Before I Say Good-Bye Read online

  Lisa looked at Kelly. She seemed indifferent to the good news; it was almost as though she weren’t listening. The plate of pasta before her was barely touched.

  It wasn’t the time to press her, though. Lisa knew that. She needed more time to come to terms with the loss. There also wasn’t time to deal with any of this right now, since Lisa knew she had to clear the table, get the homework started and be in Manhattan at 7:30.

  “Kyle,” she said, “as soon as we finish dinner, I want you to help me bring up a couple of packages from Daddy’s workroom downstairs. They belong to someone he worked for, and I’m dropping them off with a lady who’s going to figure out to whom they should be returned.”

  sixty-two

  AFTER HE LEFT THE HOSPITAL on Wednesday afternoon, Dan Minor went directly to Cornelius MacDermott’s office. When he had called for an appointment, he learned that Nell already had told her grandfather about him, so his call was expected.

  MacDermott greeted him cordially. “You and Nell are both Georgetown graduates, I hear.”

  “Yes, although I was ahead of her by some six or seven years.”

  “How do you like living in New York?”

  “Both my grandmothers were born here, and my mother was raised in Manhattan and lived here until she was about twelve. Then they moved to the D.C. area. I’ve always felt that genetically I had one foot here and the other in Washington.”

  “So do I,” MacDermott agreed. “I was born in this house, and in those days, this wasn’t a fancy neighborhood. In fact, the joke was that you could get a buzz just from smelling the fumes coming out of Jacob Rupert’s brewery.”

  Dan smiled. “Cheaper than buying a six-pack.”

  “But in the end not quite as satisfying.”

  As they chatted, Cornelius MacDermott realized that he very much liked Dr. Dan Minor. Fortunately, he’s no chip off the old block, he thought. Over the years, he had met Dan’s father at various affairs in Washington and had found him to be pretentious and boring. Dan was obviously made from fairly sturdy stuff. Another guy would have written off a mother who deserted him, especially one who was known to be a homeless drunk. This son, though, wanted to find her, and to help her. My kind of guy, MacDermott thought.

  “I’ll see if I can’t get some of these bureaucrats off their duffs and have them put on a real search for Quinny, as you call her,” he said. “You say the last time she was seen was in the squats south of Tompkins Square, back in September, about nine months ago?”

  “Yes, although her friends there thought she might have gone out of town,” Dan explained. “From the little bit I’ve been able to glean, when she was last seen she was in one of her terribly depressed moods, and whenever that happened, she didn’t want to be with people. Apparently she would just find her own space and crawl into it.”

  With every word he spoke, Dan felt with a growing certainty that his mother was no longer alive. “If she’s alive, I want to take care of her, but I know she may well be dead,” he told Cornelius. “If she is, and if she’s buried in potter’s field, I want to find her and bring her to the family grave in Maryland. Either way, it would give great peace to my grandparents to know that she isn’t still wandering the streets, sick and maybe delusional.” He paused. “And it also would give me great peace,” he admitted.

  “Got any pictures of her?” Cornelius asked.

  Dan opened his wallet and took out the picture he always carried. He handed it to Nell’s grandfather.

  As Cornelius McDermott studied the picture, he felt a lump forming in his throat. The look of love captured there between the pretty young woman and the young boy in her arms seemed to leap from the well-worn black-and-white photo. Both of them were windblown, their faces pressed together, and his small arms were wrapped tightly around her neck.

  “I also have a picture of her taken from the documentary film on the homeless that aired on PBS seven years ago. I had it aged digitally on the computer, and then the technician adjusted it to conform to the description her friend gave of her appearance last summer.”

  MacDermott knew that Dan’s mother would be about sixty years old. In this picture, the gaunt woman with shoulder-length gray hair looked eighty. “We’ll get some duplicates and put posters around town,” he promised. “And I’ll get some of those guys with nothing better to do to go through the files to see if any unidentified woman buried in potter’s field since September matches this description.”

  Dan stood. “I should go. I’ve taken enough of your time, Congressman. I’m very grateful to you.”

  MacDermott waved him to a seat. “My friends call me Mac. Look, it’s 5:30, which means the cocktail flag is up. What’s your choice?”

  Liz Hanley walked into the office unannounced as the two men were companionably sipping very dry martinis. It was clear to both of them that she was upset.

  “I stopped home after I left Bonnie Wilson’s apartment,” she said quietly. “I was pretty shaken.”

  MacDermott jumped up. “What happened to you, Liz? You’re so pale!”

  Dan was already on his feet. “I’m a doctor . . .” he began.

  Liz shook her head and sank into a chair. “I’ll be fine. Mac, pour me a glass of wine. That’ll help. It’s just . . . Mac, you know I went there pretty much as a skeptic, but I have to tell you that she has changed my mind. Bonnie Wilson is on the level. I am convinced that she is a genuine psychic—which means that if she warned Nell about Peter Lang, then she’s got to be taken seriously.”

  sixty-three

  AFTER GERT LEFT THE APARTMENT, Nell had gone back to her desk and reread the column she had drafted earlier for the Friday edition of the Journal, a piece about the long and frenzied campaigns that increasingly characterize presidential elections in the United States.

  Her next—and, if all went according to plan, her final—column would be both a farewell and an announcement of her intention to view the campaign frenzy firsthand by becoming a candidate for her grandfather’s former congressional seat.

  I made the decision two weeks ago, Nell thought as she edited the work she had done earlier, but only now does it seem as though all the confusion and doubt and self-questioning are over. Inspired by Mac, she always had known that public office was something she wanted to pursue, but for so long she had harbored many fears and misgivings.

  Had all the negativity come from Adam? she wondered. As she sat in her study, she thought back to many discussions they had had about her possibly running for office. I just don’t understand what changed him, she thought. When we were first married three years ago, he was gung-ho for me to take over Mac’s seat, but then he not only cooled to the idea, he became downright hostile. Why the radical turnaround?

  It was a gnawing question that she acknowledged had begun to take on added significance since his death. Was there something going on in Adam’s life that made him nervous about our having to face public scrutiny? She got up from her desk and began to walk restlessly around the apartment, pausing at the bookshelves that flanked the fireplace in the living room. Adam had a habit of pulling out a book he hadn’t read, glancing through it briefly, then putting it back willy-nilly in the shelves. Her eyes and hands moving in synch, Nell rearranged the shelves so that the books she especially enjoyed again and again were all once more within easy reach of her comfortable club chair.

  I was sitting in this chair, reading a novel, when he phoned me that first time, she recalled. I’d gotten a little depressed after not hearing from him. We had met at a cocktail party and been attracted to each other. We had dinner, and he said he would call. But then, two weeks later, I was still waiting. I was disappointed.

  I remember I’d just come back from Sue Leone’s wedding in Georgetown. Most of the others in our crowd were married and swapping baby pictures. I was very ready to meet someone. Gert and I even joked about it. She said that I had developed an acute nesting instinct.

  Gert warned me not to wait too long. “I did,” she said. �
�And I look back and think of a couple of the men I could have married, and I wonder what in the name of God I thought I was waiting for.”

  And then Adam phoned. It was about ten o’clock at night. He said his out-of-town business had taken him longer than he expected. He had missed me, he said, but he hadn’t been able to call because he had left my number in his apartment in New York.

  I was so ready to fall in love, and Adam was so appealing. I was working for Mac; Adam was starting on his first job in New York, with a small architectural firm. There was so much ahead. Life for us was just beginning. It was a whirlwind courtship, she remembered. We were married three months later, in a quiet wedding, with only my family in attendance. It didn’t matter, though, Nell thought. I never wanted a big splash anyhow.

  As she sat now, in her favorite chair, she thought back to that heady, special time. It had all happened so fast, but it had been exciting. What had attracted her so totally to Adam? Nell wondered, as she reminisced, sadly thinking of the man she had loved and then lost so abruptly. I know what it was, she thought: he was so absolutely charming. He made me feel special.

  And of course there was more, Nell told herself, so say it straight. Adam was in some ways the antithesis of Mac. I know how Mac feels about me, she thought, but he would choke on the word “love.” I was hungry for someone to tell me instantly, passionately that I was loved.

  But in other ways, Adam and Mac were very similar, and I liked that too. He didn’t so much have the take-no-prisoners mentality that Mac had, but he had the same moral stamina. Adam, like Mac, was very independent, having worked his way through college and graduate school.

  “My mother wanted to pay my way, but I wouldn’t have it,” Adam had said. “I told her that she was the one who taught me to neither a borrower nor a lender be. And it took.”

  I admired that, Nell thought. I believed that Adam, like Mac, would give you the shirt off his back, while at the same time harboring a horror of borrowing money himself. “Make do, or do without, Nell.” That was the lesson Mac preached to me.

  All that changed later, though. Adam had no trouble asking me to invade my trust fund to lend him more than a million dollars, Nell thought. What happened to his staunch stand against borrowing? she wondered. But of course she hadn’t questioned him at the time.

  As soon as they were married, Adam had asked Mac to help him get a better job. That was how he happened to go to work for Walters and Arsdale.

  Then he left them to open his own firm, using the rest of the money he borrowed from me.

  The last two weeks had been so terrible. First she had lost her husband, and then came all the suggestions that he wasn’t the man she thought him to be. I don’t want to believe he was in on that bid-rigging and kickback scheme, Nell told herself. Why would he have been involved? He didn’t exactly need the money. The boat was his only extravagance. He wouldn’t have had to borrow money from me if he was also getting paid off under the table, she reasoned.

  But why didn’t he tell me that his design had been rejected by Peter Lang? That was a question for which she would have to find an answer.

  And why did he do such a complete turnaround when I began to talk seriously about wanting to run for Mac’s seat? He blamed his anger on Mac. He said Mac would never let me be my own person, not so long as he held any sway over me, and that I would just end up being a puppet for my grandfather. Well, I fell for it, but now I have to wonder if I wasn’t really just being manipulated by Adam.

  What reason—other than his disdain for Mac, and perhaps politics in general—would Adam have to keep me away from the glare of the media? she wondered.

  As she looked back over what she had learned in the past few days, an answer to the questions that were plaguing her began to form in Nell’s mind, one that made sense and that chilled her to the bone. Adam knew that if I ran for that office, then the media and my opponents would dig deep and hard into our personal histories to see if there were any skeletons in either of our closets. I’m confident I’m clean, she thought. So what was he afraid of?

  Could there be some truth to the suggestion that he had been taking kickbacks? Was he in any way to blame for that defective renovation job on Lexington Avenue, where the façade collapsed the other day?

  Anxious to put these questions out of her mind, Nell decided to tackle one of the chores she had been putting off. The maintenance men had brought up to the apartment a pile of boxes for her to use in packing Adam’s clothes. She went into the guest room and put the first box on the bed. The neat piles of underwear and socks disappeared into it.

  Questions beget questions, Nell thought. As she continued to pack away Adam’s clothes, she allowed herself to face the one question that she had been most determinedly avoiding these past few days: Was I truly in love with Adam, or did I merely want to be in love with him?

  If I hadn’t rushed so quickly into marriage with Adam, would the initial attraction have worn off? Did I see in him what I wanted to see? Wasn’t I always denying the truth to myself? The truth is, it wasn’t a great marriage—at least, not for me. I resented having to give up my career goals for him. I also wasn’t sorry when Adam would take off for the weekend on his boat, fishing and cruising. I enjoyed the time alone, and it gave me time to spend with Mac as well.

  Or could all my doubts be something else? Nell asked herself as she closed a box, set it on the floor and picked up another one. Is it simply that I have grieved enough in my life, and that now I am trying to find a reason not to grieve deeply again?

  I’ve read that people are often angry at the loved one who has died. Is that what’s happening to me? she wondered.

  Nell carefully folded sports clothes—chinos and jeans and short-sleeve shirts—placing them in boxes; ties and handkerchiefs and gloves were the last items to be packed away. The bed was now clear. She had no heart to start in on the closet. That can wait till another day, she thought.

  The Ryan woman had called earlier in the afternoon and insisted that she had to see Nell that evening. The call had been abrupt, almost rude, and Nell had been tempted to tell the woman where to get off. Still, she knew that Lisa Ryan was in great pain, and she deserved to be given time to come to terms with her loss.

  Nell looked at her watch. It was after six. Lisa Ryan had said she would be there by seven-thirty; that gave Nell enough time to freshen up and relax for a few minutes. A nice glass of chardonnay would also help, she decided.

  THE ELEVATOR OPERATOR helped Lisa carry the two heavy packages into Nell’s apartment. “Where shall I put these, Ms. MacDermott?” he asked.

  It was Lisa who answered. “Just put them there.” She was pointing to the round table under the window that overlooked Park Avenue.

  The elevator operator glanced at Nell, who nodded.

  When the door closed behind him, Lisa said defiantly, “Nell, I have nightmares that the cops will come in with a search warrant, find this cursed money and arrest me, right in front of my children. They’d never do that to you. That’s why you’ve got to keep it here until you can give it back to someone.”

  “Lisa, that is absolutely impossible,” Nell told her. “I respected your confidence, but there’s no way under the sun I can hold on to or send back money that was given to your husband because he went along with something illegal.”

  “How do I know your husband wasn’t involved in this?” Lisa demanded. “There was something very strange in the way Jimmy got his job in the first place. He sent a résumé to everyone in the building trade, but only your husband responded. Was Adam Cauliff in the habit of being a bleeding heart for a guy who was blackballed because he was honest? Or did he get him a job with Sam Krause precisely because he thought poor Jimmy might just be desperate enough to be useful? That’s what I want to know.”

  “I don’t know the answer,” Nell said slowly. “I do know that no matter who gets hurt, it’s important to find out just how and why Jimmy was useful to someone.”

  Lisa Rya
n’s face drained of color. “Over my dead body will Jimmy’s name come into this,” she cried. “I’ll take that damn money and throw it in the river first. That’s what I should have done the minute I found it.”

  “Lisa, listen to me,” Nell pleaded. “You’ve read about the building façade that collapsed on Lexington Avenue. Three people were injured, and one of them may die.”

  “My Jimmy never worked on Lexington Avenue!”

  “I didn’t say he did, but he worked for Sam Krause, and it was his company that did that renovation. If Krause did shoddy work on that building, then chances are he did the same on others. Maybe there’s another job that Jimmy was on, in which corners were cut and inferior materials were used. Maybe there is another structurally unsound building, an accident waiting to happen. Jimmy Ryan hid that money away and never spent it, and from what you tell me, he was terribly depressed. I have a feeling that he was the kind of man who would now want you to do whatever you could to help avoid another tragedy.”

  The defiant anger in Lisa’s face faded, and she collapsed into deep, wracking sobs. Nell put her arms around her. She’s so thin, she thought compassionately. She’s only a few years older than I am, yet here she is, faced with the responsibility of raising three kids with basically no money. And still she’d throw fifty thousand dollars into the river rather than feed and clothe her children with money that was dirty.

  “Lisa,” she said. “I know what you’re going through. I also have to face the fact that my husband may have been involved in bid rigging, or at the very least guilty of closing his eyes to the use of substandard materials. True, I don’t have children to protect, but if knowledge of Adam’s complicity in anything illegal comes out, it could cost me my political career. And having said that, I want your permission to talk to the detectives investigating the explosion.

  “I’ll ask them to do whatever they can to keep Jimmy’s name out of the investigation, but Lisa, do you realize that if Jimmy knew too much, he may well have been the target in the explosion that blew up the boat?”