. She obviously didn't want to remind me of our last meeting. "So how have you and Mrs. Thomas been?" She stood at the end of the counter while the teenager rang up my groceries. I had a few more things than Stella but not many.
"Martha was fine, last I heard."
"Oh?" She had a way to ask a question without really asking.
"We got divorced about eight years ago." I made it a closed statement. I didn't want her asking a lot of silly questions.
"I'm sorry to hear that," she replied.
"Not a problem anymore." It was a statement of fact. I had managed to move past Martha.
"So are you still painting?" She finally asked a real question.
"I'm not really a painter, but yes I am still up to the same old things. How about you? Did you become a world class reporter. That is what you wanted?"
"I did want that once. Now I am happy just to have a job. I work for the Jamestown Gazette."
"So you are a reporter?" I asked.
"That and about everything else," she replied with a weary smile.
"That surely isn't your dinner?" I asked pointing to the pile of lettuce.
"This," she said, lifting the plastic carton, "And a couple of slices of left over pizza."
"I guess you aren't married?" I asked as we wandered toward the exit doors.
"Not anymore, I, like you, am divorced."
"You even talk like a writer." I meant it as a joke.
"I know, occupational hazard," she was wearing a bright smile when she said it.
"I know this is going to sound pretty bad, but I am on my way to dinner. I would like it very much if you joined me." I had long since learned to take rejection, so I didn't much care what she might answer.
We were standing on the sidewalk in front of the store. "Tell you what," she said. "Let me toss this into my car and you got a date."
"Good, I hate to eat alone."
I followed her to her small American car. I couldn't tell one of those little coffins from another. Stella opened her door, then placed the plastic bag, with the plastic carton of salad onto the plastic seat cover.
She then followed me to my car. Unlike her car mine was twenty five years old. My 1970 Ford Thunder Bird was anything but plastic. It was heavy and a real gas guzzler. It was also the only thing I had left from the time she had known me.
"I see you still have the Bird," she said with a smile.
"Some things never change," I replied with a warm smile of my own. I opened then closed the door for her.
I had the car's engine throbbing when she asked. "So where are you taking me. I'll bet it is a greasy spoon somewhere."
"That is another of the things that never change." She was of course referring to the well know fact that I never ate in fancy restaurants. At least it was well known to people who had known me for any amount of time. She was quiet for a while, finally she said, "I know I should have stayed in touch with you and Martha. I just never knew what to say."
"There was never anything to say," I replied quietly.
"I know, but I should have at least stopped by when I came to town to visit my family."
"It wouldn't have done any good. By that time you were in college. When you graduated Martha and I had split. She moved away you know?"
"I didn't know that. Where did she go?" Stella asked off handedly.
"Back to where her family was from. Some burg in Pennsylvania."
"You still living in the old house on Elm?" It was all small talk and we both knew it.
"Lord no, I could never have kept that place. It was too big and too expensive for me."
"So where do you live now?"
"I bought a little house on the edge of town. When I bought it, it wasn't on the edge, but it is now." I didn't speak again until we pulled into the parking lot of Marie's. "So where are you living these days?"
"A townhouse near the paper," she replied.
"A townhouse, I didn't know weekly papers paid that well?" I said it as a joke.
"They don't. I got a pretty good settlement from my ex."
"Good for you," I replied meaning it. Why should I be the only one gutted.
"Before we go in, I have to ask you something."
"Sure Stella, anything."
"Can I call you Ed?" she asked with a smile.
"Of course you can call me Ed."
"Thanks, having dinner with a man, while calling him Mr. Thomas seems a little too depressing."
"I know what you mean. Whenever anyone calls me Mr. Thomas, I look around for the ghost of my father." She laughed as I hoped she would.
We made it through dinner without discussing old times. It was a miracle since that is all we had in common. Instead she told me amusing stories about working as a junior reporter for the Washington Post. According to her she was no more than a trainee coffee maker and general purpose flunky. I expected she did more than she admitted. I allowed her to ramble on since I didn't have anything to add to the conversation. That and the fact that she was really an interesting conversationalist.
After she finished an especially complicated story, I remarked, "You really should write a book. Not just about the paper but about anything. You have a nice way with words."
"Actually I am writing a book." I saw her eyes fall to the table. She quickly tried to change the subject. "So where have you been painting? I mean since you lost your grand old studio."
"I converted the garage at my new place into a studio."
"Maybe I'll have you paint me. I'm certainly old enough now. At least I can see your painting now. My mother hated it when I came to your house as a kid. She was afraid I might see one of your paintings and be corrupted." She said it with a far away smile. "Mother was a real church lady. I missed her when I was a teenager but she probably would have warped me even worse had she lived.
"So what is your book about?" I asked moving her back to the subject she was trying to avoid.
"Now isn't the best time to discuss this," she informed me with a certain amount of finality in her voice.
"Please tell me you aren't going to dredge all that up again." I begged.
"Ed, I really think we should discuss this another time."
"Then you are writing about Julie?" I asked.
"Yes, I wish I could say no, but I am writing about Julie."
"Why Stella, that happened ten years ago. It is one of those things best left alone."
"Somebody needs to tell her story."
"Why it certainly won't help her."
"No but maybe I can find out something. You know I have been digging into it."
"You do what you want, but I wish you wouldn't do this." I replied.
"Since dinner has been pleasant, up until now, let's change the subject."
"I was sorry to hear about your dad," I said to help switch the conversation away from Julie.
"Thanks, I really do miss him. I hate that I never got the chance to tell him how right he was about almost everything," she said sadly.
"He probably knew. Most fathers know their kids will come around one day."
"Still, I wish I had told him." I simply nodded. There just was no proper answer.
"You know bumping into you was a real surprise. I didn't expect you to ever return to our little town. What was it you called it in that article?"
"A dust spot on the world. God how long will it take people to forgive a child's stupidity."
"They forgave you, they will probably never forget. Some folks agree with you. Don't take that as too large a compliment. They are mostly the new arrivals. The ones who work in Andrews and sleep here."
"You mean the ones who pay the bulk of the taxes, but are really second class citizens?" She asked it with an edge in her voice.
"Those are the ones." I replied strongly. You either loved or hated the commuters. Me I leaned slightly onto the hater's side of the fence.
"Why do the old time residents hate the new people?" she asked childishly.
"Mostly because they hate the town, therefore us. They chose to live here for the cheaper houses and taxes, but they don't take part in the community. I guess it's because they think we are all red neck hicks."
"I'm kind of caught in the middle on this one. I grew up here, but I realize things have to change," she said.
"Usually change is for the better, in this case I'm not so sure. This was once a peaceful little town, but now it has become as bad as Andrews. The commuters fill our schools with their kids, then run off somewhere else to work and play. Their kids cause a disproportionate amount of the trouble in school. Most of them come from larger cities and bring that crap with them."
"Are you sure you aren't making a mountain out of a mole hill?" Stella asked.
"Maybe but surely you remember the time when you could go to an ATM without an armed guard standing over it?"
"I have to admit the one with the guard is the only one I use these days. I think it is like that everywhere."
"It wasn't like that here. At least not until the town began growing. One of our mayors thought it would be good to have the added tax base. She almost gave the builders the keys to city hall. The next thing any of us knew, we had housing developments and apartments all over."
"All those extra dollars had to help the town," she said in defense of the growth spurt.
"Really, most of them went for more cops, more firemen, more schools, and more roads to benefit the newcomers. The quality of my life hasn't changed in any way, except downward. I can't drive across town in less than thirty minutes. It used to take ten. Instead of a horse pasture behind my house, I have a housing development with a gang of teenagers roaming the streets until all hours. Then there is the great purchasing power of the bedroom residents. They think that if a product or service is from Greenpoint it is inferior to that same product purchased in Andrews."
"I don't think that is true," Stella commented.
"Really, tomorrow take a drive through one of the developments. You will see a half dozen plumber electricians and the like. Count how many of them are from Andrews. Go into one of those yuppie restaurants and see how many local residents you see. Then ask the owner where he is from, that may be difficult since most of them are chain crap restaurants. Face it this place has become two different towns. The local merchants are being squeezed out by big chains. If 'locally owned' is in the advertisement for a store, it is the kiss of death."
"You are exaggerating. My paper is doing great." she said.
"I haven't read a Gazette lately, but if you have a large circulation, my guess is that you take a pro bedroom stand on every issue."
"It doesn't really matter, you can't turn back the clock." she said with finality.
"That we can at least agree on. The difference is that I see that as a bad thing."
"So how many local customers do you have?" she asked needling me.
"Not enough to pay the electric bill." I admitted.
"So?"
"So I go out to get my customers, then bring my work home to produce. That's a little different that spending all my waking hours somewhere else, while dumping the problems I create on someone else."
"What exactly have you done to help your community. Unless you have changed, you are a semi-hermit," she demanded.
"You have me there. I still stay pretty much to myself." I paused a long moment then said, "You know this isn't such a good subject either."
"No and it's getting late. That waitress looks like she is headed this way with an eviction notice."
"It's okay, they have to give us a thirty-day notice. However, it is time for us to go."
"Ed, I really did enjoy the conversation, maybe we could do this again sometime."
"Sure, we'll \lquote do lunch\rquote ," I said sarcastically.
"No I'm serious, I want to have dinner with you again." She paused for a second waiting for me to respond. I said nothing, because there was nothing to say. "How about Saturday night. The paper goes to bed on Friday and the deliveries have all been made by Saturday afternoon." She paused again. "Come on, I hate sitting home on Saturday night."
"I have a show in Andrews on Saturday. I won't be home before seven." I answered hoping to talk her out of the dinner.
"Eight is fine," she said as she removed a card from her purse. She scribbled something on the back of it. "That is my address and phone number. I expect to see you on my doorstep at eight on Saturday night."
I nodded then stood. I drove her to her car, then headed home. I wondered how I could get out of the dinner. Dinner with a woman half my age didn't seem like a good idea to me. She wasn't really half my age. I was forty-eight and she was twenty-nine, but it was still too great a difference for me to expect anything but a pretty miserable evening. Not only was she young but she was apparently a flaming liberal. I doubted we could have a conversation without a fight starting.
When I arrived at my small frame house, I immediately went to the garage studio. I still had a couple of painting to finish. Everyone called what I did painting, though I doubted a real painter would agree. I simply took a photograph then had it blown up really big. I treated the photo with a couple of sprays so that it would hold paint. At that point I painted over the image on the photograph. Changing the background was easy and did a lot to remove a too large tummy or butt. The enhancement of the figure was a different thing and did require a little talent. A week after I finished, I could deliver a really nice oil painting of the person.
As Stella had hinted, I mostly did nudes. As she also hinted, I mostly did nudes of out of town clients. I exhibited at the art shows religiously. Usually sometime over the weekend show a woman or two would timidly approach me. One thing usually led to another and a painting was born. Shooting the picture required only a good quality camera. I could shoot in almost any light since I would be repainting it anyway.
The resulting painting could be accomplished faster than an original oil and cheaper. Not only that, the model posed only once. With a nip and tuck here and there the model actually looked better than she had in real life. As a result I was, on occasion, forced to make a trip to some far off town during the week, to shoot a friend of the model's. Business was pretty good these days and had been for all of the eight years since Mattie and I split. Since I had nothing to do but paint, I produced not only a ton of nudes but also some straight paintings to sell to the walk-in customers at the shows.
When I sat down to work that night, it wasn't on either of those. I worked on the painting of an exotic dancer, better known as a stripper. I worked on about a dozen or more of them a year. It had become some kind of status symbol for a club to have a dozen stripper's in oil, hanging on their walls. I suppose they thought it gave them class or something. &&
I almost never did straight photography or small painting. Olan Mills could have all the straight photography and as far as small painting went, it took as long to do an 8x10 as it did a 20x30. and it was actually harder. The small paintings were just that, too small to really work on for a man with old shaky hands.
On Friday I drove to Andrews for the painted leaf festival. I found that as usual the promoter had put me in a far corner. They tried to keep me out of the way, so that strolling families wouldn't pass by my exhibit. Once in a while I even got turned down for a festival. Some people, mostly Baptist, didn't see art in my work. Even though none of the models did anything in the least suggestive, I was called a pornographer by some promoters.
I actually enjoyed working in the towns near my home. At those shows, I handed out cards and made appointments in my studio for the shoots. When I was far from home, I either shot the photo's in my motel room or the model's home. No matter where the shoot, it was always strictly business. Even though I dealt with nude women's pictures everyday. My love life was almost as dry as the Sahara.
Saturday came and most of it went before I drove to Stella's townhouse. hers wasn't a big townhouse but rather a small two bedroom unit. It was new and nicely decorated. She allowed me into the living room while I waited for her to finish whatever women do to keep men waiting. As far as I could see she was fully dressed, so she had to be doing something mysterious up those stairs. Something only another woman would understand.
I found a copy of the new Gazette on her sofa. I sat down to read it. I was surprised to find her name on the masthead as the managing editor. I flipped through the pages to find that the Gazette had changed. The last time I had read the Gazette it was mostly hometown news and profiles of the local residents of Jamestown. Jamestown was an even smaller town than Greenpoint. It was situated smack-dab between Greenpoint and Andrews.
Even Jamestown had experienced the bulge of over growth. It coped differently, mostly because it had always been a community of commuters. There were absolutely no employment opportunities in Jamestown. Everyone had to work somewhere else, so the bulge didn't bother their residents as much as it had the Greenpoint natives.
The Gazette ran a lot of lifestyle kind of articles. Like, things to do in Greenpoint or Andrews, if you happen to be stranded in one or the other of them. Jamestown got mentioned only a very few times. There was very little real news in the paper. I found the only really interesting thing on the editor\rquote s page. Stella had written a new piece on tolerance, then spent most of the page answering angry letters from readers.
After the lifestyle things, I found a section on scandals. Kind of a national inquirer on a local scale. I was surprised to find myself actually interested in the scandal section. Not interested enough to stay with it once Stella came down the stairs.
She had indeed had changed her clothes. She wore a lightweight wool clinging dress. I found her woman's body smaller and tighter than her girl\rquote s body had been. Not that I had really noticed her child body. I just had a lingering impression of a slightly chubby little girl.
"So what do you think?" she asked.
"It looks as though you have grown up," I suggested.
"Ten years tend to do that to a person," she said with a chuckle.
"Well, I approve."
"So where are you taking me for dinner?" she asked.
"You invited me, you pick it."
"I'll try to compromise on the restaurant but I insist on a nice place after. I need to unwind and I can't do it, if I have to toss red necks off our table," she said it with a smile.
"Then you are probably with the wrong man," I admitted.
"How about the stockyard for dinner, then the Parisian for a drink after?"
"Whatever you say dear," I said in my henpecked husband's voice.
"Good, I'm glad you have the right attitude from the start." She laughed as I followed her out the door. "God, I just love that T-Bird. Does it have some special significance for you."
"No, when I bought it the bird was just an old car. In those days it was called fixing it up, not restoration. I tried out a few new cars over the years but never could get enthusiastic about them. I just kept the old bird."
\f1\fs20 "You certainly don't drive this car every day?"
"Sure, I have an old Chevy truck I drive when it is in the shop, which isn't as often as you would think. I take the truck to the shows. I can't carry large paintings in the bird. I can but they tend to get bent up."
"So it's either this beauty or an old pick up. I approve of your choice for a date," she informed me.
"I'm glad you approve."
Dinner was good, even if the restaurant was filled with 'bedroomers'. I had to admit the Stockyard did a pretty good steak. Stella was in a light mood and I was glad. I wasn't up to another argument.
I had never been inside the Parisian nightclub. I was pleasantly surprised to find a piano bar. The piano made a nice background sound to Stella's voice. She and I again made small talk. The small talk lasted so long I began to worry that Stella was lulling me to sleep so that she could drop some kind of bomb on me. The bomb never came. I dropped her at home, then returned to my own house.
The show in Andrews wound down at six on Sunday. I returned home to find my telephone answering machine blinking furiously. Two of the calls were to set appointments for portrait shoots. There were as usual twice as many hang-up calls. Toward the end of the tape was a message from Stella.
"I had a nice time last night, please call me when you get a chance," the metallic voice said.
It was only eight so I called. "Hello," I said into the phone, only to find that I was talking to an answering machine. "I hate talking to these things, so you call me. Oh yeah, this is Ed." After the brief call, I put away my display. When I returned from the studio, where everything was stored, I found the light blinking again on my answering machine.
"I was in the shower. Call me when you get this message," the metallic voice of Stella said.
I made the call. Stella didn't really want anything. At least it didn't seem so at first. She spent the first five or six minutes making telephone, small talk. When she finally got around to the reason for all the calls. She wanted to ask me questions, questions about Julie.
I cut her off, before she got more than one out. "I told you I am not going to help you with any of that."
"I just want you to set the record straight."
"The record is straight. There is nothing you can add to it."
"I'm sorry I think there is."
"Like what?" I asked hating myself for letting her suck me into a conversation about Julie."
"I'm not going to tell you what I know until you tell me what you know." The air was pregnant with the silence. She broke first, "I don't want your judgment clouded by what I might tell you. I want to know what you knew, not what you knew after I tell you what I know."
"In that case, I have nothing to say."
"Come on Ed, between the two of us we might know or maybe find out what really happened."
"What really happened is Julie killed herself," I spat the words into the phone.
"That's what the cops said, but only because they didn't know everything."
"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.
"If this town wasn't so backward they would have done an autopsy."
"What do you mean? There was no reason for an autopsy, she hung herself in a locked room. The door was bolted closed from the inside. There was no way for anyone to get in or out of that room."
"They might not have found anything different about her death, but they would have found out that she was pregnant."
"Where the hell did that come from?" I asked angrily.
"Julie told me the week before she killed herself. I would rather have told you all this face to face. I'm sorry Ed but she was pregnant. Now, if you want to talk about this come on over."
"You bet your ass I'll be over."
Fifteen minutes later I was knocking on her door. Stella opened the door without any hesitation. I hardly noticed her as I pushed past her. "Now exactly what the hell are you talking about?" I asked without any hesitation.
"Here," she said, handing me a glass filled with an amber colored liquid. "You still drink bourbon, don't you?"
"Yes, but I'm not quite sure I want to drink with you." I said angrily.
"Take the drink Ed, you are going to need it."
"Okay, but I want to know everything you know before I tell you anything. If you tell me everything, I promise I will answer your questions." I had planned it while driving over.
"You give me your word?" Stella asked.
"If I gave my word, it is good," I replied angrily.
"Take it easy Ed. I just want to know, I'm going to get something for my information."
"Since your bomb, I'm not sure I know anything you don't."
"You have to know something, even if you don't know that you know it."
"Are you sure about Julie being pregnant?" I asked.
"As sure as I can be. I'm not the only one she told. She told Amy." Stella informed me.
"Did she tell you who the father was?" I asked.
"Frankly she didn't know for sure," Stella informed me.
That one hit me hard. It was bad enough to think Julie could have been having sex, it was worse to think she was having it with so many men that she didn't know who the father of her child might be. "I know this is going to sound awful, but I want to talk to Amy before I believe that."
I had spoken to Amy off and on over the years. She had never mentioned anything like that, even when Martha and I were blaming each other for Julie death. I wanted to hear it from her as well as Stella.
"I thought you might feel that way so Amy is on the way over now. I didn't expect you to believe me." She probably expected me to deny my disbelief. If she did, I disappointed her. We sat almost in total silence until Amy arrived about ten minutes later.
"Mr. Thomas," she said as she took my hand. "Stella told me why you wanted to talk to me. I would never tell you these things, if it didn't bother me so much." She began to cry. After a few minutes she continued. "I have had this on my conscience since Julie died. I know I should have told you when you and Mrs. Thomas were having so much trouble. I have even been feeling guilty about that. I thought that if I had told, you might have stayed together." The young woman looked miserable. "Then again I was afraid that it might be the thing to drive you apart."
"Honey, telling or not telling, wouldn't have made any difference. The underlying problem was a failure to talk. The divorce would have happened eventually anyway." I wanted to make her feel at least a little better.
"Amy, I want you to tell Ed everything," Stella demanded quietly.
"Where do I begin?" She asked Stella.
"Anywhere you want."
"I guess we have to start with her first date. I mean, up until that time, I thought she was all talk. You know how teenage girls are. We talked a lot about boys and doin' it. Mr. Thomas I always liked you and so did all of Julie's friends. I really hated the way she talked about you but what could I do."
"Tell him what Julie said," Stella demanded.
"She said she hated you and wished her mother would divorce you. According to her she could get her own way if you weren't around. I don't think she meant it." Amy said still miserable.
"I'm sure she meant it," I said feeling about as bad as Amy looked.
"Go on Amy, tell him the rest of it." Stella demanded.
"Damn it Stella why should I? It's your book. You tell it and I will just sit here to make sure you tell it straight." Amy said angrily.
"Julie told me she had her first boy at school. She slipped into a janitor closet with one of the soccer players. I don't know which one."
"So how old was she?" I asked.
"Thirteen," Stella said without any emotion. "From then until her senior year, there were plenty of others. Julie got passed around from boy to boy."
"Did she ever tell you who she thought the father of the child might be?" I asked.
"No she was very secretive about the boys in her life. At least until her fling with them ended. Then Amy and I would hear all about them."
"Did she ever say why she did it?" I asked.
"Sure, she said it felt good. At the same time she was lying her ass off to you and everyone at the school. According to her school persona, she was a vestal virgin." Stella suddenly seemed to take pleasure in the telling of it.
"Okay, so who do you think the father was?" I asked to cut her off. I neither needed nor desired to hear more.
"I'm pretty sure it was a teacher," she said it with a small smile.
"What do you mean a teacher? You all went to a church school?" I demanded.
"You know as well as I, those people are no better than the rest of us." Stella said.
"Surely if she was doing a teacher someone would have known?" I demanded.
"If he didn't tell and Julie killed herself without telling, who would know?"
"A man like that would surely have made advances to other students," I suggested.
"Frankly Ed, I think Julie seduced him."
"Is that what you think Amy?" I asked. She lowered her eyes to the floor as she nodded. "So you have no idea who the teacher might have been, if indeed it were a teacher?" I asked.
Each of them shook her head. "She went out with a couple of guys but she also spent a lot of time after school." Stella said.
"Julie was pretty heavy into the band the last two years of her life. I thought she was at some kind of band practice."
"That's just what she told you. She was the most horrible liar. She even lied to Amy and me. Frankly I just don't know whether she was at school or out with some boy most of the time."
"Now that you have completely destroyed Julie's memory, what do you want from me." I asked.
"Ed, I could tell you a lot more things, some of them pretty sick, but I won't. I have told you only what you need to know. Frankly I need your help."
"I agreed to talk to you, not to do anything else."
"If there was a teacher involved, wouldn't you like to know who it was. Wouldn't you like to get even?"
"I can never get even, I might be able to get a little vengeance but even never. I could never take away anyone else's child. That's what it would take to make us even."
"Okay then help me for the sake of vengeance. Help me find out who the teacher was."
"Now how would I go about that?" I asked.
"You can get her school records. There might be a clue in them."
"What kind of clue?"
"Ed, I won't know that till I look at them. Maybe someone wrote something in her records that will give us a clue."
"Sure the man wrote a diary account of his affair with my under aged daughter." I said sarcastically.
"Not that, but he might have written something just a little off center in her records. After that we can talk to the other teachers, maybe one of them would talk to you."
"You can talk to them without me," I suggested.
"I tried but got no where," Stella admitted.
"So you want to use me too." I replied.
"More like mutual cooperation. You know, I might be able to help you some. I know how to follow the leads," Stella suggested.
"I think it was the basketball coach," Amy suddenly said.
"What?" Stella asked.
"I think it was one of the basketball coaches. Julie spent a lot of time at the practices and games. She wasn't interested in basketball, so it had to be either a player or a coach she was interested in."
"It could have been a player, you know Mike played basketball?" Stella commented.
"Who is Mike?" I asked.
"One of the guys Julie was interested in. I don't know if she ever slept with him or not. It might be interesting to find out. If she wasn't after Mike, he might know something about who she was after."
"I want to be with you when you conduct any interviews about Julie," I said.
"Why?" She asked casually. It wasn't a complaint, more a point of curiosity.
"Two reasons, one I don't want you putting words into his mouth. Two, I want to make sure that you tell the truth."
"Why would I lie?" she asked.
"You are a news reporter." The statement did exactly what I expected it would. She became furious, but didn't say anything. She swallowed her anger. I was sorry to see that she didn't choke on it. I wasn't angry just disgusted by the whole thing.
"Okay, then you be ready to ride on a moment\rquote s notice. I will check with you before I set up any interviews but you have to go when I make the appointments." I nodded my agreement.
The whole conversation took no more than half an hour. Amy left first, she was pretty uncomfortable with it all.
"So" Stella asked. "Who do we look at first?"
"I don't know, you are the investigator not me."
"Then let's check out the Mike thing. I would like to rule him out before I go after the coaches."
I worked in my studio on Monday, I had a few things which needed finishing. Stella called around three to inform me that Mike was going to be harder to find than she had thought. His parents had moved. She vowed to stay with it. She also asked me to get Julie's school records first. I refused. The school records were the only weapon I had at my disposal. If I gave those up chances were better than fifty, fifty it would be necessary for me to read her book to find out anything further.
She called again on Wednesday. She had located Mike's family. Mike was living in Greensboro with his wife and two little boys. Mike was also some kind of manager trainee in a steel fabrication business. Stella had already called and arranged a meeting with him for lunch on Thursday.
When we met him in the restaurant at one thirty, I didn't know him from Adam's house cat. If I ever saw him around the school, my ten year old memory didn't pull him from the soup. Fortunately, he and Stella recognized each other.
She introduced me as her boss on the paper. She and Mike relived old times for a few minutes, then she began asking him questions. At first they were simple questions about school, then about basketball. I did no more than shake his hand. Stella asked all the questions.
"Do you remember the girl who killed herself?" she asked.
"Julie Thomas, sure now there was a strange duck."
"How so?" Stella asked.
"I don't know, other than the obvious. There was just something strange about her from the beginning and it got worse."
"Was she on drugs or something?" Stella asked. "I never did understand why she killed herself."
"I don't know why she did it. I don't think she was on drugs, at least I never heard about it."
"You went out with her didn't you."
"Lord no, I think she wanted to go out with me, but I was too busy with Jessie. Jessie and I had been going together for a couple of years when Julie killed herself."
"Really? I know she was hanging around the basketball team, I thought it was to be around you?"
"I think she might have been at a few practices but it wasn't to see me."
"So who was she there to see?" Stella asked.
"I don't know, why all the interest in Julie. It has been a long time." he suggested.
"I'm going to do a piece of teen suicide. Julie was the only one I ever knew personally."
"Oh," he said. "I have no idea why she killed herself or why she was hanging around the basketball team. I do know it wasn't to see me."
After a little more small talk we left the restaurant. "He's lying," I said.
"I know. I don't think he was seeing her though, but I do think he knows who was." Stella agreed.
"So how do you make him tell the truth?" I asked.
"Torture or blackmail," she replied without a smile. "I never was any good at torture, and you don't seem the type. I expect old Mike has a skeleton or two in his closet."
"I'm going to be out of town this weekend, let me know when I get back if you find anything."
"I'm going to be working on a few other things despite your lack of cooperation." she said sarcastically.
"Good for you," I replied calmly.
When I returned from the Apple festival, there were several messages for me. One of them was from Stella. Over the weekend she had talked to several of Mike's current friends. It seems Mike had a bit of a drinking problem. Not only that he liked to hit his wife when he drank.
She approached Mike without me being present at lunch on Monday. He agreed to meet with us on Monday evening. We met at his house. His wife and kids were staying with her mother until they completed couple counseling.
"Well Mike, you agreed to talk so let's get to it. And Mike, If you lie all bets are off."
"I would never tell you all this if you weren't blackmailing me." he said.
"In the trade we call it journalistic pressure," Stella replied with a wicked smile.
"Like I said, I never went out with Julie. Sure she threw herself at me, most of the girls did. I was kind of a big wheel in high school. You remember how it was Stella. I could choose from a dozen other girls so Julie didn't interest me. She had gotten around, if you know what I mean." Stella nodded, I sat perfectly still while he continued.
"Hanging around the basketball team had nothing to do with me. I had turned her down all ready. She was hanging around trying to buddy up to coach Jefferson. I never knew why, but she followed him around like a puppy."
"So you don't know why?" Stella asked.
"I think it was a father thing. He was kind of a second father to all of us. She sure as hell didn't have much of a father at home. I hear that step father of hers is some kind of nut."
I didn't even flinch. I sat perfectly quiet while he paused for a few seconds.
"Then again everybody thought their father was stupid. In her case it might have been true. How could he not know what Julie was doing. I mean she even looked and dressed like a hooker. Not so much at school. We had that silly dress code, but when she came to one of the games."
"Are you implying that she was selling her body?" Stella asked.
"Not for money, but she was getting something for it."
"What was she getting?" Stella asked.
"I thought about this all afternoon. She seemed to be keeping score or something. You know about Rainbow?"
"Rainbow?" Stella asked.
"Sure that weird chick from her part-time job, the one at the hamburger joint. Rainbow worked there with Julie. Rainbow was some kind of throw back to the hippies of the sixties. At least that's what my mom said when she first saw her. She dressed in those weird clothes." I had no idea what he was talking about.
"Anyway, I think she and Julie were in some kind of competition. You know to see who could score the most boys. I know it sounds unbelievable but that's what I think. Anyway I had nothing to do with her."
"About this coach Jefferson thing. Did he seem to be interested in being one of her scores?"
"I don't think so, but you would have to ask him that."
"Do you know where he is these days?" Stella asked.
"Last I heard, he was still coaching basketball at the school. That was a couple of years ago."
"Who was the assistant coach?" Stella asked.
"One of the fathers helped out. I think it was Tera Adams dad. Yeah it was Mr. Adams."
The two of them talked a little while longer but nothing much came from it. Once we were in Stella's generic car, I asked. "So what do you do now?"
"I get those school records from you," she said firmly.
"Not yet, I want to be at the interviews with these people."
"Ed, you're a nice guy, but I can't have you tagging along on all my interviews. Frankly it cramps my style."
"I can see how it might. How about a compromise. You tape the entire interview, allow me to hear it, then when you run out of leads, I will request the school records."
"I don't like it but it's fair," she agreed. "You know you aren't bad at that blackmail thing yourself."
"Well, in the business, we call it trading well." I said with the first smile I had felt all day.
"How about taking me to dinner? I mean I think I have earned it." To her this was all a day\rquote s work. She didn't have any idea how the information from Mike had affected me.
\f0\fs24
\f1\fs20 "You certainly don't drive this car every day?"
"Sure, I have an old Chevy truck I drive when it is in the shop, which isn't as often as you would think. I take the truck to the shows. I can't carry large paintings in the bird. I can but they tend to get bent up."
"So it's either this beauty or an old pick up. I approve of your choice for a date," she informed me.
"I'm glad you approve."
Dinner was good, even if the restaurant was filled with 'bedroomers'. I had to admit the Stockyard did a pretty good steak. Stella was in a light mood and I was glad. I wasn't up to another argument.
I had never been inside the Parisian nightclub. I was pleasantly surprised to find a piano bar. The piano made a nice background sound to Stella's voice. She and I again made small talk. The small talk lasted so long I began to worry that Stella was lulling me to sleep so that she could drop some kind of bomb on me. The bomb never came. I dropped her at home, then returned to my own house.
The show in Andrews wound down at six on Sunday. I returned home to find my telephone answering machine blinking furiously. Two of the calls were to set appointments for portrait shoots. There were as usual twice as many hang-up calls. Toward the end of the tape was a message from Stella.
"I had a nice time last night, please call me when you get a chance," the metallic voice said.
It was only eight so I called. "Hello," I said into the phone, only to find that I was talking to an answering machine. "I hate talking to these things, so you call me. Oh yeah, this is Ed." After the brief call, I put away my display. When I returned from the studio, where everything was stored, I found the light blinking again on my answering machine.
"I was in the shower. Call me when you get this message," the metallic voice of Stella said.
I made the call. Stella didn't really want anything. At least it didn't seem so at first. She spent the first five or six minutes making telephone, small talk. When she finally got around to the reason for all the calls. She wanted to ask me questions, questions about Julie.
I cut her off, before she got more than one out. "I told you I am not going to help you with any of that."
"I just want you to set the record straight."
"The record is straight. There is nothing you can add to it."
"I'm sorry I think there is."
"Like what?" I asked hating myself for letting her suck me into a conversation about Julie."
"I'm not going to tell you what I know until you tell me what you know." The air was pregnant with the silence. She broke first, "I don't want your judgment clouded by what I might tell you. I want to know what you knew, not what you knew after I tell you what I know."
"In that case, I have nothing to say."
"Come on Ed, between the two of us we might know or maybe find out what really happened."
"What really happened is Julie killed herself," I spat the words into the phone.
"That's what the cops said, but only because they didn't know everything."
"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.
"If this town wasn't so backward they would have done an autopsy."
"What do you mean? There was no reason for an autopsy, she hung herself in a locked room. The door was bolted closed from the inside. There was no way for anyone to get in or out of that room."
"They might not have found anything different about her death, but they would have found out that she was pregnant."
"Where the hell did that come from?" I asked angrily.
"Julie told me the week before she killed herself. I would rather have told you all this face to face. I'm sorry Ed but she was pregnant. Now, if you want to talk about this come on over."
"You bet your ass I'll be over."
Fifteen minutes later I was knocking on her door. Stella opened the door without any hesitation. I hardly noticed her as I pushed past her. "Now exactly what the hell are you talking about?" I asked without any hesitation.
"Here," she said, handing me a glass filled with an amber colored liquid. "You still drink bourbon, don't you?"
"Yes, but I'm not quite sure I want to drink with you." I said angrily.
"Take the drink Ed, you are going to need it."
"Okay, but I want to know everything you know before I tell you anything. If you tell me everything, I promise I will answer your questions." I had planned it while driving over.
"You give me your word?" Stella asked.
"If I gave my word, it is good," I replied angrily.
"Take it easy Ed. I just want to know, I'm going to get something for my information."
"Since your bomb, I'm not sure I know anything you don't."
"You have to know something, even if you don't know that you know it."
"Are you sure about Julie being pregnant?" I asked.
"As sure as I can be. I'm not the only one she told. She told Amy." Stella informed me.
"Did she tell you who the father was?" I asked.
"Frankly she didn't know for sure," Stella informed me.
That one hit me hard. It was bad enough to think Julie could have been having sex, it was worse to think she was having it with so many men that she didn't know who the father of her child might be. "I know this is going to sound awful, but I want to talk to Amy before I believe that."
I had spoken to Amy off and on over the years. She had never mentioned anything like that, even when Martha and I were blaming each other for Julie death. I wanted to hear it from her as well as Stella.
"I thought you might feel that way so Amy is on the way over now. I didn't expect you to believe me." She probably expected me to deny my disbelief. If she did, I disappointed her. We sat almost in total silence until Amy arrived about ten minutes later.
"Mr. Thomas," she said as she took my hand. "Stella told me why you wanted to talk to me. I would never tell you these things, if it didn't bother me so much." She began to cry. After a few minutes she continued. "I have had this on my conscience since Julie died. I know I should have told you when you and Mrs. Thomas were having so much trouble. I have even been feeling guilty about that. I thought that if I had told, you might have stayed together." The young woman looked miserable. "Then again I was afraid that it might be the thing to drive you apart."
"Honey, telling or not telling, wouldn't have made any difference. The underlying problem was a failure to talk. The divorce would have happened eventually anyway." I wanted to make her feel at least a little better.
"Amy, I want you to tell Ed everything," Stella demanded quietly.
"Where do I begin?" She asked Stella.
"Anywhere you want."
"I guess we have to start with her first date. I mean, up until that time, I thought she was all talk. You know how teenage girls are. We talked a lot about boys and doin' it. Mr. Thomas I always liked you and so did all of Julie's friends. I really hated the way she talked about you but what could I do."
"Tell him what Julie said," Stella demanded.
"She said she hated you and wished her mother would divorce you. According to her she could get her own way if you weren't around. I don't think she meant it." Amy said still miserable.
"I'm sure she meant it," I said feeling about as bad as Amy looked.
"Go on Amy, tell him the rest of it." Stella demanded.
"Damn it Stella why should I? It's your book. You tell it and I will just sit here to make sure you tell it straight." Amy said angrily.
"Julie told me she had her first boy at school. She slipped into a janitor closet with one of the soccer players. I don't know which one."
"So how old was she?" I asked.
"Thirteen," Stella said without any emotion. "From then until her senior year, there were plenty of others. Julie got passed around from boy to boy."
"Did she ever tell you who she thought the father of the child might be?" I asked.
"No she was very secretive about the boys in her life. At least until her fling with them ended. Then Amy and I would hear all about them."
"Did she ever say why she did it?" I asked.
"Sure, she said it felt good. At the same time she was lying her ass off to you and everyone at the school. According to her school persona, she was a vestal virgin." Stella suddenly seemed to take pleasure in the telling of it.
"Okay, so who do you think the father was?" I asked to cut her off. I neither needed nor desired to hear more.
"I'm pretty sure it was a teacher," she said it with a small smile.
"What do you mean a teacher? You all went to a church school?" I demanded.
"You know as well as I, those people are no better than the rest of us." Stella said.
"Surely if she was doing a teacher someone would have known?" I demanded.
"If he didn't tell and Julie killed herself without telling, who would know?"
"A man like that would surely have made advances to other students," I suggested.
"Frankly Ed, I think Julie seduced him."
"Is that what you think Amy?" I asked. She lowered her eyes to the floor as she nodded. "So you have no idea who the teacher might have been, if indeed it were a teacher?" I asked.
Each of them shook her head. "She went out with a couple of guys but she also spent a lot of time after school." Stella said.
"Julie was pretty heavy into the band the last two years of her life. I thought she was at some kind of band practice."
"That's just what she told you. She was the most horrible liar. She even lied to Amy and me. Frankly I just don't know whether she was at school or out with some boy most of the time."
"Now that you have completely destroyed Julie's memory, what do you want from me." I asked.
"Ed, I could tell you a lot more things, some of them pretty sick, but I won't. I have told you only what you need to know. Frankly I need your help."
"I agreed to talk to you, not to do anything else."
"If there was a teacher involved, wouldn't you like to know who it was. Wouldn't you like to get even?"
"I can never get even, I might be able to get a little vengeance but even never. I could never take away anyone else's child. That's what it would take to make us even."
"Okay then help me for the sake of vengeance. Help me find out who the teacher was."
"Now how would I go about that?" I asked.
"You can get her school records. There might be a clue in them."
"What kind of clue?"
"Ed, I won't know that till I look at them. Maybe someone wrote something in her records that will give us a clue."
"Sure the man wrote a diary account of his affair with my under aged daughter." I said sarcastically.
"Not that, but he might have written something just a little off center in her records. After that we can talk to the other teachers, maybe one of them would talk to you."
"You can talk to them without me," I suggested.
"I tried but got no where," Stella admitted.
"So you want to use me too." I replied.
"More like mutual cooperation. You know, I might be able to help you some. I know how to follow the leads," Stella suggested.
"I think it was the basketball coach," Amy suddenly said.
"What?" Stella asked.
"I think it was one of the basketball coaches. Julie spent a lot of time at the practices and games. She wasn't interested in basketball, so it had to be either a player or a coach she was interested in."
"It could have been a player, you know Mike played basketball?" Stella commented.
"Who is Mike?" I asked.
"One of the guys Julie was interested in. I don't know if she ever slept with him or not. It might be interesting to find out. If she wasn't after Mike, he might know something about who she was after."
"I want to be with you when you conduct any interviews about Julie," I said.
"Why?" She asked casually. It wasn't a complaint, more a point of curiosity.
"Two reasons, one I don't want you putting words into his mouth. Two, I want to make sure that you tell the truth."
"Why would I lie?" she asked.
"You are a news reporter." The statement did exactly what I expected it would. She became furious, but didn't say anything. She swallowed her anger. I was sorry to see that she didn't choke on it. I wasn't angry just disgusted by the whole thing.
"Okay, then you be ready to ride on a moment\rquote s notice. I will check with you before I set up any interviews but you have to go when I make the appointments." I nodded my agreement.
The whole conversation took no more than half an hour. Amy left first, she was pretty uncomfortable with it all.
"So" Stella asked. "Who do we look at first?"
"I don't know, you are the investigator not me."
"Then let's check out the Mike thing. I would like to rule him out before I go after the coaches."
I worked in my studio on Monday, I had a few things which needed finishing. Stella called around three to inform me that Mike was going to be harder to find than she had thought. His parents had moved. She vowed to stay with it. She also asked me to get Julie's school records first. I refused. The school records were the only weapon I had at my disposal. If I gave those up chances were better than fifty, fifty it would be necessary for me to read her book to find out anything further.
She called again on Wednesday. She had located Mike's family. Mike was living in Greensboro with his wife and two little boys. Mike was also some kind of manager trainee in a steel fabrication business. Stella had already called and arranged a meeting with him for lunch on Thursday.
When we met him in the restaurant at one thirty, I didn't know him from Adam's house cat. If I ever saw him around the school, my ten year old memory didn't pull him from the soup. Fortunately, he and Stella recognized each other.
She introduced me as her boss on the paper. She and Mike relived old times for a few minutes, then she began asking him questions. At first they were simple questions about school, then about basketball. I did no more than shake his hand. Stella asked all the questions.
"Do you remember the girl who killed herself?" she asked.
"Julie Thomas, sure now there was a strange duck."
"How so?" Stella asked.
"I don't know, other than the obvious. There was just something strange about her from the beginning and it got worse."
"Was she on drugs or something?" Stella asked. "I never did understand why she killed herself."
"I don't know why she did it. I don't think she was on drugs, at least I never heard about it."
"You went out with her didn't you."
"Lord no, I think she wanted to go out with me, but I was too busy with Jessie. Jessie and I had been going together for a couple of years when Julie killed herself."
"Really? I know she was hanging around the basketball team, I thought it was to be around you?"
"I think she might have been at a few practices but it wasn't to see me."
"So who was she there to see?" Stella asked.
"I don't know, why all the interest in Julie. It has been a long time." he suggested.
"I'm going to do a piece of teen suicide. Julie was the only one I ever knew personally."
"Oh," he said. "I have no idea why she killed herself or why she was hanging around the basketball team. I do know it wasn't to see me."
After a little more small talk we left the restaurant. "He's lying," I said.
"I know. I don't think he was seeing her though, but I do think he knows who was." Stella agreed.
"So how do you make him tell the truth?" I asked.
"Torture or blackmail," she replied without a smile. "I never was any good at torture, and you don't seem the type. I expect old Mike has a skeleton or two in his closet."
"I'm going to be out of town this weekend, let me know when I get back if you find anything."
"I'm going to be working on a few other things despite your lack of cooperation." she said sarcastically.
"Good for you," I replied calmly.
When I returned from the Apple festival, there were several messages for me. One of them was from Stella. Over the weekend she had talked to several of Mike's current friends. It seems Mike had a bit of a drinking problem. Not only that he liked to hit his wife when he drank.
She approached Mike without me being present at lunch on Monday. He agreed to meet with us on Monday evening. We met at his house. His wife and kids were staying with her mother until they completed couple counseling.
"Well Mike, you agreed to talk so let's get to it. And Mike, If you lie all bets are off."
"I would never tell you all this if you weren't blackmailing me." he said.
"In the trade we call it journalistic pressure," Stella replied with a wicked smile.
"Like I said, I never went out with Julie. Sure she threw herself at me, most of the girls did. I was kind of a big wheel in high school. You remember how it was Stella. I could choose from a dozen other girls so Julie didn't interest me. She had gotten around, if you know what I mean." Stella nodded, I sat perfectly still while he continued.
"Hanging around the basketball team had nothing to do with me. I had turned her down all ready. She was hanging around trying to buddy up to coach Jefferson. I never knew why, but she followed him around like a puppy."
"So you don't know why?" Stella asked.
"I think it was a father thing. He was kind of a second father to all of us. She sure as hell didn't have much of a father at home. I hear that step father of hers is some kind of nut."
I didn't even flinch. I sat perfectly quiet while he paused for a few seconds.
"Then again everybody thought their father was stupid. In her case it might have been true. How could he not know what Julie was doing. I mean she even looked and dressed like a hooker. Not so much at school. We had that silly dress code, but when she came to one of the games."
"Are you implying that she was selling her body?" Stella asked.
"Not for money, but she was getting something for it."
"What was she getting?" Stella asked.
"I thought about this all afternoon. She seemed to be keeping score or something. You know about Rainbow?"
"Rainbow?" Stella asked.
"Sure that weird chick from her part-time job, the one at the hamburger joint. Rainbow worked there with Julie. Rainbow was some kind of throw back to the hippies of the sixties. At least that's what my mom said when she first saw her. She dressed in those weird clothes." I had no idea what he was talking about.
"Anyway, I think she and Julie were in some kind of competition. You know to see who could score the most boys. I know it sounds unbelievable but that's what I think. Anyway I had nothing to do with her."
"About this coach Jefferson thing. Did he seem to be interested in being one of her scores?"
"I don't think so, but you would have to ask him that."
"Do you know where he is these days?" Stella asked.
"Last I heard, he was still coaching basketball at the school. That was a couple of years ago."
"Who was the assistant coach?" Stella asked.
"One of the fathers helped out. I think it was Tera Adams dad. Yeah it was Mr. Adams."
The two of them talked a little while longer but nothing much came from it. Once we were in Stella's generic car, I asked. "So what do you do now?"
"I get those school records from you," she said firmly.
"Not yet, I want to be at the interviews with these people."
"Ed, you're a nice guy, but I can't have you tagging along on all my interviews. Frankly it cramps my style."
"I can see how it might. How about a compromise. You tape the entire interview, allow me to hear it, then when you run out of leads, I will request the school records."
"I don't like it but it's fair," she agreed. "You know you aren't bad at that blackmail thing yourself."
"Well, in the business, we call it trading well." I said with the first smile I had felt all day.
"How about taking me to dinner? I mean I think I have earned it." To her this was all a day\rquote s work. She didn't have any idea how the information from Mike had affected me.
\f0\fs24
\f1\fs20 "Sure, but I won't be very good company. The things, Mike told us about Julie didn't exactly lift my spirits."
"I'm sorry, but you are the one who insisted. I might have spared you some of the details."
"No, I want to know all there is to know," I replied.
Stella was able to keep the dinner conversation light, and I suppose it had been long enough since Julie's death to soften the impact of the new facts about her. I managed to at least put it out of my mind while we ate and talked.%%
On the drive home, it all began to sink in on me. I guess I had been a lousy father, but her real father hadn't been any help. He came to see Julie about twice a year, otherwise we never even heard from him.
I had long ago analyzed my relationship with Julie to death. I knew she had good reason to think I was an uncaring bastard. She and I had always fought like cats and dogs. I just didn't think in the great scheme of things it would matter. I had blamed myself for her death for years. It would be nice to find another scapegoat. I didn't get my hopes up, because it would probably still come back to me somehow.
I had remembered to take the cordless phone into the studio a couple of days later when Stella called. "I talked to Rainbow last night," Stella informed me. "I have the tape, can I bring it over after work?"
"Sure," I didn't know what else to say.
"I'm going to stop by for some Chinese take out," she said as she hung up the phone.
I was distracted the remainder of the afternoon, but I continued to work on the paintings. I pretty much had one finished, while I worked on a second one. When I say pretty much finished, I mean I thought it was finished. I knew from experience that I would be back on it, at least twice more. I never really felt satisfied with any of them, not even when I packaged them to mail.
When Stella arrived we ate the Chinese takeout while I listened to the tape. I had to admit Stella was a real con artist. She fed R.J., as Rainbow now called herself, the doing an article crap. The questions began slowly, but began to build within minutes. She went after R.J. pretty viciously. She reminded her that she wasn't a minor when she had first met Julie. She accused her of causing all Julie's problems.
Rainbow countered with, "It wasn't my fault that she liked boys."
Stella asked, "You are the one who started the game?"
"What game?" even on the tape I could tell she already knew, what game. I could also tell that she was nervous. It took a little more prodding but R.J. finally told it all. The game had been her idea all right, but Julie had jumped on it. The two of them awarded points for different types of men based on the difficulty of getting them into bed. Nerds were a point. Jocks were two points, and so on.
"So who won," Stella asked. Stella was beginning to show a mean streak.
"We never finished but Julie was ahead," R.J. said softly.
"Did you know Julie was pregnant?" Stella asked.
"Sure I knew. I told her to get an abortion and forget it. If she hadn't had such a problem with the idea of an abortion, she never would have killed herself. I blame that damned Christian school." The sobbing wasn't faked. "Poor kid was scared to death to tell her old man, but the school had brainwashed her. She just couldn't get it, that her life was more important than the thing inside her."
"So who was the father?" Stella asked.
"I don't know, but I know I scored her two points for a jock and five for a married man, the week she got pregnant."
"Didn't you ask who the men were?" Stella insisted.
"No, she didn't want to tell and we agreed to never press it. I know she didn't lie about the men. I never did."
"So you think the father is either some jock or some married man?" Stella asked.
"It had to be, those are the only two she scored during the last two months before her death."
"Why is that?" Stella asked.
"Julie was pretty hung up on the married man. She thought she was in love. I expect it was the father thing."
"And you have no idea who it was?" Stella hammered away.
"None, but I can tell you he wasn't from the mall. I expect it was someone at her school. Those are the only two places her dad let her go without a hassle. Besides she and I went about everywhere else together."
There were a couple of good-byes then the tape ended.
"So was the jock Mike?" I asked.
"Could be, or the married man could have been one of the coaches. We need to get a look at her school records."
"Not just yet, I think you need to talk to the basketball coach. He might know something."
"He isn't going to cop to anything," she informed me.
"Maybe not, but you never know. He might just be innocent and saw something that might help. At least he might know if Julie was there to see Mike. I certainly wouldn't suggest that him. Let him do the talking."
"Ed, don't tell me how to interview people. I don't tell you how to paint naked women."
"Oooh that really hurt," I said with a grin.
She was forced to laugh at herself. "Okay, I over reacted. You know I have never seen one of your paintings. How about taking me to your studio for a quick tour."
"Not tonight, I have a lot to digest. I really wasn't in a real good mood to begin with, now it's absolutely horrid."
"I know this is tough on you. It seems like everyone I talk to blames you."
"That's not it. I came to grips with that years ago. It's just that I am learning a lot of things about Julie, I would just as soon not have known."
"Do you want to stop?" Stella asked in surprise.
"No, not at all, I want to finally know what the contributing factors were," I admitted.
"I guess I'll go on home then. I need to find a way to see the coach tomorrow."
"Bring me the tape when you are finished. Next time, I'll spring for dinner," I suggested.
"Okay, but you are going to have to request those records for me soon."
"Soon, but not just yet." I replied.
I heard the coaches tape the next evening. It was a lousy tape. He ducked every question, hiding behind his religion at every turn. He just refused to tell Stella anything at all. I somehow felt better for a night without hearing anything bad about Julie. I actually felt good enough to conduct that tour I had promised Stella. She was fascinated by the difference between the proof photos and the paintings.
"All these women look gorgeous in the paintings, even the ones who are overweight or flat chested."
"Hey, I can work magic."
"You certainly can. If I had anyone to give one of those to, I would buy one in a minute."
"You could send it to your ex," I suggested.
"Nope, he would recognize that it had been touched up. I'll just wait until I find the right person, then I am going to have one done."
"If business gets real bad, I may have to hold you to that."
"Who knows, I might become your Helga," she said with a wicked grin.
"Who knows indeed," I replied subtlety informing her that I knew who Helga was.
"If I became your model, you would have to lock the paintings away for at least twenty years." she said it with a giggle.
"Who knows, we might work something out, later."
Stella left without posing, and I went back to work. I did a show over the weekend. I think Stella must have loved answering machines, either that or she did a hell of a lot of work over the weekends. I had another message from her on Sunday night.
"We really have to begin working on the school. If not the records, how about we at least talk to the counselor. She might know something. This time, I do need you to come along. Call me and I will set it up."
I made the call, though Stella had to convince me to go along with the interview. According to Stella she had reached the end of her resources. We needed someone to break and she just couldn't figure anywhere else to go. I reluctantly agreed to go along for the interview of Julie's high school counselor.
The meeting was arranged for after school hours the next day. Four p.m. found us in the small office of Mrs. Reid. Stella explained why we were there. It was more of the same B.S. She did introduce me as myself.
"Stella, that was so long ago. I really haven't though of it for years. Even if I could remember anything, I don't think I could tell you. There are certain confidentiality considerations."
"Mrs. Reid," I said. "Julie is gone. I am her next of kin and I need to know so that I can find some peace. I think in this case we might dispense with the confidentiality rules."
"Mr. Thomas, I know what happened between you and Julie. I also know that your wife left you because of Julie's death. I hardly think you are in a position to suggest anything to me."
Ten years worth of anger, resentment, and even a little guilt found vent at that moment. "First of all Mrs. Reid, all you know about Julie and me is what Julie told you. You might be interested to know that Julie was a world class liar. Most of the things she said about me were a figment of her imagination. She knew how to pull anyone's string. You respond to a certain type stimulus and Julie could find it. As far as Martha goes, our marriage split because we each blamed ourselves for Julie death. Now it looks as though it might have been something all together different which caused her to take her own life." I paused to let that sink in. "Now with all that said, let me tell you something else you didn't know. There was no coroners inquest into Julie's death. If you refuse to discuss this with us, then I am going to court to request an inquest. I will see that you and your records are brought to court. At that time, I will demand to know what advice you gave her concerning her pregnancy. If that advice happened to be that she carry that child to term no matter what, then I will try my damnedest to have you named as an accomplice in her death. I think that Stella here will made sure it gets into all the papers."
"Mr. Thomas, I think you should leave."
"That's fine, I will see you in court. Stella why don't you explain what we have and how I intend to use it."
I left them alone as I walked to Stella's generic automobile. I waited half an hour for her to join me. It seems that Mrs. Reid melted when I had gone. The idea of being in the papers frightened her but she was too proud of her dogma to back down. Once I had gone she was willing to talk to Stella.
Stella forced me to wait until we arrived at her office to play the tape. The Gazette was housed in an old farm house. The farm was long since gone. It was replaced by the town. The farmhouse now stood only twenty-five feet from the main road.
We were met at the door by a young man probably twenty-one or so. He was her assistant and only reporter. He was actually twenty-two and a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina school of journalism.
"Ed, this is Rudy, Rudy meet Ed Thomas." Stella said as we breezed past the young man.
I sat in a stuffed chair across from Stella's desk. She began the tape without speaking.
The tape was no more than a set of whining alibis. "I didn't know, I couldn't have done anything. Nothing I said could have caused Julie to take her own life. Yes I knew she was sexually active. No I never told anyone, how could the children ever trust me if word got out that I had talked to a parent about something like that."
"I know the school's position is abstinence but when you knew it wasn't working why didn't you at least warn her parents?"
"I just couldn't."
"Did you know that Julie was pregnant."
"I suspected it. She came to talk to me about abortion. I explained my beliefs to her."
"Did you tell her that she could get an abortion without telling her parents?"
"She told me. I think she just wanted someone to tell her not to do it."
"Well it worked she didn't have the abortion," Stella said cruelly
"I couldn't have known what she planned."
"No, but you didn't mind jumping on the bury Ed Thomas bandwagon. You knew his relationship with his daughter wasn't what drove her over the edge, but you never talked to either of the them. You let them think, they were the reason she killed herself?"
"I know but others did also. There were at least three faculty members who knew about Julie. Anyone of them could have told. God, did you see how angry Mr. Thomas was?"
"Can you blame him, everyone who knows him has all but accused him of driving Julie to kill herself. When he begins to maybe find out he wasn't the reason, nobody wants to talk."
"Can he really ask for an inquest ten years after Julie's death?"
"There is no statute of limitations on murder. If someone drove her to kill herself, they can probably be charged with manslaughter."
"I don't think our little talk drove her to kill herself. I think the fact that the father wouldn't marry her was the reason she did it."
"So who was the father?" Stella asked.
"I don't know. It was a grown man. I know because she said he could have married her, if he wanted. He just didn't want her."
When the tape ended, I sat for a long time without talking. Stella noticed but said nothing. Finally I stood, then closed the door. "So how long have you known?" I asked.
"Known what?" she asked innocently.
"Come on Stella, you pointed me in the right direction from the beginning. Why didn't you just come out and tell me?"
"I don't know what you are talking about," she said blankly.
"You mean you really don't know?" I asked.
"Know what?" She demanded.
"Nothing, I have to be going. I don't think I want to take this any farther. There isn't going to be anything in those school records. The father of Julie's child wasn't a teacher."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"I just know." She had all the clues, whether she worked it out or not wasn't my concern. The final clue was in the tape. He could have married me, if he wanted. Julie hadn't deserved those five points for a married man. If I ever saw Rainbow, I would have to ask how many points for a widower. Stella might or might not remember that her father was the parent volunteer, who drove the bus for the athletic department. Either way she was a smart girl, she would figure it out someday.
As for me, I didn't feel one damned bit better.
THE END
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