Brooklyn Bones (29 page)
Then I checked all the locks and all windows, twice, before I was ready to go to bed.
I was up early, thinking about Chris, thinking about Steven, thinking about Mrs. Rogow, thinking about Rick. I made up my mind to think about Steven first, as he was first on the schedule. A practical choice. I needed make both myself and my downstairs presentable. I had asked Joe for no workmen this morning, even though I knew it might set the work back.
Steven arrived, juggling muffins, coffee, my newspaper from my stoop, and his attaché with, I assumed, my files.
I tended to forget how attractive he was, as he really wasn’t my type. That is, assuming I had a type. Then I remembered when I saw him again. An affectionate kiss on my cheek. What did that mean?
After I assured him the security system seemed to be working and nothing unusual had happened, he spread breakfast and files on the table, opened his computer and we got to work, He read quickly, checked off some points, and overall, was extremely pleased with the information I had gathered. We made notes about further data needed.
“Now,” I said. “Now. Please explain everything to me.’
“You look cute when you’re determined.” He laughed. “All right, I’ll stop teasing you. I do various jobs for James. He was the client that made it possible for my partners and me to start our own firm. And no, we are not his in-house consulting firm. We have a highly satisfying collection of other clients and our own offices.”
“I don’t think this development project is his usual type of investment, though. So what’s up with that?”
He raised one eyebrow, a trick I’ve read about but never actually seen. I admit I found it rather attractive, and distracting.
“You’ve been researching Uncle James? Ah, well, it’s not that hard, he’s so public.” He looked at me with an odd expression. “I shouldn’t be surprised, not even a little. You are right. He’s not normally a real estate developer. He prefers more abstract investing, moving the numbers around, but in this case, he is the financier I told you about, with the famous architect friend. He’s excited about the creative aspect. It’s a hobby, like Sunday painting.”
We were talking about a man for whom a billion dollar project was a hobby. I had no words for my reaction. Of course that only lasted a few minutes.
“Plus he expects to make a lot of money?”
“Well, yes, of course. That’s what James does, he makes money. It’s a talent he has. Like you have one for asking uncomfortable questions.”
We were done with business. At least Steven was. He leaned back with a smile. “You know, I could get to like this dating thing. That is what we are doing, isn’t it? Dating? I was, let’s say, out of practice, when Darcy first tried to get us together. It’s been a long time. But this is starting to feel…right? Like the right thing to do, right now.”
He looked like he wanted to kiss me again. I would not have objected.
Instead, he said, “How busy will you be before your daughter comes home? Glued to your work, or busy shopping for the fatted calf?”
I giggled. And then I told him about Mrs. Rogow, my bizarre encounter with her daughter, and my plans for a Manhattan get-together with her.
His expression changed from amused to unreadable. “You can’t stop yourself? Is that it?” He put up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I give up. I like you—there, I said it out loud, on the record—and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Then his expression changed back to amused, but not quite.
“Do you have any time for an actual date? Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s make it a real night on the town. What do you think? I know a great Latin dance place.” He smiled, ruefully. “My WASP heritage means I can only do the fox trot and the waltz. I’m a lousy Latin dancer but it’s fun. Care to take a chance?”
“Sure. Uh, what do I wear to this place?”
“Go for flamboyance.”
“Flamboyance? Me? And look at you, Mr. Prep School.” He was wearing chino-colored chinos, a light blue button down shirt and loafers. With tassels.
“And I will look the same tonight. But you have a chance to get wild if you want to.”
Wild? That would be a problem. I would have to raid Chris’ closet, and her vast earring collection. I hoped she would approve.
Steven stood up. “Till tonight, then. For now I must be pushing off to drab meeting rooms with boring middle-aged men in suits. This is a lot more fun.”
At my door, his arms went around me, unexpectedly, and my arms went right back around him. That was all, except for a long, serious look into my eyes and a kiss that lasted after he was gone.
I allowed myself to have a moment of interesting thoughts about Steven. All right, it was a few moments, very nice ones. Then I went back to Leary’s math problem trying to add up one plus one. The problem was that numbers are stable and clear, and I was adding up facts that were slippery and foggy. The first one was our poor dead girl, a complete mystery. Maybe Rick could have shone a beam of light into the fog, but now he could not. Leary himself couldn’t, much as he was trying. And Brenda Petry wouldn’t.
Time to hit the subway. I had a coffee date in Manhattan with someone who would, I thought, if she could.
I spent my time on the train thinking about how to talk to Mrs. Rogow. Start with congratulations again on her daughter’s success. Lead her into how her daughter grew up in the business, learning from her father, now walking in his footsteps and all that.
I would wonder if there was anything else she knew or remembered or even speculated on, about my immediate neighborhood. I grew up around cops. They were neighbors and relatives. They used to say witnesses often know more than they think they do. Ask again. And again.
I did have tiny pang of guilt about plotting to manipulate an old woman who had not been anything but nice to me. It was only a tiny pang. I had to keep pulling at all the threads of this tangle until something came loose.
It was another way of thinking about Leary’s math problem.
We met in the very chic café with a dramatic atrium view. Her clothes were as colorful, her makeup as careful, but her smile was mechanical, pasted on for this social situation. I knew this, because I caught a glimpse of her face before she saw me. There was no smile.
“Sit down, my dear.” She tried to expand the smile. “’I’ve ordered coffee and pastry. The pot roast I promised you will have to wait until the next time you come to my house.”
“I want to say again how impressed I am by your daughter’s new venture. I mean, it’s great to see a woman rising that high in a man’s game.” I was burbling. “You must be so proud of her, continuing your husband’s heritage and all.”
She gave me a shrewd look.
“I don’t think you came all the way here to tell me that. And I hear you have excellent coffee in Brooklyn now.”
This was not the chatty, grandmotherly lady I had met before. My shock must have showed in my face, because she sighed deeply. “Forgive me. Motherhood is not my favorite topic today.” I saw that her hand was trembling as she put her cup down. “Let me ask. How do you get along with your own daughter?”
“My daughter?”
She nodded, silent and unsmiling.
“Ohhh…It’s hard, isn’t it?” I was suddenly fidgeting with the sugar bowl, with my napkin, my cup. I had come ready to talk about her daughter, not mine. “Lately it has become hard almost all the time. I mean, we used to be very close, and now. Wow. We are on different planets one day, and then another, she’s my baby. Maybe even in the next hour.” I took a big gulp of coffee and barely noticed I had forgotten the cream and sugar. “Sometimes it’s even in the next minute. It feels like a gulf, sometimes, this big.” I moved my hands. “And I’m always, always, struggling to get across it.”
Mrs. Rogow’s jaw was clenched as she said, “Every day. Every day is like that with my daughter. It’s exhausting. Yours will outgrow it…”
“If I am lucky.”
“She will outgrow it. Remember, I heard her voice on my phone. I could tell from that, she’s a good girl. But my daughter? Never. Never. It’s too late.”
This was not the conversation I had rehearsed but going along seemed the only choice. Besides, I liked Mrs. Rogow.
“Did something happen between you, recently?”
“Always. There is always something happening to break my heart. “
“But wasn’t yesterday a good something? Something to be proud of? I mean, she was on TV! With the mayor!”
She was looking off somewhere, over my shoulder, not at me, but I could see her eyes were dry and hard.
“Yesterday is the day she signed papers to take my Harry’s name off the company. It is time to move forward, she said. It is a new era. Complete crap, you should pardon the expression. Everything she is, and everything she has is built on his hard work. Who do you think he did it for? Her! And me! So now she wants it to be called Petry Limited, the name of her whitebread, no-good second husband she hasn’t spoken to in ten years.” She stopped, the line of her mouth grim.
“Mrs. Rogow? You said she learned everything from her father. Did you mean that? She told me she was never involved.”
“Of course she was. When she was a little girl, she would dress up in a nice coat and ride in with him and carry his account books. She called it going to work with Daddy. And she wrote those accounts too, when she got older. All that about not being involved? Ha!” The dismissive gesture was not quite an obscenity. Not quite.
“And did he love it. I never gave him sons but he saw how smart she was, and decided she would be the heir. Rogow and Daughter, instead of Rogow and Sons. Why not? And then….” For the first time, the angry voice faltered.
“And then?” I was holding my breath. Mrs. Rogow was doing my work for me.
“Ahh, she got a little wild. It was the times. Wild times. And then too, her father…what happened to him. Did your daughter do that wild thing? Did you?”
I shook my head. “My daughter is a little young so not yet. I just dread what might be ahead. She’d better not!”
Mrs. Rogow shook her head. “If she wants to get in trouble, nothing you do will stop her.”
“Military school? No, no, I’m kidding. I didn’t get into trouble much myself, because I fell in love young. I wasn’t out running around, and yet.” I remembered the screaming fights with my father. I was out too late, I was with Jeff all the time, my skirts were too short, he didn’t want me driving at night. My poor mother was caught in the middle, trying to keep the peace. “The truth is, I was a good girl with a smart mouth. Dad didn’t take it well. We could fight about anything. Or nothing.”
“Harry never knew what she was up to. Sweet as could be, she was with him. Quite the daddy’s girl. She was sneaky even then. But I knew. She thought I didn’t. But mothers know. She was hanging around with those dirty hippies. She would say, so sweet, ‘I’m going to the city, mama, with my friends. We’re going to the Metropolitan Museum for an art assignment.’ But I found the hippy-dippy clothes in her laundry basket, when she had a closet full of sweet dresses from Saks. And they smelled.” She gave me a full look. “I didn’t know then but I do now, that it was drugs.”
It was a scary picture.
“Was she going to Brooklyn?”
She shrugged. “I thought so then. I told you about the groups in our houses. One of the few mistakes Harry ever made. I heard. People told me. And I didn’t believe it, at first. My own daughter. After awhile she stopped pretending. Long dirty hair, late nights, bad grades. There was a boy, maybe lots of boys. I think, lots of boys, and maybe an older man, too, a working man. My sweet little girl playing the tramp.”
“Is this her?” I put the little photo on the table along with the magnifying glass.
Her expression softened and blurred, just for minute. “Yes, I believe it is. Dear lord, I remember that dress. And it is one of our houses.”
So. Two numbers just added up. My house plus Brenda Rogow on my steps. Around the time a girl disappeared into my fireplace. Around the time Rick was at a party next door.
That’s when I knew. I didn’t know if I could ever prove it, but I knew, in my heart, that she was there at my house when it—whatever it was—happened. It was the only thing that made sense, a secret ugly enough to threaten everything she had built.
Now I knew she would never talk to me.
“What happened next? I mean, did she drop out of school? Run away?” I thought of Leary’s file of runaways’ notes and thought I would not wish that life on anyone, not even Brenda Petry.
“No, no, none of that. I have no idea what happened, but something, because she changed her mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s not clear? She changed her mind. Something happened, and she changed back. Cut her hair. Took bubble baths. Got rid of the hippy clothes—I saw her sneak the trash bag out one night. She went back to cashmere sweaters and Pappagallo shoes. And got herself into Barnard.”
‘When was this?”
She looked right at me, and said, “1971, if my memory serves. 1972. The time you wanted the company records.” She stopped then. Her expression said, “Make of it what you will.”
“About those company records?”