Before I Say Good-Bye (29 page)

“That’s a mild word. You had dinner the other night with Nell. Did she talk about running for my old seat?”

“Yes, she did. She’s obviously looking forward to it.”

“Well, she phoned half an hour ago to tell me to let the party bosses know she doesn’t intend to run.”

Dan was stunned. “What changed her mind? She’s not sick, is she?”

“No, but she’s beginning to believe that what I’ve been telling her about her late husband’s business dealings is possible. Adam Cauliff, or at least his assistant, may have been involved in the bribery scandal you’ve been reading about.”

“But that has nothing to do with Nell.”

“In politics, everything has to do with everything. I told her not to make up her mind yet, though, and that she had to hold off her decision until next week at least.”

Dan decided to take a chance. “What was Adam Cauliff like, Mac?” he asked cautiously.

“He was either a smart—perhaps even ruthless—businessman, or he was a hick trying to play in the big time who got in way over his head. We’ll probably never really know which. But one thing I
do
know. He wasn’t the man for my granddaughter.”

sixty-eight

A
FTER SHE CALLED
M
AC,
Nell immediately began to dial Detective Sclafani, but then abruptly broke the connection. Before she called him, she decided, she would go to Adam’s office and get the twine and wrapping paper she had seen in Winifred’s office.

She showered and dressed, putting on white chinos, a short-sleeve blouse, a lightweight blue denim jacket and sandals.

It’s almost time for a cut, she decided as she brushed her hair into a French twist. Then she paused suddenly, as something in the mirror struck her as odd. It was the face—the face she saw there seemed almost to be that of a stranger, the expression strained and anxious. This ordeal has definitely taken its toll, she realized. Something had better be resolved soon, or I will be a total wreck.

I really don’t want to give up my chance to run for Congress, she admitted to herself, and I’m glad Mac
bullied me into waiting until next week to make a final decision. Maybe by then I’ll have some answers. Maybe Adam was simply naïve and didn’t realize something corrupt was going on under his nose.

The wrapping paper and twine were in Winifred’s file—she remembered that clearly. She also knew that Winifred was involved with someone named Harry Reynolds, although she still had no clue as to who he was. Winifred had been at Walters and Arsdale for over twenty years, long before Adam went there. When she began working closely with Adam, had she taken advantage of his trust? Nell wondered. He would have been the new man on the job, untried and untested, while she knew the construction business, including the seamy side, backward and forward.

As she was leaving the apartment, Nell thought about the money Lisa Ryan had forced her to keep. I can’t just leave it out on the table, she thought. She knew she probably was being paranoid, but it seemed to her that anyone who came into the room would be able to merely glance at the packages and guess that they contained cash.

I’m starting to understand how Lisa felt having this stuff under her roof, she thought as she carried the boxes into the guest room and put them on the floor of the closet.

Adam’s suits and jackets and slacks and coats were still hanging there. She stood in the doorway of the closet and looked at them, many of them items she had helped him select. Now they seemed to be reproachful reminders that she was questioning the integrity of the man who had worn and enjoyed them. They seemed to chide her for doubting the man who had been her husband.

Nell promised herself that before the day was over, all the clothes would be packed and ready to take to the thrift shop first thing on Saturday morning.

T
HE CABBIE TURNED RIGHT
onto Central Park South and then left down Seventh Avenue as it headed south to Adam’s office. A block before reaching it, they passed the construction fence that had been put up around the ruins of the Vandermeer mansion. The shabby, narrow building next to it was the one she now owned, the one Peter Lang wanted so badly.

The one
Adam
had wanted so badly, Nell thought suddenly. “Let me off here,” she said to the driver.

Getting out at the corner, she walked back and stood in front of the property she owned. Most of the buildings in this immediate area were old, but she could see the beginning of change in the neighborhood. An apartment complex was going up across the street, and a sign announced the forthcoming erection of another one farther down the block. When he borrowed the money from her to buy this property, Adam had said that this was turning into the hottest new real estate section in the city.

The Vandermeer mansion had been on a fairly large parcel of land, whereas the parcel she owned was a narrow strip. All the tenants were gone from the building, and it had a deserted, shabby look. Graffiti added to the dismal effect of the dark stone exterior.

What did Adam think he was going to do with this property? she wondered. How much money would he have needed to be able to pull it down and build something in its place? As she studied the location, she realized
fully for the first time that its only real value derived from its possibilities as an addition to the Vandermeer property.

So why was Adam so anxious to buy this parcel? she wondered. It was especially odd since at the time of the purchase, the Vandermeer mansion was still standing and still had its landmark status.

Could Adam have had inside information that the Vandermeer mansion’s landmark status was being removed?

It was another troubling possibility.

She turned and walked the block and a half to Adam’s office. When she had left there with the detectives on Tuesday, the superintendent had given her a spare key to the front door. She let herself in and once again experienced a sense of deep disquiet when the door closed behind her.

She went into Winifred’s cubbyhole and could visualize her sitting at that desk, smiling meekly whenever a visitor came in.

Nell stood facing the desk, remembering. It was the expression in Winifred’s eyes that she remembered most, she thought. Always anxious, almost pleading, as if she were afraid she was going to be criticized.

Had that been an act?

She opened the bottom drawer of the file and took out the brown wrapping paper and twine. She had brought a shopping bag in which to carry them. Even before comparing side by side, she knew that the pattern of the twine was identical to the pattern of the twine around the boxes of money.

She had been there only a few minutes, but in that time she had become aware that the temperature was
becoming increasingly warmer. It’s happening again, she thought, as she felt a sense of disorientation overtaking her.

I have to get outside, she told herself.

Nell slammed shut the file drawer, grabbed the shopping bag and rushed from Winifred’s cubbyhole back through the reception area and to the outer door.

She grabbed the doorknob and pulled, but nothing happened. The door was stuck. The handle felt hot to the touch, and suddenly she was coughing. Frantically she kicked the door as she felt her hands begin to blister.

“Something wrong, Ms. Cauliff? That door sticking again?” The building superintendent was there suddenly, calmly shoving open the door with his shoulder. Nell stumbled past him to the steps outside. Her legs gave way as she sat on the bottom step and covered her face with her hands.

It’s happening again, she thought. It’s a warning. The coughing began to subside, but she was still gasping for air. She looked at her hands. The blisters she had felt forming there did not exist.

“I guess it’s kind of emotional to go into your husband’s office,” the superintendent said sympathetically, “I mean knowing that he and Ms. Johnson are never coming back to it.”

N
ELL RETURNED
to her apartment to find there was a message from Dan Minor on the answering machine. “Nell, just spoke to Mac,” he said. “We’re getting to be old friends. He’s got his people checking the records for me for information about my mother. I’ll call you later to see if you’re free for dinner tonight.”

Still shaken by the bizarre experience in Adam’s office, Nell played the message again, soothed by the undertone of concern in Dan’s voice. He probably got an earful about me from Mac, she thought.

She noticed Jack Sclafani’s card lying next to the phone. Once again she dialed the number, but this time she did not break the connection. He answered on the first ring.

“It’s very important that I see you, and I have to ask you to come here, to my apartment,” she told him. “I’d rather not go into it over the phone.”

“We’ll be there in an hour,” he promised.

Trying to banish from her mind the frightening memory of those moments in Adam’s office, Nell went into the guest room and began to empty the closet. As she removed the jackets and suits and slacks from the hangers, she reflected on how Adam, though still quite youthful, had been a very conservative dresser. Navy and charcoal and tan were his inevitable choice of colors. She remembered that a year ago she had urged him to buy a dark-green summer jacket that she had seen in the window at Saks, but instead he had once again bought a navy blazer.

I told him it looked exactly like another one he had, Nell thought as she took a navy jacket from the closet. In fact, it looked just like this one.

But as she held it, she realized she was mistaken. This one was the newer of the two—she could tell from the weight. Puzzled, Nell held it in her hands. This is the one I meant to give Winifred to take to him that day. This is the one he laid out. The other one would have been too warm.

Oh, of course! she thought, as suddenly she remembered
the sequence of events. That last night, Adam changed in here and laid out on this bed the clothes he intended to wear in the morning. Then he rushed out after we quarreled in the morning, and I put his briefcase in his study and hung his jacket in his closet and later in here. The one I gave Winifred was the wrong jacket, the heavier one.

If he had lived, he probably would have been glad of the mistake, she thought. The temperature dropped a lot during the day, and it was raining hard that night.

Nell started to fold the jacket to place it in the box, then hesitated. She remembered how a few days after his death, feeling bereft, she had put on this blazer, wanting to have some sense of his presence. Now I’m acting as if I can’t wait to get
rid
of it, she thought.

There was a buzz from the intercom in the foyer. She knew that had to mean the detectives, Jack Sclafani and George Brennan, were on their way up.

Nell hung the navy jacket over the back of a chair. I can decide later whether or not to keep it, she told herself, as with increasing trepidation she hurried to let the detectives in.

sixty-nine

W
HEN HE TALKED TO
D
R
. D
AN
M
INOR,
Cornelius MacDermott did not tell him that one of the calls he had Liz make in trying to trace Dan’s mother’s whereabouts had been to the Medical Examiner’s office.

Liz had learned from the call that in the last year,
fifty unidentified bodies had been buried in potter’s field—thirty-two men and eighteen women.

At the request of the M.E.’s clerk, Liz faxed the computerized picture of Quinny that Dan had given them, as well as the vital statistics he had furnished.

In midafternoon, she received a call from the morgue. “We may have a match,” a laconic-voiced clerk told her.

seventy

J
ACK
S
CLAFANI
and George Brennan sat with Nell in the dining room. They had carried the boxes of cash to the table, opened them and confirmed the count.

“You don’t get fifty thousand dollars for looking the other way when the right concrete isn’t used,” Sclafani said. “For this amount of money, Jimmy Ryan was on the take for something bigger than that.”

“I thought as much,” Nell said quietly. “And I think maybe I know who gave it to him.”

She had left the shopping bag in the kitchen and went to retrieve it. Returning, she dumped the ball of twine and the sheets of wrapping paper on the table next to the money. “These came from Winifred Johnson’s file drawer,” she explained. “I noticed them on Tuesday, when I was there with you.”

Brennan held the twine used to wrap the packages of cash against a strand he unraveled from the ball. “The lab can verify it, but I’d swear that what was on the packages was cut from here,” he said.

Sclafani was comparing the brown wrapping paper. “I’d say this is a match too, but that’s up to the lab to determine for sure.”

“I hope you understand that if Winifred Johnson passed on a bribe to Jimmy Ryan, it does not necessarily mean that my husband was in any way involved,” Nell said, with a conviction she knew she did not feel.

Sclafani studied Nell as they sat across from each other. She doesn’t know what to believe, he thought. She’s playing straight with us, and she convinced Lisa Ryan that turning the money over was the only way to go. We should be straight with her as well.

“Ms. MacDermott, this may be farfetched, but we have a witness, an eight-year-old kid, who may have seen someone in a wet suit dive off your husband’s boat just before the explosion.”

Nell stared at him. “Is that possible?”

“Ms. MacDermott,
anything
is possible. Is it probable? No. The currents in that part of the harbor are pretty vicious. Could a strong swimmer make it to shore in either Staten Island or Jersey City? Maybe.”

“Then you believe this child
did
see someone?”

“The detail that hits home is that in the picture the kid drew, the diver is carrying a woman’s pocketbook. The truth is, we did find Winifred’s purse, but we never released that detail to the press, so there is no way this kid could have known unless he really
did
see something—or is just very good at guessing. There are a few other facts we have that you may or may not be aware of.” Sclafani paused; he knew the next part was going to be difficult. “We know from DNA tests we have run on remains that have turned up that both Sam Krause
and Jimmy Ryan are dead. There are two people, however, whose deaths we haven’t been able to verify.” He paused. “Winifred Johnson and Adam Cauliff.”