Before I Say Goodbye Page 12

  There was a close-up of Nell on the screen. Dan Minor’s eyes widened—she looked very familiar. Wait a minute, he thought. I met her four or five years ago. It was a reception at the White House. She was with her grandfather, and I was escorting Congressman Dade’s daughter.

  He remembered that he and Nell MacDermott had chatted for a few minutes and discovered they were both graduates of Georgetown. It was hard to believe that since that chance meeting, she had been married, widowed and now might be setting off on a political career of her own.

  The camera lingered on Nell’s face. The rigidly composed features and pain-filled eyes were a startling contrast to the sparkling and smiling young woman Dan remembered.

  I’ll write her a note, he thought. She probably won’t remember me at all, but I’d like to do it. She looks so grief stricken. Adam Cauliff must have been quite a guy, he decided.

  Friday, June 16

  thirty-three

  WINIFRED JOHNSON had lived in a building at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and Eighty-first Street. At ten o’clock on Friday morning, Nell met her grandfather in the lobby there.

  “Faded grandeur, Mac,” she said when he arrived.

  He looked around the lobby, which obviously had seen better days. The marble floor was stained, the lighting dim. The furniture consisted of two shabby armchairs.

  “Winifred’s mother phoned the manager this morning to tell him we were coming,” she explained as the handyman, who seemed to double as doorman, waved them to the single elevator.

  “Nell, I think it’s a big mistake coming here,” Cornelius MacDermott said as the elevator lumbered upward toward the fifth floor. “I don’t know where the district attorney’s investigation is going to lead, but if Winifred was either involved in or had any knowledge of bribery, or if . . .” He stopped.

  “Don’t think of suggesting that Adam was involved in bribery or bid rigging, Mac,” she said fiercely.

  “I’m not suggesting anything other than the fact that if the police at any point are able to get a search warrant for these premises, it won’t look good that you and I beat them to it.”

  “Mac, please.” Nell tried to cover the catch in her voice. “I’m just trying to help. I came here primarily to see what kind of financial provisions Winifred may have made for her mother; I’m looking for insurance policies and that sort of thing. Mrs. Johnson is worried sick that she’ll have to leave Old Woods Manor nursing home. She’s happy there. I don’t think she’s a particularly easy person, but it’s obvious she has terrible rheumatoid arthritis. If I were in pain all the time, I don’t think I’d be oozing charm either.”

  “What has oozing charm got to do with our snooping around in Winifred’s apartment?” Mac asked as they stepped off the elevator. “Come on, Nell. We used to be honest with each other. You’re not a Girl Scout doing a good deed. If there was bribery going on at Walters and Arsdale, you’re hoping to find something that will tie Winifred to the problem and leave Adam as clean as the driven snow.”

  They walked down the dingy hallway. “Winifred’s apartment is 5E,” Nell said. She reached into her shoulder bag for the keys Mrs. Johnson had given her.

  “Double lock and safety lock,” Mac observed dourly. “A professional could bust them with a can opener.”

  When Nell opened the door, she hesitated for a moment, then stepped inside. Winifred was here only a week ago, she thought, but already the place has a feeling of being neglected, abandoned.

  They stood for a moment in the foyer, getting their bearings before venturing farther into the apartment. A table to the left of the door held a vase of wilting flowers, the kind of stingy arrangement sold in grocery stores. The living room was directly in front of them, a long, narrow, cheerless space with a threadbare Persian-style carpet, an aging red velour-covered sofa and matching chair, an upright piano and a library table.

  A lace runner covered the table. On it were several precisely placed framed pictures and a pair of matching lamps with fringed shades. It was so old-fashioned that it made Nell think of movies she had seen that were set in the Victorian era.

  She walked to the table and studied the pictures. Most of them showed a young Winifred, wearing a bathing suit and receiving an award. In a more recent photograph, she seemed to be in her early twenties, a thin, eagerly smiling, waiflike creature. “These have to be the pictures her mother said she wants,” she told Mac. “I’ll collect them on the way out.”

  Nell went back to the foyer and glanced into the kitchen, which was to the left. Then she turned right and walked down the hall, her grandfather closely behind her. The larger of the two bedrooms off the dark corridor contained a double bed, a dresser and a chest. The chenille spread on the bed reminded her of one her grandmother had when she was a child.

  She went on to the next room, clearly used by Winifred as both den and office. Crowded into the small space were a couch, a television set, a basket of magazines and a computer desk. Two rows of bookshelves over the desk and rows of framed medals over the couch added to Nell’s growing sense of claustrophobia. The whole place is so depressing, she thought. Winifred spent most of her life here, and I’ll bet, except for this room, she hasn’t changed a thing about it since her mother went into a nursing home.

  “Nell, if we’ve finished the grand tour, I would suggest you try to find what it is you’re looking for, and we get out of here.”

  Nell knew that when Mac sounded his most curmudgeonly it was a signal that he was worried. She admitted to herself that it had not occurred to her that going into Winifred Johnson’s apartment might be misinterpreted by the district attorney’s office, but since her grandfather had pointed it out, she had become concerned as well.

  “You’re right, Mac,” she said. “Sorry.” She went over to the desk, and, feeling uneasy about what she was doing, opened the center drawer.

  It was as though she had discovered another world. The drawer was stuffed with pieces of paper of every size and description, from sticky-backed notepads to architectural plans. On every one of them, in print, in handwriting, in large letters, or letters almost too small to be read, Winifred had written four words: WINIFRED LOVES HARRY REYNOLDS.

  thirty-four

  THE MANAGER OF THE SALON at which Lisa Ryan worked told her to take the whole week off. He said to her, “You need a little time to yourself, honey, so you can start the healing process.”

  “The healing process,” Lisa thought scornfully as she looked at the piles of clothing on the bed. Those must be the stupidest three words ever uttered. She remembered how contemptuous Jimmy had been whenever he heard them used by some newscaster after the report of a plane crash or an earthquake.

  “The relatives have just been notified, the bodies haven’t been found and some yo-yo with a mike in his hand is talking about the healing process beginning,” he would say to her, shaking his head in irritation.

  Someone had told her it would be therapeutic if she kept moving, kept busy, and one of the activities suggested was cleaning out Jimmy’s closet and drawers. So here she was, sorting Jimmy’s clothes and putting them in boxes to be given away. Better they help some poor soul than rot in the closet like Grandpa’s did, she thought.

  Her grandmother had kept everything her grandfather had ever owned, almost—or so it seemed at the time—creating a kind of shrine to his memory. As a child she remembered seeing his jackets and coats hanging neatly from hangers next to her grandmother’s dresses.

  I don’t need Jimmy’s clothes to remind me of him, she thought as she folded the sport shirts the children had given him this past Christmas—there isn’t a moment I’m not thinking about him.

  “Change your routine,” the funeral director had urged. “Don’t sit at the same place at the table. Move the furniture around in your bedroom. You’d be surprised how little things can help you get through the first year after a loss.”

  When she had finished clearing out Jimmy’s dresser, she was going to put it in the boys�
� room. She already had moved the model of her dream house into the living room. She couldn’t bear to look at it when she was lying alone in the bed she had shared with Jimmy.

  Tomorrow I’ll move the bed and put it between the windows, she thought, although she doubted that all the changes in the world would really help. She couldn’t imagine that she ever would have a day in which she didn’t at some point think about Jimmy.

  She glanced at the clock and was dismayed to see that it was quarter of three, which meant the children would be home in twenty minutes. She didn’t want them to see her sorting through their father’s things.

  The money—suddenly it flashed into her mind.

  She had managed all day not to think about it. Yesterday, after Adam Cauliff’s Mass, when she saw the two cops coming out of the church, she was sure they were going to want to talk to her. Suppose they find out about the money, she thought. Or suppose they suspect something, and get a search warrant and find it here. And suppose they think I know how Jimmy got it, and they arrest me. What would I do then?

  She could no longer force that fear from her mind. I don’t know what to do, she thought. Oh dear God, I don’t know what to do.

  The sudden sound of the door chimes shattered the quiet of the house. With a startled gasp, Lisa dropped the shirt she was holding and hurried downstairs. It’s Brenda, Lisa reassured herself. She said she would stop over later.

  But even before she opened the door she knew with fatalistic certainty that instead of Brenda she would find one of the detectives standing at her door.

  • • •

  JACK SCLAFANI felt a tug of genuine compassion as he observed the swollen eyes and blotchy complexion of Jimmy Ryan’s widow. She looks as though she’s been crying all day, he thought. This has got to be a terrible shock. Also, at thirty-three she is awfully young to be left with three kids to raise alone.

  He had first met her when he came with Brennan to tell her that her husband’s body had been positively identified—or rather, pieces of her husband’s body, he corrected himself mentally—and he was certain she had recognized him outside the church at the Cauliff Mass.

  “Detective Jack Sclafani again, Mrs. Ryan. Remember me? I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”

  As he watched, naked fear replaced the intense grief in her eyes. This won’t be hard, he thought. Whatever is on her mind is going to be on the table fast.

  “May I come in?” he asked politely.

  She seemed immobilized, unable to either speak or move. Finally she whispered, “Yes. Of course. Come in.”

  Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, Jack thought as he followed her into the house.

  They sat stiffly across from each other in the small but pleasant living room. Jack made a point of studying the large framed family portrait that was hanging over the couch.

  “That was taken in happier times,” he observed. “Jimmy looks as though he’s got the world by the tail, every inch the proud husband and father.”

  The words achieved the desired effect. As tears welled in Lisa Ryan’s eyes, some of the tension he had seen in her expression seemed to relax.

  “We did have the world by the tail,” she said quietly. “Oh, you know what I mean. We lived from payday to payday like most people in our circumstances, but that was okay. We had a lot of fun and we had plans. And dreams.”

  She pointed to the table. “That’s a scale model of the house Jimmy was going to build for us someday.”

  Jack got up and walked over to inspect it closely. “Very, very nice. Is it okay if I call you Lisa?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Lisa, your first reaction when you heard Jimmy was dead was to ask if he had committed suicide. That has to mean something was pretty wrong in his life, but what? I have a feeling it wasn’t a problem between you two.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Was he worried about his health?”

  “Jimmy was never sick. We used to joke that it was a shame to pay for health insurance for a guy like him.”

  “If it’s not a marital problem, and if it’s not health, then it’s usually a money problem,” Jack suggested.

  Bingo, he thought as he saw Lisa Ryan’s hands clench.

  “It’s easy to run up bills with a family. You put something you need on the credit card. You’re sure you’re going to pay it off in a couple of months, but then suddenly you need tires for the car or a new roof for the house or one of the kids has to go to the dentist.” He sighed. “I’m married; I’m a father. It happens.”

  “We never ran up bills,” Lisa said defensively. “At least not until Jimmy lost his job. Do you know why he lost it?” she burst out. “It was because he was honest and decent and he was outraged that the contractor he was working for was using substandard concrete on the job. Oh, sure, some contractors cut corners. That’s the way it is in the building industry, but Jimmy said this guy was putting lives in danger.

  “Well, for his conscientiousness he was not only fired, he was also blackballed,” she said, “unable to get work anywhere. That’s when we started having financial problems.”

  Be careful, Lisa warned herself. You’re talking too much. But the understanding in Detective Sclafani’s eyes was balm to her soul. It’s been only a week, she thought, and already I’m hungry to talk things over with an adult man.

  “How long was Jimmy out of work, Lisa?”

  “Almost two years. Oh, he managed to get a little work here and there, off the books, but they were not the kind of long-term jobs that pay decent money. The word was out that he had a big mouth, and they tried to destroy him for it.”

  “He must have felt pretty relieved then, when he got a call from Adam Cauliff’s office. How did Jimmy happen to contact him? Cauliff only opened his own place recently.”

  “Jimmy contacted everybody,” Lisa said. “Adam Cauliff happened to see his résumé. He had his assistant pass it on to Sam Krause, and Krause took Jimmy on.”

  Suddenly, a possibility occurred to Lisa. Of course, she thought, that must be what happened. Jimmy had told her that Krause was known to cut corners. So in working for Krause, maybe he had been forced to go along with it or lose his job.

  “It seems as though something was bothering Jimmy pretty badly even though he was working,” Sclafani suggested. “Certainly it had to have been if you thought he might be contemplating suicide. I think you know something about that, Lisa. Why don’t you talk it over with me? Maybe there’s something Jimmy would want us to know, now that he’s not here to tell it himself.”

  That’s what happened, Lisa thought, barely hearing the detective’s words. I’m sure of it. Jimmy saw something on one of Krause’s jobs that he knew was wrong. He was given his choice of being fired or being paid to look the other way. He felt he had no choice, but he also knew that once he took money under the table, they had him.

  “Jimmy was a good, honest man,” she began.

  Sclafani nodded at the family portrait. “I can see that,” he agreed.

  This is it, he thought. She’s going to talk about it.

  “The other day, after the funeral . . .” Lisa began, but her words trailed off when she heard the sound of the kitchen door being opened and then the tramping of feet as the children ran into the house.

  “Mom, we’re home,” Kelly called.

  “I’m in here.” Lisa sprang up, suddenly aghast that she had been about to tell a member of the police department that hidden downstairs was a packet of what could only be called “dirty money.”

  I have to get rid of it, she thought. I was right when I tried to talk to Nell MacDermott yesterday. I feel as though I can trust her. Maybe she can help me to get that money returned to whomever it should go to in Krause’s company. After all, it was her husband who sent Jimmy to him.

  The children were beside her, reaching up to kiss her. Lisa looked at Jack Sclafani. “Jimmy was mighty proud of these three,” she said, her voice steady, “and t
hey were mighty proud of him. As I said, Jimmy Ryan was a good and decent man.”

  thirty-five

  “SO WINIFRED HAD a boyfriend?”

  “I’m shocked,” Nell admitted to her grandfather. They were in a cab on the way home from Winifred’s apartment. “I used to tease Adam by saying that she had a crush on him.”

  “She had a crush on him the way women had a crush on the Beatles or Elvis Presley,” Cornelius MacDermott said tartly. “Adam buttered her up so she’d leave Walters and Arsdale and go with him when he opened his own firm.”

  “Mac!”

  “Sorry,” he said hastily. “What I mean is, Adam was a much younger man, married to a beautiful woman. Whatever Winifred was, she wasn’t a dope. She was obviously involved with—or at least crazy about—some guy named Harry Reynolds.”

  “I wonder why he doesn’t come forward?” Nell said. “I mean it’s as though Winifred just disappeared off the face of the earth. According to her mother, no one contacted her except the building manager, who called to say that unless she was planning to move back home, he hoped she would give up the apartment. Meaning that she shouldn’t plan on trying to sublet it.”

  “I still say we made a mistake going into her home. Especially since it turns out she didn’t keep any records there,” Mac said. “You should have gone to the office first.”

  “Mac, I went to Winifred’s apartment at the specific request of her mother.”

  The package of framed photographs Nell had gathered was on her lap. Cornelius MacDermott eyed it. “Want me to have Liz mail that stuff to the nursing home?”

  Nell hesitated. I may visit Mrs. Johnson again, she thought, but not soon. “Okay, have Liz send it,” she agreed. “I’ll call Mrs. Johnson and tell her it’s on the way. And that we’ll look in the office for Winifred’s records.”

  The cab was slowing down in front of Nell’s building. She felt Mac’s arm go around her. “I’m here for you,” he said quietly, giving her a gentle hug.