Free Fall

3

So, basically, we’re in a “she said/she said” situation.

Both sides give completely different versions of what happened and the one semi-independent witness, Mrs. Oppenheimer’s son, can only tell us that he saw the two women whaling on each other in his living room.

So I ask all three parties to write up their statements-in separate rooms. Santucci and I will head back to the house (that’s what we call the SHPD headquarters) and fill out a “review only” Case Report. In other words, there isn’t enough evidence to request an arrest warrant or to charge anybody with anything. Just enough for me to hunt and peck through the paperwork.

Fortunately, Christine agrees to leave the Oppenheimer residence.

“Permanently,” sneers Mrs. Oppenheimer before I separate the parties again.

“Do you have someplace safe you can go?” I ask Christine when her former employer is out of the room.

“Yes. I also work for Dr. Rosen. I’ll be fine.”

Santucci and I head back to the house and do our duty.

I type up our report with one finger on the computer. If I could text it with my thumbs, it would take a lot less time.

A little after eleven, I climb into my Jeep and head for home. On the way, I stop at Pizza My Heart and pick up a slice. With sausage and peppers.

I blame my heartburn on Santucci.

I’m sacked out and dreaming about driving a jumbo jet down the New Jersey Turnpike, looking for a rest stop with a parking lot big enough for a 747, when my cell starts singing Bruce Springsteen’s “Land Of Hope And Dreams.” That’s not part of the dream. That’s my ringtone for John Ceepak.

“Hey,” I mumble.

“Sorry to wake you.”

I squint. The blurry red digits tell me it’s 2:57 A.M.

“That’s okay. I had to get up to answer the phone anyway.”

“We have a situation.”

“Is everything okay with Rita? Your mom?”

“Affirmative. However, I was having difficulty falling asleep this evening so I went into the other room to monitor my police scanner.”

Yes, some people drink a glass of warm milk or pop an Ambien. Ceepak? He chills with cop chatter.

“Do you remember Katie Landry’s emergency room nurse friend Christine Lemonopolous?” he asks.

“Sure. In fact, she was involved in an incident a couple hours ago down in Beach Crest Heights. Santucci and I took statements.”

“I heard her name come across the radio. Cam Boyce and Brad Hartman were working the night shift when nine-one-one received a complaint of a woman sleeping in her car outside a residential property in Cedar Knoll Heights. They investigated and identified the ‘vagrant’ as Christine Lemonopolous.”

“Where are you now?”

“Eighteen-eighteen Beach Lane in the Heights.”

“I’m on my way.”

You may think it odd that Ceepak would run out of his house at two-thirty in the morning to make sure a woman he barely knows is okay.

Not me.

I’ve been working with the guy for a while now. This is what he does. He jumps in and helps first, asks questions later.

Before he came to Sea Haven, Ceepak was an MP over in Iraq, where he won just about every medal the Army gives out including several for rushing in and saving the lives of guys he didn’t know-even when common sense (and my intestines) would’ve said run the other way.

Cedar Knoll Heights is, as the name suggests, a slightly elevated stretch of land overlooking the beach. That elevation? It saved the million-dollar homes lining Beach Lane in The Heights from Super Storm Sandy’s full wrath and fury.

When I reach 1818, I see Ceepak’s six-two silhouette standing ramrod straight beside a dinged-up VW bug. It’s not Ceepak’s ride. He drives a dinged-up Toyota.

The VW is parked in a crackled asphalt driveway leading up to a three-story mansion. The lawn is a tangle of sand, weeds, and sea grass.

“Thanks for joining me,” says Ceepak.

I know I must look like crap, having crawled out of the rack with chin drool and bed hair, a problem Ceepak will never know. He’s thirty-seven, been out of the Army for a few years, but still goes with the high-and-tight military cut.

Christine waves to me from behind the wheel of her VW.

I wave back.

I haven’t seen Christine Lemonopolous in years. Now, we bump into each other twice in one night.

Ceepak motions for me to step out to the street with him.

He wants to discuss something “in private.”

“So, you and Santucci sent Ms. Lemonopolous up here to Dr. Rosen’s home?”

“Right. She told me Dr. Rosen would let her spend the night.”

Ceepak cocks an eyebrow. “In the driveway?”

“No. She’s one of his home health aides. I figured he had a spare room for her.”

“Perhaps. But Ms. Lemonopolous never requested accommodations from Dr. Rosen. Not wishing to disturb his rest, she chose, instead, to spend the night in her vehicle. Neighbors complained. Boyce and Hartman swung by to arrest her for vagrancy.”

“Now what?” I ask.

“I promised Cam and Brad that we would find a more appropriate venue for Christine to spend the night.”

And Ceepak is a man of his word.

“Well, she can’t go back to where she’s been staying,” I say. “There was an altercation. And she doesn’t have a place of her own.”

“So she informed me. Christine has hit hard times, Danny.”

“You guys talked?”

Ceepak nods. “Apparently, she left her high-paying position in the trauma center at Mainland Medical.”

“Did she say why?”

Ceepak shakes his head. “Nor did I ask. At this juncture, it is none of my business. I have no need to pry into her personal affairs.”

Like I said earlier, it’s been a rough year for a lot of folks in Sea Haven. Ceepak’s wife, Rita, for instance, lost her catering business when all the big parties and beach bashes quit pitching their tents around town-even before Sandy blew into town. She’s back waitressing at Morgan’s Surf and Turf.

I glance at my watch. 3:22 A.M.

“Christine is due back here for her nursing shift at oh-seven-hundred hours,” says Ceepak.

So, she could grab some more Z’s-if we can find a place for her to crash for a few hours.

“I was hoping, Danny, that, given your numerous female friends, you might know someone who could take Christine in for the remainder of the night.”

I go down a mental checklist. I do have a lot of gal pals. Kara Cerise. Barb Schlichting. Dawn Scovill. Heidi Noroozy. What can I say? It was a long, cold, lonely winter. But I don’t know any of those ladies well enough to barge in on them at three-thirty in the morning with a stray cat.

And I can’t have her stay at my place. It’s tiny. Christine’s a curvaceous hottie. Do the math.

Ceepak can’t take Christine to his apartment, either. His adopted son, T.J., may be off at the Naval Academy in Annapolis (freeing up the fold-out sofa) but he and his wife (plus Barkley the dog) share a very cramped one-bedroom apartment over the Bagel Lagoon bake shop. Ceepak’s mother moved to Sea Haven last winter, but she’s in an “adults only” condo complex. And by adults, they mean people over the age of fifty-five without kids or grandkids.

“Should we take her to the house?” I suggest. “Let her bunk in one of the jail cells?”

“Probably not our best option,” says Ceepak.

Finally, it hits me. “How ’bout Becca?”

Our mutual friend Becca Adkinson’s family runs the Mussel Beach Motel. It’s the first week of June. The summer season won’t really start for another couple of weeks. They probably have a few vacant rooms.

“Excellent suggestion, Danny.”

Yeah. I just hope Becca and her dad agree.

Oh, by the way, Becca’s father, Mr. Adkinson? He’s the guy who ran for mayor against Hubert H. Sinclair.

The guy who lost.