Before I Say Good-Bye Read online

  “I know that, Mac.”

  “If you need to talk it out, just pick up the phone, day or night. Don’t forget—I’ve been through some grieving time myself.”

  Yes, you have, Nell thought. Your wife, your only son, your daughter-in-law—all taken so suddenly. No one has to tell you about grief.

  As she turned, Carlo was opening the cab door for her. Then she heard Mac’s voice.

  “Nell, just one thing.”

  Mac’s tone was hesitant, which was not like him. As Nell put one foot outside the cab, she turned to look at him and waited.

  “Nell, you never filed a joint income tax return with Adam, did you?”

  She was about to flare at him when she saw the deeply worried look on his face. With a pang of concern, she realized that with every passing day Mac was more and more showing his age.

  She remembered that when she married Adam, Mac had warned her to file income tax returns separately. “Nell,” he had said at the time, “you intend to have a career in government service. That means the vultures will be circling around you every inch of the way, looking for some misstep on your part. You can’t afford to give them any opportunity to smear you. Let Adam file his own income tax. He might innocently claim something that later could be used to hurt you. You do your own return and make it simple. Don’t play around with complicated tax dodges.”

  “Yes, Mac, I filed separately,” she said tightly. “So stop worrying.” She started once more to step outside, then turned back again. “But level with me. Is there anything you know—hear me out—and I mean know that would suggest Adam wasn’t on the up and up?”

  “No,” he said somewhat reluctantly, shaking his head. “Nothing.”

  “Then it’s a combination of rumor, and Walters and Arsdale’s denial, and that famous gut-level instinct of yours that has you so sure Adam was involved in whatever it is the district attorney is investigating?”

  He nodded.

  “Mac, I know you’re trying to protect me, and I guess I should love you for it, but . . .”

  “I don’t feel very loved by you at the moment, Nell.”

  She managed a smile. “Truthfully, you’re not; and then again, of course you are. Trust me, it’s both.” With an apologetic glance toward Carlo, she finally stepped out of the cab. By the time she was in the elevator and on the way up to the blessed sanctuary of her apartment, Nell had made a decision.

  She didn’t begin to understand her own psychic ability to discern certain events. She also didn’t understand—or accept—the idea of a medium communicating with the dead. But if Bonnie Wilson claimed to be in touch with Adam, Nell knew she had to investigate that claim.

  I have to do it, she told herself, if not for my sake, then for Adam’s.

  thirty-six

  EACH DAY since the explosion of Cornelia II, the search and recover Coast Guard team had continued the tedious process of searching for any remains of the boat and its passengers, and trying to collect the many bits of debris. On Friday afternoon, for the first time in four days, a significant find was made. In the area of the Verrazano Bridge, a three-foot section of splintered wood bobbed through the water and onto the shore. Pieces of a stained blue sport shirt with fragments of human bone were caught in the splinters.

  The somber and macabre find confirmed to the search team that minute remains of one more victim might well have been recovered. Sam Krause’s secretary had been asked to describe what he was wearing when he left the office to go to the meeting on the boat. She was absolutely certain that it had been a long-sleeved blue sport shirt and khaki slacks.

  George Brennan got the news of the find as he was leaving to meet Jack Sclafani at 405 East Fourteenth Street. In his pocket he had a warrant that gave them permission to search the residence of Ada Kaplan, whose son, Jed, had now become an active suspect in the explosion of the yacht.

  They met in the lobby of the building, and Brennan filled Jack in on the newest find. He said, “You know, Jack, whoever did this used enough explosive to blow away half an ocean liner. Last Friday was a perfect boating day. From what I hear, there were a lot of small craft in the harbor. It’s just lucky that most of the others had headed back toward their marinas before Cauliff’s boat blew up. No telling how many other injuries there might have been if someone had been really near.”

  “Do you suppose there was a remote control or maybe a timing device? Whoever did the job had to be pretty careful setting it up.”

  “Pretty careful, yeah, if it was someone experienced with explosives like Jed Kaplan, or pretty damn lucky if it was an amateur. Otherwise he easily could have killed himself putting the components together.”

  A DISTRAUGHT ADA KAPLAN wept with embarrassment at the thought of what her neighbors were saying as her four-room apartment was searched inch by inch. Her son Jed sat at a table in the small dining area, an expression of contempt on his face.

  He’s not worried, Jack thought. If he did blow up that boat, he never had anything that could be evidence here.

  They did have one small victory—the discovery of a bag of marijuana in a duffle bag in the closet. “Come on, you can tell that stuff is old,” Jed protested. “I never even saw it, and anyhow, the last time I was here was five years ago.”

  “It’s true,” Ada Kaplan protested. “I put his old bags in that closet in case he ever wanted them, but he hasn’t touched them since he got home. I swear it.”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Kaplan,” Brennan told her. “And I’m sorry for you too, Jed, but there’s enough smoke here to book you for possession with intent to sell.”

  THREE HOURS LATER, Sclafani and Brennan left Jed in the lockup at the precinct station house. “His mother’ll put up the bond money, but at least the judge agreed to lift his passport,” Brennan observed. He didn’t sound happy.

  “He must have learned a lesson when he got caught in Australia with explosives in his car,” Jack Sclafani said. “There was zilch in the apartment to tie him to what happened on that boat.”

  They walked toward their cars. “Any luck with your visit to Lisa Ryan?” Brennan asked.

  “Unfortunately, no. But I’m sure she was on the verge of spilling something when her kids came in from school.” Jack shook his head as he pulled out his ignition key. “I swear, two minutes more and I would have heard whatever it is she knows. I even hung around, talked to the kids.”

  “Did you have milk and cookies with them?”

  “Then coffee with her when they went out. Believe me, I tried. She just wasn’t buying any more ‘trust me’ talk.”

  “Why did she clam up?”

  “Impossible to be sure,” Sclafani said, “but my guess is it’s because she doesn’t want to tell me something that, if it came out, could hurt Jimmy Ryan’s memory in his kids’ eyes.”

  “You know, I bet you’re right. Okay, see you tomorrow. Maybe then we’ll get a break.”

  Before they reached their cars, George Brennan received a call on his cell phone informing him that a woman’s pocketbook had been found washed ashore in the same area near the Verrazano Bridge as the splintered wood and stained sport-shirt fragment.

  Inside the water-soaked wallet they’d found the credit cards and driver’s license of Winifred Johnson.

  “They say it was hardly even scorched,” Brennan said when he had clicked off. “Crazy how that happens. It must have flown straight up, then landed in the water.”

  “Unless it wasn’t on the boat when that bomb went off,” Sclafani suggested after a thoughtful pause.

  thirty-seven

  NELL SPENT THE AFTERNOON responding to the sympathy notes that had been piling up on her desk all week. When she was finished, it was nearly five o’clock. I’ve got to get out of here for a while, she thought. I haven’t exercised all week.

  She changed to shorts and a T-shirt, put a credit card and a ten-dollar bill in her pocket and jogged the three blocks to Central Park. At Seventy-second Street she turned in to the park and began to run s
outh. I used to run three or four times a week, she thought. How did I let myself stop doing it?

  As she slowly eased herself into the old routine and enjoying the feeling of freedom that came with such open, unrestricted movement, Nell thought of the many cards of condolence she had received.

  “You seemed so happy with Adam . . .”

  “We’re so sorry about your tragedy . . .”

  “We’re here for you . . .”

  Why didn’t I read one single letter saying what a terrific guy Adam was, and that he’ll be missed?

  Why do I feel so numb? Why can’t I cry?

  Nell picked up the pace, but she couldn’t get the questions out of her mind. Where was it she had read that you can’t outrun your thoughts? she asked herself.

  DAN MINOR LOOPED AROUND Central Park South and reentered the park, beginning the run northward. A perfect day for running, he thought. The late afternoon sun was pleasantly warm, the breeze refreshing. The park was filled with joggers, Roller Bladers and pedestrians. Most of the benches were occupied by people either enjoying the passing scene or engrossed in reading.

  Dan felt a stab of pain as he passed a bench occupied by an unkempt young woman wearing a threadbare dress. No one is sitting near her, he thought, observing the overflowing plastic bags at her feet.

  Is this the way Quinny spent most of her life? he wondered. Was she also avoided or ignored?

  Odd that it was easier for him to think of her as “Quinny.” “Mom” was someone else—Mom was a pretty, dark-haired woman, with loving arms, who used to call him Danny-boy.

  She was also a woman who night after night began drinking after I was in bed, he thought. Sometimes I’d wake up and bring a blanket down to cover her after she passed out.

  As he ran, he had a fleeting impression of a tall woman with chestnut hair jogging past him.

  I know her, he thought.

  It was an immediate reaction, the kind of sensation one gets when something familiar triggers a memory reflex. Dan stopped and turned. But who is she, and why do I remember her?

  He knew he had seen that face in the last twenty-four hours.

  Of course, he thought. It was Nell MacDermott. I saw her on the ten o’clock news last night. There had been a clip showing her standing outside the church after the memorial Mass for her husband.

  A compulsion he did not understand made Dan turn and jog back toward Central Park South, following Nell MacDermott’s cascading chestnut hair.

  AS SHE APPROACHED Broadway, Nell slackened her pace. Coliseum Books was on the corner of Broadway and Fifty-seventh Street. When she left the apartment, she had thought to bring cash and credit card in case she decided to stop in there on her way home. Now was the time to make up her mind.

  She decided. If I am indeed going to see Bonnie Wilson and deal with her claims of being in touch with Adam, then I need to know a lot more about psychic phenomena than I do, she thought. I know Mac would ridicule the idea and tell me that only simpletons and dotty old women—meaning Aunt Gert, of course—give any credence to the “babbling” of psychics. In fact, it’s really only because of him that I rejected Gert’s earlier suggestion. But if what I saw Bonnie Wilson do on that television program was legit, then maybe she actually can be in contact with Adam. At the very least, if I’m going to see her, I want to be prepared. I want to know what to look out for and what to ask.

  DAN FOLLOWED NELL down Broadway until she disappeared into the bookstore. Undecided about what to do, he stood on the sidewalk and stared at the window, pretending to be absorbed in the display. Should he follow her in? He didn’t have a cent on him, so there was no way he could pretend he was shopping. Besides, he had been running pretty hard before he spotted her, and he knew he must look like he needed a shower and a change of clothes. He was hardly fit for shopping.

  Lifting the bottom of his shirt, he mopped perspiration from his forehead. Maybe I should just write her a note, he thought.

  But I’d really like to talk to her now. Her phone number probably isn’t listed, and at a time like this, she’s got to be getting too much mail to deal with. I’ll go inside, he finally decided.

  Through the window he caught a glimpse of her as she walked between the racks of books. Then, with a combination of relief and uneasy anticipation, he saw her walk to the checkout counter.

  When she came out of the store, she took two long strides to the corner and raised her hand to signal a cab coming down Broadway.

  It’s now or never, Dan thought. Then he took the plunge.

  “Nell.”

  Nell stopped. The tall, sandy-haired jogger in the long-sleeved sweatshirt was vaguely familiar.

  “Dan Minor, Nell. We met at the White House. It was a few years back.”

  They both smiled. “You have to admit, that line certainly beats, ‘Haven’t we met before?’ ” Dan said, then quickly added, “You were with your grandfather. I was Congressman Dade’s guest.”

  I’m sure I know him, Nell thought as she studied his pleasant face. Then it came back to her. “Oh, yes, I remember. You’re a doctor,” she said, “a pediatric surgeon. You went to Georgetown.”

  “That’s right.” Now what do I say? Dan asked himself. He watched as the spontaneous smile faded from Nell MacDermott’s lips. “I just wanted to tell you how terribly sorry I am about your husband’s death,” he said quickly.

  “Thank you.”

  “Lady, do you want this cab or not?” The taxi Nell had signaled had pulled over to the curb.

  “Yes, wait, please.” She put out her hand. “Thanks for stopping to say hello, Dan. It was good to see you again.”

  Dan stood watching as the taxi cut across Broadway and made a turn east on Fifty-seventh Street. How do you ask a woman who’s been widowed for exactly a week if she would like to go out to dinner? he wondered.

  thirty-eight

  ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, in Philadelphia, Ben Tucker was taken to the office of clinical child psychologist Dr. Megan Crowley.

  He sat alone in the reception room while his mother went into another room to talk to the doctor. He knew that he was going to have to talk to her too, and he didn’t want to, because she was sure to ask him about the dream. It was not something he wanted to talk about.

  He had it every single night now, and sometimes even during the day he was sure he would turn a corner and the snake would be there and jump straight at him.

  Mom and Dad tried to tell him that what he was seeing wasn’t real, and that he was upset. They said that it was very hard for a little kid to see a terrible explosion where people died. They said that the doctor would help him to get over it.

  But they didn’t get it—it wasn’t the explosion. It was the snake.

  Dad said when Ben thought about that day in New York, he should think about the visit to the Statue of Liberty. He should think about how much fun they had climbing all those steps, and about the view from the statue’s crown.

  Ben had tried to do all that. He’d even made himself think about Dad’s boring story of how his great-great-grandfather was one of the kids who collected pennies so that the Statue of Liberty could be put up in the first place. He thought about all the people who had come from other countries, had sailed by the statue and looked up at it, excited to be coming to the United States. He thought about all those things, but they didn’t help—he just couldn’t stop thinking about the snake.

  The door opened and his mother came out with another lady.

  “Hi, Ben,” she said, “I’m Dr. Megan.”

  She was young, not like Dr. Peterson, his pediatrician, who was real old.

  “Dr. Megan would like to talk with you now, Benjy,” his mother said.

  “Will you come with me?” he asked, starting to be afraid.

  “No, I’ll wait right here. But don’t worry. You’ll be fine. And you’ll be back here with me in no time, and we’ll go get a treat.”

  He looked at the doctor. He knew he was going to have to go with her. But I�
�m not going to talk about the snake, he promised himself.

  Dr. Megan surprised him, though. She didn’t seem to want to talk about the snake. She asked him about school, and he told her he was in the third grade. And then she asked about sports, and he told her he liked wrestling best, and he told her how the other day he won his match because he pinned the other kid in thirty seconds. Then they talked about music class, and he said he knew he didn’t practice enough, and he told her that he hit a real clinker when he was playing the recorder today.

  They talked about a lot of things, but she never once asked him about the snake. She just said that she would see him again on Monday.

  “Dr. Megan’s nice,” he told his mother when they were going down in the elevator. “Can we go for ice cream now?”

  Saturday and Sunday

  June 17 and 18

  thirty-nine

  NELL HAD SPENT all Friday evening reading the books about psychic phenomena she had purchased that afternoon after her run in the park.

  By Saturday afternoon she had gotten through all the sections of each book that dealt with the aspects of the phenomena she wanted to explore. What do I believe about all this? she kept asking herself as she read, and then reread, many of the passages.

  I knew the exact moment when Gram and Mom and Dad died, she thought, and I know that when I was in Hawaii, Mom and Dad made me keep swimming when I wanted to give up—these are my own personal experiences with psychic phenomena.

  Nell noted that in some of the books the author wrote about a person’s “aura.” That last day, she thought, the day of the explosion, when I saw Winifred, there seemed to be a kind of blackness around her. According to what I’ve read here, I was seeing her aura. That blackness, according to these books, is a symbol of death.

  Nell thought about the time she had seen Bonnie Wilson on television. She was positively startling in the way she talked to that woman about the circumstances of her husband’s death, she remembered.