Page 11

CHAPTER TEN

September 14, 1996

Late Saturday night

I suppose I could have had a drink with him. As I’ve said, I didn’t drink because it loosened my tongue. Cass knew my secrets though so it might not have been a big deal. On the other hand, the boy was a danger to me. Drinking with him would have been foolish.

Upstairs in the junk room, I did not go to sleep. I wouldn’t have even if that had been my plan. Cass was playing music. CDs? Possibly record albums? Either way, the volume was cranked up. I wasn’t sure if there was a turntable or a CD player in one of the cabinets in the living room or I’d simply not noticed it in the office. His taste—or more likely Joanne’s—ran to early eighties new wave: The Police, The Go-Go’s, Talking Heads. It was taking me back.

I tried not to think about my misspent youth since I was clearly misspending my middle age. Instead, I opened boxes. Quickly, I realized it was called the junk room because it really was full of junk. A lot of the boxes held things from Cass’s childhood. They seemed to move backward through time, the most accessible boxes more recent. One seemed to be from Cass’s fourteenth year: A Jurassic Park T-Shirt, a frayed pair of carpenter jeans, several hoodies. There was a Gameboy and six cartridges. Another held his clothes from aged twelve. He’d been small for his age—he was still small for his age. There were a couple of books that seemed to skew younger. The only way I was sure he was twelve at this point was that there was a stack of comics from 1991. I checked the copyright pages.

Some of the boxes were obviously Joanne’s, like the one that had three Jane Fonda VHS tapes and a half dozen Lycra exercise outfits in bold purples and pinks. There were also several boxes of financials, including Joanne’s taxes from 1992 and 1993. Both looked as though they were filed late, so I guessed that 1994 and 1995 hadn’t been filed yet.

I scanned through, attempting to glean what I could. Her salary for each of the two years was $44,000. Not bad, but also not enough to support the way she was living. I continued to scan through. The only other interesting thing on the forms was that her mortgage interest deduction was nearly eleven thousand dollars. I had no idea how much houses in Detroit area were worth, but it did seem like a lot of interest.

I dug around some more and found her bank statements. She banked with Fifth Third. These were from ’94 and the whole year was there. There wasn’t a lot of information. Transactions were identified by check number and date, and not much else. I was able to see that she received an automatic deposit every two weeks for $1,362.

Okay, there was something interesting. Every month she sent out a check for $2,232. That had to be her mortgage payment. That left roughly four hundred dollars a month to live on. But she didn’t have to worry too much. The balance in her checking account never seemed to dip below eleven thousand dollars.

I scanned through for additional deposits. Randomly, there were deposits for a few hundred dollars here and there, up to five hundred. They happened several times a month. I also noted that, aside from writing checks, she never took any cash out of the account. There didn’t seem to be any ATM withdrawals. Did that mean she was walking around with absolutely no cash in her pocket? Somehow I doubted that.

I dug deeper into the box and found two more bank accounts: One at 1st State Bank and another at Community Bank. Both of these accounts were in the name of Joanne Reilly, though it seemed she usually used her maiden name. I gathered the statements from April ’94 and was able to trace money moving from 1st State to Community, and then finally to Joanne Di Stefano’s account at Fifth Third. The deposits to these additional accounts were several thousand dollars and monthly.

The statements told me a few things. They each had a deposit once a month, which was always more than Joanne took out of the accounts. Also, I suspected these accounts had something to do with Top Dawg Collections downstairs. I had the feeling she was up to something illegal. I just wasn’t sure what exactly.

I opened the closet and began looking around. I found what was probably the earliest of Cass’s boxes. It was full of his baby clothes, including a pair of impossibly small, stonewashed jeans, a Detroit Lions onesie and a baby-sized Hawaiian shirt. Underneath the clothing I found a baby book. When I opened it, an invitation to Cass’s baby shower fell out with a carefully printed list of those who attended. The shower wasn’t part of the book. I quickly determined that Heather was the one to give her the shower since the invitation was homemade: a cute sketch of a duck, which was then copied onto yellow copy paper. The list of guests was artfully printed onto a similar piece of paper. I set the list aside and flipped the pages of the book. They were all empty. Joanne hadn’t made a single entry in the baby book. Obviously, she wasn’t sentimental. But then why did she still have Cass’s baby clothes?

At the very end of the book, a Catholic baptismal certificate had been stuck there. At the top of the page it listed the church as St. Margaret of Scotland. Then it had Cass’s name, Cassidy Matteo Reilly. His parents’ names. That he was born at St. John Hospital. The officiating priest was named Di Stefano—likely a relative of Joanne’s. Heather Szymanski and Luca Amato were named as sponsors.

I returned to the list of women who were at Joanne’s baby shower. Heather, of course. Suzie Reilly. Josette and Angelina Di Stefano. Verna Reilly—Dom’s mother, Carla and Rose Amato—who were probably cousins of Joanne’s, and Mama Di Stefano.

Would it be worth talking to any of them? Dom’s mother was gone so that wasn’t possible. And we’d already talked to Suzie. I definitely wanted to talk to Joanne’s sisters, preferably before she came back on Sunday night. One of the cousins might be a good idea… Wait. There was only one friend on the list. Heather. Why weren’t there more? Well, I suppose a seventeen-year-old wife and mother might not have a lot in common with her classmates. And… I was getting the impression Joanne did better with men than she did with women.

Cass had put “Tainted Love” on repeat for the last forty-minutes. Now, I couldn’t tell you exactly why he was listening to the song again and again, but the possibility he was coming to terms with his mother killing his father was high my list.

I knew I should call Ronnie. There was a phone in Joanne’s room. I could call while Cass was listening to music and he’d have no idea. But honestly, I didn’t know what to say to Ronnie. It had been almost twenty-four hours since we talked. He’d be upset about that. He’d be upset that I was in Michigan. He’d still be upset that I couldn’t tell him when I was coming home. I tried to think of some lies that would make him happy and calm but couldn’t come up with a single one. Most of them were just as distressing as the truth.

Around eleven thirty the music stopped and Cass clumped unsteadily up the stairs, went into his bedroom, and slammed the door. Not too much later I heard him snoring. Yes, teenagers snore. Especially after they spent the evening drinking sweet and sticky liquors. I decided I should take a closer look at Joanne’s walk-in closet.

Creeping down the hallway, I quietly opened the door to her room. I didn’t turn on a light as there was enough streetlight slipping in through the windows. I opened the closet door and waved my hand around until I found a string that was attached to the light above me. I pulled it and the light came on. There were clothes on three sides. There wasn’t a lot of floor space, just enough to easily turn around.

At first it looked like there was no real order to the way her clothes were hung. With so many things to choose from, it seemed logical to organize them either by type or color, just to be able to find things. But then I realized it was organized. She’d organized her closet by outfits. Things she liked to wear together.

I realized this when I noticed a purple leather jacket—probably the one Gavin’s daughter mentioned. It hung there with a pair of black slacks, a black miniskirt, a black-and-white zebra print top, a yellow dress and unfaded designer jeans. They were all out of date. Next to them were more recent party outfits.

Opposite them were all her office clothes. She favored suits: gray, blue, black. Blouses in an array of pastel colors. No pants suits, though. For casual there were several velour tracksuits: red, green, purple.

On the floor, ringing the entire closet, were her shoes. Mostly high heels, some of them very high. All carefully lined up. The shelf above the clothes didn’t hold a lot. There were a couple of spare blankets, extra pillows, a tabletop humidifier and three shoeboxes. The last stopped me. If there had been fifteen or twenty boxes it wouldn’t have stopped me, I’d have assumed she kept the boxes for her shoes. But she’d only kept three. I pulled the first one down to examine. It was full of half-used makeup. There was enough makeup out on her makeup table that I couldn’t see the point of keeping it, but she kept a lot of things that didn’t quite make sense. I put the box aside and took down the next one.

Cash. It was full of cash. Neatly rolled in bundles with rubber bands. The bundles appeared to be mixed: twenties, fifties, hundreds. It was hard to guess how much was in there, but I’d have to go with ten, fifteen thousand. Possibly more. I wondered where it was coming from. Was it the proceeds of her credit card scams? Though that could have been in her extra bank accounts. Was it gambling money? If it was, she did well.

And why was it in cash? Why wasn’t it in the bank? Was she like me? I used to have cash hidden around in case I had to make a fast exit. Did she understand her little frauds could get all her bank accounts quickly frozen? Was this her getaway fund? She could be across the border to Canada in less than an hour. At an airport in Toronto in a few hours.

I put the box back and took down the last shoe box. It held chips; a few hundred dollars’ worth. They came from different casinos in Las Vegas and various other gambling towns. There were also half a dozen loyalty cards for different casino chains. I put the box back on the shelf, turned off the light, and went back to the junk room.

I got into the twin bed and stared at the ceiling. The more I found out about Joanne Di Stefano the shadier she seemed. And the more I thought it likely she was behind Dom Reilly’s disappearance.

Which made me feel profoundly unsafe. If she got rid of one Dom Reilly she could get rid of another. Maybe I should just get out of bed, call a cab, and go to the airport. Let the kid do his worst. My life would be in ruins, but I’d still have a life. Or would I?

There were the crimes I’d committed as Dom Reilly. Fraud mostly. Small things that at worst could result in a few years in prison—less if Lydia helped me. And then there were the crimes Nick Nowak had committed—or more accurately had been accused of, charged with, was wanted for. I’d skipped bail on a murder charge.

Honestly, I didn’t usually think about it much. It was a long time ago and I had told the police who’d really done it. But to my knowledge the charges had never been dropped. To make that all more complicated, I’d killed the actual murderer in self-defense. Or at least I thought I had. It was dark.

No, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let this kid destroy the life I’d built. I couldn’t risk going back to being Nick Nowak. I had to find a way to stay Dom Reilly.