The Nightgown (7 page)

Chastened, I retreated into the hallway, where I eventually began interviewing a representative sample of the people who had been in Nancy’s life: high school classmates, fellow
Eagle-Examiner
carriers, coworkers from the State Street Grill.

I got a good dose of the usual clichés—everyone liked her, she never said a bad word about anyone, she didn’t have a single enemy, and so on—but also managed to ferret out some of the details of Nancy’s life.

She had been an outstanding student at Belleville High, graduating in the top ten percent of her class and making All-County in softball. After high school, she enrolled at College of New Jersey, then known as Trenton State, a well-regarded small public college. Her father died a few weeks into her freshman year and Nancy moved back home to be with her mother. And, somehow, that’s where she stayed. She got a job as a waitress. A few years after that, she took over the newspaper route. And that became her life: she worked two jobs, kept her mother company, and maintained her friendships from high school and the neighborhood. She didn’t have much time for anything else. She was never married. She dated occasionally, but there hadn’t been anyone special in that capacity for quite some time. Friends said she seemed content, never considering what life might have held for her if her father had stayed alive or if she had gone back to school.

Eventually, she saved enough money to buy her own house, a source of pride. It was just a few blocks over from her mother’s place, but in that part of New Jersey—a jigsaw puzzle of tiny towns fitted next to each other—a few blocks crossed a municipal boundary. So it was she ended up living in Bloomfield, not Belleville.

Beyond those biographical details, I mostly heard about Nancy’s kindness and generosity of spirit. She not only had two jobs that involved serving others, she did it in her off-time, too. It seemed Nancy was everyone else’s biggest fan, the kind of person who always knew when someone had done something good and was the first to congratulate them for it.

“She just existed to cheer on other people,” one of her friends told me. “It’s like her hands were made for clapping.”

It was the perfect first quote. And being as it was nearing three o’clock, the end of the afternoon session at the funeral home that made it the perfect time to get back to the office and start writing.

I was on my way out the door when I recognized one last person who could make for a useful interview: Jim McNabb, the executive director of IFIW–Local 117 and a well-known figure on New Jersey’s political scene.

Local 117 was a large conglomeration of unionized employees, encompassing workers who could loosely be considered in the communications business—everything from newspaper deliverers to bulk mail assemblers to cable TV installers to the people building the latest wireless network. All told, it claimed something like a hundred thousand members, which made it a force in the state capital, where vote-hungry legislators remained cognizant of the need to pander to its leadership.

For as long as anyone could remember, that leader was Jim McNabb, who greatly enjoyed being the recipient of said pandering. His primary talent was knowing all the players and, more importantly, where they buried the bodies. (And, this being New Jersey, I mean that literally). He was a gregarious guy with a full head of silver hair and a stocky frame, and he was like the politicians he lobbied in that he enjoyed working a room.

Unlike the politicians, though, I actually liked him. He had a gift for names and faces, and once he met you the first time, he treated you like a long-lost best friend every time he saw you thereafter. To some that might seem disingenuous, inasmuch as he reacted to everyone that way. But to me, you couldn’t be that enthusiastic about other human beings unless somewhere, deep down, you really liked them.

Plus—and this always counted for something in a newspaper reporter’s estimation—he was a colorful quote, the kind of guy who was always available for comment and could be relied upon to say a bit more than he probably should.

So we had some good history and as I approached he greeted me with a quiet-but-enthusiastic, “Carter Ross! How is the star investigative reporter!”

“Hey, Jim, pretty good. Wish we were seeing each other under different circumstances, but—”

“Is there something to investigate here?” he interrupted, not bothering to hide his intrigue.

“Not a thing. I’m just doing a little appreciation piece about Nancy for tomorrow’s paper.”

“Are you sure there’s no smoke here?” he quizzed. “Because you know what they say about places where there’s smoke.”

His natural friendliness aside, McNabb was the kind of guy who was always looking to exploit any angle that might help the union cause, or at least get his name out there. If I told him I was doing a piece on businesses that refused to let their workers eat hot dogs, he would launch into a windy sermon about the health benefits of the roasted wiener—all of which he would have invented on the spot—and rail against anyone who deprived employees of their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of Oscar Mayer.

“Nope,” I said. “No smoke, no fire.”

“Okay, okay,” he replied. “Well, it’s real kind of you to do a story about Nancy. She was a terrific kid.”

We chatted for a few minutes about Nancy, whom he described as one of his Best shop stewards. He said the obligatory nice words about her, sharing the opinion that she was a loyal employee and a trustworthy friend. Then, as we began to wrap up, he jerked his silver mane in the direction of her coffin.

“Hit and run. Hell of a way to go, huh?” he said. “I just hope they catch the bastard that did it and tie him to the center lane of the Turnpike so we can run
him
over.”

By the time Jim and I parted it was after three, and the funeral director was gently shepherding the crowd out onto the street. He was subtle about it—a funeral home can’t exactly announce last call—but people were getting the hint.

I climbed into my Malibu, feeling my reporter’s notebook pressing against my thigh. I don’t know what it is, because ballpoint-pen ink barely weighs anything, but a full notebook just feels heavier than an empty one. And I knew I had stuffed this one with enough good stuff to easily get me to sixteen inches.

My favorite anecdote was shared by one of Nancy’s fellow paper deliverers. As any longtime resident of New Jersey knows, one of the
Eagle-Examiner
’s nicknames is “the bird.” For one of her shop meetings, Nancy made T-shirts with a picture of a guy tossing a rolled-up
Eagle Examiner
onto someone’s front porch, Frisbee-style. Underneath, it read, IFIW–LOCAL 117: PROUD TO FLIP YOU THE BIRD!

I wasn’t sure whether I could get that line past some of our prissier editors. But as I returned to the newsroom and started writing, I figured I owed it to Nancy to try.

The words were just starting to flow onto my computer screen when my cell phone rang. The caller had a 510 area code, which was neither a New Jersey number nor one I recognized.

“Carter Ross.”

“Mr. Ross?” said a monotone female voice on the other end, and I knew who it was before she could say her name. “This is Jeanne Nygard, Nancy Marino’s sister. We met earlier today.”

“Hi, Jeanne. Thanks for calling.”

The line hissed with the sound of no one talking, though I could faintly hear her breathing. I shifted my weight, and my chair creaked in response. I cleared my throat and soon found myself talking, because I felt like someone ought to be.

“I’m sorry if I triggered a little bit of a spat at the viewing,” I said. “I didn’t mean to stir up ill will.”

“My sister and I don’t always get along,” Jeanne said, and I fought the urge to reply,
No, really?

“She’s not a happy person,” Jeanne continued. “She seeks fulfillment in worldly things, in money and power. They will never lead her to enlightenment.”

Okay there, Siddhartha,
I nearly replied. But again I resisted. And since I didn’t want to enter into a conversation about Anne’s self-actualization, or lack thereof, I asked, “So what can I do for you, Jeanne?”

“My sister would be angry if she knew I was talking to you,” Jeanne said, which didn’t exactly answer my question. “She said I should keep my mouth shut. But I gave up trying to please my sister a long time ago. Do you have siblings, Mr. Ross?”

“An older brother and a younger sister.”

“So you know what it’s like.”

“Family can be a joy and a pain,” I confirmed.

The line hissed silence.

“I’m sorry, is there something I can help you with?” I said, trying to prod the conversation toward…wherever it needed to go. “The story about your sister is going in tomorrow’s paper, so I’m on a bit of a deadline.”

“I wanted to call you because your card says you’re an ‘investigative reporter.’ Is that true?”

I put my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t say something like,
No, Jeanne, I’m actually a taxidermist with an active fantasy life.

I gave myself half a beat, then removed my hand and said, “Yes, it’s true.”

More faint breathing was followed by, “Don’t you think it’s odd, her being killed in a hit and run?”

“I’m not sure I would choose the word ‘odd.’ I would just say it was a terrible tragedy.”

“The police said it was probably a drunk driver. What do you think about that?”

“That people shouldn’t drink and drive?” I said, trying not to sound like a smartass.

“I’m told bars around here close at two. Would anyone still be drunk at six in the morning?”

I sighed. Where was she going with this? “People get drunk places other than bars, so there’s—”

“And there were no skid marks,” Jeanne interrupted, her voice managing to rise above the flatness of Parkinson’s disease to gain some inflection. “The police said they didn’t find any skid marks on the street. Don’t you think the driver would have slammed the brakes after hitting something as large as a person?”

“Depends. The guy might have been so bombed he didn’t even realize he hit someone. It happens.”

Jeanne took a moment to consider this. She was nothing if not deliberate.

“Your card says you’re an investigative reporter,” she repeated. “Are you going to investigate the accident any further?”

“I’m not planning on it, no.”

I tilted forward in my chair and rested my elbow on my desk. The bottom right corner of my computer read 5:17. Obits, which are not considered breaking news, have to be filed by six, no exception. I wanted to be considerate to Nancy’s grieving sister, but I had to find a way to gracefully exit this conversation.

“I need to know if I can trust you, Mr. Ross,” Jeanne said.

“And why is that?”

“Because I have something I think you should investigate,” she said.

“Okay.”

Another pause. Then: “It wasn’t an accident.”

“You mean Nancy’s death?”

“Yes. It wasn’t an accident. I believe Nancy had reason to fear for her life. I believe someone killed her.”

“What makes you think that?”

“She’s my sister. Sometimes sisters just know things about each other.”

“Yes, but do you have any proof?” I asked.

“No,” she said. Then, after a pause, she added: “And yes.”

“I’m listening.”

“I was the last person to talk to my sister before she died. She called me at ten on Thursday night—that’s one in the morning, her time. Mr. Ross, my sister went to bed at seven-thirty and woke up at three-thirty. She
never
had trouble sleeping like that.”

“So what was bothering her?”

“She was having…problems at work.”

“What kind of problems?”

The line went quiet again, causing me to press my ear to the phone. From somewhere in the background, I heard a door open. Jeanne drew in her breath sharply.

“Jeannie, whatchya doin’?” I could hear a male voice inquire.

And at that, Jeanne promptly hung up.