Before I Say Good-Bye Read online

  Nell paused, then went ahead and said what had been in the back of her mind ever since Monday, when Lisa first told her about the money. “Lisa, if someone is worried that Jimmy told you what he did to get that money, you also might be considered a threat. Had you considered that?”

  “But he didn’t tell me!”

  “You and I are the only ones who know that.” Nell gently touched the other woman’s arm. “Now do you understand why the detectives need to be told about the money?”

  Thursday, June 22

  sixty-four

  ON THURSDAY MORNING, Jack Sclafani and George Brennan were once again at Fourteenth Street and First Avenue, visiting the apartment of Ada Kaplan.

  “Is Jed home?” Sclafani asked.

  “He’s not up yet.” Ada Kaplan was once again on the verge of tears. “You’re not going to search my house again, are you? I can’t take any more. You’ve got to understand that.” The dark circles under her eyes accentuated the extreme whiteness of her face.

  “No, we’re not going to search your house again, Mrs. Kaplan,” Brennan said soothingly. “We’re sorry we have to inconvenience you at all. Would you just tell Jed to get dressed and get out here. We want to talk to him, that’s all.”

  “Maybe he’ll talk to you. He hardly says a word to me.” She looked at them appealingly. “What would he have to gain by hurting Adam Cauliff?” she asked. “Sure, he was mad because Cauliff talked me into selling my building—and Jed thinks for too little money—but truthfully, if I hadn’t sold it to him, I’d have sold it to that big-shot realtor, Mr. Lang. I told Jed that.”

  “Peter Lang?” Brennan asked. “Did you speak with him about your property?”

  “Sure I did. Right after that fire in the mansion, he came to see me. Had a check in his hand.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “He offered me two million dollars, and only the month before, I’d sold it to Mr. Cauliff for less than one million! It broke my heart to have to tell him I didn’t own it anymore, and I didn’t dare let Jed know how much more I could have gotten for it.”

  “Was Lang upset when he learned you’d sold the property?”

  “Oh, my, yes, he was. I think if Mr. Cauliff had been standing there, he’d have strangled him with his bare hands.”

  “Are you talking about me, Mom?”

  All three people turned to see an unshaven Jed Kaplan standing in the doorway.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Ada Kaplan said nervously. “I was just telling the gentlemen that Peter Lang had been interested in buying my property too.”

  Jed Kaplan’s expression became ugly. “Our property, Mom. And don’t you forget it.” He turned to Brennan and Sclafani. “What do you two want?”

  They got up. “Just the chance to make sure you’re as charming as ever,” Sclafani remarked. “We also don’t want you to forget that until we say it’s okay, you shouldn’t be planning any vacations or anything like that. While this investigation is ongoing, we need to know where you are. So don’t be surprised if we drop in again for a little visit.”

  “It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Mrs. Kaplan,” Brennan said.

  On the way down in the elevator, Sclafani spoke first. “You thinking the same thing I am?”

  “Yeah. I’m thinking that Kaplan’s nothing but a two-bit hood, and that we’re wasting our time on him. Lang, on the other hand, deserves a little closer scrutiny. He had motive in wanting Adam Cauliff out of the way, and he very conveniently saved his own life by missing the meeting on the boat.”

  They arrived back at headquarters at eleven o’clock to find an unexpected visitor waiting for them. The receptionist explained: “His name is Kenneth Tucker. He’s from Philadelphia, and he wants to speak to whoever is handling the investigation into that boat explosion a couple of weeks back.”

  Sclafani shrugged. There’s never a high-profile case that doesn’t get its share of loonies with hot tips or crackpot theories, he thought. “Give us ten minutes to get some coffee.”

  He tried not to raise his eyebrows when Tucker was escorted into the office. He looked like the typical young executive, and his first words, “I may be wasting your time,” convinced both men that that was exactly what he would be doing.

  “I’ll get right to the point,” Tucker said. “My son and I were on a boat in New York harbor when that boat exploded two weeks ago. He has been having nightmares ever since.”

  “How old is your son, Mr. Tucker?”

  “Benjy is eight.”

  “And so you think that these nightmares are related to that explosion?”

  “Yes, I do. Both Benjy and I witnessed it. We were returning from a visit to the Statue of Liberty. Truthfully, the whole episode was kind of a blur to me, but Ben saw something that I believe may be significant.”

  Sclafani and Brennan exchanged glances. “Mr. Tucker, we spoke to a number of people who’d been on the ferry at the time. Some of them witnessed the explosion, but they all agree that the ferry was too far away for them to see anything distinctly. I can understand why a little boy might have nightmares if he happened to be looking at that boat when it blew up, but I can assure you that from that distance, he did not see anything significant.”

  Kenneth Tucker flushed. “My son is unusually farsighted,” he said with quiet dignity. “He wears glasses to correct his vision so that he can read, but he had taken them off just before the explosion. And as I told you, it was right after that that he began having nightmares. He kept saying that in his dreams, when the boat blew up, a snake would leap off it and start coming at him. We took him to a child psychologist. After several visits, she got him to draw what he had seen.”

  He handed them Ben’s latest sketch. “He now believes he saw someone in a wet suit and carrying a woman’s pocketbook dive off the boat at the moment it exploded. It may indeed be a child’s fantasy, but I felt you should at least see the sketch. I am aware that you get many crank calls after an incident such as this, and I figured that if I sent it to you by mail, then it would be ignored, and I didn’t want that to happen. The drawing may not help at all, but I felt I had to bring it to your attention.”

  He stood up. “Obviously the face mask prevented Ben from having even the faintest idea of what the person in the wet suit looked like. If you put any credence in this drawing, I hope you realize there is no point in questioning him. He slept through the night last night for the first time in two weeks. And of course, we want no media attention.”

  Brennan and Sclafani again exchanged glances.

  “Mr. Tucker, we’re very grateful,” George Brennan said. “I can’t be sure without more investigation, but your son’s drawing could have significance. Ben’s name will not be mentioned, I promise you, and I’m going to ask you not to reveal to anyone else what you’ve just told us. Even if someone did get off that boat, we know that at least two people, and probably a third, died in the explosion. We’re dealing with a multiple homicide, and whoever was responsible has to be considered extremely dangerous.”

  “Then we understand each other.”

  When the door closed behind Kenneth Tucker, Sclafani whistled. “It was never leaked to the media that our guys found Winifred Johnson’s pocketbook,” he said. “So there’s no way the guy could have known that.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That would explain why it was hardly singed. Whoever got off the boat was carrying it.”

  “And probably lost it in the water when the boat exploded. If the kid was right, whoever jumped off the boat barely got away in time.”

  “Then who do you think it was?” Sclafani asked.

  Without knocking, Cal Thompson, the assistant district attorney who had interviewed Robert Walters, opened the door and poked his head in. “Thought you guys might be interested in the latest development. We’ve got ourselves another Queen for a Day. Sam Krause’s top assistant came in with his lawyer. He admits they’ve been using substandard materials on many of their jobs and consistently overbilling on jobs they g
ot from Walters and Arsdale.”

  “Does he say who over at Walters and Arsdale was making the deal with them?”

  “No. He said he assumed it was Walters and Arsdale themselves, but he can’t swear to that. The contact for these transactions was Winifred Johnson. He said they even had a name for her: ‘Winnie the bag lady.’ ”

  “She also seems to be one hell of a swimmer,” Brennan said.

  Thompson raised his eyebrows. “Unless I’m mistaken, her swimming days are over.”

  “Maybe yes. Maybe no,” Sclafani replied.

  sixty-five

  ON THURSDAY MORNING, Nell had gotten up at dawn. Whatever sleep she had known during the night had been disturbed by bad dreams, and several times she had awakened, startled by imagined sounds in the night. More than once she also had awakened to feel her face wet with tears.

  Were they for Adam? she wondered. In truth, she could not be sure. I’m not sure of anything, she admitted to herself that morning, as she pulled the covers closer around her. When she had gone to bed, the night air was cool, so she had turned off the air-conditioning and opened the windows wide.

  As a result, the sounds of New York had been with her all night—the traffic, the occasional wail of a police siren or ambulance, the faint strains of music from the apartment below her, whose owner played the stereo almost nonstop.

  But the room embraced her, filling her with the sensation of having come home. Without the tall dresser that had been Adam’s, the room felt spacious again, her own dresser back in its original place, positioned so that with the tiny night-light she could see the picture of her mother and father whenever she woke.

  The picture evoked memories, but fortunately they were happy ones. Before she was old enough to begin school, her parents had taken her on some of their field trips to South America. She had vague memories of them talking to natives in remote villages, of herself playing with other small children. The game was often one of teaching each other the words for parts of their bodies, such as the nose and ears and eyes and teeth.

  Nell realized that she was reminded of that time because she had something of the same sensation now, that of being in a strange land and having to try to learn the language. The difference this time, she thought, is that I don’t have a mother and father hovering around me to make sure I don’t get into trouble.

  Several times when Nell had awakened, Dan Minor’s face floated across her mind. She found the image a reassuring sight, since he was a fellow traveler, another survivor of a broken childhood, another person on a quest for answers.

  That morning, over a cup of coffee, she decided to open the packages and count the money Lisa Ryan had thrust on her the night before. She had said it was fifty thousand dollars. It might be wise for me to verify that figure, Nell thought.

  The packages were heavy, and it was a struggle for her to haul them to the dining room table. With meticulous care she opened the knots on the twine, making a mental note of the strand of green in the twist. The brown wrapping paper also brought back childhood memories, those of her parents sending packages to the friends they had made all over the world.

  Twine and wrapping paper.

  Nell ignored a troubling sensation that settled into her subconscious, as she went ahead and opened the first box and looked down at the neat stacks of bills held together with rubber bands.

  Before she began to count, she examined the box carefully. It was about two-thirds the size of a box a department store might have used to pack a woman’s suit. There was no company or product identification of any kind displayed on the sides. She was sure the box had been chosen with care. Clearly someone did not want to have it traced back to its source.

  She poured herself more coffee and got out her calculator. As she counted and recounted each stack, she entered the figure. The first box contained twenty-eight thousand dollars in mostly fifty-dollar bills.

  She opened the second one and began to count, noting that this one had well-worn, smaller bills, including fives and tens and twenties as well as fifties. Few hundreds, she thought. Whoever did this was smart enough to realize that Jimmy Ryan flashing hundreds might draw attention.

  The total in the second box was exactly twenty-two thousand dollars. The total was not one cent less than the fifty thousand Jimmy must have been promised for whatever it was he had to do to earn it, she thought. But why didn’t he spend any of it? she wondered. Was he so guilt ridden that he couldn’t bear to touch it?

  Reflecting on what Jimmy Ryan must have felt, Nell remembered that in the Bible, after the Crucifixion, Judas, overwhelmed with guilt, had tried to return the thirty pieces of silver he had been paid for betraying Jesus.

  And then he hanged himself, Nell thought as she replaced the money in the second box. Was it possible that Jimmy Ryan was suicidal? she wondered.

  As she began to fold the brown wrapping paper back around the first package, she suddenly realized what it was that had been bothering her all morning about these packages. She had seen this same kind of heavy paper before, as well as the twine with the green thread running through it.

  In Winifred’s file drawer.

  sixty-six

  DURING THE NIGHT, Lisa Ryan had tossed and turned, listening to the familiar sounds from outdoors that punctuated the night. Some of the sounds were reassuring, almost comforting, like the breeze rustling the maple trees in their front yard. But there also had been the sound of their next-door neighbor, a bartender, parking his car in the driveway sometime in the very early hours, and then only a little later she had heard the rumbling of the freight train as it passed on nearby tracks.

  By five o’clock she had given up trying to sleep. She got out of bed and put on her chenille robe. As she tied the belt, she was reminded that she had lost considerable weight in the short time since Jimmy’s death.

  One way to do it, she thought grimly.

  There wasn’t the slightest doubt in Lisa’s mind that after Nell MacDermott talked to the detectives assigned to investigate the case, they would rush to talk to her again. In the months he had worked for Sam Krause, Jimmy had been involved with a number of different building projects. She wanted to try to figure out which sites he had been working on and when. Perhaps that way she might be able to tell them exactly where he had been working when his intense depression started.

  She was sure that location was the key to whatever it was that he had done, or had not done, to be paid the bribe.

  As she had headed downstairs, Lisa looked in on the children. Kyle and Charley were fast asleep in their bunk beds.

  In the faint early morning light, she studied their faces. Kyle’s jaw was showing the first hint of firming into adolescence. He will always be lean, like my side of the family, she thought.

  Charley had a sturdier build. He would be a big man, like Jimmy. Both boys had inherited their father’s red hair and hazel eyes.

  Kelly was in the smallest bedroom—a glorified closet, Jimmy had called it. Her slender body was curled in the fetal position. Strands of her long, light blond hair covered her cheek and spread over her shoulders.

  Her journal was half hidden under the pillow. She wrote in it every night, something she had begun as a school project but then kept up on her own. “It’s very private,” she had said solemnly, “and the teacher said that our families should respect our privacy.”

  They all had pledged never to read it, but Jimmy, made suspicious by the mischievous glance Kyle and Charley exchanged, had made Kelly a strongbox that sat on top of her dresser. The box had two keys. One Kelly wore on a chain around her neck. The other Lisa kept hidden in her own dresser, in case the first one was ever lost.

  Kelly had exacted a “cross my heart, I hope to die,” promise that Lisa would never use that key to open the box, and she never had. But now, looking down at her sleeping child, Lisa knew she was going to break that promise.

  It was not only because she needed to know what Kelly, who had been the ultimate “Daddy’s girl
,” was thinking and feeling now. It was also because of what Kelly—always observant and sensitive to moods—might have written about Jimmy at the time when he plunged into depression.

  sixty-seven

  DAN MINOR HAD ARRIVED at the hospital early on Thursday morning. He had three operations back to back, and the first of them was at seven o’clock. Then he had the pleasure of discharging a five-year-old patient who had been in the hospital for a month.

  With easy good humor he cut off the parents’ out-pouring of gratitude. “You’d better get him out of here fast. The nurses are signing a petition to adopt him.”

  “I was so sure he’d be disfigured,” the mother said.

  “Oh, he’ll have a few reminders, but it won’t be enough to hurt him with the girls in ten or twelve years.”

  It was one o’clock before Dan was able to grab a sandwich and coffee in the physicians’ lounge. He also used the time to call Cornelius MacDermott’s office to see if they possibly had learned anything about his mother. He knew it was unlikely—it had been less than a day—but still he couldn’t resist calling. He’s probably at lunch, though, Dan thought as he dialed the number.

  Liz Hanley answered on the first ring. “He’s in his office, Doctor,” she told him, “but I have to warn you. The good Lord barreling down Fifth Avenue on a tricycle wouldn’t get a smile out of him today, so if he bites your head off, don’t take it personally.”

  “Maybe I’d better skip trying to talk to him now.”

  “No, not at all. But I hope you don’t mind hanging on for a bit. He’s on the other line. It should be only a minute more, though. I’ll put you through as soon as he’s done.”

  “Before you get off, Liz, tell me how you feel today. I don’t know whether you realize it, but you were in mild shock yesterday.”

  “Oh, I’m all right now, but what I experienced yesterday was definitely a shock to my system. Doctor, you have to believe me when I tell you that Bonnie Wilson is a gifted psychic. That’s why I’m absolutely sure I saw . . . Well, I won’t go into all that.”