Drawing Conclusions (16 page)

“I hate when he talks like Confucius,” I grumbled. “What kind of truth does he mean?”

“He means being wrong is information in and of itself,” DeRosa said, sounding as if he were enjoying the challenge. “The police academy teaches you to make direct and obvious links in a case. But on some level, your father is right. Sometimes the wrong answer is really an open door. Pushing your brain to think external or tangential to the facts can often reap a larger reward.”

“And that's why you're getting on a plane to Italy?”

“Maybe.”

“I won't push you, but you said earlier that you thought Igor was not an immediate threat to me. How so?”

“At first I thought your life was being threatened because you knew something. The murderer may have known that you and Teddy were close and suspected your brother alerted you to something right before his death. Carrying around that information would have made you a target. Same goes for Naomi, another individual close to Teddy.” It was almost as if DeRosa were thinking out loud. “But then I took your father's advice and pretended that was an incorrect assumption. Which led me to another conclusion.”

“Okay, I'm listening,” I said.

“If Igor wanted to kill you,” DeRosa said, “he would have. In D.C., he ran from you as opposed to fighting back. He's had enough chances at this point. The eggs could have contained a lethal dose of poison, but they didn't. On the day of the funeral, Igor could have shot you point-blank in the limo and then pushed the car down the hill and into the water to hide your body. Instead, he pushed the limo down the hill and engaged in a shoot-out with the police. I'm starting to believe both events were for show.”

“I could have done without the visuals.”

“Yes, but the visuals were meant for someone. I think Igor was sending a message.”

“What if you're wrong?” I asked. “What if Igor's just warming up? What if he wants to scare the hell out of me before he kills me?”

“Or he's dragging it out to scare someone else.”

I made one last attempt to hold my tongue to see if DeRosa would keep talking.

“There's one more thing,” he said.

Finally, my advantage! “Go ahead.”

“My assignment to the case came with a recommendation.”

“From whom?” I asked.

“Your father. Apparently, he did some research and specifically asked for me.”

“He's a stickler for quality. He wants this crime solved.”

“Well, let's hope I can deliver. But I'll tell you something: there's a good chance I can't solve Teddy's death and remain within your father's constraints.”

I hung up the phone less than a minute later with a sense of empowerment. It was past midnight, but I still had enough energy to work on the sketches. I had no idea why DeRosa wanted them, but at least I was involved. I turned on the kitchen light and made myself a pot of coffee, creating the illusion of safety. I spread out my art supplies on the kitchen table and focused on capturing DeRosa's face as it looked now. It was hard to believe that he and I were close in age. As I drew, I realized there was nothing old about his face, rather it was his expressions and movements that gave him an air of maturity. I kept that in mind as I took on the aging process, a real challenge.

First, I worked with gravity, figuring anything hanging low by thirty years of age would move in the same direction over time. DeRosa had a heavy lid, which would most likely pull down the corners of his eyes over time. This initial change had impact, and I got a sense of where I was going. When I hit a roadblock, I accessed our library, grabbing any book with photos to study common facial lines and their changes over time. As ridiculous as it seems, I found
it quite helpful to analyze an old
LIFE
magazine with a photo spread of the Kennedy family over decades. I knew that President Kennedy had suffered from back pain, and I could almost see the discomfort etched into his face. Similarly, I had noticed that DeRosa,
when deep in thought, would crinkle his forehead. I expected this would worsen with age, so I increased his brow lines. Because he did not smile much, I was softer around the mouth, assuming these muscles were not getting much of a workout. I anticipated his hair remaining thick, drawing only a slight widow's peak, one of his better qualities. The one feature I couldn't save was his nose. All noses enlarge with age, and since DeRosa was starting out with a slightly larger proboscis, I added some heft and spread.

People age differently, a genetic fact I'm sure my father could speak volumes about. Some gain weight in the face for a fuller, puffy image. Some lose muscle tissue and bone density, causing a hollow-cheeked effect. I decided to try both a thin and heavier version, ending up with four final executions. It was much harder to predict DeRosa's aging process since I did not have access to family photos. I did, however, make one assumption based on his Italian olive skin: his Mediterranean glow ensured he would never look washed out or pale, so I kept his face light on the wrinkles, almost smoothing with age.

I assessed my completed work and arrived at a pleasant conclusion: Frank DeRosa's physical attributes, it appeared, would stand the test of time.

twenty-seven

Jonathan's makeover was astonishing.
I actually had difficulty trying to find the person I knew. Sans the thick beard and unruly hair, here stood a mild-mannered man who appeared to be no more than an eager job candidate. There was, however, an unanticipated skin issue that Trina was able to obscure with make-up. Jonathan had worn a beard for so long that the skin underneath was baby pink compared to his sun-beaten forehead. A quick application of blush on his lower cheeks and chin and some gel to force his hair over his brow, and the discrepancy was barely noticeable. With his shirt tucked in and belted and his rough hands smoothed with pounds of hand cream, the ruse seemed believable.

“You could sell me insurance in that get-up,” I remarked.

Jonathan caught his reflection in the mirror, fiddling with his hair like a young boy at the prom. His transformation was probably more of a shock to him than to the rest of us.

“Really? Then my expectations were too low. I was hoping to sell you a set of kitchen knives.”

“Or a vacuum with lots of useless accessories.”

“I think I could pull that off,” he said, with amusement.

“But can you pull this off?” I hinted at the potential danger, feeling terribly guilty that my good friend had volunteered for this charade. “Seriously, I'm worried.”

He held out a small device, almost imperceptible in his palm. “I've been instructed to hit the panic button in case of emergency.”

“For real?”

“No. This is actually an empty razor case from my first shave in ten years,” Jonathan said, tossing the object on the counter. “Lamendola will drive me up and stay on site, and I have his number preprogrammed in a cell phone the police provided. Cheski is going to stay here with you. It's just an interview, CeCe. Please don't worry.”

“I get the sense you're actually looking forward to this.”

“Is it that obvious?” He scratched his newly shorn hair. “I'm starting to wonder if it's not too late for medical school. I sort of enjoyed the prep work for the interview. It's been a while, but the basics came back pretty quickly.” Jonathan grabbed a medical genetics book and flipped through the tome as if it were a Dr. Seuss book. “I studied DNA links and got sidetracked by multiples. Look here, CeCe. I tabbed this page to show you the various combinations of twins.”

“I had no idea there were types, other than identical and not.” Despite growing up in a medical household, my father had been mum on things related to our personal bodies. When it came to issues of hygiene, puberty, and sex, we were entirely on our own. It was almost like growing up in Victorian times, when modesty had been a sign of a good upbringing. My father was adamant in his repression, never entertaining a frank conversation of twin births—or any birth, for that matter. Given that Teddy was the miracle child, delivered straight from heaven on the wings of an angel, it may have seemed unnecessary to educate his children on the finer details of reproduction. For a brief period in time, I had feared that merely kissing on the lips would result in twins. As for Teddy, I had no idea how he came to understand the changes of a young boy's body, but I suspect that Charlie was probably his source of remarkable yet erroneous information. I know that I personally had fallen victim to Charlie's sideshow fabrications. It's hard to admit, but in high school Charlie actually seduced me into thinking that sex would increase my hormones, resulting in a larger cup size. That fact has yet to be proven.

Jonathan opened the book to reveal a series of medical drawings showing fetuses floating contentedly in sacs filled with what looked like warm, squishy fluid. Whoever the artist, they had made sure to etch a mild, almost Mona Lisa smile on the amoebic faces. It was sweet and endearing, and it reminded me of the subtle power of the pencil. All it took was a centimeter turn of a line to completely change an expression. Not to read too far into this artist's agenda, but these particular babies had their palms placed gently together in a praying position. I doubted a layman would pick up on this detail, but I suspected a subliminal attempt by a clever artist to sway the reader's thoughts on Darwinian theory.

“So which figure is me and Teddy?”

Pointing to two cherubic fetuses floating aimlessly next to each other, Jonathan said, “Most likely, you and Teddy are the standard dizygotic version of twins. Dizygotic is medical code for two separate eggs and two separate sperm.”

“How ordinary. I hoped for something with a little more genetic buzz.”

“Actually, with dizygotic twins, there's always a slim chance of the sperm originating from two separate men.”

“As in a threesome?”

Jonathan blushed in response to my question. I almost felt bad putting him on the spot when he was about to risk his life on behalf of my brother.

“I'm sorry, you don't have to answer that.”

“No, it's good practice for my interview,” Jonathan said, regaining his exposure. “Here's a valid example. A husband and wife have sexual relations in the morning and on that day the wife is ovulating. That ‘meeting,' shall we say, results in a fertilized egg. Later that day, the wife entertains her lover while her husband is busy at work. Unbeknownst to her, she has dropped multiple eggs in one cycle. Her afternoon ‘meeting' begets another fertilized egg. Two babies, one mother, two fathers.”

“Half-siblings born on the same day. How would anyone discover the twist of the tryst?”

“Well posed, CeCe,” Jonathan complimented my linguistic gymnastics. “Here's the answer. There may be obvious physical differences and genetic traits that would otherwise be impossible to replicate given the pairing of only two people. Eye color is a typical give away. But a definitive answer would be found in a genetic test of paternity.”

“Very cool,” I said.

Jonathan had captivated the room. Cheski leaned over my shoulder to scan the pages of the medical text, and Trina was rapt with newfound admiration for her almost-doctor boyfriend.

“Paternity testing is another genetic product offered by Relativity.com,” he said. “That's why I wanted to brush up on it.”

Lamendola honked the horn then, and we sent Jonathan off in a flurry of good wishes. I had asked the policeman to call the house phone as soon as the interview was concluded. Jonathan seemed so gung-ho about his fake interview that I was afraid he'd actually accept the job and leave us to till the soil ourselves.

“I need to see my mother,” I announced.

“Is she slipping?” Trina asked.

“I'm not sure what to expect, but I don't think it will be good.”

–––

Against my wishes, Cheski trailed behind me to my parents' house in an unmarked car. He apparently wasn't convinced of DeRosa's new theory concerning my safety. Being followed by a cop, even one who was looking out for your best interests, was unnerving. As a result, I drove like a sixteen-year-old with a new learner's permit. I waffled between driving too slowly or too quickly, with inordinately long pauses at street signs. I felt frazzled by the time we arrived, but I was fully prepared to scrape my mother off the floor. A chance meeting with my father, however, would be an entirely different matter. I wasn't sure I could handle two parents in one day.

I leaned my head into Cheski's car to give him the lay of the land. “My dad gets driven to the labs by a town car every day around midmorning. I see the light on in his library, so it appears he's running pretty late. Just so there aren't any surprises, I'm alerting you that there may be an incident if my father and I cross paths. If you haven't heard, we're not exactly best friends.”

“Then let's move the Gremlin out of sight. Gimme the keys, and I'll re-park it,” Cheski said, sporting a faint smirk. “Don't worry about your dad. I'm pretty sure I could take him down if push came to shove.”

“Good to know.” I gave the hood of his car a hard slap.

“Hey, CeCe,” Cheski said. “You've got good intuition. Listen to it.”

“You think I'd make a good cop?”

“I actually think you'd make a great sketch artist,” he answered. “Frank's sketches were damn good. I faxed them this morning. You got some talent.”

Too bad my father can't see that
, I thought as I opened the oversized front door, heading straight for the solarium only to find my mother's lounge chair empty.

“Miss Prentice,” Norma whispered from behind. “She is in the den. Come.”

It had been nearly ten years since I walked the intricate web of the hallways of my childhood home. The house, or rather mansion, was so enormous it was easy to get lost, a never-ending game Teddy and I played as children. Wandering toward the den, I experienced an overwhelming sensation of Teddy—a sense of déjà vu, as if at any moment he'd reappear. That bubble popped when I discovered my mother curled up on the couch, shades drawn and an empty bottle of scotch on the floor, her gray pallor lit only by the glow of the television.

“Jesus, Mom. You were doing so well,” I sighed with disappointment. I spoke quietly to Norma, requesting a pitcher of cold water and some aspirin. Then I closed the door. “Mom, you look dehydrated. Your lips are chapped.”

She nodded out of habit, barely registering my arrival. I knelt on the floor in front of her and pushed her fair hair from her eyes. “Will you let me put some lip balm on you?” Again, the weak nod. I found a small pot of Trina's homemade, organic lip moisturizer in my bag and gently swabbed my mother's mouth, which appeared puckered from an over-abundance of alcohol. Her breath smelled harsh, and I grew concerned that she may not have eaten in a few days. Since this was the worst I could remember her being, I wondered if her horrific condition had been enhanced by pharmaceuticals.

“Mom? Did Detective DeRosa upset you?”

This time I got a faint croak, and I could see her dry eyes at
tempt to cry.

“I know he looks kind of like Teddy. It's subtle, but it's there. Almost like seeing a ghost. It freaked me too, Mom. Maybe it caused you a little setback, am I right?” I held her hand and she squeezed it with so little passion that I could have mistaken the gesture for a muscle spasm. I realized that the best I could offer her at that moment was company, so I settled on the couch and watched television next to h
er. Today's programming was a matinee of the Prentice family home movies.

“Oh my god. This must be one of our first vacations at the beach.” I let out a controlled squeal. “Look at how cute Teddy was. So chubby.” The footage was classic. Typical summer family day, complete with shining sun and gentle waves. Teddy's diaper poked out of an ill-fitting bathing suit as he sucked down a bottle. The only thing missing was me, as if my parents had planned to document our family life at the exact time I took a nap. I let the tape roll for about ten minutes, while Norma and I tried to ply my mother with analgesics and water.

“Norma, this may not work. I think she's going to need professional help this time.”

“No, no,” Norma protested. “I can do this. It has happened before. Tomorrow is a new day.”

“Well then, let's start.” I ejected the DVD from the recorder and popped it into my satchel so it was unavailable for repeated showings. “Clean slate, no dwelling on the past.” I kissed my mother gently and without thinking twice, hugged Norma, replaying my childhood years when I'd relied on the help to navigate my day in my mother's self-imposed oblivion. “Norma, I trust you, but if there's no improvement by tomorrow, I'm going to call a doctor.”

On my way out of the house, I chose a hallway that placed me outsid
e of my father's office. I could hear him talking on the phone and though I couldn't hear his words, he was speaking, as always, with authority and purpose. I pushed my toes directly up to the door hoping to eavesdrop. Instead of more words, I caught the shuffle of feet approaching from behind me—a heavy step, definitely a male. I started to panic until I remembered a neglected closet located a few feet to my left. Movi
ng swiftly, I opened the door and stepped inside.

Blackness engulfed me and I felt a whole new fear: being trapped in the closet. I tried to control my breathing, convincing myself I was exaggerating the circumstances. Realistically, I was in my childhood home, mere yards from my mother, Norma, and my father. I tried to focus on that fact, breathing deeply through my nose and slowly out of my mouth. My controlled respiration quickly gave way to something I can only describe as the frantic gasps of a pregnant woman in the throes of the Lamaze technique. The trigger was a voice.

“Are you ready, doctor?” The voice had a distinct accent, not unlike the waiter from the Volna restaurant.

“Not today,” my father responded with a dismissive tone.

I listened as the footsteps moved back down the hall and then with every ounce of strength I could muster, I willed my paralyzed body to walk out of the closet. Without a second to spare, I caught a glimpse of a man as he turned the corner heading away from my father's office. The bulky frame and thick neck were unmistakable. Igor. I wanted nothing more than to step back to the quiet confines of my closet, but I had been spotted as easily as a red wine stain on a white shirt.

“Constance?”

“Daddy.”

Daddy
? I was suddenly seven years old again, standing sheepishly at my father's feet. Only this time, his shoulders were stooped with age and I almost had to bend and look up to see his face. For the first time, I felt a physical advantage over my father. Time had worn his frame down, and Teddy's death had beaten him. Even his earlobes sagged, although they were covered by the coarse ear hair that only older men can produce in such volume. His other hair had thinned terribly, so unlike Teddy's thick mane, and his bare scalp revealed red patches of eczema. His eyes were watery and red-rimmed, and I wondered if he had been crying. His voice had been stern on the phone, but his face displayed worry.