Suzanne Trauth Interviews Connie Tucker from The First to Die
Connie Tucker from The First to Die
Connie Tucker, a free-spirited beach bartender, has been estranged from her family in New Jersey ever since her actress mother, Simone, disappeared one night during a violent storm at the theatre where she was rehearsing. Uncontrollable and in a rage at the loss of her parent, fifteen-year-old Connie is exiled to California, due to her delinquent behavior, to live with an aunt she doesn’t know.
Now, fifteen years later, Simone’s murdered remains are discovered at a construction site and Connie returns to the east coast for the funeral—she owes it to her mother. The cold case unit will take over now and solve the crime. But then she discovers a message her mother left behind. It feels like a dispatch from the grave. Connie must face her tortured past, the guilt of concealing a devastating secret, and the part she played in her mother’s disappearance. Unearthing buried family history and childhood demons, she confronts the agonizing reality that she doesn’t know where she belongs, where to call home. Who to trust.
When a second suspicious death occurs, Connie races to unravel the events of the night Simone disappeared. Her mother was the first to die…but not the last.
Her interrogation is all in her mind…
I’m going to my childhood home. On a red eye that will land in Newark, NJ tomorrow morning. To see my mother buried; she disappeared fifteen years ago. My mind is racing, questions assaulting me. It’s like I am arguing with myself. My stomach is a tight fist, my eyes dry and red, My skin clammy and cold. I need sleep. Maybe I should have stayed in California.
Q. Face facts. Would it have been easier to live your life without knowing what happened to your mother?
CT. (pulling my travel blanket around my shoulders) Maybe. Probably. I did such a great job of burying that time, burying that night. The night she disappeared…
Q. Not really, right? All that burying? Never happened.
CT. One choice changed everything for me. My decision to find Mom backstage. I heard and saw things I shouldn’t have. Fifteen years ago.
Q. One choice back then. And look what it got you.
CT. Alienated from my family and everybody I knew growing up. To live with an aunt, a near stranger until I was eighteen. I don’t think she wanted me there any more than I wanted to be there.
Q. But you escaped…
CT. College for a couple of years…odd jobs…then wandering up and down southern California beaches for a decade. No ties to my past. No one to answer to. In limbo. Then, ripping through the veneer of pretend-contentment I’d created came a bolt out of the blue: someone discovered Mom’s remains.
Q. You should have been glad to hear this. What kind of a daughter are you?
CT. The kind that is overwhelmed. Shocked. Angry all over again. Guilty. I wanted to bury myself in the sand and never reappear.
Q. But you couldn’t.
CT. I owe it to her. To Mom…to go…to New Jersey.
Q. Jersey. Right. Can’t say the word “home” can you? You know who’s waiting to see you there? Your father and sister—
CT. –my father and sister. I know! I haven’t thought about them in years—
Q. Liar! Who’re you kidding?
CT. All right!
Q. Still, you’ve got a sweet life out here. New Jersey was never like this.
CT. I know.
(Images come to mind—sun, the ocean, warm days, irresponsible nights, dancing to tunes while I tend bar; generous tips from customers; a single room and shared bath in the rambling Victorian on Walter Street. Then there’s New Jersey. A gritty, gray, middle-class community on the outskirts of Newark.)
CT. My nerves are a jumble. How am I going to react to seeing family and old friends?
Q. Try breathing.
CT. How are they going to feel about me? I left in a rage fifteen years ago. Thrown out of the only home I’d known—
Q. Thrown out? Isn’t that a little dramatic?
CT. Dumped thousands of miles away on a relative I’d never met—
Q. She’s your mother’s sister—
CT. (frustrated) The hell with them. They should be nervous to see me.
A pause.
Q. You said guilt. What was that about? Blaming yourself for your mother’s death? You didn’t have that kind of power.
CT. I had power…I could have acted. And maybe things would have turned out differently.
Q. How?
CT. Maybe my mother would be alive.
Q. Come on… You were just a kid.
CT. I was thirteen. Nearly fourteen.
Q. So…?
CT. I don’t know. (closes her eyes) I’m going to sleep.
Q. And dream?
CT. What?
Q. About good memories of “home”?
CT. Good memories?
Q. Uncle Charlie and your parents sitting on the porch on summer evenings…
CT. Things were always more fun when Charlie was around.
Q. Dancing to ABBA with your mother and sister…
CT. She’d crank the volume up so loud, even the neighbors could hear it!
Q. Hanging out in Porter’s with your father and the Old Man…
CT. (pauses) I loved the Old Man. I wonder if he’s still alive. How old would he be by now?
Q. Watching your Mom rehearse. Especially that last play…
CT. Okay that’s enough…
Q. You can’t go there, can you? Because it all comes back to that night.
CT. (whispers) Yes. That night.
Q. She’s a cold case now. That unit will take over.
CT. I guess.
Q. Are you going to help them?
CT. What? How?
Q. Go back to that night. Tell them what you saw.
CT. I can’t do that. You know why.
Q. You might not have a choice. If you want her murderer found.
PREORDER THE FIRST TO DIE HERE
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Suzanne Trauth is the author of the suspense novel The First to Die, the Dodie O’Dell mystery series—Show Time, Time Out, Running out of Time, Just in Time, No More Time, and Killing Time—and What Remains of Love, an historical romance (Firebird, American Book Fest, Chanticleer book awards), as well as plays and non-fiction books. In her previous career, she spent many years as a university professor of theatre. When she is not writing, she coaches actors. She lives in Woodland Park, New Jersey. Visit her website: www.suzannetrauth.com or connect on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SuzanneTrauth
Category: Interviews, On Writing
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