The Heritage Paper (18 page)

The shrill ring of his cell phone interrupted the reminiscing. He released his arthritic hands from the sides of his chair, which he had gripped in anger while thinking of the turbulent days at the end of the war, and answered.

“They are headed to Bedford Hills … to see Rose Shepherd,” the voice spoke with urgency. “Do you want me to stop them?”

Otto pondered this development for a moment. He was always at his best when plans went awry and he was forced to improvise. “No—that won’t be necessary. Rose will come through. She always has before,” he said and ended the call.

Otto suddenly felt a large hand caress his shoulder. He looked up to see the Candidate. He had been so engrossed in his call that he hadn’t heard him enter.

Destiny had arrived.

As far as Veronica knew, Carsten never had any communications with Rose Shepherd as long as they were married. He never even brought up the subject.
Yet on the day he dies, right before meeting his “contact,” he goes to meet with her?

It made no sense.

Or did it make perfect sense?

They’d have to go to Bedford to try to get their answers.

But not everyone would remain on the Nazi Ghost Ship. Eddie refused to go within five miles of Rose Shepherd, and had a good excuse to jump ship—a security meeting for tomorrow’s election. Mr. Big Shot would be hanging out with Kingston, the mayor, and the police commissioner, to name a dignified few. Veronica feared his big break would be marred by Ellen’s claims this morning. She hoped it wouldn’t cost him the gig, but was aware that no politician wanted the stigma of a Nazi connection.

Flavia also turned down an offer to sail the “good ship” to Bedford Hills, choosing instead to return to her gallery. She claimed the Nazi ghosts had caused enough damage in her life, believing they were behind the death of her mother, and refused to chase after them.

After a quick break so that the children could use the bathroom and the adults could return phone messages, they were back on the road.

Youkelstein remained stationed between Maggie and Jamie in the backseat. He was talking to himself, analyzing the letters, and trying to match them to the list of Apostle names. It was established that Ellen was Andrew, and Müller was Philip. But he was now confident that Peter was Hitler, Judas was Bormann, and Thomas was Himmler. And they knew that Thaddeus was the one who married Josef.

But by the time they hit the Taconic Parkway he’d fallen asleep. Veronica noticed a lot of elderly folks napping during her visits to Sunshine Village, and a common theme she noticed was shallow breathing. It was like they knew they only had so many breaths left and didn’t want to waste them. But not Youkelstein. Even his breathing was passionate.

He didn’t even twitch in response to the sibling battle breaking out around him. Veronica decided not to reprimand them, finding the sound of normalcy to be calming.

My kids are actually acting like kids!

As they merged onto I-84 East, the mood relaxed. Jamie joined Youkelstein in a matching coma, and Maggie was using her iPod to block out the lesser species. Zach had signed on the Internet to search for all the information he could on Rose Shepherd. His mood seemed to sour the closer they got to Bedford. Veronica didn’t blame him—the story of Rose Shepherd wasn’t pretty.

When they first started dating, Carsten had told her that his parents had died in an “accident,” which she assumed to be a car crash. But as their relationship took a turn for the serious, and they found they had that rare
“
can tell each other anything”
dynamic—the one that often fools couples into making vows and having babies—he told her the real story. That his mother was taking medication for depression that caused her to go into a state of paranoia, and made her think his father was a burglar, resulting in her accidentally stabbing him to death.

Carsten blamed the charges against his mother on it being a different time, when not much was known about mental illness. He contended the District Attorney made a mistake by putting her in a jail when she really needed to be in a hospital to get treatment. A mistake that cost his mother her life.

It was a gut-wrenching story.

But not completely true.

Veronica had been married to Carsten for almost eleven years when the incident took place in the kitchen of their Upper East Side apartment. The night their arguing crossed the line. The funny thing was that Veronica used to brag to their friends about how she and Carsten “never fought.”
Probably because she always gave in to his every whim,
she thought in retrospect.

She couldn’t pinpoint the exact time when he changed. There wasn’t any one incident. His long nights at the office were not out of character throughout their marriage, but he’d turned distant, and started not coming home for days.

Their arguments went from non-existent to constant, each one escalating in ferocity. And that night it happened so fast that Veronica never saw his fist coming toward her, dropping her to the cold, linoleum floor. That’s what she most remembered—how cold the floor felt.

The next day she told a mother at Maggie’s school that she was taking a box off the top shelf of their closet and accidentally dropped it on her face. Suddenly she was one of
those
people. They were one of
those
couples.

He said it would never happen again.

And it didn’t.

But his look remained a haunting reminder. The one where it looked like he needed every muscle in his body to restrain himself from doing it again.

All of this led her to re-examine his father’s death, eventually leading her to the microfilm room at the New York Public Library. She’d never questioned it before—it was a touchy subject that Carsten would never bring up. But after their own violent altercation in a kitchen, questions had arisen in Veronica’s mind.

By all accounts, Harry Jr. was a model husband and a doting father to their son Carsten, and Eddie, who was Greta’s child from a previous relationship. But according to the police report, Greta claimed that something snapped in him one day.

He started drinking heavily and would go into random rages where he’d hold rambling conversations with himself. This correlated with violent attacks on the job, leading to reprimands and suspensions.

Greta alleged that he’d threatened to kill her and the children on numerous occasions over the past month of his life, and that night he looked like he was going to live up to his word. During a scuffle, with his hands gripped tightly around her neck, cutting off her air, she reached for the nearest object. It turned out to be a meat cleaver, and she thrust it through his chest.

And the worst part—

It happened right in front of Carsten and Eddie.

They weren’t tucked away in their room like Carsten had told her.

The next days’ headline in the
New York Globe
was
Mrs. Cleaver
with a picture of Greta being hauled away in handcuffs. Not exactly one for the family scrapbook.

The arrest was controversial. Groups for battered women came to Greta’s defense, while the police tried to spin their fallen brother as heroic, and depicting Greta as a deranged woman with a checkered past.

Rumor was that the DA planned to drop the charges as soon as the furor died down and the police found a way to save face. But Greta Peterson never left her jail cell. While awaiting her preliminary hearing, she was strangled to death by her cellmate.

Her cellmate was named Rose Shepherd.

The gray autumn sky had faded to black. It was a few minutes before four in the afternoon, but this time of year it got dark early.
Just what this amateur horror film needed,
Veronica thought.

Bedford Hills Correctional Facility was a block-shaped building surrounded by barbed wire fencing. It looked like a typical prison, but in the quaint, historic hamlet of Bedford Hills, it seemed as out of place as a snowmobile shop in Malibu.

As they moved through a guard-gate and headed toward visitor parking, Veronica was tempted to turn the vehicle around and dash the ten miles to home sweet home.

Jamie and Youkelstein were still out like a light, and Maggie remained lost in her iPodian world. Veronica expected Zach to be the rock he’d been all day, but he looked like he was about to be ill. Prisons could do that to people.

“Are you okay?” she asked him softly.

He didn’t respond. He was lost in thought and staring at the large structure in front of them.

“Zach?”

“Oh … I’m sorry … you were saying?”

“You’re supposed to wait until the second date to start ignoring me,” she said with a grin.

Still no response. But then it hit her why. Bedford was the largest
women’s
penitentiary in the state of New York. Over eight hundred inmates were incarcerated inside the facility.

Zach’s wife was in prison.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t connect it,” she immediately apologized.

“It’s not your fault. It wasn’t your crystal-meth lab.”

“It’s not too late to turn around.”

“Don’t worry about it. I bring TJ up here every weekend. I should be used to it by now, but there is just something about this place that gives me the creeps. Once I get inside, I’m usually okay.”

“That’s why you moved to Pleasantville and took the job at the local paper, isn’t it? To be close to Bedford.”

“It’s important that TJ continues a relationship with his mother. They have a great program here to promote closeness between the inmates and their children. Eighty percent of the inmates here are mothers.”

“I never really thought about that.”

“They offer programs that allow TJ to stay with a volunteer family overnight, and he can then visit his mother for extended hours during the day. It’s run by this great woman named Sister Goulet. She’s kind of a legend in these parts—she should be sainted.”

“I think I read about her in the paper.”

He smiled proudly. “That was my article. Of course, I also wrote one about the inadequate facilities—not enough heat in the winter and no ventilation in the summer. And how the bathrooms didn’t meet minimal health codes. But I regret writing it, I don’t want to hurt Sara’s chances of parole.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, how long is her sentence?”

“Eight years, up for parole in three. She just completed her first year.”

Veronica thought that perhaps Zach should be the one up for sainthood, but he was philosophical about it, “Sister Goulet reminded me that many of the women in here have been bad citizens, but still are good people and great mothers. I like to believe that Sara fits that description. Nothing in life is black and white.”

The superintendent of the prison was waiting for them. Zach was the one who called ahead to request the visit, and after his articles they were ready to put on their best face when he came calling. The other reason for using Zach’s name was so they didn’t raise any suspicion as to why the daughter-in-law of the woman Rose Shepherd murdered would be attending.

The superintendent was a woman named Nina Flores. She led them through a security checkpoint, in which Youkelstein’s umbrella was confiscated with the promise of a return upon their departure. Without his cane, Veronica helped him walk down the bleak corridors. She got the sense that he would’ve preferred Flavia.

Ms. Flores was putting on her best foot forward, but Veronica could still sense a little coldness directed at Zach. They first stopped off at the office of Sister Goulet, whose demeanor was the complete opposite. She greeted them with warm hugs and smiles.

After the introductions, and some brief small talk, they continued the journey to a large room that resembled a nursery, painted in pinks and blues. It was the playroom, filled with children and their jailed mothers—a few of the inmates were pregnant. There was even a pre-natal room with a wading pool.

Sister Goulet suggested the children stay there while the adults go to see Rose Shepherd.

Jamie was attracted to the toys, and didn’t need to have his arm twisted. Maggie, on the other hand, would rather have been put in solitary lock-down. She looked like she was about to deliver a right hook to the sister’s midsection. But showing another mark of her potential sainthood, she somehow convinced Maggie to stay behind without a fight.

Rose Shepherd was a local quasi-celebrity because she was the oldest incarcerated female in the United States. Ninety-nine years old.

Veronica was expecting the traditional jail cell with steel bars. But that wasn’t where Rose Shepherd was spending the late winter of her life. A large window allowed visitors to view into her room as if she were on display in a zoo. When Veronica peeked in, she noticed what looked like an apartment with a couch and television. No windows to the outside world, but frankly, the place would’ve gone for about five grand a month in Manhattan.

Ms. Flores, likely fearing a Zach Chester exposé on preferential treatment of murderers, explained, “Ms. Shepherd is almost a hundred years old. It just isn’t plausible to have her living with the normal population.”