Murder on K Street - Margaret Truman [18]
Jeannette Simmons, wife of Senator Lyle Simmons, a potential presidential candidate, has been murdered…an anonymous source at MPD said that she was killed with a blunt instrument, a blow to the back of the head…her body was discovered by her husband when he returned from a speaking engagement…there are no suspects at this time, although the police are speaking with “persons of interest”…funeral plans have not been announced…
The article jumped inside the paper to chronicle Senator Simmons’s career and point out that the couple had two grown children: Neil, president of the Marshalk Group; and Polly, a peace activist living in California.
He returned to the front page and gazed at the photo of Lyle and Jeannette, which triggered thoughts of another time and place.
• • •
It was 1970, his senior year at the University of Illinois. Homecoming Weekend was in full swing. The football team had defeated Michigan State, a cause for celebrations on the Urbana-Champaign campus and in student hangouts in town. He had a second reason to celebrate. Earlier that week, he’d been named All Big Ten, second team. He’d called his father with the news.
“That’s good, Philip, very good,” his father said in his Italian-tinged English, “but remember, your studies are the most important thing.”
Phil smiled at his father’s admonition. Their conversations always ended with those words.
His father had come to America from Milan and set up a shoe repair shop in his adopted town, Batavia, New York, outside Buffalo. The shop generated enough money to support the family—two sons and two daughters—but left little for anything other than necessities. Phil and his siblings appreciated their father’s hard work and helped out in the store whenever possible, pitching in with household chores. Unlike the father, their mother resisted assimilating into her new culture. She’d learned little English and kept to herself, limiting her social life to the small Italian American community that had sprung up in Batavia. She was a stern woman who ran the household with precision and an iron hand; the kids said—muttered, really—that she’d taught Mussolini how to keep the trains running on time. She always seemed to be cooking; memories of growing up in that modest home invariably included the smell of simmering tomato sauce and baking bread.
Philip was twelve when his mother died of a burst aneurysm, a congenital defect according to the doctor at the hospital. Philip’s father, never a gregarious man except after consuming too much cheap wine, went into even more of a shell, spending virtually all his waking moments at the shop. Philip’s two older sisters took over most of the household duties with help from their brothers. It was a difficult, challenging time, but the Rotondi children faced it head-on and made it work.
College was out of the question unless scholarships and student-aid packages were involved. The oldest sister felt it was her obligation to help support the family and took a job following graduation as a secretary in an accounting firm. She eventually married a boy she’d dated in high school who worked in his father’s insurance agency. They’d had two sons and appeared happy.
The middle sister, only a year younger than the eldest, enrolled in a community college, supporting herself as a waitress. She excelled in school, and prior to graduating was offered a full scholarship to a New York State university. After a stellar career in college, she went on to law school and was now a corporate attorney in Cleveland.
Philip’s brother, two years younger, floundered during and after high school, to everyone’s disappointment, and ended up drifting through a succession of menial jobs. He eventually moved to Los Angeles, where he thought he might find work as an actor. The last Phil heard, he’d ended up in Las Vegas managing a pawnshop. Married and divorced three times, he’d virtually severed all