“I understand,” Jocelyn said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You’re a private investigator,” Francine said, pointing to Jocelyn’s business card on the coffee table. “That’s your job. You know, we filed a grievance with the police department years ago. We thought this matter—Sydney’s case—was closed.”
“I’m not with the police, Mrs. Rigo. Sydney’s family hired me. I’m a neutral party.”
Jocelyn heard the lock in the front door turn. A cold blast of air sailed through the room as the door opened and closed.
“Fran,” a male voice called. “They didn’t have escarole, so I just got fresh spinach.”
Jocelyn heard the sounds of plastic bags rustling from what she assumed was the kitchen.
“Francine?”
Cash Rigo pulled up short when he entered the living room. He looked at Jocelyn, then his wife. He had definitely aged and put on about twenty pounds. His cheeks were fuller, his skin beginning to wrinkle. His brown hair showed strands of gray here and there. He didn’t look as fresh as he had in the photo Sydney had taken of him. He was still an attractive man, but he seemed to have lost the shine of youth. He looked tired and insubstantial. Not what Jocelyn expected of a murder suspect. But that was just the thing, wasn’t it? Murderers hardly ever looked murderous.
Francine stood quickly when she saw him, hands still covering her belly. “Honey,” she said. “This is Jocelyn Rush.”
He stepped forward, an uncertain smile on his face, and extended a hand. “Cash Rigo.”
Jocelyn stood and shook his hand.
“She’s here about Sydney Adams,” Francine explained.
Cash’s hand went limp in Jocelyn’s. He pulled it away, face ashen. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
“She’s not with the police,” Francine assured him quickly.
Jocelyn smiled and told him about the scholarship program and fundraiser. “We were hoping you could speak,” she finished. “Talk about the kind of person Sydney was, that sort of thing.”
Cash swallowed again as the color returned to his face. Francine moved closer to him and touched his hand. He looked at her face, a genuine smile breaking across his own.
“It’s in a few weeks. Plenty of time to come up with something. What do you think?” Francine asked.
He looked back at Jocelyn. “Uh sure, I could do that.”
“You remember Sydney, right?” Francine added, her tone bland.
His gaze flickered to his wife momentarily, his face paling again. Jocelyn couldn’t tell if it was panic or incredulity, but he quickly regained his composure. He managed a tight smile for Jocelyn’s sake. “Of course I do.”
Chapter 14
March 5, 2000
Cash Rigo had never been so angry. Not even when he was a teenager, and his little brother totaled the brand new car he’d spent three summers saving for—working for a landscaping business with a shitty boss who was as stupid as he was tyrannical. Or when his best friend made a pass at his wife two weeks before their wedding.
But today his wife had crossed a line.
“Calm down,” she told him as they stood arguing in their living room. It was like telling a tsunami not to crash onto shore. He couldn’t stop himself. His whole body burned and shook with rage. His face was on fire.
Francine put her hands up, a tiny worry line creasing the skin above her nose. “Cash, please.”
But he was a category five hurricane, an F-5 tornado bearing down on their home. He could not be slowed, mollified or reasoned with. A guttural cry issued from his throat as he upended the coffee table, shattering the glass vase with multi-colored marbles in its base and fake flowers in its neck. Francine’s heavy, hardcover coffee table books—a book of Picasso’s art, a book of historical sites in and around Philadelphia, and a photography collection of natural disasters—flew through the air, tumbling in a blur of pages. The sharp corner of one of them landed on top of Francine’s left foot. She was wearing black flats, the delicate skin atop her instep exposed. She let out a yowl and leaped onto the couch, as though escaping a mouse. She clasped her foot with both hands.
“Cash!” she cried.
He kicked the debris scattered on the floor. He didn’t look at his wife. He couldn’t. If he looked at her face, he didn’t know what he’d do.
“How could you?” he hollered, pacing before her. Glass shards from the vase crunched beneath his sneakers. “Why? Why would you bring our personal lives to work like that?”
It wasn’t the first time she’d done it, but it was certainly the worst thing she’d ever shared at their place of employment.
“I was confiding in a friend,” Francine offered.
“A friend?” Cash spat. “Since when is Terri Marvin a friend?”
“Since her husband has trouble getting it up too.” Her words were the sound of the first crack of thunder shattering the pregnant stillness after a lightning strike.
He went after her, jumping like a large feral cat pouncing on its prey. He knocked her backward, curling both hands around her throat and squeezing for all he was worth. The couch back couldn’t hold their combined weight. It flipped, throwing them across the room. He was vaguely aware of the strangled gasp as Francine’s head and back slammed against the living room wall. His hands had come away from her throat in the fall, and now they searched blindly for the soft flesh, raking over her waist, her breasts, tearing at her clothes.
She kicked at him, trying to crawl away, her breath wheezy. Their struggle dislodged the large, wooden decorative sign on the wall above them. The one that said Welcome to Our Happily Ever After. It crashed down on his head, and he threw his arms up to shield himself. The sign bounced off him and tumbled toward his wife, the corner of it hitting her square in the right eye.
Her hands flew to her face, covering her eye. She screamed—an otherworldly howl of pain that instantly brought to mind images of his wife disfigured, with a pulpy, ruined eye, the soft orb pierced by a piece of wood from the sign. The stuff of B-grade horror movies.
“Oh my God, Francine!” he cried. The rage inside him dissipated like a puff of steam, gone instantly. “Francine! Oh my God, Fran. I’m sorry. Let me see your eye. Oh my God, Fran.”
He pulled at her wrists, but she jerked away from him as though he were a live wire, shocking her and sending a scorching current through her whole body. “Don’t touch me,” she shrieked.
She pressed her back into the wall, her legs moving like pistons against the carpet, trying in vain to put some distance between them.
“Fran,” he implored. “Please. Please let me help you. I am so sorry. I don’t know—I wasn’t thinking. I—I—”
Gently this time, he touched her wrists, but she pulled away again. She turned her face, staring at him with her good eye, that eye wide with terror and wet with tears.
Instantly, he felt like the biggest piece of shit on the planet. Just like always. He had failed her again. He had sinned again. He had once more cemented a place for himself in the annals of shitty husbandry. Like when they were seniors in college, and he’d left her alone in their apartment so he could study for finals with the hot girl from his Medieval History class. Now he couldn’t even remember the girl’s goddamn name. Francine had begged him to stay in that night. She hadn’t felt well, was coming down with the flu, and had even offered to help him study. But he didn’t want to stay. So while he was getting a blow job from the hot girl in the library stairwell, someone broke into their apartment and raped Francine.