Now You See Me... (20 page)

Chapter 36

Melissa answered the door. I recognized her from the photo in Greg Shankman’s apartment, but the photo hadn’t shown the freckles. She was wearing jeans and a black cable-knit V-neck sweater over a white T-shirt. With her brown hair in a ponytail, she looked more like a teenage babysitter than a mother of a four-year-old.

“I thought you were my friend Judy,” she said. “Do I know you?” Her voice was friendly, open.

“I’m Molly Blume. I stopped by the other day?”

It took a second or so before accusation replaced the friendliness. She narrowed her eyes. “You said you were Greg’s cousin.”

“I’d like to explain,” I said. “I don’t blame you for being upset.”

Behind her, a voice called, “Mommy? Can I go on the swing now?”

“In a sec’, hon.” Melissa faced me. “You’re a reporter, right. That’s what your card said.”

At least she hadn’t slammed the door shut. “I freelance, and I write books and a weekly column.”

“I talked to reporters Sunday night, but I didn’t tell them much more than they knew. They were here when I got back from Seattle. How did they find out so fast?” She shook her head.

“I know this is a terrible time for you, Ms. Frank, but if I could have a few minutes of your time?”

She studied me. “You told my neighbor you wanted to talk to me about one of Greg’s students. What about him?”

“Greg suspected him of cheating. I think Greg found proof. I’m wondering if you could tell me more about that.”

“Why?”

“I’m wondering if that had anything to do with his death.”

She thought that over, then opened the door wide. Stepping inside, I was assaulted by the overpowering scent of days-old floral arrangements that filled the living room. Stacks of toys and the boxes they had come in covered the floor.

“People have been bringing stuff since we came home,” Melissa said. “I won’t have to cook till next year. Kaitlin, say hi to Mommy’s friend Molly.”

The little girl was feeding a doll with a miniature bottle. She was wearing a sweater with Disney characters over black leggings, sitting the way only children can—bent legs wide apart, her weight on her shins, her red-and-white sneakers touching her hips, her little butt an inch off the carpet.

“Hi, Kaitlin.” I smiled.

“Can we go outside now, Mommy?” She had a sweet, round face, blond curls, and a hint of her mother’s freckles.

And no father, I thought. Hearing that Greg Shankman had a daughter was one thing. Seeing her in the flesh was more painful.

“Sure, baby.” Melissa smiled at her daughter. “She’s been cooped up indoors, poor thing,” she told me.

Kaitlin put down the bottle, held on to the doll, and jumped to her feet. Swinging the doll by an arm, she raced down a narrow hall to a door that led to the backyard and waited for us to catch up.

A red metal swing set took up most of the small yard, which was enclosed with a cinder-block wall and brightened with pockets of pansies and straggly impatiens. In the corner were a pink tricycle and a yellow scooter.

Melissa strapped her daughter into a swing and set it in motion. The swing creaked as it moved back and forth. The girl squealed. From where I stood, it looked as though her red shoes were touching the gray-blue sky.

“I haven’t told Kaitlin,” Melissa told me in a sad, low voice. “I haven’t found the right time, or the words to tell her she’s never going to see her daddy again. First they said maybe Greg killed himself. Now they’re saying he was killed. I don’t know what to believe.”

“Do you know anyone who would want to kill Greg?”

She shook her head. “Greg got along well with people. His students loved him. Well, except for this one kid you were asking about, a big-time cheater.”

“Greg didn’t tell you his name?”

“Higher, Mommy! Higher!”

“He may have. I don’t remember.” Melissa pushed the swing harder. “He spent the summer getting the goods on this kid. I’d asked him to move out, so maybe he needed something to focus on. Anyway, the first week in September Greg had proof. He showed it to the principal, but she told him it wasn’t enough. So he quit. He didn’t want to teach in a school where they took the word of a cheater over his.”

Not the same version I’d heard. I wasn’t surprised that Shankman hadn’t told Melissa that he’d been fired and accused of sexual harassment.

“Greg was intense, you know?” Melissa said. “And impulsive. And he got into moods where he thought the whole world was against him. That’s one of the reasons we split up.”

“Is that why you got a restraining order against him?”

“I’m sorry that got out. I didn’t want his parents to know.” Melissa sighed. “Greg had crying jags when I asked him to move out. And he kept coming to the house, begging me to take him back. He said his life was over, he didn’t want to live without us, stuff like that. He scared me, and Kaitlin.” She looked at her daughter. “I had no choice.”

“But things obviously improved if Greg was going to join you for Thanksgiving.”

“He was calmer.” Melissa nodded. “He’d pulled himself together. Two weeks ago Sunday we spent the day together, the three of us. We went to the park, had a picnic lunch. It was a nice day.” The swing slowed. “I did it for Kaitlin. Maybe I gave Greg false hope. That was the last time I saw him,” she said, with sadness I hadn’t heard before.

“More, Mommy!” the girl called.

“So you weren’t about to reconcile?” I asked.

Melissa pushed the swing again. “The TV reporter said we were setting a wedding date. That’s not true. We had major problems. I didn’t know if we could get over them. I told Greg, that Sunday. But he was a good dad, and I wanted Kaitlin to have him in her life.”

“Did you talk to him after that Sunday?”

“He phoned every day, mostly to talk to Kaitlin. He said he was in Sedona—that’s in Arizona? He was trying to make decisions about what he was going to do. Obviously, he lied. He didn’t go anywhere.”

I felt a stirring of interest. “What kind of decisions?”

“For one thing, the principal called him a couple of times. She wanted him to come back. And the kid that cheated? The brother went to see Greg at his apartment, to talk things out. Greg said it was too little, too late. But he didn’t have anything else, so I told him to consider the principal’s offer.”

The swing came to a stop.

“Again,” Kaitlin said.

“Maybe you should get off now, honey,” Melissa said. “I don’t want you getting sick.”

“I won’t.”

“One more time, and that’s it. But tell me if you feel funny, promise?” Melissa gave the swing a shove. “She gets a little nauseous sometimes,” she told me.

“That happens to one of my nieces,” I said. “Did you talk to Greg Friday night?”

“Friday afternoon. He sounded tense. I asked him what was wrong, but he wouldn’t tell me. I asked if he was planning to come to Seattle for Thanksgiving. He said he’d let me know.”

“Did you go to his apartment to see if he was okay?”

“The police asked me that, too. As far as I knew, Greg wasn’t
at
his apartment. And if he was having one of his moods, I didn’t want to be around him. The next thing I heard, he died in a car accident, in L.A. They said he killed himself. And now they’re saying someone killed him.”

We had come full circle. I had learned a few details about Shankman’s life, but nothing surprising or revealing.

“And today they said he was involved with a girl.” Melissa huffed. “A high school senior, the daughter of the Jewish studies principal of the school where Greg was teaching. I don’t know what Greg was thinking. Well, obviously he
wasn’t
thinking. I guess all his talk about wanting to reconcile was just that—talk. Or maybe he took up with this girl because he figured we were over.”

She grabbed the back of the swing and brought it to a stop. “Okay, Kaitlin. That’s it for now.”

She undid the straps, removed her daughter from the swing, and set her down. The girl’s face was a little pale.

“Can I go on the scooter, Mommy?”

“In five minutes. Rest your tummy.”

“My tummy’s fine,” she said, beginning to whine.

“Your baby’s, then. I think she needs a nap, honey. Don’t you think so, Molly?”

“I do,” I said.

“ ’Kay.”

Holding the doll so that its legs grazed the ground, Kaitlin walked a few feet, plopped onto the grass, and rocked her doll in her arms.

“She can spend hours with that doll,” Melissa said, watching her.

“Did Greg ever talk about Rabbi Bailor, Melissa?”

Melissa nodded, her eyes still on her daughter. “Greg said the rabbi was a good man. But when Greg needed help with this cheating thing, the rabbi wouldn’t get involved. Greg was steamed about that. I thought he was over the whole thing, but he told me he was going to go public about the cheating at the school.”

My stomach muscles tightened. “When was this?”

“One of the days he was supposedly in Sedona. He said he was going to talk to the newspapers, and write an article about cheating in schools.”

“About this boy, you mean?”

“And cheating on the AP exam. Greg said he knew who was doing it.”

“Who?” I said, with greater intensity than I’d intended, but Melissa didn’t seem to notice.

“He wouldn’t say. Greg was going to give this boy one last chance to come clean. If the kid refused, Greg was going to go public. He didn’t care about the consequences. He hoped I wouldn’t, either.”

“What consequences?” I asked, though I knew.

“A girl at the school—not the rabbi’s daughter—accused Greg of coming on to her. If Greg showed the school his proof, the girl was going to call me. Greg swore it wasn’t true, but . . .”

“I don’t mean to offend you, Melissa, but I understand he was your teacher when you first started dating.”

Her face turned a deep shade of pink. “I guess that’ll be tomorrow’s headline. I was seventeen. I trusted him. He said he’d never done anything like that before.” She looked at her daughter. “I’d better take Kaitlin inside. It’s chilly.”

Back in the living room, I picked up my purse from the side of the sofa, where I had left it.

“Do you know what Greg did with this proof, Melissa?”

“He said something about keeping it in a safe place. A safe deposit box, probably. This morning one of Greg’s students called. He was sorry to hear about Greg and hated to bother me, but Greg had some papers the student had written a while back. He said if I found anything, when I got around to it, no rush, to please let him know. I told him Greg took everything when he moved out, but the boy gave me his number in case I came across anything.”

“What was his name?”

“Adam Prosser. That’s the boy who cheated, isn’t it?” Melissa said. Last night my mother had mentioned a senior who’d tried to sabotage a rival’s academic career by tampering with her transcript. Tampering with grades is one thing, I thought on my drive home from Mar Vista. Murder is another. Adam Prosser was a cheater, and he might have had his heart set on Harvard, but I couldn’t see him killing Greg Shankman to get there.

I
could
see him going to Greg’s apartment Friday night to reason with him. Or maybe Prosser’s father had made the visit. Or the brother? And if the argument had turned violent? And if somebody grabbed a knife . . .

Had Hadassah witnessed the confrontation and run out? If Cheryl was right, and the cuts on Hadassah’s arms were self-inflicted, they weren’t evidence of a struggle. I remembered the tissues I’d seen in Hadassah’s wastebasket. I had thought the dark stains were red lipstick. Maybe they were blood. And I recalled Rabbi Bailor’s comment:
Dassie’s sleeves are so long you can barely see her wrists.

But if Hadassah had left during the confrontation between Prosser and Shankman, why was she refusing to talk? Rabbi Bailor had told me his daughter might be in shock. That was possible. That was also a convenient excuse.

And who had removed her belongings?

Back in my house, I folded the laundry and came up with no answers. I returned to my desk, added a circle with Adam Prosser’s name, and linked it to Shankman’s. Melissa had told the police about Greg’s decision to go public. Now that she knew Adam’s name, she was planning to phone Jessie Drake with the new information.

I was tempted to phone Jessie, too, in case Melissa didn’t make Prosser her priority. She had a child to worry about, and maybe funeral arrangements, too, once Shankman’s body was released, though his parents would probably make most of the decisions. It must be awkward and painful, dealing with your child’s grandparents when you’ve obtained a restraining order against their son. Maybe the Shankmans had taken comfort from the media reports about a reconciliation.

Even though, according to Melissa, there
was
no reconciliation. The media had probably wanted to romanticize the story, give it more pathos. Maybe they’d heard talk of reconciliation from the neighbor. She had seemed hopeful, I recalled. So had Cheryl.

I wrote RECONCILIATION?? on the bottom of my page of circles.

Maybe Melissa had changed her story after she’d talked to reporters. . . . After she heard about Hadassah?

I ran the angles through my mind. If I were Melissa, and I had learned that while my ex-boyfriend and I were talking about getting back together, he was having a fling with a high school senior, I would be furious and humiliated. The police might consider that a motive. So if I wanted to divert suspicion from myself, I would downplay my interest in reconciling. And maybe that explained why Melissa had been willing to talk to Molly Blume, a reporter, to get that point across.

I considered phoning Jessie about Melissa, but I had nothing concrete, and I knew she’d see it for what it was: an attempt to divert suspicion from the Bailors. And my heart wasn’t in it. Having met Kaitlin, I didn’t want Melissa to be involved in her ex-boyfriend’s murder.

So I phoned Rabbi Bailor’s office. I wanted to know how Dassie was doing, whether she’d shed light on what had happened.

“Rabbi left a few minutes ago,” Sue said. “His wife phoned, and he went right home. But I’ll tell him y’all called.”