WITH THE EXCEPTION of when his team practiced or had a game during the baseball season, sixteen-year-old Paulie Stroebel worked in Hillwood’s service station after school and all day Saturday. The alternative was to help out during those same hours at his parents’ delicatessen a block away on Main Street, something he’d been doing from the time he was seven years old.
Slow academically, but good with things mechanical, he loved to repair cars, and his parents had been understanding of his desire to work for someone else. With unruly blond hair, blue eyes, round cheeks, and a stocky five-foot-eight frame, Paulie was considered a quiet, hardworking employee by his boss at the service station and something of a dopey nerd by his fellow students at Delano High. His one achievement in school was to be on the football team.
On Friday, when word of Andrea Cavanaugh’s murder reached the school, guidance counselors were sent to all the classes to break the news to the students. Paul was in the middle of a study period when Miss Watkins came into his classroom, whispered to the teacher, and rapped on the desk for attention.
“I have very sad news for all of you,” she began. “We have just learned . . .” In halting sentences she informed them that sophomore Andrea Cavanaugh had been killed, the victim of foul play. The reaction was a chorus of shocked gasps and tearful protests.
Then a shouted “No!” silenced the others. Quiet, placid Paulie Stroebel, his face twisted in grief, had sprung to his feet. As his classmates stared at him, his shoulders began to shake. Fierce sobs racked his body, and he ran from the room. As the door closed behind him, he said something in a voice too muffled for most of them to hear. However, the student seated nearest the door later swore that his words were “I can’t believe she’s dead!”
Emma Watkins, the guidance counselor, already stunned by the tragedy, felt as though a knife had gone through her. She was fond of Paulie and understood the isolation of the earnestly plodding student who tried so hard to please.
She herself was positive that the anguished words he shouted were “I didn’t think she was dead.”
That afternoon, for the first time in the six months he’d been working at the service station, Paulie did not show up, nor did he call his boss to explain his absence. When his parents got home that evening, they found him lying on top of the bed, staring at the ceiling, pictures of Andrea scattered beside him.
Both Hans and Anja Wagner Stroebel had been born in Germany, and they immigrated to the United States with their parents when they were children. They had met and married in their late thirties and used their combined savings to open the delicatessen. By nature undemonstrative, they were fiercely protective of their only son.
Everyone who came into the store was talking about the murder, asking each other who could possibly have committed such a terrible crime. The Cavanaughs were regular customers at the deli, and the Stroebels joined in the shocked discussion that Andrea might have been planning to meet someone in the garage on the Westerfield estate.
They agreed that she was pretty, but a bit headstrong. She was supposed to be doing homework with Joan Lashley until nine o’clock, but had left unexpectedly early. Had she planned to meet someone, or had she been waylaid on the way home?
Anja Stroebel acted instinctively when she saw the pictures on her son’s bed. She swooped them up and put them in her pocketbook. At her husband’s questioning glance, she shook her head, indicating that he was to ask no questions. Then she sat down next to Paulie, and put her arms around him.
“Andrea was such a pretty girl,” she said soothingly, her voice heavy with the accent that became stronger when she was upset. “I remember how she congratulated you when you made that great catch and saved the game last spring. Like her other friends, you are very, very sad.”
At first it seemed to Paulie that his mother was talking to him from a distant place. Like her other friends. What did she mean?
“The police will be looking for anyone who has been a particular friend to Andrea, Paulie,” she said slowly but firmly.
“I invited her to a mixer,” he said, the words coming haltingly. “She said she would go with me.”
Anja was sure her son had never asked a girl for a date before. Last year he had refused to go to his sophomore dance.
“Then you liked her, Paulie?”
Paulie Stroebel began to cry. “Mama, I loved her so much.”
“You liked her, Paul,” Anja said insistently. “Try to remember that.”
On Saturday, composed and quietly apologetic for not showing up on Friday afternoon, Paulie Stroebel reported for work at the gas station.
Early Saturday afternoon, Hans Stroebel personally delivered a Virginia ham and salads to the Cavanaugh home and asked their neighbor Mrs. Hilmer, who answered the door, to convey his deepest sympathy to the family.