The Lost Years Read online

The police arrived in minutes. I’ll never forget how they looked at Mom and me. I had hugged Daddy, so I had blood all over me too. I overheard one of the cops say that by touching Daddy I had contaminated the crime scene.

  Mariah realized she had been staring unseeingly into the mirror. Glancing down at the clock on the vanity she saw that it was already seven thirty. I have to get ready, she thought. We should be at the funeral parlor by nine. I hope Rory is getting Mom ready by now. Rory Steiger, a stocky sixty-two-year-old woman, had been her mother’s caregiver for the past two years.

  Twenty minutes later, showered and her hair blown dry, Mariah came back into the bedroom, opened the door of the closet, and took out the black-and-white jacket and black skirt she had chosen to wear to the funeral. People used to be draped in black when there was a death in the family, she thought. I remember seeing pictures of Jackie Kennedy in a long mourning veil. Oh God, why did this have to happen?

  When she was finished dressing, she walked over to the window. She had left it open when she had gone to bed and the breeze was making the curtains ripple on the sill. She stood for a moment looking out over the backyard, which was shaded by the Japanese maple trees her father had planted years ago. The begonias and impatiens he had planted in the spring ringed the patio. The sun made the Ramapo Mountains in the distance shimmer with tones of green and gold. It was a perfect late August day.

  I don’t want it to be a beautiful day, Mariah thought. It’s as if nothing terrible has happened. But it has happened. Daddy was murdered. I want it to be rainy and cold and wet. I want the rain to weep on his casket. I want the heavens to weep for him.

  He is gone forever.

  Guilt and sadness enveloped her. That gentle college professor who was so glad to retire three years ago and spend most of his time studying ancient manuscripts had been violently murdered. I loved him dearly, but it’s so awful that for the last year and a half our relationship has been strained, all because of his affair with Lillian Stewart, the professor he met from Columbia University, whose very existence had changed all of our lives.

  Mariah remembered her dismay when she came home a year and a half ago to find her mother holding pictures she had found of Lillian and her father with their arms around each other. I was so angry when I realized that this had probably been going on while Lily was with him on his archaeological digs to Egypt or Greece or Israel or God knows where, for the past five years. I was so furious that he actually had her in the house when we had his other friends, like Richard, Charles, Albert, and Greg, over for dinner.

  I despise that woman, Mariah told herself.

  The fact that my father was twenty years her senior apparently did not bother Lily, Mariah thought grimly. I’ve tried to be fair and understand.

  Mom has been drifting away for years, and I know it was so tough on Dad to see her deteriorate. But she still has her somewhat good days. She still talks about those pictures so often. She was so hurt knowing that Dad had someone else in his life.

  I don’t want to be thinking like this, Mariah said to herself as she turned away from the window. I want my father to be alive. I want to tell him how sorry I am that I asked him only last week if Lily of the Nile Valley had been a good traveling companion on their latest jaunt to Greece.

  Turning away from the window, she walked over to the desk and studied a picture of her mother and father taken ten years ago. I remember how loving they used to be with each other, Mariah thought. They were married when they were in graduate school.

  I didn’t make my appearance for fifteen years.

  She smiled faintly as she remembered her mother telling her that as long as they had had to wait, God had given them the perfect child. Actually, Mom was being more than generous, she thought. Both of them were so strikingly handsome. And elegant. And charming. Growing up I certainly was no head-turner. A mop of long, straight black hair, so skinny that l looked undernourished, beanpole tall, and teeth that I grew into but were too big for my face when they first arrived. But I was lucky enough to end up being a decent composite of both of them.

  Dad, Daddy, please don’t be dead. Be at the breakfast table when I get there. Have your coffee cup in hand, and be reading the Times or the Wall Street Journal. I’ll grab the Post and turn to “Page Six,” and you’ll look over your glasses and give me that look that means a mind is a dreadful thing to waste.

  I don’t want to eat anything, I’ll just have coffee, Mariah decided as she opened the door of the bedroom and walked down the hall to the staircase. She paused on the top step but didn’t hear any sound from the connecting bedrooms where her mother and Rory slept. I hope that means they’re downstairs, she thought.

  There was no sign of them in the breakfast room. She went into the kitchen. Betty Pierce, the housekeeper, was there. “Mariah, your mother wouldn’t eat anything. She wanted to go into the study. I don’t think you’ll like what she’s wearing but she’s pretty insistent. It’s that blue and green linen suit you bought her for Mother’s Day.”

  Mariah considered protesting but then asked herself, What in the name of God is the difference? She took the coffee that Betty poured for her and carried it into the study. Rory was standing there looking distressed. At Mariah’s unasked question she jerked her head toward the closet door. “She won’t let me leave the door open,” she said. “She won’t let me stay in there with her.”

  Mariah tapped on the closet door and opened it slowly while murmuring her mother’s name. Oddly sometimes her mother answered to it more easily than when Mariah called her “Mom.” “Kathleen,” she said softly. “Kathleen, it’s time to have a cup of tea and a cinnamon bun.”

  The closet was large, with shelves on either side. Kathleen Lyons was sitting on the floor at the far end of it. Her arms were wrapped protectively around her body and her head was pressed against her chest as though she was bracing for a blow. Her eyes were shut tight and her silver hair was falling forward, covering most of her face. Mariah knelt down and embraced her, rocking her as if she was a child.

  “So much noise… so much blood,” her mother whispered, the same words she had been repeating since the murder. But then she did let Mariah help her up and smooth back the short, wavy hair from her pretty face. Again Mariah was reminded that her mother had been only a few months younger than her father and would not look her age if it weren’t for the fearful way she moved, as though at any minute she could step into an abyss.

  As Mariah led her mother out of the study she did not see the baleful expression on the face of Rory Steiger or the secret smile she permitted herself.

  Now I won’t be stuck with her much longer, Rory thought.

  2

  Detective Simon Benet of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s office had the look of a man who spent a lot of time outdoors. He was in his midforties, with thinning sandy hair and a ruddy complexion. The jacket of his suit was always wrinkled because the minute he didn’t have to wear it, he tossed it over a chair or in the backseat of the car.

  His partner, Detective Rita Rodriguez, was a trim Hispanic woman in her late thirties with stylishly short brown hair. Always impeccably dressed, she made an incongruous counterpart to Benet. In fact they were a top-notch investigative team, and they had been assigned to the Jonathan Lyons murder case.

  They were the first to arrive at the funeral parlor on Friday morning. On the theory that if an intruder had been responsible for the murder, he or she might come here to view the victim, they were on the watch for anyone whom they might recognize as a potential suspect. They had studied the pictures of convicted felons who were now on parole but had been involved in break-ins in the surrounding communities.

  Anyone who has gone through this kind of day knows what it’s all about, Rodriguez thought. There were flowers galore, even though she knew that in the obituary it had been requested that, in lieu of them, donations be made to the local hospital.

  The funeral parlor began to fill up well before nine o’clock. The detective
s knew that some of the people there had come out of morbid curiosity—Rodriguez could spot them in an instant. They stood at the casket for an unnecessarily long time searching for any sign of trauma on the face of the deceased. But Jonathan Lyons’s expression was peaceful and the artistry of the cosmetician at the funeral home had successfully hidden any bruising that might have occurred.

  For the past three days they had been ringing the doorbells of the neighbors in the hope that someone might have heard the shot or observed someone running from the house after the bullet was fired. The investigation had come to nothing. The closest neighbors were away on vacation, and no one else had heard or seen anything unusual.

  Mariah had given them the names of the people who were very close to her father and in whom he might have confided if he had been having any kind of problem.

  “Richard Callahan, Charles Michaelson, Albert West, and Greg Pearson have gone on all of Dad’s annual archaeological trips for at least six years,” she had told them. “All of them come to our house for dinner about once a month. Richard is a professor of Bible studies at Fordham University. Charles and Albert are also professors. Greg is a successful businessman. His company has something to do with computer software.” And then, her anger clearly showing, Mariah had also given them the name of Lillian Stewart, her father’s mistress.

  These were the people the detectives wanted to meet and set up appointments to interview. Benet had requested that the caregiver, Rory Steiger, identify them when they arrived.

  At twenty minutes of nine, Mariah, her mother, and Rory entered the funeral parlor. Even though the detectives had been in her home twice in the past few days, Kathleen Lyons stared vacantly at them. Mariah nodded to them and went to stand by the casket and greet the visitors who were already passing by it.

  The detectives chose a spot nearby where they could clearly see their faces and how they interacted with Mariah.

  Rory got Kathleen settled on a seat in the front row, then joined them. Unobtrusive in her black-and-white print dress, her graying hair pulled back into a bun, Rory stood behind the detectives. She tried not to show that she was nervous about assisting them. She could not stop thinking that the only reason she had taken this job two years ago was because of Joe Peck, the sixty-five-year-old widower in the same apartment complex she lived in on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

  She had been going out for dinner regularly with Joe, a retired fireman who had a home in Florida. Joe had confided to her how lonely he had been since his wife died, and Rory had built up her hopes that he was going to ask her to marry him. Then one evening he told her that while he enjoyed their occasional dates, he had met someone else who was going to move in with him.

  At dinner that night, angry and disappointed, Rory had told her best friend, Rose, that she would take the job she’d just been offered in New Jersey. “It pays well. It does mean I’ll be stuck there from Monday to Friday, but no reason to come rushing home from a day job hoping Joe will call,” Rory had said bitterly.

  I never thought taking this job would lead to this, she thought. Then she spotted two men in their late sixties. “Just so you know,” she whispered to Detectives Benet and Rodriguez, “those men are experts in Professor Lyons’s field. They came to the house about once a month, and I know they used to talk on the phone a lot to Professor Lyons. The taller one is Professor Charles Michaelson. The other one is Dr. Albert West.”

  A minute later she tugged at Benet’s sleeve. “Here are Callahan and Pearson,” she said. “The girlfriend is with them.”

  Mariah’s eyes widened when she saw who was coming. I didn’t think that Lily of the Nile Valley would dare show up, she thought, even while unwillingly admitting to herself that Lillian Stewart was a very attractive woman, with chestnut hair and wide-set brown eyes. She was wearing a light gray linen suit with a white collar. I wonder how long she ransacked boutiques to find it, Mariah asked herself. It looks like the perfect mourning outfit for a mistress.

  That’s exactly the kind of crack I’ve been making to Dad about her, she thought remorsefully. And I asked him if she wears those high heels of hers when they’re digging for ruins. Ignoring Stewart, Mariah reached out to clasp the hands of Greg Pearson and Richard Callahan. “Not the best day, is it?” she asked them.

  The grief she saw in both their eyes was comforting. She knew how deeply these men had valued her father’s friendship. Both in their midthirties and avid amateur archaeologists, they could not have been more different. Richard, a lean six feet four, with a full head of graying black hair, had a quick sense of humor. She knew that he had been in the seminary for one year and had not ruled out returning to it. He lived near Fordham University, where he taught.

  Greg was exactly her height when she was wearing heels. His brown hair was close-cropped. His eyes, a light shade of gray-green, dominated his face. He always had a quiet deferential manner, and Mariah had wondered if despite his business success, Greg might be innately shy. Maybe that’s one of the reasons he loved to be around Dad, she thought. Dad was truly a spellbinding raconteur.

  She had gone on a few dates with Greg, but knowing she was not going to be interested in him in any romantic way and afraid he might be going in that direction, she hinted that she was seeing someone else and he never asked her out again.

  The two men knelt by the casket for a moment. “No more long evenings with the storyteller,” Mariah said as they stood up.

  “It’s so impossible to believe,” Lily murmured.

  Then Albert West and Charles Michaelson came over to where she was standing. “Mariah, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe it. It seems so sudden,” Albert said.

  “I know, I know,” Mariah said as she looked at the four men, who had been so dear to her father. “Have the police talked to any of you yet? I had to give a list of close friends and of course that included all of you.” Then she turned to Lily. “And needless to say I included your name.”

  Did I sense a sudden change in one of them in that instant? Mariah wondered. She couldn’t be sure because at that moment the funeral director came in and asked people to walk past the casket for the last time, then go to their cars; it was time to leave for the church.

  She waited with her mother till the others had left. She was relieved that Lily had had the decency not to touch her father’s body. I think I would have tripped her if she had bent over to kiss him, she thought.

  Her mother seemed totally unaware of what was going on. When Mariah led her over to the casket, she looked blankly down at the face of her dead husband and said, “I’m glad he washed his face. So much noise… so much blood.”

  Mariah turned her mother over to Rory, then stood by the casket herself. Daddy, you should have had another twenty years, she thought. Somebody is going to pay for doing this to you.

  She leaned over and laid her cheek against his, then was sorry she had done so. That hard, cold flesh belonged to an object, not her father.

  As she straightened up, she whispered, “I’ll take good care of Mom, I promise you, I will.”

  3

  Lillian Stewart had slipped into the back of the church after Jonathan’s funeral Mass was under way. She left before the final prayers so there would be no chance of running into Mariah or her mother after the frosty reception she had just received at the funeral parlor. Then she drove to the cemetery, parked at a distance from the entrance, and waited until the funeral cortege had come and gone. It was only then that she drove along the road that led to Jonathan’s grave site, got out of the car, and walked over to his freshly dug grave, carrying a dozen roses.

  The grave diggers were about to lower the casket. They stood back respectfully as she knelt down, placed the roses on it, and whispered, “I love you, Jon.” Then, pale but composed, she walked past the rows of tombstones to her car. Only when she was back inside the car did she let go and bury her face in her hands. The tears she had held back began to gush down her cheeks and her body shook with sobs.
/>   A moment later, she heard the passenger door of her car open. Startled, she looked up, then made a futile attempt to wipe the tears from her face. Comforting arms went around her and held her until her sobs subsided. “I thought you might be here,” Richard Callahan said. “I spotted you briefly in the back of the church.”

  Lily pulled away from him. “Dear God, is there any chance Mariah or her mother saw me?” she asked, her voice husky and unsteady.

  “I wouldn’t think so. I was looking for you. I didn’t know where you went after the funeral home. But you saw how packed the church was.”

  “Richard, it’s awfully nice of you to think of me, but aren’t you expected at that luncheon?”

  “Yes, but I wanted to check on you first. I know how much Jonathan meant to you.”

  Lillian had originally met Richard Callahan on that first archaeological dig that she’d attended five years ago. A professor of biblical history at Fordham University, he had told her then that he’d studied to be a Jesuit but had withdrawn from the priesthood before taking his final vows. Now with a rangy body and easygoing manner, he had become a good friend, which somewhat surprised her. She knew it would be natural for him to be judgmental of her relationship with Jonathan, but if he was, he had never shown it. It was on that first dig that she and Jonathan had fallen desperately in love.

  Lily managed a weak smile. “Richard, I’m so grateful to you, but you’d better get to that luncheon. Jonathan told me many times that Mariah’s mother is very fond of you. I’m sure it will be a help if you’re around for her now.”

  “I’m going,” Richard said, “but, Lily, I have to ask you. Did Jonathan tell you that he believed he had found an incredibly valuable manuscript among the ones he was translating that were found in an old church?”

  Lillian Stewart looked straight into Richard Callahan’s eyes. “An old manuscript that was valuable? Absolutely not,” she lied. “He never said anything about it to me.”