Before I Say Good-Bye Page 27

  Bonnie stopped and turned. “What is it, Nell?”

  They were standing side by side, their reflections gazing back at them. Don’t you see? Nell wanted to shout. Your aura is almost completely black, just like Winifred’s was. You’re going to die.

  Then, to her horror, as she watched, the darkness began to spread and encircle her as well.

  Bonnie tugged at her arm. “Nell, dear, come into the study,” she urged. “It’s time to talk to Adam.”

  eighty-four

  DAN HAD GONE to the hospital to check on two postoperative patients, and it was four-thirty before he was able to get away. Once again he called Nell’s apartment, but there still was no answer. Maybe Mac has heard from her, he thought.

  Cornelius MacDermott reported that while he had not talked to his granddaughter, he had heard from his sister. “It’s not bad enough that she sent Nell to some loony psychic, but now Gert is pulling the same stuff on me. She’s worried because she has some kind of premonition that something bad is going to happen to Nell.”

  “What do you think she means by that, Mac?”

  “It means that she has nothing better to do than to sit around and fret. Look at the way it’s raining. Gert’s arthritis is probably kicking up, and she’s turning her own discomfort into some kind of psychic warning. It’s like she’s channeling the pain for all the rest of us to enjoy. Dan, tell me I’m the sane one here. You should see the look that Liz is giving me. I think she believes in that nonsense too.”

  “Mac, do you think there really is any reason to be concerned about Nell?” Dan asked sharply. Worry begets worry, he thought. This whole day has just been one unsettling thing after another.

  “What’s there to worry about? I told Gert to come over here to my office and listen to what those two detectives have to tell us about Adam Cauliff. Gert thought he was tops because he danced around opening doors for her, but according to what that Brennan told me, they’ve dug up a lot of dirt on that guy. They wouldn’t tell me over the phone what all was in the report, but from the sound of it, seems like we’re well rid of him.

  “The detectives said they’d be here in about an hour. They were stopping at the 13th Precinct, where you and I were today. They said they’d located the woman whose soup kitchen card was found at the mansion fire, and she’d been taken there for questioning.”

  “I’d like to know what she had to say to them.”

  “I think you should know,” Mac said, his tone becoming gentler. “Come on down now so you can hear everything firsthand. Then, when we hook up with Nell, we’ll go out for an early dinner.”

  “Just one more thing. Is it like Nell to ignore messages? I mean, do you think she’s home and maybe is not picking up the phone because she doesn’t feel well?”

  “Good God, Dan, don’t you get started.” But Dan could hear the concern in Cornelius MacDermott’s voice. “I’ll call over to her doorman and see if he’s seen her either coming or going.”

  eighty-five

  “I REPORTED MY BAG with my good things stolen hours before that fire,” Karen Renfrew said angrily. She was with Captain Murphy and Detectives Sclafani and Brennan, seated in the same conference room in which they had met earlier with Cornelius MacDermott and Dan Minor.

  “Who’d you report it to, Karen?” Sclafani asked.

  “A cop who passed in a squad car. I waved him down. You know what he said?”

  I can only imagine, Brennan thought.

  “He said, ‘Lady, haven’t you got enough junk in those carts without worrying if one bag fell off?’ But I tell you, it didn’t fall off. It was stolen.”

  “Which probably means that whoever stole it was cooping in that mansion,” Captain Murphy said, “and that person started the fire that killed Dr. Minor’s mother. That means—”

  Karen Renfrew interrupted the Captain. “I can tell you just what that cop looked like. He was too fat, and he was in the squad car with another cop he called Arty.”

  “We believe you, Karen,” Sclafani said soothingly. “Where were you staying when your bag was stolen?”

  “On One Hundredth Street. I had a nice doorway across the street from where they were fixing up that old apartment building.”

  Suddenly alert, Sclafani asked, “What is the avenue that One Hundredth Street crosses there, Karen?”

  “Amsterdam Avenue. Why?”

  “Yeah, what difference does that make?” Murphy asked.

  “Maybe none. Or maybe a lot. We’re following up something on a guy who was foreman on that job. According to his wife, he was extremely upset because of a change-of-work order that had canceled a job he was doing up there. We can’t find, though, that any such thing ever happened—there’s no trace of any order like that. So we figure maybe he was upset about something else. It also just happens that this all took place the same evening as the fire at the Vandermeer place, and while it could be pure coincidence, based again on what his wife told us, we’ve been looking for some way to connect him to both sites.”

  George Brennan looked at his partner. There was no need to vocalize the rest of the connection they had just made. Jimmy Ryan had been working across the street from where Karen Renfrew was cooping. She was a wino. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to have lifted one of her bags and thrown it in the trunk of his car while she was sleeping. It would be a good way of planting phony proof that the mansion fire had been set by a squatter. It was a twist of fate that he grabbed the bag with her soup kitchen card, and that the card wasn’t burned in the fire. The pieces of this puzzle were finally beginning to fall into place, and the picture they were getting was far from pretty.

  If this line of reasoning panned out, Brennan thought with disgust, Jimmy Ryan was not only guilty of arson that resulted in a felony murder, but of stealing from a homeless woman who had a pathetic, compulsive need for the scraps and rags and trash he took from her.

  eighty-six

  “NELL, I can sense that you are very troubled.”

  The two women were seated at a table in the center of the room, and Bonnie was holding Nell’s hands.

  Bonnie’s hands are ice cold, Nell thought.

  “What is it you need to ask Adam?” Bonnie whispered.

  Nell tried to withdraw her hands, but Bonnie gripped them even more tightly. She is frightened, Nell thought—and desperate. She doesn’t know how much I know or suspect about Adam and the explosion.

  “I need to ask Adam about Winifred,” Nell said, trying to keep her voice calm. “I think she may still be alive.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because a little boy who was on a ferry coming from the Statue of Liberty saw the explosion. He says he saw someone dive off the boat, someone dressed in a wet suit. I know Winifred was a strong swimmer, and I suspect it may have been her that the boy saw.”

  “The child might have been wrong,” Bonnie said, her voice low.

  Nell glanced about. The room was filled with shadows. The shades were drawn. The only sound she could hear, other than their own breathing, was the rain pelting on the windows.

  “I don’t think the child was wrong,” Nell said firmly. “I think someone did escape from that boat before the explosion. I also think you know who it is.”

  She felt a tremor run through Bonnie’s body, convulsing her hands, and it was then that Nell was able to pull her own free.

  “Bonnie, I’ve seen you on television. I believe you do have genuine psychic powers. I don’t really understand what causes some people to have those special abilities, but I do know that I have had several psychic experiences myself—experiences that were very real but are not explainable as part of the rational world. I know that my Aunt Gert has had these experiences as well.

  “But you’re different from us. You have a rare gift, and I think you have been guilty of misusing it. I remember Gert told me years ago that a gift of psychic power must only be used for good. If it is abused, she said, the one who possesses it will be severely puni
shed.”

  Bonnie listened, her eyes fixed on Nell, her pupils darkening with every word she heard, her complexion draining to alabaster white.

  “You came to Gert, claiming that you had been contacted by Adam. I don’t believe in channeling, but I was distraught enough at his death to want to try to be in touch with him myself. When my mother and father died, they came to say good-bye to me because they loved me. I thought Adam had not come to say good-bye because we had quarreled. So I wanted to be in touch with him; that way we could reconcile. I needed to part from him with love. That’s why I wanted so much to believe in you.”

  “Nell, I am sure that on the other side, Adam—”

  “Hear me out, Bonnie. If you did channel to Adam, what you claim he said to me was untrue. I know now that he did not love me. A man who loves his wife does not have an affair with his assistant. He does not open a safe-deposit box with her under another name. I am sure that Adam didn’t love me because that is precisely what he did.”

  “You’re wrong, Nell. Adam did love you.”

  “No, I am not. And I’m also not a fool. I know you are helping either Adam or Winifred by trying to get the safe-deposit key that was inadvertently left in Adam’s jacket.”

  I’ve hit home, Nell thought. Bonnie Wilson was moving her head from side to side, not so much in denial as in despair.

  “Only two people would have any use for that key—Adam or Winifred. I hope it is Winifred that you are working with, and that Adam is the one who is dead. I cringe to think that for more than three years I might have been living and breathing and eating and sleeping with someone who could deliberately take three lives, and arrange a fire that took the life of a homeless woman.

  “On a different, but important level, I cringe to think that I gave up the career I wanted all my life just to please a cheat and a thief—that Adam was both those things I know with certainty. I can only pray that he was not also a murderer.”

  Nell reached into her pocket and took out the safe-deposit key. “Bonnie, I believe that you know where Adam or Winifred is hiding. You may not realize that if you have assisted either of them in any way, then you have become an accessory to multiple murder. Take this key. Give it to whichever one is still alive. Let him or her think that it’s safe to go to that bank in White Plains. It’s your only chance for leniency.”

  “What do you mean, ‘think that it’s safe,’ Nell?”

  She had not heard the footsteps approaching from behind. She turned and looked up in shock and horror.

  Adam was standing over her.

  eighty-seven

  DAN MINOR glanced at the window, hoping to see that the slashing rainfall was letting up. Unfortunately it was still pouring, beating against the glass, the rain creating a virtual waterfall. His grandmother used to tell him that when it rained like this, the angels were weeping. He found that an especially ominous thought today.

  Where did Nell go? he kept asking himself.

  They were all gathered in Mac’s office. He was there with Mac and Gert and Liz and the two detectives, who had just arrived.

  Nell’s doorman had confirmed that she arrived home at about three o’clock and went back out shortly after four. That meant she must have heard the message I left for her, he thought. Why didn’t she call me back?

  The elevator operator said she had seemed upset.

  When Jack Sclafani and George Brennan had arrived, they were introduced to Liz and Gert. Then Sclafani took over. “Let’s start by talking about the homeless woman who reported the theft of one of her bags only hours before the mansion fire. We’ve been able to verify her story with the police officer she stopped that day. So we believe that she was not the one who set the fire at the Vandermeer mansion.

  “I don’t think we’ll ever have absolute proof, but we believe very strongly that Winifred Johnson paid Jimmy Ryan, one of the people who lost his life in the boat explosion, to set that fire, and to make it look as if a homeless person had done it.”

  “That means my mother—” Dan interrupted.

  “That means that your mother has been cleared as a suspect.”

  “Do you think Winifred Johnson was doing this on her own, or was she acting on instructions from Adam?” Mac asked.

  “We assume it was all done for Adam Cauliff.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Gert said. “How did he stand to benefit from the fire?”

  “It was because he had bought the Kaplan property right next door to the old mansion. He was smart enough to know that it would increase enormously in value if the mansion was gone and the property therefore no longer restricted by the building’s landmark status. He then would approach Peter Lang, who bought the old Vandermeer property, and offer him a deal. He was also arrogant enough to think that he could force himself on the developer as architect for the project.”

  “According to the widow, a man phoned Jimmy Ryan’s home the night of the fire with instructions to cancel the job,” Brennan explained. “That’s one of the reasons we believe both Adam and Winifred were in on planning the fire together. They may just have learned that the Vandermeer mansion had been removed from landmark status that same day. Thus there was no longer any need to set the fire.”

  “Well, it didn’t do either one of them much good,” Liz commented. “Since both of them were blown to bits on that boat.”

  “We don’t think so,” Brennan told them. Noting their astonished expressions, he said, “A witness claimed to see someone in a wet suit dive off the boat an instant before the explosion. Two bodies have not been accounted for—those of Adam Cauliff and Winifred Johnson.”

  “Thanks to some sleuthing by your granddaughter, Congressman,” Sclafani said, picking up the story, “we have gained access to a safe-deposit box shared by a man and a woman who called themselves Harry and Rhoda Reynolds. The box contained doctored passports and various other forms of identification. We haven’t seen the actual contents of the box, but copies of the pictures on the passports were faxed in to our offices. And while both the man and the woman are somewhat disguised, it is clear that they are pictures of Winifred Johnson and Adam Cauliff.”

  “The box also contained nearly three hundred thousand dollars in cash and several million dollars worth of bearer bonds and other securities,” Detective Brennan added.

  A long silence followed these disclosures, broken finally by Gert, who asked, “How on earth could they accumulate that much money?”

  “It’s really not that hard with the kind of projects Walters and Arsdale handle. They have billings of nearly eight hundred million in their various jobs on their books right now. Also, we think this was something that Winifred and Adam had been planning for some time.”

  Looking at the distress on Mac’s face, Sclafani said, “I’m afraid your granddaughter married a pretty despicable character, Congressman. It’s a sorry history and it’s all in this report. You can go over it at your leisure. I’m sorry for Ms. MacDermott. She’s a fine woman and a very smart one. I know this will be a shock for her, but she’s resilient, and in time she will get over it.”

  “Will she be joining us?” Brennan asked. “We’d like to thank her for all her help.”

  “We don’t know where Nell is,” Gert told him, her tone a mixture of distress and irritation, “and no one will listen to me, but I’m worried sick about her. Something isn’t right. I could tell when I talked to her on the phone earlier this afternoon that she was distracted. She didn’t sound at all like herself. She said she’d just come back from Westchester. So why would she go running out again on a day like this?”

  There is something wrong, Dan thought, agonized by his concern. Nell is in trouble.

  Brennan and Sclafani looked at each other. “You have no idea where she is?” Sclafani asked.

  “That bothers you,” Mac snapped. “Why?”

  “Because Ms. MacDermott obviously found the other key to the safe-deposit box and was smart enough to investigate a bank near the nursing h
ome where Winifred Johnson’s mother is a resident. If she has figured out where either Winifred or Adam may be hiding, and tries to contact them, she is putting herself in grave danger. Anyone who, with cold deliberation, blows up a boat with several people on it, is capable of doing whatever it takes, including committing more murders, to avoid detection.”

  “It has to be Winifred who swam away from the boat,” Gert said, her voice trembling. “I mean, Bonnie Wilson channeled to Adam. He spoke to Nell from the other side, so he has to be dead.”

  “He what?” Sclafani asked.

  “Gert, for God sake!” Mac exploded.

  “Mac, I know you don’t believe in this, but Nell did. She was even following Adam’s advice that she give his clothes to the thrift shop. I just confirmed that with her this afternoon. She’s got them all packed up and is bringing them in tomorrow, and Bonnie Wilson even volunteered to help me unpack them. I told Nell that. Bonnie’s been so helpful through all this. The only thing is, I was surprised that she either forgot or didn’t tell me that she once had met Adam at one of my parties. I found a picture of the two of them together. I would have thought she might have mentioned that.”

  “You say she told Ms. MacDermott to give Adam’s clothes away, and then wanted to help unpack them,” Brennan exclaimed, jumping up. “I’ll bet anything she was trying to get at that key. She’s in on this some way, whether she’s in cahoots with Adam or with Winifred.”

  “Dear God,” Liz Hanley said. “I thought he actually had materialized.”

  They stared at her.

  “What do you mean, Liz?” Mac asked.

  “I saw Adam’s face appear in the mirror in Bonnie Wilson’s apartment. I thought she must have channeled him, but maybe he really was there.”

  That’s where Nell went, Dan thought, to that Wilson woman’s apartment. I’m sure of it.

  Sick with dread, he looked around, seeing the sudden fear he felt reflected in the faces of everyone in the room.