Read New Year's Eve Murder Online
Authors: Lee Harris
New Year's Eve Murder
A Fawcett Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 1997 by Lee Harris
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Fawcett and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-90551
ISBN 0-449-15018-6
eBook ISBNâ9780804181242
v4.1
a
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.A
LFRED
, L
ORD
T
ENNYSON
“In Memoriam”               Â
At the last minute, it was touch and go whether we would go to the party. For Jack, my husband of almost a year and a half, the evening was a tradition not to be missed, one he usually shared with old friends, both on the job with the NYPD and people he had gone to school with since he was a curly-headed child. New Year's Eve didn't have the mystique for me it had for him, the excitement that included all the trappings like champagne and noisemakers. Of course, having spent fifteen years in a convent where most of us went to sleep at nine, tired from a day that began at five, regardless of the calendar, the difference in our approach was understandable. It has only been in the two and a half years since I left St. Stephen's for a secular life that New Year's Eve has achieved a certain luster.
But the real reason for our hesitation was that we were the new parents of a baby boy who had changed our lives, separately and together, in ways we could not have imagined when an act of love had started his existence in the cold of last winter. Edward Bennett Brooks, named after my father who died when I was a child, weighing seven pounds and ten ounces (slightly less than a Sunday Times Jack brought home about the time of his birth) was both a Presence and a Personality almost from before his birth and certainly from the moment I heard his first cry.
What had become of my certainty that an absolutely dependable baby-sitter would enable me to teach my one-morning-a-week class at a local college? And that easygoing husband of mine who seemed unruffled in situations of life, death, and drawn weaponsâwhere was the calm I had always counted on? How many phone calls a day from the Sixty-fifth Precinct in Brooklyn did it take to insure that his wife and son were feeling fine, eating well, taking their naps, and getting their sunshine?
I smile as I say this. Having observed friends and acquaintances from various degrees of afar as they became mothers, I blithely assumed that this next step on the path of life was a simple one, easily achievable by the smart and the not-so-smart, and even by those of us who still found putting an interesting dinner together something of a chore. It seemed easy enough. When he wakes up, you change him, feed him, change him again, talking to him, of course, to start him on his way to life in a happy family, then lay him down gently for some more sleep. But our Eddie hadn't read the same books I had. Sometimes he wasn't ready to go back to sleep after his feeding, and other times he awoke not hungry but in a mood to be entertained. I didn't mind entertaining himâit was fun and I had looked forward to it for the many months of my pregnancy. But Jack and I wondered, as evening on the last day of the year drew near, whether our hosts at the party we were planning to attend who had offered us a room with a double bed and a crib would be as accepting of our son's unpredictable schedule as we were.
In the end I called them, and they said they would be devastated if we didn't show up, so we packed our angelically sleeping baby into the car and took off.
Our hosts for the great evening were Arnold and Harriet Gold. I had met Arnold not long after I left St.
Stephen's and was investigating what turned out to be the first in a string of murders I would look into. Forty years earlier, Arnold had represented one of the presumed killers of a woman found dead in her Brooklyn apartment on Easter Sunday. My work on the case eventually turned up the real killer and led me to the precinct where I met Jack, changing my life forever. Arnold, who had been a very young lawyer at the time of the murder, was more than happy to help me out and we became good enough friends that I consider him a surrogate father. He's also my employer from time to time, which is nice because I can do most of the work at home, and I am one of those people who really need to work to keep me happy.
Jack dropped me off at the Golds' and went to find a parking space. Eddie was sleeping blissfully, and even the commotion of our entry hardly fazed him. Harriet took me upstairs to the bedroom reserved for us, and I managed to take off the baby's outer clothes and get him settled in the crib with only a few murmurs and sighs to keep me on my guard.
“He's wonderful,” Harriet said in a soft voice.
“Yes, I think he is.” I squeezed her.
“And he's all ours,” she said with a big smile. “At least until tomorrow. Come, let's get you something to nibble.”
Jack showed up a few minutes later, carrying our small suitcase and the baby seat, both of which he stowed in the bedroom, more, I thought, to check on his son than to get them out of the way. When he returned, Arnold fixed them both drinks and they sat down, probably to talk about Jack's law classes. Since I was a nursing mother, I was saving alcohol for midnight, when I planned to indulge in a gulp of champagne that I hoped would not have an adverse effect on my little one.
It was a wonderful party, thanks to the interesting and diverse guests who kept coming as the New Year neared. I spent some time talking to a lawyer whose name I had seen often enough in the
Times
to know he was famous and very special, a man who said of Arnold all the things I had come to know, that he was a truly admirable human being who would take any case he believed in and who never gave up until he was convinced that the truth had been made known.
“You'd be surprised how many hopeless cases Arnold has won,” the lawyer said with feeling.
“A lot more than I know about,” I said. “He's remarkably modest when it comes to talking about himself.”
“He also knows the best lawyer jokes,” he said with a twinkle. “I think he generates them in that little office of his. How do you come to know him?”
I explained our relationship.
“Ah, the case of the twins with mental retardation. Took him forty years to set that one straight. So you're the one who did the digging.”
“It was quite an experience.”
We talked for some time, and he told me about some of his more interesting cases. I wondered if Jack would ever be in that position, talking to someone at a party about his casesâa very sweet thought.
I don't know when I became aware that there was an undercurrent of something amiss, but I remember sensing it. The phone rang several times during the evening, and Harriet answered it, but at least once she came into the living room to speak to Arnold, and he left the room quickly, looking troubled.
A little after ten, the Golds' daughter looked around the room and asked, “Does a crying baby belong to anyone here?” and I jumped up and dashed for the stairs. Eddie was waiting to be fed, and I sat in a lovely old
rocking chair and nursed him till he fell asleep, which I almost did, too. As I was putting him back in the crib, I heard Arnold's voice on the other side of the interior bedroom wall.
“I'm here, Ada,” his muffled voice said, and then there were silences and more muffled questions and comments.
I felt the chill of bad news, of a woman's anxiety, of the need to call a lawyer friend on this most celebrated night of the year. Had someone been hurt? Arrested? I didn't want to know. I patted my sleeping baby and waited till the conversation was over before going downstairs. I didn't want to meet Arnold as he left his room, full of whatever he had been told on the telephone. When I reached the living room, he was talking to Harriet. A moment later he was circulating among his guests.
Someone turned on the television set just before midnight so we would have the time right. There was Times Square, a place I had walked through during the day on a few occasions and once or twice at night with Jack. Tonight it was packed with more people than lived in my town and all the towns around it, many of them holding up banners with distant cities and states printed in large letters that the camera panned across. Here was Ohio, there was Kansas. I have seen very little of my country outside the New York City area, and just thinking of people traveling such a long way to watch a lighted ball drop as the New Year began excited me. Kansas, the center of the United States. Cornfields and polite people and plenty of parking spaces. I smiled.
“We're gettin' there,” Jack said, suddenly at my side just when I needed him.
“Can you imagine coming all the way from Kansas to celebrate the New Year?”
“To the Big Apple? Sure. Except they must be
freezing their fingers and toes off tonight. It's cold out there.”
“Maybe we'll go there someday.”
“Times Square?”
“Kansas.”
Jack laughed. “Wait till Eddie's out of diapers.”
“I bet that would be fun.”
“Sixty seconds, honey.”
I watched the countdown, my glass half-full of bubbling champagne, the ball slowly descending. My heart was in my mouth. I was starting my first full year as a mother. I was in the company of the most fascinating people I had ever met. I was happier at this moment than I had ever been.
“Happy New Year!” The greeting rang out in chorus. Jack and I kissed, then kissed again. I hung onto my glass, lest I lose the little I had allotted for myself on this special evening. Then we drank and joined in a happy chorus of
Auld Lang Syne.
I found myself kissing an assortment of men and women, the famous lawyer, a rather infamous lawyer, a doctor I had chatted with earlier whose wife was a lawyer, and finally Arnold himself, a great hug and a heartfelt kiss.
“You teary-eyed or bleary-eyed?” he asked.
“A little of both. It's been such a great year, and the new one's going to be a wonderful one.”
“Well enjoy it, Chrissie. You deserve the best.”
“You, too, Arnold.”
To my surprise there was a midnight buffet. After hours of indulging in delicious tidbits, one of my favorite ways of eating, I saw Harriet put out a great spread of hot and cold dishes and invite us all to help ourselves.
“It looks wonderful, Harriet,” I said, helping her carry a few small things out to the dining room table. “When did you have time to do all this?”
“I didn't,” she said proudly. “I had it catered. And you know who I used? Jack's sister.”
“You're kidding.”
“Arnold said, why not keep it in the family. She did such a great job at your wedding, I've been looking for an excuse to hire her. I made her promise she wouldn't say a word. Isn't it beautiful?”
“Fabulous.”
“Go and eat. It's all nourishing, I promise. And if you feel too tired to stay awake, you can disappear any time you want.”
By now I had my second wind. Without thinking of how I would feel in the morning, I ate heartily, talked ambitiously, and had a plain old good time. When at last I saw my usually energetic husband stifle a yawn, I looked at my watch and knew the time had come. The crowd had thinned out, and now I didn't have to excuse myself repeatedly as I edged toward him.
“Chris,” he said with some surprise as I reached him.
“Forgot that I was here?”
“Just a lot of good conversation. This is Abel Gardner, a friend of Harriet's.” We said our hellos.
“Must be getting late,” Jack said. “I'm starting to feel done in.”
I picked up my cue and we retired to our upstairs quarters.
I was hoping Eddie would choose this night to sleep through his two A.M. feeding for the first time. He was more than a month old, but less than six weeks, and my pediatrician had warned me not to count on sleeping through the night too soon. And he was right. Just as I was about to get into bed, Eddie was up with a bang, so I didn't get to sleep till close to three. And then, just as I
fell into a deep, necessary sleep, I heard the phone ring in the next room. It was answered with a soft voice and I turned over and went back to sleep, but I knew I had been right and that somewhere, something was very wrong.
The three Brookses were up early, only one of us with any enthusiasm for starting a new day. I kept Eddie as quiet as I could while Jack and I dressed. Then we all went downstairs to let the family sleep. It was a bright, sunny day with almost no snow to be seen out the front windows. Back in Oakwood we had shoveled a path to the door and to the garage, but here, what had fallen a few days earlier had largely melted.
“Up already?” It was Harriet Gold, dressed in a wool skirt and a tailored shirt and looking as energetic as my son. “Come here, you sweetheart.” She picked him up out of his little seat and hugged him and talked to him while he watched in wide-eyed interest. “What a doll you are,” she said finally, putting him back in his chair. “Breakfast, folks?”
We joined her in the kitchen as she made coffee and set the table.
“My daughter probably won't be down till this afternoon, so let's find some good stuff here and enjoy ourselves.”
“Is Arnold still sleeping?” I asked.
“Arnold's gone. I don't know when he'll be back.”
“I hope he's not working.”
She looked a little odd. “I hope it doesn't turn out to be work. There's a problem, and he's gone to see if there's anything he can do.”
“The phone calls,” I said.
“I hope they didn't wake you. Our friend is rather distraught.”
I was about to answer when the doorbell rang.
“I don't believe this,” Harriet said. “It's New Year's Day. What's wrong with people?” She wiped her hands on a towel and went to the door. “Well, you've missed him,” I heard her say. “Come on in anyway and join us for breakfast.”
She came into the kitchen with a dark-haired, rather good-looking man in his thirties. “This is Kevin Angstrom,” she announced. “Chris and Jack Brooks. And little Eddie Brooks, who's joining us this morning.”
Kevin Angstrom seemed less than impressed with our son. He looked worried, and I sensed he didn't want to be here if Arnold wasn't. He said a perfunctory hello, then leaned against the doorjamb. “Do you know when he'll be back?” he asked.
“He's gone to see Susan's mother.”