The Memory Box (23 page)

“Caroline, I know you don’t want to see me anymore. Think what you must about me. But I told you it’d be difficult. It’s so painful for you. I don’t really blame you if you can’t hear anymore. I understand how half of you wants to know everything but the other half doesn’t. If that makes any sense. But there’s another tape. It’s something you need to hear. You don’t know the whole truth.”

Thursday, October 5, 2006, 11:35 a.m.

Last night, Tessa
told me there was a special place dedicated to meditation in the sculpture garden they visited. A docent brought them there and taught the girls how to meditate. She told them that one way was to close their eyes and think about things they’re grateful for. She explained that this simple act helps to make them more positive, especially on days of disappointment or frustration. On the drive to Dr. Sullivan’s office, I try just that. I attempt to think of things I’m grateful for. I search my heart, but it feels like reaching beyond the teeth of a shark to get there. Instead, I find myself praying. First: that after this last tape, no matter what it contains, I’ll be able to resume a happy life with Andy and the girls. Even if I need to work at it. I’m ready for that. I’ll work as hard as it takes. I’m a natural problem solver. I make things work. I don’t run from problems. I meet them head-on and roll up my sleeves. I’m the architect of my own destiny. I’ve always believed that. Second: I keep thinking about my parents’ deaths. They happened right around JD’s. I’m praying Timothy had nothing to do with that. “You don’t know the whole truth” sticks in my brain like a rusty nail.

I sit in my usual spot across the desk from Dr. Sullivan, and pull the lapels of my sweater closer and tighten its belt. I don’t look at him. I simply sit there, my arms crossed in front of my chest to cushion the blows. He’s flitting around as if I busted in on him naked. Not that I need that visual to calm me down. I’m as calm as a corpse. I wait forever for him to get the tape recorder set up. He looks over at me and opens his mouth to say something, but thinks better of it and instead presses the play button.

Caroline:
Did I tell you who was driving the car that hit Lilly?

Dr. Sullivan:
No. Do you know who it was?

Caroline:
JD knew who it was. She saw the driver’s face, and she recognized the car immediately. She told me she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. But she said, “If I tell the cops, no good will come of it.” She told the cops it happened too quickly. I couldn’t figure out who’d she’d want to protect that badly. I mean Lilly’s life was hanging by a thread. Did I tell you she was in a coma for a few days? The doctors gave us little hope. We thought we were going to lose her, with all the internal injuries. Somehow, by the grace of God she pulled through. But, JD never got to see that.

I shouldn’t have let JD go that day. It’s my fault. I blame myself for her death.

Dr. Sullivan:
Why would you blame yourself, Caroline? There’s nothing you could’ve done. This had nothing to do with you.

Caroline:
I could’ve kept her at the hospital. She’d be alive today.

Dr. Sullivan:
You don’t know that. She could’ve died the next day. Or the following week.

Caroline:
The day JD died was the day she told me who the driver was. I don’t know why she told me that day. I know she was feeling vulnerable. It would be her first day out of the hospital in over three weeks. It was almost as if she knew it was her last chance to tell someone. She swore me to silence. It was Mrs. Withers. She was still driving at ninety-three. In the old light-blue Dodge Dart she owned forever. JD said there was no mistaking that car.

Though Mrs. Withers was always proud, we knew she lived with heartache. Her husband of fifty-three years had died a while back, and all her friends were gone, too. She and Mr. Withers never raised any children. It’s funny, she used to look after her house and her things like they were her children. Her house was always kept up. If something fell apart, she fixed it right away.

Just because she never had children, she wasn’t the kind who hated kids. She loved Lilly. Mrs. Withers used to sit on her front porch and wait for Lilly to visit. Once a week, they’d have a tea party together. Lemonade and Social Tea Biscuits. JD moved into my parents’ basement when Lilly was born, so Mrs. Withers was like a surrogate grandmother to her. That probably sounds crazy since Lilly’s real grandmother, my
mother
, was living in the same house with her. But my mother was too busy for tea parties. She had Hummels to dust.

JD didn’t tell the police because she thought Mrs. Withers was already suffering from what she did. JD thought Mrs. Withers’ guilty conscience would end up killing her. In fact, Mrs. Withers died about a month after the accident. Only two weeks after JD died. They never spoke about it.

When I went to Mrs. Withers’ funeral, she was laid out wearing a fancy pale-blue dress and her signature pink lipstick. She wore the same necklace she’d worn every day of her life. A small gold locket. Only this time it rested open on her neck. In it were two tiny photos of a baby. I knew Mrs. Withers for all those years growing up right next door, but I never knew she had a daughter. Her niece told me at her funeral. The baby died when she was three months old.

Dr. Sullivan
:
That’s why your sister didn’t want to press charges.

Caroline:
That’s quintessential JD for you. No matter her own personal pain, she wasn’t going to take someone else down, especially if she thought it was senseless. An eye for an eye wasn’t her way of thinking. I think that’s a demented way to go through life. I couldn’t turn my cheek if my life depended on it. No one’s going to get over on me. JD thought some things were meant to be. That’s lazy thinking. She would ask me, “Caroline, do you think you can control everything?” Of course you can. I pity people who don’t realize that. Those are excellent values. I’m the architect of my destiny.

Some people are just too goddamn passive, and they rationalize their ineptitude by saying lame things like, “Things happen for a reason,” or “It’s not meant to be.”

That might be the one fundamental thing that differentiated me and JD. I’m okay with that now, discovering that we had our differences. Even twins diverge in some way.

Dr. Sullivan:
What do you mean “twins”?

Caroline:
Me and JD. Even twins as close as we were—we still had distinct traits.

Dr. Sullivan:
I see.

Caroline:
What’s the sense in turning your cheek? I’m not a floormat for other people’s dirty boots. That’s one thing my mother always said about me: “No one’s gonna pull the wool over Caroline’s eyes.”

Dr. Sullivan:
And in this case …

Caroline:
Where would you like to start? You want to start with my fiancé abandoning me in college? Of course, I’ll never know if it was because I got pregnant with his baby at the wrong time, or because after the abortion and hysterectomy, I’d never be able to have his children. Talk about the circle of death.

What about that phone message on my sister’s machine the day I found out that they were screwing behind my back? The sister that wanted to be her own person, march to her own drummer. Couldn’t find her own guy? Has to sleep with my fiancé? Strange behavior for someone who was
“saving herself
.” Don’t you think? Talk about a change in tune. JD even got pregnant. To really stick it to me. Unfortunately for her, it was my baby.

Dr. Sullivan:
What do you mean?

Caroline:
Isn’t it obvious? Lilly was supposed to be mine. Mine and Timothy’s. Anyone could see that. We were engaged. He made promises to me. I told you that—go back to your notes. Are you listening to me, or am I wasting my breath here?

Dr. Sullivan:
I remember you told me that you and Timothy were planning your future together, where you’d live and how many children you’d have. I believe you even said you came up with names for the children.

Caroline:
That’s right, and I can tell you Lilliana wasn’t one of them. I don’t know what JD expected a girl to do with a name like that. Maybe pick her teeth with hay and do-si-do in her spare time.

Dr. Sullivan:
Did you ever think that not having a life with Timothy or a family with him might actually be a positive outcome?

Caroline:
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe I actually pay you.

Dr. Sullivan:
JD decided to keep the baby. Do you think she knew she’d be on her own?

Caroline:
I don’t know what Timothy led her to believe—but one thing was always clear with Timothy. He was going to finish law school and become partner at Hayes & Hayes and go into politics. He wanted to be somebody someday. At least, that’s what his father wanted. And when his father had his mind set on something, nothing stood in his way. Certainly not an illegitimate grandkid.

No one could ever tell JD what to do anyway. When she had the baby, she made me swear to never ask her about who the father was. I was devastated that she didn’t trust me enough to tell me. Now I know why. She most assuredly did not believe in abortion. She didn’t even believe in premarital sex. Or so she said. Of course being antiabortion is always easier when you’re not in the position to need one. But I think after my horrific experience, she decided not to go down that road. There was nothing Timothy could do to stop her. He did the only thing he could: threaten her and pay her off.

You know where the police found the money?

Dr. Sullivan:
You told me they found it in your sister’s freezer.

Caroline:
That’s right. All hundreds. All of it was there when the cops found the bag. Timothy put the money in a NYAA bag. Just like his father and his grandfather, he was a member of the New York Athletic Association. Stupid asshole put the money in a NYAA plastic bag that’s used for dirty workout clothes—so they can be washed and folded neatly in your locker, waiting for your next workout. So you don’t have to cart home your smelly, sweaty clothes like some poor asshole. At the NYAA, once you take those soiled clothes off, you never have to touch them again until they’re soft and dry and clean. I guess that’s what money smells like.

He wrapped the money in a towel from the locker room and put a pair of white socks on top. Clever. That would really dupe someone looking for 5,000 crisp one hundred dollar bills. Wouldn’t it? What an idiot.

Oh, and the note—sitting on top of the towel—said,
Disappear
. His handwriting. Wrote it himself. Clever as a fox.

I found the tape. But you already know that. I’m just pointing out that without me the police wouldn’t have had a case.

Dr. Sullivan:
How so?

Caroline:
I gave them the tape. Don’t forget what it contained. The threats and the admission to a half-million-dollar bribe. All they had to do was find the money. I wasn’t going to do everything.

Dr. Sullivan:
But bribes and threats do not a murderer make. There must’ve been other evidence.

Caroline:
What about the fight they had at the Red Horse Tavern—there were witnesses. Including the hostess. In fact, she was a witness at the trial. Remember JD said she was meeting a friend the day she left the hospital? It was Timothy.

Dr. Sullivan:
She told you she was going to meet Timothy?

Caroline:
No.

Dr. Sullivan
:
How could you have known? Didn’t she die that afternoon?

Caroline:
Because I was the one who arranged it.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Thursday, October 5, 2006, 2:17 p.m.

D
r. Sullivan presses a button on the tape recorder and the tape comes to an abrupt stop.

“What? What’s going on? That’s it? That’s the end?” I’m at the edge of my seat.

He looks over at me. “No. Caroline. It continues on the other side.” He turns it over, and my voice on the tape resumes.

Caroline:
You heard what Timothy said on JD’s answering machine. I told you how angry he was–he threatened her. Do you think he would’ve agreed to meet her in public? Where so many people would see them together? He couldn’t risk being linked to her. This had to be handled with care.

Dr. Sullivan:
Did you want to get JD and Timothy together for the sake of the child?

Caroline:
What?

Dr. Sullivan:
Were you thinking of Lilly? Was this a gesture out of love and concern for your sister and her child?

Caroline:
I gotta tell you—you say the most fucked-up stuff. Do you actually think this shit? Is this what they teach in psychology school? It’s fucking scary. Love for my sister?! Are you serious?! Where was the love for
me?!
Did she think about
me
when she was
screwing my fiancé?

I despise hypocrites.

Let’s be honest. I’m gonna spell it out for you since you seem to be a little thick upstairs. Lilly is
my
daughter. Not JD’s. I don’t give a shit who pushed her out. That’s simply a technicality. That’d never hold up in a million years. Any decent-minded human being would agree. As for Timothy—she could have him. I certainly didn’t want that scumbag anymore. I wanted Lilly. The other two could rot in hell for all I cared. All I needed was Lilly and a twin for her. But I knew I could find one easily enough. Every girl needs a twin. Oh, and a proper father. We weren’t going to be a broken family. I wasn’t looking for pity. First, I had to deal with the two of them. There was no room for JD in this scenario. And Timothy, well, I had to be clever with that one. It wouldn’t be good enough to just get rid of him. He needed to be humiliated, like he humiliated me. Killing him wouldn’t have caused him any pain. He’d have to suffer. His father would have to eat crow over this, too.

Dr. Sullivan:
How did you arrange for them to meet?

Caroline:
I’m so glad you asked. I’ve been dying to tell someone. And, as it happens, you’re the only one I can tell.

Getting them together was pretty easy, actually. To get JD at the restaurant, I sent a note to her from Timothy on Hayes & Hayes stationery. I still have lots of letters Timothy sent me tucked away in a box. In fact, I recently got a new letter from Timothy—from jail. I must say I was surprised. But not interested enough to open it.

Dr. Sullivan:
You didn’t read it?

Caroline:
No, I didn’t read it. And I’m not going to. I just threw it in the box with the others. I don’t have to listen to him anymore. He can send me a letter a day till he croaks. The conversation is over. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, the notes he used to send me when we were in college were all on Hayes & Hayes stationery. Even though he was in school, he loved pretending he was a big shot. Sometimes he would send me flowers pressed into the letterhead. So romantic. I saved everything. The sheets of stationery that held the pressed flowers were blank. That’s what I used for the letter to JD. I mailed it from New York City so it would have the proper postmark. It said:

JD—I need to speak to you about the girl. I know she’s not doing well. I’ve been thinking about the possibility of never meeting her. I don’t think I want that. Please meet me. Before something happens. I’ll be at Red Horse Tavern on April 21st at 2:30. It’s in Bellowsfield. Please come. T.H.

The note I sent to Timothy from JD, in an envelope marked
Private and Confidential,
was sent to his office. I knew his secretary sorted his mail and that she wouldn’t open a letter marked
Private and Confidential,
but she might look at the return address and sender. The note to Timothy said:

Timothy—I thought twice before sending you this note because of our agreement. But I need to share some news with you. You’ll want to know about this. Before others do. I would have put it in this note, but knew you wouldn’t want a paper trail. If you don’t meet me, I’ll tell someone else. Maybe the
New York Observer
would be interested. With a name like Hayes, the papers can’t resist. Nor the police. I’ll be at Red Horse Tavern in Bellowsfield on April 21st at 3:00. JD

I wanted JD there by herself for a while so she’d be forced to order something. Before she left the hospital that day, I removed the cash from her purse so she’d have to use her credit card. I left her some coin change in case she needed it for a parking meter. She hated parking tickets—I knew that would really upset her.

At about two, right before JD left, I borrowed her phone from her handbag and went down the hall to make a call to Timothy’s office. Unless he decided not to meet JD, he would have already left. I told his secretary that I was JD Spencer. That I was meeting Timothy at Red Horse Tavern in Bellowsfield at three, but I was running late. I told her his cell phone mailbox was full. I asked her to relay this message to him if he called the office, or maybe she knew the phone number of the restaurant since Timothy probably told her he was going there. I asked her if she’d be kind enough to call there and ask them to pass the message onto Timothy. I knew if Timothy showed up at the restaurant and they handed him a message from his office, he would have a stroke. His secretary couldn’t have been more obliging. In fact, she went above and beyond. She actually left a message for Timothy with the restaurant hostess with the additional information that his evening meeting in New York City had been cancelled.

Dr. Sullivan:
How do you know she called the restaurant?

Caroline:
The hostess took the witness stand at the trial. She gave the details of what happened that day. I couldn’t have done better myself, really.

She said Timothy walked into the restaurant like a guy who was meeting his bookie or his mistress. She said she could spot a guy up to no good in a second. He was wearing a baseball cap and a suit, and he walked through the restaurant with his head down, and his eyes ping-ponged, like he was looking for something or trying to avoid it. She asked him if she could help him, and he snapped at her. He walked into the dining area himself and found JD, who had been waiting a half an hour, maybe longer. The hostess said that JD got up a couple of times to use the bathroom, and that the busboy said she walked very unsteadily. He thought she was drunk. Apparently she bumped into a customer who nearly fell to the floor.

The hostess said she approached the table Timothy was standing at. He didn’t sit. She said when she asked him if he was Timothy Hayes, it was like “time froze.” The only thing that moved was anger, flashing across his face. She didn’t want to wait for his answer. He was making her uncomfortable. So she just said, “Your secretary called and said your dinner meeting in the city is cancelled and your cell phone voice mail is full.” Then she darted away. She heard Timothy say, seething, “How did my secretary know I was here?” She looked back at him and said he looked like a time bomb ready to blow. He grabbed JD’s arm and got up close to her face. A half-filled ginger ale sat on the table in front of her. Before Timothy left the restaurant, he jerked at her arm so hard that her head buckled forward.

The hostess sent the manager over to the table because she was afraid things would escalate. As the manager approached, he saw Timothy jab his finger in JD’s face and heard him say “I warned you, you stupid shit … you just sank your own ship,” something like that. The manager asked him to leave, which he quickly did. The hostess didn’t see him again until that day in the courtroom.

At the restaurant the next day, they heard news that there had been an accident on Route 206. A girl was found dead in her car. The hostess said she immediately thought it was the girl who’d ordered the ginger ale.

Of course, while the hostess was giving her testimony, Timothy’s lawyer was objecting all over the goddamn place. Thankfully, she was able to say what needed to be said.

Do you want to know how she died?

Dr. Sullivan:
Do you mean—yes, why don’t you tell me.

Caroline:
The police thought it was the accident that killed her, at first. You know, the impact of the crash. Her car was found wrapped around a tree. It happened about fifteen miles from the Red Horse Tavern. That’s a winding country road that doesn’t get much traffic. Who knows how long the car was there until someone found her.

Sometime in the early evening, a lady driving by saw the car and pulled over to the side of the road. She said it looked like an accordion. The hood was crushed back all the way to the windshield. But there was no sign of the driver. She was too nervous to get out and look around herself, so she called the police.

When the police arrived on the scene, they looked in the window and saw JD’s body slumped onto the passenger seat. They opened the driver-side door, hoping she was still alive, and were knocked out by the smell. JD’s face was in a pool of vomit. There was vomit everywhere, the steering wheel, the dashboard, the face of the speedometer. JD’s pants were soiled. The heat that had built up in the car from sitting in the sun had intensified the stench. Thank God JD will never know she was found that way—it would horrify her.

The police report described her complexion as jaundiced. Her body was taken to Danielston Hospital and examined by a coroner. Once the autopsy was done, the coroner concluded she’d experienced severe gastric distress, which caused the uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea, and that it was her convulsions that caused her to drive off the road. And collide with a tree. A pathologist was brought in to advise on possible chemical substances in her body. He found traces of arsenic in her digestive track. Some Nancy Drew-type in the police department leaked an unauthorized, preliminary report to the local news saying it was a suicide. You know, because it’s all the rage to commit suicide with arsenic. Huge embarrassment for the Bellowsfield Police Department. They confiscated everything in the car, including the water bottle with the arsenic. Which had the fingerprints.

Dr. Sullivan:
Whose fingerprints?

Caroline:
Obviously I never wanted it to look like a suicide. Where would that leave Timothy? I have to admit, when I read that it was a suicide, I thought I’d have to hunt down that inept moron who fucked up the investigation and get rid of her, too. Total loser. After all that work.

It took some effort getting Timothy’s fingerprints on the water bottle. And because Bellowsfield is Podunkville, it took forever for them to reverse the cause of death to murder.

I don’t know what took them so long. The day after the accident, I gave the police a sealed envelope. I told them JD wanted me to turn it over to them in the event anything ever happened to her. It contained the answering machine tape. Which, of course, JD knew nothing about. I told the police that JD left the hospital that day to meet someone. That she was very nervous but never told me who she was meeting.

Dr. Sullivan:
You started to say you got Timothy’s fingerprints on the bottle.

Caroline:
To tell you the truth, I probably have a hundred things with his fingerprints on them—letters, photos, books, a razor, toothbrush, his mouth guard. But nothing that could help me. I wasn’t really sure at the time what I was looking for. The only concrete idea I had was to immerse myself in his routine.

I found his office easily enough in New York City. It was in the same building Hayes & Hayes has always been.

Every day for almost two weeks, I went to New York and stood outside his office building. It was easy to blend in—so many people walk up and down Park Avenue, especially during rush hour. Hundreds of people pour out of Grand Central Station and walk north on Park Avenue, walking past his building just two blocks up from the train station.

I followed him whenever he left his building—from across the street, of course—for lunch or for meetings, for the gym, or at the end of the day for dinner, or to his apartment on the Upper East Side. He was incredibly predictable. Before the tenth day of following him, I could tell you what he’d wear, where he’d eat lunch, what side of the street he’d walk, what kind of vodka he favored, and what time, roughly, he’d get up the nerve to sing at the karaoke bar. “My Way,” of course.

But it was his morning routine that would pay off for me. He traveled to and from work, actually everywhere, by car service. Exec Town Cars. In the morning, usually by nine-thirty, a shiny black car would pull up to the curb in front of the revolving doors to his building. The driver would get out of the car and walk around the back of it to the right passenger door, open it, bid Timothy a good day, close the door, and walk around the back of the car to the driver’s seat and leave. After about four days of this, I noticed that when the driver opened Timothy’s door, he’d pause to wait for Timothy to gather his things and whatnot. The driver would fidget as he waited. He’d straighten the knot of his tie, brush off both arms of his suit, and button the top button of his jacket. Every day the same thing.

Timothy certainly took his time getting out. I couldn’t see what he was doing in there, but when he got out he always did the same thing: guzzle what was left of his water and toss the empty bottle onto the seat before he walked away.

Slob. No shame even. I hate litterbugs.

The last day I followed him, I wore my gray interview suit and pearls. I knew this would be the day. A spritz of jasmine water, makeup and heels, and I was ready. I hadn’t dressed like that in a long time; my job at the Philadelphia Post never required anything smarter than jeans.