Molly couldn’t hold her tongue. “But you sent her to Sacred Heart all those years.”
“My folks paid for it. Said they didn’t want Ginny to turn out like me. Imagine my own folks saying that. Really knew how to hurt a girl. You got another drink there, Jesse? Suddenly I’m not feeling so chipper.”
Jesse poured her another short one just to get her through the remainder of the interview.
When she was done, Jesse went back to the interviews Maxie Connolly had done with the police in the immediate wake of the girls’ disappearance. Although the years had eroded her memory somewhat, her statement was consistent with what she had told the police back then. She was watching TV when Ginny went to meet Mary Kate and her other friends at the park for the fireworks and concert. She met friends for dinner. Had a few drinks. Got home around eleven-thirty on the Fourth. She went to bed and was woken up by a panicked call from Tess O’Hara early in the morning.
Jesse explained that he could release the remains to her as soon as she could arrange for a place to take Ginny. That did it. Maxie fell off her chair onto her hands and knees and wailed. She was shaking uncontrollably. Jesse turned to Molly for help, but she was frozen. Molly’s eyes were as distant as Jesse had ever seen them.
“Molly!” he said as he knelt down beside Maxie Connolly. He threw his arm over her shoulders. “Molly! Get her a glass of water or something. Then take Mrs. Connolly into the ladies’ room.”
Molly finally snapped out of it, though her eyes were still very far away.
Twenty minutes later, Suit was driving Maxie Connolly to her hotel. Molly was sitting across from Jesse. He said nothing. Molly knew all about Jesse and his silence. She was determined not to talk, but somehow words came out of her mouth.
“I’m sorry, Jesse. I hate that woman. I guess I always have. I thought maybe it would have gone away after all these years. That’s why I didn’t say anything when you had me go pick her up. But it’s worse now.”
Jesse nodded.
“Maxie never gave a rat’s ass about Ginny. Ginny did everything for herself. Made her own meals, washed her own clothes. She cleaned the house. Shopped. Got herself up in the morning. The only real parenting she ever got was from my folks. She raised herself. So of course it killed her to go to her mother about her first period. You won’t understand this, Jesse, but when a girl gets her period it can be special or terrible. It’s a little bit of both, I guess. Especially for a Catholic girl. We’re raised in such a schizophrenic way about that stuff. Sex is made so taboo, but having children is so meaningful. I don’t know.”
“What aren’t you saying, Molly?”
“About what?”
“You tell me.”
“Maxie Connolly was a whore and a drunk. Still is, as far as I can tell.”
Jesse opened his mouth to speak, but Molly cut him off.
“And don’t even bring up Crow to me. That was different. It was only once and it was only about sex and curiosity.”
Jesse shook his head. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
Molly flushed.
“All I was going to say was that everybody is entitled to their grief, Molly. Even Maxie Connolly. You don’t have to like her to give her that. Now, get home. We’ve got an early start tomorrow.”
As he watched Molly walk away, Jesse realized just how little he knew about her.
19
Stu Cromwell kept a bottle in his drawer as well. Officially, cops and reporters were wary of the other, but they often shared common vices.
“Hope you like rye,” Cromwell said, sliding the glass across his desk to Jesse. “It was my dad’s drink. For years I wouldn’t go near the stuff for just that reason. Now I can’t stay away from it.”
“When it’s the only thing on the drink menu, it’s my favorite.”
They clinked glasses.
After a sip or two, Cromwell said, “I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
“And I didn’t expect to be here.”
“You here to talk or to drink?”
“A little bit of both, Stu.”
“Well, we drank some. Now you want to talk some?”
Jesse said, “What did you make of all those reporters at the press conference today?”
Cromwell screwed up his face. “Reporters! Those weren’t reporters. They were leeches. Most of them will disappear in two or three days. Once the next starlet has an affair or shows up at a club holding hands with another woman, they’ll clear out and move on.”
“You sound bitter, Stu. That the rye talking or you?”
“Guess I’m a little jealous. Guarantee you any one of those jackals makes more money than I ever did or will. None of them have any real journalism training. Most are failed actors, but it’s tough to knock them taking the money. And there’s no real future for newspapers. Let’s face it, Jesse, this paper might not be long for this world. I spend more time on the phone with my creditors than with Martha’s oncologists.”
“You seem to know a lot about the enemy,” Jesse said.
“Journalism is a small fraternity that’s shrinking by the day. When I was in college, I didn’t like all my fraternity brothers, either, but I knew a lot about them.”
Cromwell poured them both a little more rye.
“Anything else, Jesse?”
“Maxie Connolly.”
Cromwell gave a tight-lipped smile. “What about her?”
“Was she always such a — such a brassy—”
“I believe the word you’re struggling for is broad.”
Jesse laughed. “I was thinking character, but broad works.”
“She got around.”
“Stu, you just called her a broad. This is no time to go polite on me.”
“She screwed around and she wasn’t choosy about her bedmate’s marital status, but the cops looked into that back then. You must have it in your files. They interviewed all of her beaus. Most of them didn’t even know Maxie had a daughter. At least she had the good taste to keep the men out of her own house.”
“Any men the cops didn’t know about?” Jesse asked.
Cromwell hesitated for a beat, then turned his palms up. “None that we could find, and we looked hard,” he said, his voice strained.
“Did you know her?”
“Maxie Connolly?” He cleared his throat. “By reputation only until the girls disappeared. You’d see her around town. She was hard to miss, if you know what I mean. Back in the day, she was quite a looker, in a cheap and loud sort of way. How’s she looking these days?”
“Still loud, but she’s forsaken cheap. She was wearing a mink coat and jewelry worth more than a few years’ worth of my salary. But after I told her she could pick up Ginny’s remains, she wasn’t looking so well.”
The newspaperman nodded. “I think everyone assumed Maxie didn’t really give a tinker’s damn about her daughter, but you can never know how someone feels just by looking from the outside in.”
Jesse stood. Shook Cromwell’s hand. “Thanks for the drink. Next time, the drinks are on me.”
“Now I’ve got a question for you, Jesse. If you don’t mind?”
“Shoot.”
“Why did you withhold Ginny Connolly’s cause of death? It was easy enough for me to find out the likely COD was a severely fractured skull. Besides, you know that stuff will become public knowledge soon enough. Were you going to use it to sort out the crazies?”