I found an interview the police had conducted with
Michelle's violin teacher, a Ms. Delilah Lancaster. Ms. Lancaster was scheduled for her weekly lesson with
Michelle the evening she disappeared. At eight o'clock she showed up, unaware of the situation. According to the report, Ms. Lancaster had seen the police, got spooked, tried to run away, which led to her questioning and being a part of the police report. Delilah had confirmed their relationship, mentioning that Michelle had recently begun working through a book called Solo Pieces for the Inter- mediate Violinist. They had just begun lessons on George
Frideric Handel's "Air," from the Water Music. She had just completed works by Vivaldi and Mendelssohn.
Four years later, when Michelle returned, the first person she asked to speak to was Delilah Lancaster. According to the Oliveiras, nobody was closer to Michelle than Delilah Lancaster. The police ran a cursory investigation into the woman on the chance they'd find some sort of impropriety. They uncovered dozens of e-mail correspondences between the two and many phone calls to and from each other's homes, but they seemed to be more of the gifted student/dedicated teacher variety. Lancaster taught Michelle Bach and Mozart and Vivaldi, fingerboards and upper bouts. She was clearly a gifted student, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Carlos Oliveira remarked to the Meriden Record-
Journal after Michelle's reappearance that socially, his daughter seemed to have withdrawn. She was unsure of herself, timid.
"She spends hours, I mean, hours a day locked in that room of hers, fiddling with the violin as if it's all she's got in the world. We try to push her to go outside, play like a normal girl, but all she cares about are those strings. She used to have so many friends. She was such a popular girl.
At least she's safe now, that's what matters most."
"The music teacher," I said. "I think I'll give Ms.
Delilah a ring. It seems like she was the closest person to
Michelle Oliveira, and spoke to her the most after she came back. All Michelle had left was her violin. If anybody knows anything it might be the music teacher."
I held up the folder. "Can I keep these?"
"Sure," Amanda said. "But I swear, Henry, my career is on the line."
"No worries. I'll take good care of this."
She looked at me, as if debating whether I could be trusted. Finally Amanda stood up. She downed the rest of her coffee, flung it at the garbage. It rattled around and fell in.
"Keep me in the loop, will you? It sickens me to think this has happened to more than one child. That it even happened to one is just…God, horrible."
"You know I will. I know what this means to you. I hope you know what it means to me. And not just from a professional perspective."
"I know." Amanda gathered her purse and began to walk out of the store.
"That's it?"
She looked at me, her eyes a mixture of hurt and confusion.
"That's it," she said. "For now, that's all I can take."
Then Amanda left.
I watched her until the door had closed and Amanda had rounded the corner. It took a moment to regain focus.
I decided the next step was to call Delilah Lancaster. It was clear she and Michelle were very close, to the point where Delilah was contacted before any of Michelle's school friends. I figured there was a reason for that. If the violin was all Michelle had left, I needed to speak to the person who probably influenced her more than any.
I sat in the store for another few minutes, then gathered up the folder and left. I hoped that somewhere, Daniel
Linwood and Michelle Oliveira knew two people were going to fight for them.
13
The next morning I went to Penn Station first thing and bought a ticket on the 148 regional Amtrak en route to
Meriden, Connecticut. Delilah Lancaster was scheduled to meet me. I'd spent the previous night going over her comments, trying to gain a better understanding of her relationship with Michelle Oliveira.
I took a copy of the file on Michelle Oliveira, a copy of that morning's Gazette and a large iced coffee that promptly spilled all over my linen jacket when a kind man with a Prada briefcase elbowed me in the head. I went to the bathroom compartment on the train to clean it, and though I was able to avoid stepping in the unidentified brown goop on the floor, I left with a softball-size blotch on my chest. I debated finding Prada man and throwing him onto the tracks, but I needed my composure. Not to mention I needed to stay out of jail.
When the train pulled out of the station, I cracked open the Gazette and read the story Jack had written for this edition. The piece focused on the looming gentrification of Harlem, how real estate prices were soaring, speculative investors, many of them foreign, were snapping up town houses and condos like they were Junior Mints. The average two-bedroom had nearly doubled in price over the past decade. Foreign investors, emboldened by the weak dollar, were monopolizing the market. The prices Jack quoted quickly confirmed that if I ever desired to buy in
New York rather than rent, I'd either have to win the lottery or find a sugar mama.
The reporting was solid, one of Jack's better recent efforts. Too many of his recent articles felt slapped together, rushed, pieces he forced past Evelyn and the copy editors simply because he was the man. Had the stories been written by a younger reporter who hadn't yet cut his teeth, won major awards and written a shelfful of bestsellers, many of them would have been spiked. The old man needed an intervention. The ink of the newsroom was still the blood that pumped through his veins, but he was a train slowly careening off the tracks. Without some straightening out, the impending crash would permanently derail his career.
The train took about an hour and forty-five minutes to reach Meriden. I finished the Gazette and spent a good twenty minutes staring at an advertisement featuring a man quizzically holding an empty bottle of water before realizing it was hawking Viagra. When the train came to a stop, I noticed a man with a friar's patch of baldness jotting down the ad's
Web site before hustling off the train. One new customer.
I disembarked the train and took in the city of Meriden.
I hadn't spent much time in Connecticut, only having traveled here once to interview a fast-food worker who'd witnessed a murder while on vacation in NYC. A lot of
New Yorkers commuted into the city from parts of Connecticut-Greenwich being a popular hub-in large part due to the ever-booming Manhattan real estate market. For just a thirty-minute train commute, a million bucks could buy you a home or large condo as opposed to a onebedroom with the view of fire escape.
Meriden, though, was no Greenwich.
What struck me first was that the Meriden train station resembled less of an actual station and more like a glorified bus stop. A small hut was the only building on the gravelly lot. It had boarded-up windows, graffiti sprayed layer upon layer. A ticket vending machine sat lonely outside the hut, like a relic from the 1970s. I wasn't even sure if it accepted credit cards. A dirty, bearded man sat on a bench fully asleep, his yellow windbreaker also looking as if it hadn't been removed since long before the man's last shave. He looked comfortable, and clearly wasn't waiting for the train.
The air was cool, but I had no doubt the day would grow hotter throughout the morning. I buttoned up my jacket, stuck my hands in my pockets, and waited. The surrounding buildings were low, squat, though they seemed to have an air of vigor. Fresh coats of paint. Newly cemented sidewalks, clear of footprints and cracks. It looked like a city wrenching itself toward respectability, while experiencing a few hiccups along the way.
As well as brushing up on the Oliveira case file, I also read about the demographics and income of the city of