Harm's Reach

57

Janine’s phone started to vibrate. She took it out. She leaned in to Ren and whispered. ‘It’s a New York number... I think it’s Carolina Vescovi. I’m going to step outside.’

‘Sure, go ahead,’ said Ren.

She took out her phone and texted Everett.

Boy at ranch lent phone to Conor Gorman, says he heard him talking about Robert Prince and fraud — Kohler processing phone records. Any updates? Also, where is RP? Anything on flight records?

Ren turned back to Jesse. ‘I need you to think where Conor might have gone.’

‘Conor could go anywhere,’ said Jesse. ‘He doesn’t give a... he doesn’t care.’

‘OK,’ said Ren, ‘tell me the rest. You fought in the restroom...’

‘Yes,’ said Jesse. ‘And then we were out in the hallway... and out by the stables.’

‘And then what happened?’ said Ren.

Her phone beeped with a text from Everett.

On the case. Will call pleasantly.

‘We shouted at each other a little more,’ said Jesse, ‘and that’s when he punched me in the face. He split the skin. He stormed off. I couldn’t see. There was blood pouring into my eye.’

‘Jesse — did Conor say he was annoyed at you for tidying the cemetery?’ said Ren.

‘Yes, but I don’t know what it had to do with him. I mean, he trashed it — he’s the one people should be mad at. I don’t get it.’

Then it hit her. Tidying it up was the issue. When Jesse tidied up, he uncovered the headstones, including the one that revealed Delores Ward’s secret. For Conor to have gone and broken that exact headstone is a little too coincidental, meaning that Conor knows Delores Ward... and perhaps he owed her a favor or was expecting one in return. But why? What could a woman like Delores Ward have done for Conor Gorman?

Outside in the hallway, Janine picked up the call from Carolina Vescovi.

‘I’m sorry for getting off the phone so abruptly,’ said Carolina.

‘That’s OK,’ said Janine. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘I... I... guess I never believed that people could bury a memory like this,’ said Carolina. ‘But... but I had,’ she said. ‘That woman in the photograph. She was... I was eight years old. I remember I was in the restaurant, we used to live above it. I was supposed to be in my room, but I had snuck down and I was playing in the coat check. I was sitting on the floor underneath where the coats were hanging down from the rail. And... a man came over to me and he started talking to me. He crouched down, told me how pretty I was. I remember him reaching out, rubbing my cheek. It was horrible. I was terrified. And then, this beautiful face appeared. This face right here in front of me. Viggi Leinster. But she looked as terrified as I was. And she put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. I remember her beautiful red nails and how her knuckles turned white. She said to him, “Come on, now, honey. Our table is ready.” He looked really angry. When he was out of the way, this woman reached out, took my hand and pulled me up to standing.

‘She said, “Sweetheart, you run along up to your house and never, ever, come down here on your own again. And if you see that man again, you make sure you don’t talk to him.”’ Carolina paused. ‘A couple of nights later, I saw him again. I was looking out the window in the back courtyard. And I saw my father roaring and shouting at him. It was Walter Prince. It was only when I saw her face that I connected the two.’

Janine’s heart was pounding.

‘I spoke with my mother about that time,’ said Carolina. ‘She said that Viggi Leinster kind of burst onto the scene on the arm of Walter Prince. There was a huge age gap that no one spoke of, but Mom reckons that Viggi couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old. I couldn’t believe it, but you know... when you’re young, you think everyone is so much older than they are. Apparently, she used to tell people she was going to be an actress. Silver screen or no silver screen, this girl shone, my mother said.

‘No one had heard of Walter Prince in New York and, at first, they passed themselves off, not as husband and wife, but as father and daughter. How creepy is that? They lived in a beautiful apartment, they led a glamorous social life, they hosted parties. They were popular people. Anyway, eventually, their secret came out. But all it seemed to do was make them even more exotic. And then? She was gone, and he was gone. I’m saving the worst till last. The reason there are no statements from my parents in the police report is because they were paid off by Walter Prince. Everyone in the restaurant that night was paid off.’

‘Even the kitchen staff, busboys?’ said Janine.

‘Yes,’ said Carolina.

‘One of them said that Viggi was having an affair with a man called Angelo Marianelli,’ said Janine.

‘I can tell you for sure that was not true,’ said Carolina. ‘Angelo Marianelli was gay. Closeted, but I know my parents knew.’

‘Did you know he disappeared six weeks after Viggi?’ said Janine.

‘No, I did not,’ said Carolina, ‘but it all sounds very strange...’

‘Thank you so much for finding all this out for me,’ said Janine.

‘I want to tell you, though, my mother is very, very sorry,’ said Carolina. ‘She’s lived with this for so long.’ She paused. ‘And that poor woman’s family... what must it have been like? God help them.’

Janine didn’t tell her that she had never known a thing about Viggi Leinster’s family. It was as if she was beamed down from above, a falling starlet with a blank-slate past.

Janine was reeling. Walter Prince had been a pedophile. He had abandoned his family in Butte, traveled to New York with a girl young enough to be his daughter. He had preyed on an eight-year-old girl under her parents’ noses. It seemed like the only thing that stopped it going any further was the intervention of Viggi Leinster... who disappeared shortly afterwards. Poor, dear Viggi Leinster. And a paid-off kitchen porter sent the rumor out that Viggi Leinster had run away with another man and they had lived happily ever after, location unknown. So what happened? Did Walter Prince follow them and have them both killed? Or had Viggi been killed the night of the film premiere and the sighting in Denver was a hoax? Had Marianelli been sent to look for her? Had he found her? Had he killed her? Did Walter Prince worry that she would reveal his secret? Was it a secret?

Then it hit her. The Orchard Girls. The vigilante attack. Walter Prince led the posse of men, not because he was honorable, not because he wanted justice, but so he could lay the blame at a dead man’s feet, so he could play the hero. It was pedophile Walter Prince who murdered those three little girls when he was only sixteen years old.