Erica Orloff - Trace Of Doubt

“Maybe, but it’s downright hellish around here. I expect this, south of the Mason-Dixon. But, my God, it’s miserable in Jersey.”

We reached the door to Quinn’s, stepped inside and felt a blast of air-conditioning that was a welcome break from the outside temperature. My uncle Tony came over and hugged me, his bald head shining. He shook Lewis’s hand and wrapped a tattooed arm around his neck. “Gang’s all here,” Uncle Tony growled.

Sitting at tables pulled together were my assorted cousins and my father and brother, and my brother’s girlfriend, Marybeth.

“Hi, Daddy,” I leaned over and kissed my father. My brother stood and grabbed me in a sort of headlock.

“Mikey…” I snapped, “we’re getting a little old for this.”

“Never.” He released my head and then hugged me tightly. “Got a whole truckload of bootleg DVDs in the back office there. Go pick through and take whatever you want.”

I narrowed my eyes and gave him a dirty look.

“What?” he asked.

“Mikey,” I said under my breath. “You promised me you’d straighten out.”

“Come on, Billie…it’s just a few DVDs.”

“It’s just a friggin’ parole violation.”

“I got the complete three-DVD set of The Godfather trilogy. You love that.”

I rolled my eyes but noticed Lewis was already heading back there.

“It’s all fun and games until I’m visiting you on Sundays and admiring your orange jumpsuit,” I said sarcastically.

“Come on, sit down and have a beer. You take life too seriously.”

I took a seat by him and poured myself a mug of beer from the pitcher on the table. Sunday brunch was family style. The place was closed until four in the afternoon, so it was only family. My uncle Tony’s short-order cook, Declan, right off the boat from Ireland—and as far as I knew with no immigration papers—made massive plates of scrambled eggs and home-fried potatoes, rashers of bacon and dozens of biscuits. Diets were forgotten in favor of good old-fashioned fatty food.

Lewis returned to the table with six DVDs—all horror movies, his and my favorite. “Nothing like some zombies,” he said. “Mikey, good haul this time.”

I glared at Lewis. “Stop encouraging him.”

Lewis sat down, poured himself a bloody Mary, and a couple of minutes later the platters of food started arriving at the table. We all ate until we were too stuffed to move.

After eating, my cousins—I had over twenty first cousins on the Quinn side—all left to go to a Yankees game. They had offered me tickets a couple of weeks before but I hadn’t been sure I could go, my Justice Foundation work was done in my spare time, which was precious. After my cousins left, my uncle Tony went into the stock room to take inventory, and my father, Lewis, Mikey and Marybeth remained, drinking beer and bloody Marys.

“I have something for you, Billie,” my father said.

“What?”

He stood and went behind the bar and returned with a rather large cardboard box and a small black velvet jewelry box. He handed me the jewelry box first. “Open it.”

I lifted the lid. Inside was nestled a diamond ring with an antique-looking platinum setting. I look at him, curious.

“It was your mother’s. I know she would have wanted you to have it. It was our engagement ring.”

My eyes involuntarily teared up. I took the ring out and showed it to Mikey. He swallowed hard a few times. “I don’t remember it.”

“Neither do I,” I said, not that most children pay attention to jewelry when they are very small.

“Put it on,” Marybeth urged.

I slipped it on to my finger. It was a tiny bit loose, but not so loose that it would fall off or I would lose it. I held my hand out. The diamond sparkled.

“It’s beautiful, Dad.”

He then opened the cardboard box and handed Mikey what looked like a big wad of newspapers. Mikey unwrapped whatever was inside the old newspapers—and found a statue of a bride and groom.

“That was on our wedding cake,” my father said. He was still as handsome as the photos of them when they were young. He hadn’t gained an ounce, and his eyes were still pale blue and striking, his hair black, with touches of gray now at the temples. His skin was unlined, except for the hints of crow’s feet around his eyes and deep smile lines near his nose.

“Thanks, Dad,” Mikey said. He turned the figurine over in his hands and then showed it to Marybeth.

Then my father handed me the cardboard box itself. I peered inside. “What are these?” I asked him.

“Cards and letters she kept—letters I sent. I guess letters from her mother and sister. Birthday cards. Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t stand the idea of reading them, so I stuck them in the box and forgot about them. You’re the one who wants…you know…to figure it out. I thought you should have them.”

My father never could bring himself to say, “Your mother was murdered.” He always said she “passed away,” conjuring images of a woman who went to bed one night and didn’t wake up. And I was the one obsessed with solving her murder. I had files of evidence and theories. My very job was, on some level, chosen because it would enable me to learn more about her death.

“Dad?” I asked, “How come you never gave me these before?” I could only imagine what clues the box might yield.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I kind of thought it was disrespectful to…you know…invade her privacy like that.”

I nodded.

“Why are you giving us all this stuff, Dad?” Mikey asked.

Dad sighed. “Well, with you two living on your own, I been thinkin’ that maybe it’s time I sold the house. I’ve got the condo in Florida and the place at the Jersey shore. Been thinking I might just get a condo around here. Don’t need a big old house anymore.”

“But…” I looked at him. I’d always imagined a someday when I would come home to the house I grew up in with my own children. I mean, I wasn’t anywhere close to having kids myself, but that didn’t preclude the idea from being there. My childhood home had a treehouse in the big oak tree out back, and Mikey and I used to play catch out in the yard. Like every boy, he dreamed of the majors, until, unlike every boy, he started dreaming of hot-wiring cars. “The house?” I swallowed hard.

“I’m just rattling around in there. I mean, there’s no sign on the front lawn yet, but I figured I better finally go through her things.”

I held the box on my lap and nodded. We drank some more, watched the TV set over the bar. When Lewis and I were ready to leave, I kissed my dad goodbye and gave Mikey a hug. Lewis didn’t say anything to me as we walked to where I had parked. When we got to my car, I unlocked it and put the box in the backseat. I climbed behind the wheel, and the first thing I noticed was the glint of the diamond in the sun as I gripped the wheel.

“You okay?” Lewis asked.

I nodded. “I think so. I just don’t know why, after over two decades, my father has suddenly decided to deal with her murder.”

“Maybe he finally needs some closure. Or maybe he can finally face looking through her things. You told me she was the love of his life.”

“She was.”

I looked over my shoulder at the box in the backseat. It felt sacred. I wondered, did that box of relics contain clues that would finally let me put her ghost to rest?

That Friday at the lab, a television crew watched me analyze the tiny blood sample from the victim in the Marcus Hopkins case.

The crew was part of a news magazine following our investigation of the Hopkins case from start to finish—however it turned out. They filmed me looking through my microscope, and then they taped a mini interview in which I explained how a single blood sample was better than a fingerprint, and how it could unmistakably identify a killer.