Worth More Dead

Would it have mattered to her? It’s impossible to say now. Their affairs were like a French movie, lovers in a circle with each one betraying the next.
    Justyn Rosen, also known as J.R., was in his early seventies when Teresa was hired as a salesperson at one of his car dealerships. He was extremely wealthy.
    As a young man, Rosen started with a used-car lot, one of thousands around Denver. He was a natural salesman, and his business thrived. He had been married to Marian Novak since they were just 18. She was beside him as he worked his way up from nothing, and they raised their two daughters together.
    His father-in-law taught Justyn the automobile sales business, and Rosen honored him by using Novak’s name in his businesses long after the old man was gone.
    When he was 35, Justyn bought Phil Reno Ford and soon turned it into Rosen-Novak Motors. He worked for three decades to build up Rosen-Novak Motors into the thriving Cadillac-Ford dealership it became in the nineties. He and his businesses were well known in the Denver area, and he had a staff of a hundred people, many of whom had been in his employ for three decades. He was known for his contributions to good causes and memberships in both Jewish organizations and businessmen’s clubs. A number of people saw him as a businessman with a heart.
    Although he was past retirement age when Teresa met him in 1996, Rosen was still a vibrant, youthful-acting man. He wasn’t particularly tall, and his hairline had long since receded. He looked a little like the actor Ben Gazzara. And he had what Teresa needed: money to spend on her and the maturity to be yet another surrogate father.
    When Teresa went to work for Rosen-Novak, she caught her boss’s eye, even though he was already involved with another woman besides his wife, a woman he called “Angel.” With Teresa in his life, Angel was soon unceremoniously dumped.
    Rosen had juggled his loyalties for a long time and had seemingly come to a place where he didn’t feel guilty about his extramarital activities as long as he was always there for his wife and his family. “Angel,” however, recalls him with bitterness, still hurt and resentful that he was cheating not only on his wife but on her while he grew increasingly attracted to Teresa Perez.
    “There should be a whole book written about him,” Angel wrote in an email. “The way he treated me—and others. I was with him for a long time before he started up with Teresa.”
    In the beginning, Rosen and Teresa Perez confined their friendship to an occasional coffee break and then to having lunch together. There was such a discrepancy in their ages that no one took their relationship seriously. But Teresa apparently fell in love with J.R. and demanded more and more of his time. She told her foster mother that he had taken her to Arizona with him for a convention and to one of his vacation homes for her birthday. His grown daughters disputed that later, saying that their father hadn’t left the state without taking his wife along for at least seventeen years. They said he was home for dinner every night.
    Perhaps. More likely, no one can keep track of adults without hiring a private detective to trail them, and Rosen’s family had no reason to do that. He had always been discreet, and he gave the women in his life cash so there would be no paper trail to follow.
     
    Teresa’s emotions and maturity seemed to be frozen as she experienced them in her teenage years, like insects trapped in amber. She had no education and no life experience beyond scrambling for money to live. She had never really grown up and was both histrionic and full of impossible dreams. She ignored the reality of Justyn’s marriage, refusing to even ponder the warning sign when he stayed with his wife for their golden wedding anniversary and well beyond.
    “She was sure he was the one for her,” her foster mother said sadly. “They were going to walk the beaches and into the sunset.”
    Teresa was more convinced of that when Rosen offered to get her a really nice apartment, pay her rent, and give her money for groceries and other necessities. Although he wouldn’t be able to move in with her, he would visit her. He did have one proviso. Her daughter, Lori, who was 14, would have to move out. He told Teresa he wouldn’t feel comfortable having the teenager around when he called on her mother.
    Most mothers would have balked at this request, but keeping Justyn Rosen in her life