One would think that the sudden loss of a parent was the most pain that could be felt. Add in a crazy girl with money on the brain and what was looking like some endless days in court and then you have the recipe for an immense amount of pain. Nothing else could possibly surpass that right? Well clearly I needed to stop asking myself these fucking questions because the answers never turned out to be quite what I was looking for. Apparently Fate had never heard of a rhetorical question; Fate’s a bitch.

The cocktails helped to bring the truth forward while numbing the pain of what I was coming to terms with. My husband, the person I shared a life with, the man I slept next to every night, the person I was so sure was my other half… this man had somehow played a hand in my father’s death. As the words rolled through my head over and over like the credits of a movie I became more aware of the current situation. “Holy Shit,” I muttered under my breath. I am sure this was not my first time making said comment because my friend just kept looking at me as if she was waiting for me to snap back to the moment. I could feel the glaze peel off my eyeballs as I finally made a feeble attempt at joining her in the present. “How do you think this played out?” I asked her. “I mean, it all makes perfect sense and it goes right along with the oddities of the scene from my fathers house on the night in question. But how in the hell did these two evil people find each other from across the country?” We need to get some paper and try and map this out, I am much better when I can literally see my train of thought.

There was no way in hell we were giving up our cozy spot in the corner of the bar, and like hell was I ready to close my tab, so my friend meandered up to the bar to ask for any scrap of paper they could muster and a writing utensil. I had worked in restaurants for many years so I knew that asking a bartender or server for a pen was like asking for a kidney. I prayed there was some over achiever on staff who had a SAM’s club pack of pens in their apron.

Luckily, my friend soon wandered back to the table with a pen and one of their paper take out menus. Perfect. I started to write down the players, I placed Steve’s name in one corner of the paper and McCrabben’s in the other. “This represents how far removed they are from one another, now we have to find the connections in between.” I said confidently. This was like a puzzle or a mystery to solve, which might be fun if it wasn’t the destruction of my life we were “playing” with. I placed my name in the center of the paper and Dad’s name right underneath. “We know that both of them knew myself and my father.” My friend suddenly straightened up in her chair like someone had pinched her. “We know it is not going to be family that makes the connections, so let’s start with your Dad’s friends. Do you remember ever hearing about or seeing McCrabben with any of his friends?” She asked.

“Well, she worked for him so there are the guys from Compson Development, but they are long time friends and I don’t see them being any part of this.” I drew a branch off my Dad’s name and wrote their names down anyways, just to cover all the bases. My head started to go through the activities my Dad participated in and I rattled them out loud to my friend. “He golfed at Ridgemont Country Club, had coffee at those trendy places like Spot, he liked to eat out.” Nothing was coming to mind or setting off any real alarms. “Keep thinking my friend urged, there has to be something. Let’s think about your wedding, there had to be people there from all walks of your life and his, and it was just recently.” I rolled my eyes so hard I thought that I would finally see the day when they really would “get stuck in the back of my head” as my mother had always warned. That’s so not what I wanted to think about right now, my wedding and my marriage to someone I was trying to prove to be a murderer! I knew she was right though, my wedding had been full of all of my friends family and acquaintances. Hell, half the guest list was complied of my father’s friends, co workers and business associates. Yep, you guessed it… as if this memory couldn’t get any fucking worse I was forced to recall that McCrabben was present at the event as well. The gold digging whore trying to take everything from me was sitting at table #9 at my wedding. #9, why the hell didn’t she end up at 15 or 16? You know like the one reserved for the band and photographers. I shook the thought from my head because that wasn’t important now. What was important was starting to put more lines of connections on this paper.

I wrote down the names of a few guys that my Dad had invited to my wedding that I could recall making small talk with McCrabben. I wasn’t sure if it was forced politeness or purposefully sought out but it was worth investigating; Frank, Dan, Carl. I started to describe them to my friend to see if she had any insight on the events of the evening that I didn’t. I mean after all, I was more focused on what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, I was unaware that I was supposed to be looking for conspiring murderers that would later take my fathers life, stage a suicide and devise a plan to steal everything he had; silly me for not thinking of that!

My friend didn’t seem to recognize the men I described. “Well did you happen to notice anyone that McCrabben was talking to during the night?” I asked her.

“To be honest I didn’t take much notice of her, I knew she worked for your Dad and she was sitting with the rest of the Compson Development people so I just thought that is how she ended up at your wedding. And shortly after the dancing started…..” my friends voice trailed off as she spoke. ” I went outside to have a cigarette and I went out front because I didn’t want your family to see me standing on the veranda smoking among all the men. It’s a little hazy of a memory because the bartender had a heavy hand on my cosmopolitans but I do remember seeing her hurled over a bush throwing up. Classy. I was going to go over and see if I could get someone for her but she was already on the phone and I figured she was waiting for a ride so I finished my cigarette and headed back in.”

I was sitting on the edge of my seat now, hanging on to her every word hoping that something she said would reveal some truth to what we were thinking. “Did you pass anyone on your way in?” I asked.

“Yeah, I remember only because he held the door for me and well, let’s face it when the fuck does that happen in New York. It was that guy who was in your wedding party, that friend of yours…you know the tall one with the dark hair who lives here in Rochester.” My friend had just described half of the Italian population that made up the city of Rochester. Luckily, the men in my wedding party were all relatives of Steve’s with the exception of one; Martin.

I wrote his name down on the paper right above my name and my father’s.  My friend looked over at the paper curiously. “Who’s that? And what’s the connection?” I was going through the paces of my thoughts faster than I was even able to comprehend them, searching for how Martin ended up in my life in the first place and then a part of my wedding party. I knew him in a few ways but we weren’t fast friends.

“I don’t know that there is one,” I said to her. “But it’s worth walking through our connection to each other to see if it leads us somewhere.” I shrugged my shoulders in a manner that suggested I was asking her opinion. “Agreed” she said firmly. “Go for it.”

“My Dad played beach volleyball every weekend over the summer. Remember? You came with me a few times.” My friend nodded her head. I didn’t expect much more excitement that that, beach volleyball (especially tournaments) could be quite daunting as a child. There is only so much you can do with 12 hours at the beach. “Anyways,” I continued, ” I can remember Martin being at some of the tournaments. We weren’t friends at that time, Martin is about ten years older than I am, and well…. you met my Dad.” So I recall him being present in some of those weekend outing to the beach. A few years ago while I was waiting tables, a few of the girls invited me out for post work cocktails with their friends. I tagged along to see what they were all about. I was re-introduced to Martin through one of the girls from work. It took a while to place him but before the night was over we were able to talk about volleyball tournaments, wearing socks on the blazing hot sand and the obnoxious calls from the lifeguard tower that often interrupted play. He acknowledged that he knew my Dad, but we didn’t get into any details. ”

I hadn’t even noticed but my friend had grabbed the pen and paper from the middle of the table and was taking notes next to Martin’s name and drawing lines. One from me to Martin, and one from Martin to my Dad. “Okay,” I told her, I see how that all works, but how does he fit in with the two main players?”

“Dana, if you weren’t ever really friends with Martin how did he end up in your wedding?” I gasped, not at her question but at the realizations that were surfacing because of it. “Steve” I muttered. “Steve met Martin on one of his trips to San Antonio and they became like best buds overnight.”

“I need more,” my friend stated. ” How exactly did that happen?”

“Well, Martin called me completely out of the blue and told me he had earned a spot in a volleyball tournament in Austin. He said that since he had to come all the way to Texas, he would want to come and visit. The generosity that emanates from my body as a result of having the Dalai Lama for a mother caused me to invite him to stay with us the night before his tournament. Wen went out drinking that evening, showing Martin the Riverwalk and various sights of San Antonio and let’s just say we enjoyed ourselves to excess. The next morning everyone had a hangover that could kill and Martin never did make it to his tournament. At the time I didn’t think it strange because my head was pounding so terribly I wouldn’t have wanted to play a sport, much less in the heat. Martin left the next day back to Rochester.”

My friend continued to write notes on the paper, our connections web was beginning to look like a lot more than a few names written in various corners.

“I figured Steve and Martin had hit it off when we all went out, exchanged numbers and stayed friends. Steve didn’t have many friends, or any for that matter, so I didn’t think much of it when he asked for Martin to stand in our wedding.”

My friend spun the paper around so it was facing me. What my eyes were seeing was unbelievable. All I had done was sit and talk for an hour about a man I met twice through six degrees of separation and it had resulted in this interconnected web that was now visible to my eyes. There was a line from my name to Martin, one from Martin to my Dad and now one from Martin to Steve. “Fuck,” the word slipped out with my exhale. “How could all of that information go right under my nose?

My eyes began to fill with tears because as much as I wanted to know the truth, the pain was still quite evident, fresh and difficult to swallow. I forced back the tears with a deep breath in followed immediately by a big swig of Tanqueray. If someone was going to witness a tear fall, at least they would think it was because my drink was really strong. The thoughts of  true New Yorker, you can’t see my emotional side, but my alcoholic side is totally on parade.

My friend gave a welcomed interruption to my current thoughts. “So now we just need to figure out if Martin and McCrabben ever crossed paths before the wedding, or maybe Martin, Steve and McCrabben. Either way, I think Martin is the link. We just need to dig a little deeper.”

I forced a smile in agreement as my stomach did somersaults with anger, frustration and humiliation of not seeing this until now. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” I am pretty sure this quote was reserved for men that cheated on their wives. What about the men that conspired to kill their wife’s father and steal all of his money? Hell certainly cannot compete with that. And where I was going to take Steve for this, well it was much worse than Hell. In fact, I am pretty sure he was going to wish he had cheated; that is if he hadn’t already.