Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Just as Maxine had warned, the medication made Carmen very tired, so much so that Carmen was still fast asleep when Jemma came by the following morning.
It was a Tuesday, the second week of December, but already it felt as though Elena had been back in Millbrook for a whole lot longer than a week and a half.
It was when Jemma entered the house, crowing her hello, that Elena thought of her Chevy, which Marvin the mechanic had sold for auto parts.
She wanted to head down to the shop, collect the cash, and thank him.
She donned her winter coat, explained her mother’s medication to Jemma, then headed out into the snow.
As Elena walked to the auto shop, she made a point to pass by James’s place.
Since he’d stayed at the house far past midnight on Friday, listening to her stories, she’d felt sheepish around him.
She’d attended another grief therapy meeting on Sunday (leaving her mother at home, this time, to avoid disaster), but when he’d asked her to coffee afterward, she’d made up an excuse and headed home instead.
It was strange to have someone carry the weight of your past like this.
More than that, she felt uneasy, as though she shouldn’t have trusted him.
Timothy had done a real number on her heart—and had permanently affected all of her future relationships. She was intelligent enough to know that he was to blame. But she wasn’t clever enough to overcome it yet.
Elena walked the rest of the way to the auto shop.
Although she knew that Marvin had sold her car for parts, that it was broken up and would never again be driven, she wished she could see that clunky vehicle one last time.
She’d purchased it after her return to Syria and driven it around the city only a few times.
She’d had visions of driving it all over the East Coast, discovering a world she’d always ignored as she’d pursued journalism, the art of the story.
But she’d never really made it out of Queens.
In that way, she’d failed both herself and the car.
But the car brought me all the way here, she thought.
Marvin was a stout man in his early fifties who greeted her with a warm handshake, having just scrubbed his hands of grease. Elena couldn’t remember him from her childhood in Millbrook, but Marvin said he knew her mother pretty well.
“I’ve been fixing her car for years!” he said. “I knew your father, too. He was a great man. He helped me repaint the shed out back.” He gestured vaguely, although from inside the garage, Elena couldn’t see the shed in question.
“I miss him,” Elena offered, her stomach heavy with sadness.
“We all do,” Marvin said. “It’s tough, losing a parent. Everyone has to tackle it in their own way.”
Elena took a deep breath and told herself not to break down. She wondered if Marvin said it that way to let her off the hook for not being here for the funeral.
Marvin had sealed her cash in an envelope that he kept behind his desk.
It all felt quite old-school, which Elena liked.
She checked in the envelope to see a little more than eight hundred dollars, which was only about two hundred less than she’d paid for the thing.
She paid Marvin what he was owed and still had more than enough left over.
“I can’t believe that car made it all the way to Millbrook,” Marvin said, throwing his hands up. “I wouldn’t have driven it as far as the post office!” This was funny because the post office was literally across the street from the auto shop.
As Marvin and Elena chatted for a bit, a surprisingly audacious vehicle snapped into the driveway—a bright red Lamborghini with a convertible top. Elena took a breath and said, “You don’t see something like that every day, especially not here in Millbrook.”
“No, you do not,” Marvin affirmed coldly. “He brought it in about six months ago, though. He likes to drive fast. He wrecks it. You wouldn’t think a judge would be so reckless, would you?”
Elena’s heart lit up like a Christmas tree. “A judge?” But Marvin was already out of the office, preparing to greet the judge. Elena followed him, shoving the envelope of cash into her bag.
The judge who got out of the Lamborghini was in his late fifties, with dyed golden hair and a warm, tan complexion. It was clear that he took numerous vacations and maintained excellent health. That, or it was like they always said: "Evil people never get old."
Was it possible that this was the same judge from the Cranberry Cove who’d said he’d “look the other way” on a construction man’s crimes—all in pursuit of the country club and building project on the opposite end of the cove?
Could this be the man who was out for himself and the other millionaires in town, and no one else?
Elena watched from inside the garage, perking up her ears to try to overhear what the judge and Marvin said.
Twice, the judge cackled in a way that made her head spin.
It seemed likely that he’d crashed the car again, carelessly, and needed Marvin to make his problems go away.
That was what money could do for you, she knew.
“That’s what I pay you for,” the judge said a few minutes later, sounding exasperated. Elena wondered if Marvin was giving the man a hard time.
Marvin hung his head. Elena could see the breath coming from between his lips, fogging in the cold.
Finally, Marvin reached out for the judge’s keys and got into the driver’s side to bring it into the garage.
This forced Elena to get out of the way.
She headed outside, adjusting her bag strap on her shoulder, her eyes on the wealthy judge.
The Lamborghini was loud and abrasive, announcing itself with the engine's roar. The judge looked pleased. Elena walked closer to him, watching his expression as Marvin drove the car inside. It was almost as though she were invisible to him.
And then, he allowed his eyes to fall upon her, and his smile lit up in recognition.
“Goodness me,” he said. “You’re the spitting image of her, aren’t you?”
Elena was caught off guard. She hadn’t expected familiarity in the judge. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your mother,” the judge said, delivering a snide smile. “You look just like her. You could be her twin. Oh, and your grandmother, too.”
Elena’s heart jumped into her throat. If she hadn’t been sure of the judge’s identity before this, she was one hundred percent clear on it now.
“I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” Elena said stiffly.
The judge extended his hand. “Judge Baxter Drury,” he said.
Elena shook his hand and kept his sinister eye contact because she didn’t want him to think she was weak. “A pleasure,” she lied. “How do you know my mother?”
“Everyone knows each other around here,” Judge Drury said with a wink. “And you know as well as I do what kind of woman your mother is, or was.” He let his smile falter and added, “Terrible to hear about her diagnosis.”
Again feeling smacked, Elena was spitting with questions. But all at once, Marvin returned, ready to discuss the work he needed to do on the judge’s car. Marvin gave her a look that meant he wanted her out of his hair so he could deal with Judge Drury. It wasn’t meant to be unkind.
Elena hurried to the newsroom to find Natalie and report on what had just happened.
But when she arrived, she found Natalie up to her ears in other people’s edits about tomorrow’s Christmas articles, proclaiming the importance of the Oxford comma as the other journalists looked on.
Elena texted Natalie: Thank you for doing that!
Looks stressful, then took to her office and sat with her head on the desk.
She sat and ran through everything Judge Drury had said, searching for clues.
It took nearly ten minutes for it to occur to her. How does he know what my grandmother looked like?
Elena popped to her feet, overwhelmed. Baxter Drury was in his late fifties, which made him a full ten years younger than her mother. Rosa Tompkins had passed away in 1960, before Baxter Drury was born.
What did it mean?
Elena’s heartbeat quickened. Unable to think without a keyboard under her fingers, she opened her laptop and typed up a list of potential answers to the current conundrum.
It didn’t mean anything. Baxter Drury obviously has it out for my mother and wants to make me feel strange at all costs.
Baxter Drury has made it his business to know the ins and outs of my journalistic family, if only because he sees us as the only boundary between him and what he wants.
Baxter Drury once saw a photograph of my grandmother.
The list was horrendous and nonsensical, and gave her no sense of the gravity of the situation. But when Elena pulled up a photograph of Rosa Tompkins from the archives, she again encountered a woman who looked tremendously like both her and her mother.
Natalie entered the office to check in, and Elena explained what had happened, plus the strange comments about her mother and grandmother.
“Didn’t you say your grandmother was writing about the mansions at Cranberry Cove even before they were built?” Natalie said, snapping the tips of her fingers against Elena’s desk.
An alarm rang in Elena’s ears. “But that was before he was born. How would he know about that?”
Natalie shrugged. “Did he inherit his house on Cranberry Cove?”
Elena pulled up Millbrook housing records to find that, yes, Judge Baxter Drury had inherited the house from his own father, the previous Millbrook judge, Garrett Drury.
According to a few articles written by Rosa Tompkins herself, Garrett Drury had been instrumental in the fight against the town of Millbrook to secure the right to build on Cranberry Cove.
In an opinion column, Rosa wrote: "It is entirely likely that Judge Drury and his scammy millionaire friends are up to their ears in fraud and hardly hiding it."
From there, it seemed that Rosa had mentioned Garrett Drury more than forty-seven different times over the course of 1957, 1958, 1959, and 1960.
“She was against him in every way,” Natalie said, breathless as they read and read, taking stock of this once-great journalist who’d left so much material for them to make sense of.
“It’s bizarre that the father would tell the son about his female enemy, isn’t it?” Elena asked, scratching her head.
“I don’t know how these judges operate,” Natalie said.
“I mean, she died, for crying out loud,” Elena continued. “You would think he’d have more respect than that.”
Natalie was quiet. Outside, it had grown dark again, and snow spat out of the sky.
When they emerged from the office, they found most of the other journalists all packed up and ready to flee.
It was a cold night—seven degrees—and Elena craved her pajama pants, a cozy sweater, and a movie.
But would her mind let her off the hook?
As she and Natalie walked home, they shivered and discussed the next steps.
“I can’t help but think we’re getting closer and closer,” Natalie whispered, her lips bluing as they neared the downtown Christmas tree.
She stopped for a second and gazed at the stars, then whispered, “Is this what it’s like to be a real reporter?
I feel like I’m constantly inundated with all the horrors of the world.
But I feel like it’s up to me to find them, expose them, and show them they can’t walk all over people. Someone is watching.”
Elena’s heart filled. She threw her arm over Natalie’s shoulder and felt a smile flutter over her lips. Inwardly, she prayed that her mother’s medication was working, that soon, they’d be able to share all this info with Carmen and hear what she thought.
Come on, Mom. We need you. We need your genius mind.