Upon payment of the fee, the subscriber would receive a card with an identification code that was valid only as long as the annual fee continued to be paid.
“What a lot of horseshit,” Marino said to me.
“I’m assuming she lived alone.”
“That’s the way it’s looking so far. A woman alone running a business like this – a damn good way to attract the wrong person.”
“Marino, do you know how many telephone lines she has?”
“No. Why?”
I told him about the hang ups I had been getting while he stared hard at me. His jaw muscles began to flex. “I need to know if her fax machine and phone are on the same line,” I concluded.
“Jesus Christ.”
“If they are and she happened to have her fax machine turned on the night I dialed back the number that appeared on my Caller ID screen,” I went on, “that would explain the tone I heard.”
‘Jesus friggin’ Christ,” he said, snatching the portable radio out of his coat pocket. “Why the hell didn’t you cell me this before?”
“I didn’t want to mention it when others were around.”
He moved the radio close to his lips. “Seven-ten.”
Then he said to me, “If you were worried about hang ups, why didn’t you say something weeks ago?”
“I wasn’t that worried about them.”
“Seven-ten,” the dispatcher’s voice crackled back.
“Ten-five eight-twenty-one.”
The dispatcher sent out a broadcast for 821, the code for the inspector.
“Got a number I need you to dial,” Marino said why he and the inspector connected on the air. “You got your cellular phone handy?”
“Ten-fo’.”
Marino gave him Jennifer Deighton’s number and then turned on the fax machine. Momentarily, it began a series of rings, beeps, and other complaints.
“That answer your question?”
Marino asked me.
“It answers one question, but not the most important question,” I said.
The name of the neighbor across the street who had notified the police was Myra Clary. I accompanied Marino to her small aluminum sided house with its plastic Santa lit up on the front lawn and lights strung in the boxwoods. Marino barely had rung the bell when the front door opened and Mrs. Clary invited us in without asking who we were. It occurred to me that she probably had watched our approach from a window.
She showed us into a dismal living room where we found her husband huddled by the electric fire, lap robe over his spindly legs, his vacuous stare fixed on a man lathering up with deodorant soap on television. The pitiful custodial care of the years manifested itself everywhere. Upholstery was threadbare and soiled where human flesh had made repeated contact with it. Wood was cloudy from layers of wax, prints on walls yellowed behind dusty glass. The oily smell of a million meals cooked in the kitchen and eaten on TV trays permeated the air.
Marino explained why we were here as Mrs. Clary moved about nervously, plucking newspapers off the couch, turning down the television, and carrying dirty dinner plates into the kitchen. Her husband did not venture forth from his interior world, his head trembling on its stalklike neck. Parkinson’s disease is when the machine shakes violently just before it conks out, as if it knows what is ahead and protests the only way it can.
“Nope, we don’t need a thing,” Marino said when Mrs. Clary offered us food and drink. “Sit down and try to relax. I know this has been a tough day for you.”
“They said she was in her car breathing in those fumes. Oh, my,” she said. “I saw how smoky the window was, looked like the garage had been on fire. I knew the worst right then.”
“Who’s they?” Marino asked.
“The police. After I called, I was watching for them. When they pulled up, I went straight over to see if Jenny was all right.”
Mrs. Clary could not sit still in the wing chair across from the couch where Marino and I had settled. Her gray hair had strayed out of the bun on top of her head, face as wrinkled as a dried apple, eyes hungry for information and bright with fear.