David Ellis - Eye of the Beholder

Regardless, I have to say, I’m not seeing vile or spoiled in this woman. Time has worked its magic.

“You own a diner?” I ask.

She smiles gently. “The community is losing retail and restaurants. I like having a place where they can get together.” She nods, thinking about that.

I decide to take this slow. Gwendolyn’s expression turns placid as she lets the sun warm her face. This is her escape.

She offers me a drink from a cooler, but I decline. She takes a seat across from me. Shelly is next to me, keeping quiet. She rolls up her sleeves and the cuffs of her pants and closes her eyes to the sun. Shelly’s playing it right. This is supposed to be a casual discussion, and two-on-one makes people uncomfortable. She’s just going to listen.

The breeze carries Gwendolyn’s coconut tanning lotion to me. She has a Russian’s fair complexion and has obviously put the lotion to good use, her skin a dark pink.

Without the benefit of shade, the temperature is almost overbearing. I take off my suit coat, roll up my sleeves, and reconsider that drink offer.

“I like it here,” she tells me. “People say what they mean and mean what they say.”

I look at my briefcase and notice that I have no pen or pad of paper handy. I’m used to having someone else do the note taking, or a court reporter transcribing every word. But I’m sure as hell not going to pull out a notepad now. Notepads and tape recorders tie tongues. Instead, I rest my arms along the upholstery, put my head against the safety railing, and close my eyes to the sun. I could fall asleep out here. I could sleep for hours.

“Having money,” she says, “you don’t think about anything. There’s nothing outside your grasp. So you keep reaching, hoping for some kind of limit. You don’t find it, so you keep pushing until-until you’re over your head.”

“You were over your head,” I say. The boat rocks with a wave.

“Of course I was. I was drinking and doing drugs and sleeping around.”

I listen politely to the rich-kid-in-therapy story, the sad, wealthy socialite, dancing from party to party, jet-setting across Europe, when all she really wanted was to be loved.

“What about Cassie?” I ask, wondering if I should be interjecting here.

“Cassie.” Gwendolyn deflates, stares at the can of soda in her hand. “Cassie had a big heart. A very generous soul. But she had absolutely no idea what she was doing. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to be popular, or good, or what.” Gwendolyn chews on her lip, her face coloring. “She was scared to death.”

“I’m trying to get a feel for what was going on in her life back then, Gwendolyn. I need your help.”

She shakes her head slowly. “I would think you would know better than anyone.”

“As I’m sure you know, we didn’t prosecute Cassie’s murder, so we never got to the point that we were”-I note the look on Gwendolyn’s face-“we never delved that deeply. You know that we didn’t prosecute Cassie’s murder, right?”

She shrugs her shoulders.

She didn’t know that?

“Why didn’t you prosecute Cassie’s murder? I don’t under stand.”

I explain it to her quickly, the notion of holding one murder back, in case Burgos got lucky, to give us a second chance at him. The legal niceties seem lost on her, and I’m still trying to under stand how disconnected she was from this whole thing.

“Where were you when all this happened?” I ask. “We tried to get hold of you.”

Another shrug of the shoulders. “I didn’t know you were trying.”

“Where were you?”

“I could have been anywhere. Back then? It didn’t matter where I was. It was all the same place.”

I sigh. This is like trying to grab hold of sunlight. I need to get this woman off the psychiatrist’s couch and onto a witness stand. But I have no leverage here. She could flip me the bird. She could knock me off the boat and I’d drown.

“The Riviera, probably,” she says. “Or the Caribbean.”

“Then, how about this?” I try. “When was the last time you’d been in the city, before Cassie was killed?”

She poises a hand in the air. “It was probably a month or so before. If you told me it was three months, I’d believe you. If you told me it was three days, I’d believe you.”

“Three days?” I can’t hide the incredulous tone in my voice. “Don’t you have some sense of how much time passed between the time you last saw Cassie and when you learned she was murdered?”

“Oh, that’s a different question.” She wipes a stray bang off her forehead, only to have the wind blow it right back between her eyes. “I found out long after. Months after. I don’t think you really understand,” she adds, noting my reaction. “My mother was dead. I never had a father. I’m sure my aunt Natalia was trying to reach me, but she didn’t know where I was. I didn’t answer to anyone. It’s not like there were cell phones, Mr. Riley. And I didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address.”

I try to see it from her perspective. Maybe my initial thoughts on her were a little harsh. Her mother had died in a DUI, and Gwendolyn apparently didn’t know who her father was. I suppose all the money in the world wouldn’t make that any easier.

“It sounds very lonely,” Shelly says.

Gwendolyn smiles at her. Then she looks at me. “Ask me your questions, Mr. Riley.”

“Was Cassie a lesbian?”

“Not to my knowledge.” She smiles plaintively. “You go to an all-girls school and everyone thinks everyone’s gay.”

Okay, fair enough. Mansbury had only recently gone coed when the murders happened.

“Do you think you would know?”

She’s amused by that. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Was Cassie seeing anyone back then?”

“Not that I knew of,” she says. “But that’s not saying much. I don’t recall Cassie dating much, period. She was painfully shy on that level. That was the weird thing. She could be very social sometimes-she would go out and party all night-but I don’t think she had ever been with a man.”

I think of the song lyrics, and of the passage from Deuteronomy, talking about stoning a promiscuous woman.

“You think she was a virgin?” I ask.

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“So I take it you don’t know if she was pregnant?”

“Pregnant?” She draws back. “Why would you think that?”

I see no reason not to share what I know with her. Hell, I’ve come all this way. “One of the people who was murdered recently was a reporter. She had asked that question about Cassie.”

She nods slowly yes, then shakes no. “I have no idea,” she says. “I’m not sure I’m the one Cassie would have told, anyway.”

Great. This whole trip is feeling like a waste of time.

“What can you tell me about Brandon Mitchum?” This was the Mansbury freshman who hung out with Cassie and Ellie. Lightner had just reminded me.

Her face lights up. Recognition. “Brandon Mitchum,” she says with reverence. “How is Brandon?”

“You knew him.”

“Yes.” She nods, a quiet smile on her lips. “Yes, I knew Brandon. God.” She reflects on that memory a moment. “He was a nice guy. Oh”-she frowns-“oh, it must have been hard on him. Cassie and Ellie.”

“Tell me about Ellie.”

“Ellie.” She makes a face. “Now, Ellie, she was more like me. A party girl. And she was afraid of him.” She wags her finger. “She was very afraid of him.”

“Afraid of Brandon?”

“No, not Brandon.”

I look at her, stone-faced.

“You mean Terry Burgos,” Shelly says.

“She thought he would do something,” Gwendolyn continues. “She always said a restraining order didn’t mean anything to a psycho.” She nods with conviction. “No, she was very afraid of him.”