Bombshell
Page 43
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“Junior didn’t like me any more than I liked him. He didn’t want me around until Barbara died. Then he swallowed his bile, and when I offered he was glad to have me move in to take care of the kids.”
Savich said, “Your sister, Barbara, committed suicide, didn’t she, Ms. Lodge? What was it, two and a half years ago?”
Marian raised a face fierce with warrior rage. “If it was suicide! The coroner called it that, and Barbara’s shrink agreed she was suicidal. But what else would he say when they were feeding her so many drugs, both JP and that damned shrink?”
Talk about a fountain of black suspicion—this woman was Niagara Falls. Sherlock said slowly, “You believe your brother-in-law was responsible for your sister’s death? He fed her drugs that drove her to kill herself?”
“I can’t prove it, but he might as well have. He kept me from seeing her, helping her. She didn’t have a lover in the wings, or any friends to speak to, because JP liked her under his thumb, the ultimate hausfrau. But none of that is important now; both of them are gone and buried. But so is Tommy, isn’t he? He’s dead, too.” She slammed her hand on the kitchen table, her mug teetering before it righted itself again. “He was twenty years old! How can any of us live with that? How can his sisters not have nightmares for the rest of their lives after seeing his dead face on YouTube? How can the Cronins survive this?”
Sherlock wondered if she wasn’t right. Her last thought about the Cronins when she and Dillon had followed Agent Ted Atkinson out of their living room was that they were props of themselves, that the only thing keeping them going at all was the promise of catching Tommy’s killer. What would happen to them once they did catch Tommy’s killer? They’d have no focus, no reason to continue.
Savich said quietly, “We’d like to ask you a few questions about Tommy, Ms. Lodge. Apart from his girlfriend, Melissa, was there anything else recently that caused you to worry about Tommy? Any change in his behavior or grades, any sign he was in trouble?”
She shrugged. “As I said, I barely saw him the last month he was alive. Did his friends at school tell you something like that?”
“We’re talking with his dorm mates, his professors, checking his room and his computer, but no, they have not, Ms. Lodge. What can you tell us yourself about Tommy’s friends?”
She cocked her head at them. “But I thought this was a domestic terrorist act committed by someone who’d been crushed by the banking collapse and blamed Palmer.”
“We are looking at all the possibilities,” Sherlock said.
“Tommy had two main friends, together since they were kids—I used to call them little jerk faces, even after Tommy turned twenty last October. They’d come by with him after classes at Magdalene sometimes, try to kiss up to me or try to hit on Marla. She’s seventeen, the older of Tommy’s two sisters, and a looker, like her mom. Joanie is only fifteen, so she was safe from Tommy’s friends, only giggled a lot around them. Most of them were geeks, trying to grow out of it, like Tommy, and like most geeks that age, they had a long way to go. I mean, they’d play at speaking Klingon, but try to carry on an adult conversation with them in English?—Good luck. Except for Peter Biaggini—now, he’s a piece of work. Peter’s really smart, not a geek bone in his body. Sometimes I wanted to quash him like a bug.”
“The Cronins felt he dominated Tommy,” Sherlock said. “What did you think?”
“Peter was something like the Fonzie of the group. The one with some social graces as well as brains, and they all seemed to let him take the lead. Peter didn’t talk to me or the girls too much, like he was too busy handling the controls to waste time talking to the underlings. I remember asking him if he was like his father. He gave me an angry look—it was gone real fast. Then he said his dad was dead. I asked Tommy about Peter’s father, and he told me he wasn’t dead, he ran a beauty-supply company with franchise stores all over the country. He said Peter didn’t like to talk about his father, that he was ashamed of him for being so ordinary, for selling cosmetics—the Hair Spray King, he called him. But Tommy really liked Mr. Biaggini, said he was a great guy, always doing stuff for the kids.”
She went on to tell them of how thoughtful Tommy Cronin had been to her and his sisters, until Melissa Ivy had come into his life.
“Do you know what Tommy’s aspirations were, Ms. Lodge?”
“He was already studying banking and finance, like his father and grandfather, and he was ambitious, too, like both of them. He joked about running Deutsche Bank by the time he was thirty.
Savich said, “Your sister, Barbara, committed suicide, didn’t she, Ms. Lodge? What was it, two and a half years ago?”
Marian raised a face fierce with warrior rage. “If it was suicide! The coroner called it that, and Barbara’s shrink agreed she was suicidal. But what else would he say when they were feeding her so many drugs, both JP and that damned shrink?”
Talk about a fountain of black suspicion—this woman was Niagara Falls. Sherlock said slowly, “You believe your brother-in-law was responsible for your sister’s death? He fed her drugs that drove her to kill herself?”
“I can’t prove it, but he might as well have. He kept me from seeing her, helping her. She didn’t have a lover in the wings, or any friends to speak to, because JP liked her under his thumb, the ultimate hausfrau. But none of that is important now; both of them are gone and buried. But so is Tommy, isn’t he? He’s dead, too.” She slammed her hand on the kitchen table, her mug teetering before it righted itself again. “He was twenty years old! How can any of us live with that? How can his sisters not have nightmares for the rest of their lives after seeing his dead face on YouTube? How can the Cronins survive this?”
Sherlock wondered if she wasn’t right. Her last thought about the Cronins when she and Dillon had followed Agent Ted Atkinson out of their living room was that they were props of themselves, that the only thing keeping them going at all was the promise of catching Tommy’s killer. What would happen to them once they did catch Tommy’s killer? They’d have no focus, no reason to continue.
Savich said quietly, “We’d like to ask you a few questions about Tommy, Ms. Lodge. Apart from his girlfriend, Melissa, was there anything else recently that caused you to worry about Tommy? Any change in his behavior or grades, any sign he was in trouble?”
She shrugged. “As I said, I barely saw him the last month he was alive. Did his friends at school tell you something like that?”
“We’re talking with his dorm mates, his professors, checking his room and his computer, but no, they have not, Ms. Lodge. What can you tell us yourself about Tommy’s friends?”
She cocked her head at them. “But I thought this was a domestic terrorist act committed by someone who’d been crushed by the banking collapse and blamed Palmer.”
“We are looking at all the possibilities,” Sherlock said.
“Tommy had two main friends, together since they were kids—I used to call them little jerk faces, even after Tommy turned twenty last October. They’d come by with him after classes at Magdalene sometimes, try to kiss up to me or try to hit on Marla. She’s seventeen, the older of Tommy’s two sisters, and a looker, like her mom. Joanie is only fifteen, so she was safe from Tommy’s friends, only giggled a lot around them. Most of them were geeks, trying to grow out of it, like Tommy, and like most geeks that age, they had a long way to go. I mean, they’d play at speaking Klingon, but try to carry on an adult conversation with them in English?—Good luck. Except for Peter Biaggini—now, he’s a piece of work. Peter’s really smart, not a geek bone in his body. Sometimes I wanted to quash him like a bug.”
“The Cronins felt he dominated Tommy,” Sherlock said. “What did you think?”
“Peter was something like the Fonzie of the group. The one with some social graces as well as brains, and they all seemed to let him take the lead. Peter didn’t talk to me or the girls too much, like he was too busy handling the controls to waste time talking to the underlings. I remember asking him if he was like his father. He gave me an angry look—it was gone real fast. Then he said his dad was dead. I asked Tommy about Peter’s father, and he told me he wasn’t dead, he ran a beauty-supply company with franchise stores all over the country. He said Peter didn’t like to talk about his father, that he was ashamed of him for being so ordinary, for selling cosmetics—the Hair Spray King, he called him. But Tommy really liked Mr. Biaggini, said he was a great guy, always doing stuff for the kids.”
She went on to tell them of how thoughtful Tommy Cronin had been to her and his sisters, until Melissa Ivy had come into his life.
“Do you know what Tommy’s aspirations were, Ms. Lodge?”
“He was already studying banking and finance, like his father and grandfather, and he was ambitious, too, like both of them. He joked about running Deutsche Bank by the time he was thirty.
