Page 27 of A Week Away
She sighed. “They were fighting a lot, more than usual. Joanne wanted to go back to school to be a paralegal.”
“And he said no?”
She shook her head. “He said yes. But he wanted her to wait until Cass was in school all day. It would have been two years. I thought he was being reasonable. Everyone thought he was being reasonable.”
“So he disappeared and she became a paralegal?”
“She signed up for some course almost right away. My parents would babysit for her. Not because they wanted to help her, but it was really the only way to see Cass. It wasn’t a long class, and then she was working for Mr. Cray in Novi. Almost right away.”
“And this is the guy she still works for?”
“Yeah,” Cass said.
I decided to ask about him later, when Cass and I were alone. I changed direction. “Did your parents ever report your brother missing?”
“Of course they did. Nothing happened, though.”
“Do you know why?”
“Because the police believed Joanne. She said he ran off and they believed her.”
“All his things were gone,” Cass said.
“She could have packed them up and gotten rid of them,” Aunt Suzie said. Her voice was gentle and kind. I got the impression she’d been waiting a long time for this conversation. She was probably right, too, since we proved she’d sold his papers. I glanced at the kid. There was struggle on his face. He seemed unprepared for the direction this might take.
“He must have had a car,” I said.
That brought a smile to her face. “Boy did he have a car. A ’68 Plymouth Barracuda. Fastback. Matador red. Lord, he loved that car. Babied it. Washed it every week. It was in amazing condition.”
“So that’s a family thing? You Reillys love your Plymouths?”
“I’ve got a Voyager in the garage.”
Not on par with a classic from the fifties or sixties, but I smiled anyway. “If your brother didn’t run off, what do you think happened to the car? Chop shop?”
She shrugged. “In 1982 there would have been a number of possibilities. Chop shop, yes. Or it could have been smuggled out of the country and sold somewhere that doesn’t look too closely at registrations. If you wanted to keep it in the US—well, by that point there would have been a lot of Barracudas in junkyards, so you could have swapped a couple of VINs with a car that’s been totaled.”
“Wait. Explain that a little more. I know what a VIN is, but why do you need more than one?”
“Ah. The VIN number for each car is put in various locations. That car had the number on the dashboard. The same number would have been somewhere in the engine. And also on the frame. Some of the locations are easy to change out, others are not. You change the number in a couple of locations and then get a salvage title based on the totaled vehicle. It would have lowered the value of the car, but that doesn’t always matter. Plus, there are ways to get a clean title at some point.”
“So the car just disappeared?”
“Maybe. As far as I know it’s never been found—not that the police are looking for it. It wouldn’t have been hard to drive it down to Indiana or Ohio and do a private sale. It could be legally registered and insured somewhere and we’d have no idea. Particularly if it’s on its third or fourth owner.”
“Do you have the VIN number?”
“I don’t. I wouldn’t. It would be with Dom’s things. Which Joanne says are long gone. Maybe it’s somewhere in her house, but she’s not about to let us search for it.”
She glanced at Cass, but he was looking at the ceiling. I tried to figure out if she’d ever asked to be allowed to search the house. She might not have. Clearly, he was touchy about his mother. Backing off, I said, “Even if we found the car, it wouldn’t mean anything. Dom could have sold it himself.”
I decided not to mention that if Dom was at the bottom of Lake Erie his car might be with him. Not to mention there were about a thousand other lakes in Michigan he could be at the bottom of.
“Did your brother have any connection to The Partnership?”
“Was he in the mob? No. He wasn’t.”
“I meant, would they want to get rid of him for any reason?”
