Before I Say Goodbye Read online

  Thrilled at the prospect, Lisa had given full vent to her imagination. She asked for a kitchen with a skylight, and she wanted that room to flow into a family room with a raised-hearth fireplace. She also had asked for a dining room with window seats, and a dressing room off the master bedroom. From what she had described, he’d made a model to scale.

  I hope he kept those plans, Lisa thought. She reached into the drawer and lifted out the stacks of papers. There weren’t as many of them as it had appeared, however, and under them, at the bottom of the drawer, she saw a bulky box—no, two—sealed with brown wrapping paper and twine. They were wedged in tightly, though, and she had to kneel on the floor and slip her fingers underneath to wrench them loose.

  She placed the boxes on the table, then reached for a sharp-edged tool from the Peg-Board, slashed the twine, unwrapped the heavy brown paper and lifted the lid from the first box.

  Then, with a mixture of fascinated horror and disbelief, she stared down at stacks of currency lying in neat rows inside the box: twenties, fifties, a few one hundreds—some worn, some mint new. The second box was mostly fifties.

  An hour later, after a careful count, followed by an even more careful recount, Lisa dazedly acknowledged that $50,000 had been hidden in this basement room by Jimmy Ryan, the beloved husband who had suddenly become a stranger.

  nineteen

  IN THE TWO YEARS since she had moved to New York from Florida, Bonnie Wilson, psychic and medium, had developed a solid clientele she met with regularly in her West End Avenue apartment.

  Thirty years old, slender, with black hair worn straight and full across her shoulders, pale skin and enviable features, Bonnie perhaps looked more like a model than a master of psychic phenomena, but, in fact, she had become quite well established in her profession and was especially sought after by all those anxious to be in touch with a loved one who had passed on.

  As she would explain to a newcomer, “We all have psychic ability, some more than others. It can be developed in all of us; however, mine came already finely tuned when I was born. Even as a child, I had the ability to sense what is going on in other peoples’ lives, to intuitively hear their concerns, to help them find the answers they are seeking.

  “As I studied, as I prayed, as I joined groups of others who share these special gifts, I found that when people came to consult me, the ones they loved, now on the higher plane, began to join us. Sometimes their messages were specific. At other times they simply wanted to let the grieving know that they are happy and well and that their love is eternal. Over time, my ability to communicate has become more and more precise. Some people find what I tell them to be disturbing, but most draw from it only the greatest comfort. I am anxious to assist all those who come to me, and I request only that they treat me and my abilities with respect. I want to be of help, for God has given me this gift, and it is my obligation to share it with others.”

  Bonnie regularly attended the New York Psychic Association meetings, held on the first Wednesday of every month. Today, as she had expected, Gert MacDermott, a regular attendee of these sessions, was not present. In hushed tones, the members discussed the terrible tragedy that had befallen her family. Gert, a loquacious person to begin with, was almost uncommonly proud of her successful young niece and frequently spoke of her psychic abilities. She had even talked of having her join their group but so far had not coaxed her to one of these meetings.

  “I met the niece’s husband, Adam Cauliff, at Gert’s house at one of her cocktail parties,” Dr. Siegfried Volk told Bonnie. “Gert seemed extremely fond of him. I don’t think he had much interest in our studies and our psychic efforts, but he certainly pleased her by showing up for the party. A charming man. I sent Gert a note expressing my sympathy, and I plan to call on her next week.”

  “I’m going to visit her too,” Bonnie said. “I want to help her and her family in any way I can.”

  twenty

  EARLIER THAT DAY, Jed Kaplan had set off on his favorite walk, starting at his mother’s apartment at Fourteenth Street and First Avenue, and ending up on the Hudson River at the North Cove Marina at the World Financial Center, where Adam Cauliff had kept his cabin cruiser. It was the fifth day in a row that Jed had made this journey, a walk that usually took him a little over an hour, depending on distractions along the way, and each time he enjoyed it more.

  And now, just as he had on the previous days, Jed sat staring out over the Hudson, a slight smile on his lips. The thought that Cornelia II was no longer arrogantly bobbing in the water there sent a thrill throughout his body so pleasurable it was almost sensual. He savored the image of Adam Cauliff’s body being blown to bits, starting with the startling, instantaneous recognition that must have registered in Cauliff’s brain, the knowledge that he was indeed dying. Then he thought of the body being torn to pieces, hurtling into the air before dropping into the water—it was an image he relived over and over in his mind, relishing it more each time.

  The temperature had been dropping all day, and now that the sun was going down, the breeze from the river had become cold and penetrating. Jed glanced around, noticing that the outdoor tables in the plaza, which had been crowded each of the last four days, were now all but empty. The passengers he saw arriving on the ferry boats from Jersey City and Hoboken walked quickly toward shelter. A bunch of sissies, Jed thought contemptuously. They should try living in the bush for a couple of years.

  He observed a cruise liner being piloted toward the Narrows and wondered where it was heading. Europe? he thought. South America? Hell, maybe he should try going to one of those places. Clearly it was time for him to push off. The old lady was driving him crazy, and he could only guess that he must be driving her crazy too.

  When she had fixed him breakfast this morning, she said, “Jed, you’re my son and I care about you a lot, but I can’t put up with you upsetting me all the time. You’ve got to get beyond all this. Despite everything you believe, Adam Cauliff was a nice man, or at least I thought so. Now, unfortunately, he’s dead, so you have no reason to keep hating him. It’s time for you to get on to something else. I’ll give you money to make a fresh start somewhere.”

  Initially she had suggested giving him five thousand bucks. By the time he finished his breakfast, he had gotten her up to twenty-five thousand, plus she had let him see her will, which showed that she was leaving everything to him. Before he finally had agreed to leave town, he made her swear on his father’s soul that she would never change the will.

  Cauliff had paid her $800,000 for the property. Chances were, given the way his mom scrimped, most of that money would still be there when she turned up her toes.

  It certainly wasn’t the amount he had hoped for—that property was worth ten times that—but it was the best he could do, now that she had practically given his inheritance away. Jed shrugged and went back to visualizing Adam Cauliff’s death.

  A witness to the explosion who had been on a boat coming back from the Statue of Liberty had been quoted in the Post as saying, “The boat wasn’t moving. I figured they’d dropped anchor and were having a couple of drinks or something. The water was getting choppy, and I remember thinking that the party wouldn’t last much longer. Then all of a sudden boom. It was like an atomic bomb hit it.”

  Jed had cut out that account of the explosion and kept it in his shirt pocket. He enjoyed rereading it, enjoyed visualizing bodies and debris hurling into the air, carried by the force of the explosion. His only real regret was that he hadn’t been there to see it.

  It was too bad about the other people who got killed, of course, but then they couldn’t have been worth much, because they worked with Cauliff, he told himself. They were probably in on his trick of finding senile widows who they could talk into selling off the property they owned for only a fraction of its value. Well, at least there won’t be a Cornelia III, he exulted.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  Startled out of his reverie, Jed sprang up, on the defensive, ready
to tell whoever was bothering him to get lost. But instead of the homeless beggar he had expected to confront, he found himself staring into the knowing eyes of a grave-faced man.

  “Detective George Brennan,” the man said as he held up his badge.

  Too late, Jed acknowledged to himself that hanging around the marina may well have been the stupidest mistake of his whole life.

  twenty-one

  DAN MINOR’S SEARCH for his mother finally promised to yield some results. The woman at the shelter who recognized the picture of her, and even called her “Quinny,” had provided him with the first ray of hope he’d had in a long, long time. He had been searching for his mother for so long—without any success—that even a glimmer of hope was enough to energize him.

  Today, in fact, he was so energized that once he was finished at the hospital for the afternoon, he had quickly changed and raced off to Central Park to continue his search there.

  It seemed as though he had been searching for his mother all his life. His mother had disappeared when he was six years old, right after the accident that almost took his life.

  He had a clear memory of waking to find her kneeling by his hospital bed, sobbing. Later, he learned that as a result of the accident—she had been drunk when it happened—she was indicted for criminal negligence, and rather than face a terrible public trial, and almost certainly losing custody of her son, she had fled.

  Occasionally, on his birthday, he would get an unsigned card that he knew was from her. But for much of his life, it was the only confirmation that he had that she was still alive. Then, one day seven years ago he had been sitting in the family room at home with his grandmother when he had turned on the television and started surfing through the channels, stopping with casual interest when he saw a documentary on homeless people in Manhattan.

  Some of the interviews had been filmed in shelters, others on the street. One of the women interviewed was standing on a street corner on upper Broadway. Dan’s grandmother was in the room at the time, reading, but when that woman spoke, his grandmother had jumped up, her eyes suddenly riveted to the screen.

  When the interviewer asked the homeless woman her name, she had replied, “People call me Quinny.”

  “Oh, God, it’s Kathryn!” his grandmother shrieked. “Dan, look, look! It’s your mother!”

  Did he actually remember that face, or was it because of all the pictures of her he had devoured over the years that he was sure this woman was indeed his mother? The face on the television screen was careworn, the eyes dulled; still, there were traces of the pretty girl she once had been. The dark hair was generously sprinkled now with gray, and it was worn too loose and full on her shoulders to look anything but unkempt. Still, to his eyes, she was beautiful. She was wearing a shabby wraparound coat that was too big for her. Her hand rested protectively on a shopping cart filled with plastic bags.

  She was fifty years old when I saw that program, Dan often thought. She had looked much older.

  “Where are you from, Quinny?” the interviewer had asked.

  “From here, now.”

  “Do you have a family?”

  She had looked straight into the camera. “I had a wonderful little boy, once. I didn’t deserve him. He was better off without me, so I left.”

  The next day Dan’s grandparents had hired a private investigator to try to track her down, but Quinny had vanished. Dan did manage to learn something about the way she had lived, and about her frame of mind—facts that saddened him and broke his grandparents’ hearts.

  Now, several days after finding someone who could identify his mother’s photograph, he was more determined than ever to locate her. She’s in New York, Dan thought. I will find her. I will! But when I do find her, what will I say? What will I do?

  Of course, he didn’t have to worry—he had been rehearsing this reunion for so long. Maybe he would limit his comments to only those words that might mean something to her: “Stop punishing yourself. It was an accident. If I can forgive you, why can’t you forgive yourself?”

  He had given his card to Lilly Brown, the woman he had met in the shelter. “If you see her, just phone me,” he told her. “Please don’t tell her I’m looking for her. She might disappear again.”

  Lilly had assured him, “Quinny will be back. Knowing her, it should be about now. She never stays away from New York for too long at a time, and in the summer she likes to sit in Central Park. She says it’s her favorite place in the world. I’ll ask around for you. Maybe someone’s seen her lately.”

  For now I’ll have to be content with that, Dan thought as he jogged the paths of Central Park, the sky still light with the setting sun, but the air getting steadily cooler and the wind chilling his damp back and legs. Now that summer is almost here—but please, he thought, don’t let this evening be any indication of what summer in New York will be, because she’ll freeze—there was always the chance that the woman who called herself “Quinny” might be found sitting on one of the park benches.

  twenty-two

  CORNELIUS MACDERMOTT ARRIVED at Nell’s apartment promptly at six o’clock. When she opened the door for him, they stood apart for a few moments, silently looking at each other. Then he reached out and put his arms around her.

  “Nell,” he said, “remember what the old Irish guys say to the bereaved at wakes? They say, ‘I’m sorry for your trouble.’ You used to think it was the dumbest remark in the world. In your most smart-alecky voice, you’d say, ‘You’re not sorry for someone’s trouble. You’re sorry they’re experiencing trouble.’ ”

  “I remember,” Nell said.

  “And what did I tell you?”

  “You said that what the expression means is, ‘Your trouble is my trouble. I share your grief.’ ”

  “That’s right. So just think of me as one of those old Irishmen. In a very real way, your trouble is my trouble. And that’s why you have to know how very, very sorry I am about Adam. I’d do anything to keep you from having to go through the hurt I know you are experiencing right now.”

  Be fair to him, Nell told herself. Mac is eighty-two years old. He has loved me and cared for me as long as I can remember. Maybe he couldn’t help being jealous of Adam. There were plenty of women who would have loved to marry Mac after Gram died. I was probably the reason he didn’t get involved with any of them.

  “I know you would,” she told him, “and I’m glad you’re here. I guess I just need some time to let everything sink in.”

  “Well, unfortunately, Nell, you don’t have time,” Mac told her abruptly. “Come on. Let’s sit down. We’ve got to talk.”

  Not knowing quite what to expect, she obeyed, following him into the living room.

  As soon as she was seated, Mac began: “Nell, I realize that this is an awful time for you, but there are some things that we have to talk about. You haven’t even had Adam’s memorial Mass yet, and here I am about to start lobbing some tough questions at you. I’m sorry to move on you like this. Maybe you’ll want to throw me out, and if you do, I’ll understand. But some things simply can’t wait.”

  Nell knew now what he was going to say.

  “This isn’t just any election year. It’s a presidential election year. You know as well as I do that anything can happen, but our guy is ahead big time, and unless he does something really stupid, he’s going to be the next president.”

  He probably is going to be president, Nell thought, and he’ll make a good one. For the first time since she heard the news of Adam’s death, she felt a stirring within her—a first sign that life was returning. She looked at her grandfather and realized that his eyes seemed brighter than she had seen them in a while. Nothing like a political campaign to get the old war horse up and running, she thought.

  “Nell, I just learned that a couple more guys are about to throw their hats in the ring for my old seat. Tim Cross and Salvatore Bruno.”

  “Tim Cross has been nothing but a wimp on the council, and Sal Bruno has missed more Se
nate votes in Albany than the mother of ten kids has missed periods,” Nell snapped.

  “That’s my girl. You could have won that seat.”

  “Could have won? What are you talking about, Mac? I am going to go for it. I have to.”

  “You may not get the chance.”

  “I repeat: what are talking about, Mac?”

  “There’s no easy way to say it, Nell, but Robert Walters and Len Arsdale came to see me this morning. A dozen building contractors have signed statements saying they paid bribes in the millions of dollars to the Walters and Arsdale firm in order to land the big jobs. Robert and Len are two fine men. I’ve known them all my life. They never pulled that stuff. They never took any bribes.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Mac?”

  “Nell, I’m telling you that Adam was probably on the take.”

  She looked at her grandfather for a moment, then shook her head. “No, Mac, I don’t believe that. He wouldn’t do it. It’s also much too easy to lay blame on a dead man, not to mention convenient. Did anyone say they actually handed Adam the money?”

  “Winifred was the go-between.”

  “Winifred! For heaven’s sake, Mac, that woman didn’t have the gumption of a sunflower. What makes you think she’d be capable of putting together a bribery scheme?”

  “That’s exactly it. While Robert and Len agree that Winifred knew the business inside out and would have known how to do a scam, they also agree that she’d never try to do something like that on her own.”

  “Mac,” Nell protested, “listen to what you’re saying. You’re taking the word of your old buddies that they’re pure as the driven snow and that my husband was a thief. Isn’t it entirely possible that by dying, he has provided them the perfect scapegoat for their own misdeeds?”