Bob actually appeared intrigued. “So what would a PR person actually do?”
“She — and I would want it to be a woman, because they’re much better at this sort of thing — would get in touch with the media and make sure some sympathetic stories are written. She’d know the right people to approach, who’d be on our side. Get them to sit down with Jeremy, interview him, see what a decent boy he actually is, not that cartoon big baby they made him out to be through the trial.”
“You know anyone like that?” Bob asked her.
Gloria shook her head. “Madeline might.”
I had my doubts Madeline Plimpton would be on board with this, but in the little time I had spent with these people, I supposed anything was possible.
Bob left the room, shaking his head.
Gloria put the question to me. “Do you know anyone like that, Mr. Weaver?”
“No.”
She frowned. I was becoming a disappointment to her. A fried phone and now this. Here I’d been trying to persuade Jeremy’s mother to stop all her interactions with the world, and now here she was trying to get her son on the Today show.
“Maybe it’s not such a great idea after all,” she said.
I decided to venture an opinion. “The more attention you bring to your situation, the longer the harassment will continue. Things’ll die down eventually.”
Gloria studied me. “Maybe you’re right. When you’re in the middle of something, you want to make it end as fast as you can, but everything you do may just prolong it.”
“Something like that,” I said.
“I’m sure my aunt had you all checked out, Mr. Weaver. But I don’t know much about you. Are you married? Do you have children?”
“I was,” I said. “And I had a son.”
A glint in her eye told me she’d caught onto the past-tense phrasing, certainly where my son was concerned. “Had?” she said.
“It’s a long story.”
She smiled. “Have you ever heard anyone say it’s a short story?”
I smiled back. “I guess not.”
“I’m guessing it’s not a long, happy story.”
“You’d be right about that,” I said.
“You think you’re the only one with troubles,” Gloria said, “and then you realize you’re surrounded by everybody else’s heartbreak.”
For the first time, I felt myself warming to her. “I think you may be onto—”
“What the hell is this about hiring a PR consultant?” Madeline Plimpton said, striding into the room. “Bob just told me about some cockamamie idea of yours to bring someone on board to get your side of the story out? Seriously?”
“Jesus,” Gloria whispered, taking another drink.
“Because a PR person is going to cost you a fortune,” Ms. Plimpton said. “And I don’t know where you’re going to find the money for that.”
“I was thinking out loud!” Gloria shot back. “Okay?”
“Doesn’t sound like any thinking was going on at all,” her aunt said.
I’d had enough.
As I left the kitchen, I grabbed Ms. Plimpton’s laptop and took it with me to the living room. I sat down in a comfy armchair, opened up the computer and a browser, and entered “Jeremy Pilford trial” into the search field. I didn’t really need a lot of background info to perform the duties I was being contracted for, but I wanted a better handle on the cast of characters, and the incident that had precipitated this shit storm.
A few hundred thousand results came back from my search, but I was quickly able to winnow those down to a handful of news accounts that summed things up pretty succinctly.
What I learned was this:
On the evening of June 15, a party was held at the Albany home of Galen Broadhurst. It was more an estate than a home. It sat on ten acres outside the city, about half of it untouched by development. Broadhurst, who had lived alone since the passing of his wife, had a seven-thousand-square-foot house to roam around in, and when he got bored with that, there was an outbuilding where he kept his stable of fancy cars. Three Porsches, one Lamborghini, an old MG, a 1969 American Motors AMX, and a new high-end Audi for daily driving.
The Porsche that I’d just seen on the street here in Promise Falls was not in the garage that night, but sitting in the driveway, right out front of the house.
The party was in celebration of a huge deal Bob Butler had done with Broadhurst, who’d acquired a tract of land in downtown Albany that would enable him to get a state contract to erect several new office buildings. The deal was worth nearly fifty million in future dollars. Butler didn’t own the land, but had represented the seller, and he had been offered the opportunity to be an investor, which had the potential for a huge windfall in the coming year.
I skimmed over the details to get to what I really wanted to know about.
Butler brought Gloria and Jeremy along for the fun. Broadhurst had invited plenty of work associates, and his neighbors, including the McFaddens — Reece and Megan and their daughter Sian (pronounced, as Jeremy’d told me, “Sharn”). Gloria and Jeremy lived close enough that Jeremy and Sian attended the same high school, and knew each other.
A number of the other guests were mentioned in various articles, but the only name I recognized was Wilson. Alicia and Frank Wilson, who were, I suspected, the parents of Charlene.
Alcohol had been flowing freely at the event, and Jeremy had helped himself to several bottles of beer without anyone taking notice. It was calculated that by the time he got behind the wheel of the Porsche, he’d had ten.
Sian had made off with only one bottle, but it was wine, and the coroner’s office testified that she had in all likelihood consumed all of it.
The two of them had been hanging out together out back of the property, lying on the grass, looking at the stars and continuing to drink. At some point, they got up and wandered around to the front of the house, where the Porsche caught Jeremy’s attention. Jeremy’d never really been a car guy, the story said, but even someone who didn’t give a shit about sports cars could appreciate that an old Porsche was a pretty neat vehicle.
He found the car unlocked, got into the driver’s seat, and invited Sian to get in on the other side, which she did. He wanted her to take a picture of him behind the wheel with her phone.
Broadhurst had left the keys in the ashtray — he didn’t smoke so he often tossed them there, at least when the car was right out front of the house, which was a long way in from the road. Jeremy found them, and was searching in frustration for the ignition slot. Instead of being on the steering column, as it is with most cars, including any that Jeremy had ever driven, it was to the left of the wheel, on the dash.
Before he could insert the key, Broadhurst himself came out of the house and spotted what Jeremy was up to. He came around to the driver’s door, opened it, and hauled Jeremy out. Several guests who’d heard the commotion — including Bob and Gloria — had gathered around the open front door and witnessed the whole thing. Sian got out of the Porsche without being asked, and the two teenagers skulked away.
Broadhurst then did something that everyone deemed very, very stupid.
He tossed the keys back into the car’s ashtray.
Even he was willing to concede that had he not been so careless, things would have turned out very differently.
About an hour later, there was a rumbling sound outside the house. No one paid much attention to it. Broadhurst’s 911 was not the only sports car parked out there, and a couple of people had decided to leave early.