Chapter Nine:
There were more interviews with the Winters family the following day. Of them, only two are noteworthy. One was with Jack Winters, Sonny’s father. The other was with Teresa Wilson, Donna’s mother. The interview with Jack Winters occurred just before sunset. It took place at his house. Which, like so many of Wannabe’s biggest promoters, was located outside the city in the suburbs.
This suburban home was one of three houses owned by Mr. Winters. The other two were located in Bridgeport, Connecticut and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. To be blunt, Mr. Winters didn’t want to have anything to do with us. He didn’t want to talk to us. He didn’t even want to let us in the door. All he wanted to do was slam the door in our face and make us disappear. Winters, though, didn’t get what he wanted. I put my foot down. Literally. I put my foot down right between the door and the frame. It’s a simplistic maneuver that’s as old as doors themselves.
Mr. Winters eventually gave and told the butler to let us in. Winters retreated quickly out of sight and the butler told us to wait in the foyer while he went and got Mr. Winters. The butler, a pale nondescript white male in his early fifties, then disappeared and was never seen again. Alex and I stood in the foyer for over fifteen minutes without seeing anyone. Jack Winters wanted us to wait. So, we waited.
When Mr. Winters finally came out of a reception room located to the right of the staircase, he wasn’t exactly pleasant. A man with a tall, thin body and average, non-distinctive features, he wasn’t someone who could intimidate anyone with his physical presence. So, he used his most potent and effective weapon. His family name.
Mr. Winters told us, in as many words as possible, that if we pursued an investigation any further that we would lose our investigator licenses. He said he would call the mayor, the police chief, and a few other well placed people and file formal complaints against us. He went way above and beyond the call to beat us over the head with verbal intimidation. The man just wouldn’t shut up. He droned on and on and on about the family name, their prestige, their vaunted place in local history and all the rest of that ‘I’m somebody, you’re nobody’ bit. His message to us was clear. We were flies and the Winters family was a giant can of bug spray.
What was the most interesting about Mr. Winters blustering was the fact that Donna Winters, his daughter-in-law played no part in it at all. Her death, like her life, meant nothing to him. What mattered to him, what really mattered to him above all else, was the preservation of the highly exalted family name. It wouldn’t be sullied, it wouldn’t be dragged into the mud, it wouldn‘t be tarnished even in the slightest way. His daughter-in-law was of no consequence whatsoever. Not living; not dead.
The other interesting aspect of our visit here was Mr. Winters refusal to talk tp his wife Francine. His refusal was absolute. There was no moving him. Not only could we not talk to her, we couldn’t even be on the same floor of the house as her. This cold, self-serving attitude brought both Alex’s and my back up. Alex pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and blew a huge cloud of smoke right into the face of Mr. Winters. He wheezed, coughed, and frantically waved his hands around as if a mad bee was buzzing his nose.
“I think we’ll be going now,” I said.
“If you have any sense,” Mr. Winters replied, “you will forget there ever was an investigation.”
“This isn’t over.”
“Then I have no choice but to use my influence against you.”
“Who are you fooling with that protect the family name crap,” Alex said. “Anyone’s who ever had to live in one of those shanty shack houses you built knows what kind of people the Winters’ family are. Anyone’s whose had to deal with the family business knows what tree rot you are. Hell, even your protectors, the ones you threaten to sick on us, know what you really are. So, go ahead and send your rabid, blue blooded guard dogs after us if you want to, but please spare us the purity of the family name crap. An elephant with four anvils tied to each leg would have a better chance of flying.”
“Nice speech,” I said proudly.
“Thanks, I’d like to go now.”
Alex dragged hard on hard on her cigarette, blew more smoke into Mr. Winters’ face then flicked the butt onto the glossy white pristine floor.
“We didn’t get to ask one goddamn question,” she said when we got back to the car. “I think we’ve boarded the train to nowhere and it’s not going to stop to let us off.”
“Then we’ll jump off.”
“Even if it kills us?”
“Hopefully we can catch a curve. The train will slow down, then we’ll jump off.”
“If you say so.”
“We’re going back to my house, right?”
“I said I wanted to stay, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but you never said for how long.”
“What is this, another interrogation?”
“Forget it.”
I got in the car and slammed the door shut. Too hard evidently, because Alex rolled her eyes to the side and glared at me. The eyes themselves remained their usual impassive selves. But I knew what thoughts were going on behind them.
“I need a drink,” she said.
“No, you want a drink.”
“Same thing.”
“No. Wanting and needing are not----.”
“You mean like porno and prostitutes?”
“That wasn’t necessary.”
“Neither was your crack about my drinking.”
“Look Alex, I worry about you, okay. I care about you. Is that wrong? Is it?
“And what, I don’t worry about you? About what’s going on inside your head and how it’s affecting you. The heavy circles under your eyes, the bad dreams, the guilt you feel about----.”
“Can’t you just tell me what started you drinking again?”
“No.”
“Then there’s nothing left to say.”
“Not tonight there isn’t.”
Alex and I didn’t say another word to each other all the way home. Not while riding through the perfectly manicured streets of Snobby Time Hills.(Not its real name)
Not while riding across a dozen or so roller coaster streets on the upper east side. The off range glow of the street lights cast shadows that only seemed to the heighten the sulleness of our brooding faces.
When we finally arrived at the house, I got out of the car and went inside without so much as a single glance over my shoulder. Alex leaned on the car horn three or four times just to annoy me some more, then drove off for another round of wagonless living. Every light in the house was off and Gina’s big, sleeping body was wedged tightly onto the living room couch. I stumbled upstairs in the dark, fell into bed, drifted off into another night’s fitful sleep.
****
The interview with Donna’s mother was the next morning. I went alone. Alexandria wasn’t even in good enough shape to get out of bed before I left. Gina was up, though I wish she wouldn’t have been. The only reason she bothered to speak to me was to cast aspersions on my character. So, anytime she decided to keep her mouth shut, I considered it a short, but peaceful holiday. I contemplated super gluing her lips shut, but I couldn’t find the tube. I also thought about stapling her lips shut, but I was all out of staples. Oh, well. Just as I was preparing to leave for the interview with Donna’s mother, Gina couldn’t let me go without throwing more aspersions in my face.
“Pornography is evil,” she said.
“What? What did you say?”
“Pornography is evil.”
“How do you even know I look at pornography?” No answer. “Did you find out on one of your cat burglar excursions upstairs when you thought I was sleeping?”
“Pornography is evil,” she repeated.
“I’m going to talk to your mother. Would you like to come along?“ Again, no answer. “Is ignoring your mother evil?”
“Not my mother.”
“What about your sister? You know, the one who’s dead now.”
No answer, yet one last time. The conversation ended there. Gina went back to watching tv and I left for Teresa Wilson’s house. It didn’t take long to get there. Around twenty minutes, I’d say. Teresa Wilson’s house was in a neighborhood bordering the city’s south central limits. The house itself was a roomy, rectangular, and banked at the top of a steep dropping slope. The neighborhood was well to do, but of a much lesser affluence than where Sonny, her son-in-law lived. It was also of a lesser affluence than Teresa was born to and lived in for much of her life.
Teresa, a woman of sixty plus years, was as frail looking as someone could look. She was a hunched over five foot three or four and had the same shade of hair as a used scouring pad. I’d describe her frame, but she didn’t have one. She either lost it or someone stole it, I don’t know which. But it was gone. It was definitely gone. Her eyes, though, bore watching. They were a light misty gray , so light it was hard deciphering the irises from the outer white. They were quick, those eyes, and they were sharp. And most of all, they had power. The power to see inside you, to go beyond what you pretended to be, and to go through to the nexus of what you really are as a human being. I’ll tell you, I’ve never felt so vulnerable and so afraid of someone who looked so physically pathetic and withdrawn as this woman.
Going into her house, I had expected more of what I’d received from both Sonny Winters and his father Jack. The same open, contemptuous hostility. The same superior air. The same circle the wagons and defend attitude. But what I expected isn’t what I got. Which goes to show how ineffectively useless preconceived ideas often turned out to be.
There were two distinctive centerpieces of subject matter that I had in mind for the interview. Teresa’s Wilson departure from the family early in Donna’s life Was it by force as Donna stated in her diary? Or was it a voluntary departure that, for whatever reason, Donna had lied or had illusory memories about. The other point of emphasis for this interview was the relationship between Donna and her mother. With an emphasis on the last couple of years.
Before I could got to any of that, I was forcefully led through a tour of the house.(If one can forcefully be led by a frail, muscle less sixty plus year old woman)
The furnishings of the house, though of obviously high quality, darkened the mood of the place with their thick, musty colors and unnecessarily cramped arrangements. The air was heavy and hard to inhale in easy, natural breaths. There were few windows, unusually few, and their size was uniformly small. When was the last time any of them had been opened to let in outside air, I wondered.
The tour seemed to be an unsaid part of a tour/interview package deal. She was eager for company, I could tell, even from the likes of a lowly private detective like me. Once the tour had officially ended, Teresa led me straight to the kitchen for tea and conversation. The tea was English. Earl Grey, I believe. I can’t remember how many cups I had. It was a lot, I know that much. The cups were demitasse, mind you, not your standard mug. But still, I drank a lot of tea that day.
It was somewhere in the middle of the first cup, I think, when the interview began. But too often during the conversation, Teresa Wilson would alter the direction we were pursuing and take us into places I didn’t want to go. . I don’t how, I don‘t know why, but I had no say in the matter at all. I was completely helpless to stop her. The kitchen, encased in a low, murky light, was entrancing. The spell, it appeared, could only be broken, when Teresa Wilson wanted it to be broken.
“As you can see Mr. Caterski,” she said, “I live alone here. Well, not exactly alone. I do have someone who cooks and cleans for me. She’s upstairs right now. She has a room up there. You don’t need to talk to her, do you?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Are you married, Mr. Caterski?”
“Divorced. Twice. Why do you ask?”
“I thought maybe you’d like to meet her. She is a pretty young thing. I could introduce you.“
“Maybe some other time, uh--”
“Teresa.“
“Teresa.“
She looked at me then, for a long time without saying a word. Sipping her tea, she seemed to be examining me with those still gray eyes of hers. This close eye to eye scrutiny made me uneasy, so I took my eyes off of her, put them on my teacup and waited hours for her start talking again. Well, not actually hours.
“You’re here because of Donna, aren’t you Mr. Caterski?”
“Yes.”
“You want to know what I think about her death?”
“Yes.”
“You want to know whether I think it was suicide or murder?”
“Yes.”
Our eyes met and the first thing that crawled into my head was a long series of unanswerable questions. They came quickly, without pause, one right after another. The tea kept coming and I kept drinking. I just couldn’t help myself. What was going on here? Was it Teresa? Has this woman somehow hypnotized me? Had she put something in my tea? Was it the house? Was it a combination of the two? I don’t know. I don’t know. one
“I was never in a mental hospital,” she said without my ever broaching the subject. “If someone told you that, then they are deceiving you.”
“It was Donna who said it. Why would she deceive?”
“Why does anyone deceive, Mr. Caterski. Ego, money, power, the chance to extricate one’s hand from the cookie jar.”
“And if it’s impossible to detect the deception, even if you know its there.”
“Then shoot the deceiver, shoot yourself, or move on.“
“And what if there’s so much deception it becomes a knotted up mess that’s so intertwined there’s no possible chance to unravel it and see the thing for what it really is.”
“Shoot the deceiver, shoot yourself, or move on.”
Teresa had her eyes on me without blinking. She was hawking me, playing predator to my prey. The urge to run the hell out of there was drumming madly in my ears. I didn’t run away though. Something made me stay. What? Who knows?
“Did you have any contact with Donna in the last years?,” I asked.
“No.”
“Three months?”
“Aren’t you descending instead of ascending?”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“I didn’t?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I wonder why?”
“So do I.”
“Is there anything else you would like to ask me Mr. Caterski?”
I sat there drinking fom an empty cup and stalling for time. My eyes were everywhere but on Teresa Wilson. She was laughing at me. Laughing at my incompetence. I could hear voices in my head, taunting me, mocking me, spitting at everything I tried to do. I closed my eyes in the hopes it would help me concentrate.
I then pulled my hands off of the table and sat very still.
“Is there something wrong,” she asked after an extremely long minute of silence.
I didn’t answer. Another minute passed. This one longer than the one before.
“Mr. Caterski,” she said. “Either say something or leave. It’s your choice.”
I had something.
“You live alone isn’t that right Teresa?”
“Yes.“
“How long?”
No answer.
“More than five years? More than ten? Fifteen? How long Teresa? ”
Still no answer.
“You live alone and you’re going to die alone. Do you realize that Teresa? You’re going to die alone. Doesn’t that frighten you? Well, doesn’t it? It frightens me and I’m not as old as you are. Nor am I as-----.”
“Please, don’t----.”
“Don’t what, Teresa? Don’t what?”
“Please, just stop. Please.”
I stopped, but my eyes remained closed and my hands stayed off of the table. For the first time since stepping into this house, I had both control of myself and Teresa Wilson. I had to seize this advantage and gain something from it before it slipped away from me. Time was precarious. Maybe I had no more than a minute.
“Have you had any contact with Donna in the last three days?”, I asked again.
“Yes. She called me on the phone.”
“A hotel phone, pay phone, or cell?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
“When was the last time you had contact with her before that?”
“Not since----. Not since I went away years ago.”
“Then you really were admitted to a mental hospital?“
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Four and a half years.”
“And you never came back to live with your family?”
“I didn’t have a family anymore. Donna got married, Gina ran away, and my husband abandoned me.” “Did you ever try to have contact with Donna after she married?”
“Twice. I went to her house. I did not get to see her. Sonny refused to let me. The second time Sonny came and threatened me. He said he had the power to have me committed again. This time for life.”
“And you took this threat seriously?”
“Could I afford not to? I knew him. I knew what he was capable of doing. He was not bluffing. Not that one; not that time.”
“Did you try any other kind of contact?”
“Yes. I wrote letters but Sonny intercepted them. I called but they never got through.”
Was this information true? Had Teresa gone back and tried to re-establish a relationship with Donna and Sonny had stopped her? And had Donna really called Teresa on the phone recently? Or was all of this just more deception? These things would all need to be looked into. I turned off my recorder. I was ready to leave. I her so.
“Do you want me to walk you to the door?, she asked
“No, that’s not necessary. I’ll find my way out.”
“You’re leaving for sure, then?”
“Yes.”
I stood in the kitchen doorway with my back to her. Her voice had a sudden desperate loneliness to it. Teresa’s eyes were on me again, intently focused on my position. This time they showed the vulnerability that’s in all of us. I knew loneliness too, yet the nature of it was of a much different kind than hers.
Old age and poor health. The subject of it had crossed my mind many times before. Here, in this particular place and time, it had cropped up again. The passing of time. The deterioration of health. A culture that dismisses it, demeans it, discards it. Friends, loved ones, one by one, they are swallowed up by the that final swallowing march into the sea. The becomes trapped, caged inside a prison shell that holds you in and keeps you from doing things your mind is calling you to do.
Abandoned by life, abandoned by society, abandoned by the very people who should care about you the most. Betrayal all around. Wait until it happens to you, you say. Blinded by the arrogance of youth, they will laugh and walk smugly away. Shaking myself loose from Teresa’s desire for me to stay a little longer, I started, once more, for the door. The harsh dragging of chair legs against the floor told me Teresa was getting up to follow me.
“The gun,” she said as my hand reached the doorknob.
I stopped, but I didn’t turn around.
“What gun?,” I asked.
“The gun Donna was shot with.”
“Do you know where it is or who it belonged to?”
“Yes.”
“To which question?”
“The second one.”
“And------.”
“It belonged -------, to me.”
Teresa came up behind me and put papers in my hand. Gun ownership papers. A nine millimeter Mauser. The gun was legally hers.
“Donna told me Sonny was going to kill her if he found her,” she said. “She came here and I gave her the gun. I told her to kill him before he killed her. She was not here more than twenty five minutes and she was gone again. Twenty five minutes. That’s all I had. Twenty five minutes in twenty five years.”
“Goodbye Teresa.“
“Goodbye. I‘m glad you came Mr. Caterski, even if you are not. Visitors are rare for me. Very rare.”
“You did keep up with the goings on in Donna’s house though, didn’t you? Through someone living down there.”
“Yes.”
“One of the servants or one of the children?”
“I am not going to tell you.“
I thought about that for a second or two, then opened the door and went outside. It was dark. Very, very dark.