Before I Say Goodbye

  “Which is and was true.”

  “Will you explain that venture to us?”

  “I believe I have already explained it in our previous meeting. Adam Cauliff and I owned adjoining parcels of real estate on Twenty-eighth Street. We were considering joining them for the purpose of building a structure that would have both co-op apartments and offices.”

  “Mr. Cauliff would have been the architect on this project?”

  “Adam Cauliff was invited to submit a design for that purpose.”

  “When did you reject his design, Mr. Lang?”

  “I would not say it was rejected. I would say that it needed considerable rethinking.”

  “That’s not what you told his wife, is it?”

  Peter Lang stood up. “I have tried to be cooperative. I see my efforts are wasted and that it is not possible to talk with you on a strictly friendly basis. I resent your tone and attitude. If this is to continue, I must insist on calling my lawyer.”

  “Mr. Lang, just one more question,” Detective Sclafani said. “You made a peremptory bid for the Vandermeer property after the mansion was removed from landmark status, didn’t you?”

  “The city desperately wanted other land I owned. I traded. The city got the better deal.”

  “Just a moment more, please. If you had not engaged Adam Cauliff as the architect on your project, would he have sold his property to you?”

  “He would have been very foolish had he not sold it to us. But, of course, he died before any transaction could be completed.”

  “And I assume that was the reason for your visit to his widow. Suppose Nell MacDermott refuses to sell the property to you?”

  “That, of course, would be her decision to make.” Peter Lang stood. “Gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse me. If you have any further questions, you can call my lawyer.” Lang switched on the intercom. “Mr. Brennan and Mr. Sclafani are ready to leave,” he told his secretary. “Please show them to the elevator.”

  fifty-eight

  GERT MACDERMOTT CALLED NELL on Wednesday morning. “Are you going to be home?” she asked. “I made a crumb cake this morning, and I know it’s one of your favorites.”

  Nell was at her desk. “Was and is, Aunt Gert. Sure—come on over.”

  “Now, if you’re too busy . . .”

  “I’m doing my column, but it’s almost finished.”

  “I’ll be there by eleven.”

  “I’ll have the kettle whistling.”

  At quarter of eleven, Nell turned off the computer. The column was almost right, she decided, but she wanted to let it sit a while longer before she gave it a final polish.

  I’ve enjoyed doing the column for these two years, she thought as she filled the kettle. But it’s definitely time to move on.

  Although, move back is more like it, she admitted to herself as she got out the teapot. Back to the world that was second nature to her, campaigning and election night—and Capitol Hill, assuming she won, of course. Also back to long hours and commuting between Manhattan and D.C.

  At least I know what I’ll be getting into if I win, she thought. People like Bob Gorman can’t take it. Or perhaps Mac was right, and Gorman was only using the position as a stepping stone to other things . . .

  AT PRECISELY ELEVEN, the doorman phoned to say that Ms. MacDermott was on the way up. Mac taught both Gert and me to be prompt, Nell thought. Adam, though, was always late. It was a trait that used to drive Mac crazy.

  She felt disloyal remembering that.

  “You look better,” were Gert’s first words, as she kissed her. Gert held a cake tin in her hands.

  “I had my first decent night’s sleep in nearly two weeks,” Nell said. “That helps.”

  “Yes, it does,” Gert agreed. “I tried to phone you last night, but you were out. Bonnie Wilson called to see how you were doing.”

  “That was nice of her.” Nell took the cake from her great-aunt. “Come on. Let’s have that tea.”

  As they sipped, Nell noticed that Gert’s hands were trembling slightly, something that was not uncommon for someone her age, she thought, but, dear God, I don’t want anything to happen to her or Mac for a long time.

  She remembered what Dan Minor had said at dinner: “I wish I’d had siblings. I may never find my mother, and once my grandparents are gone, that’s it for my family.” Then he had added, “I don’t count my father. Unfortunately, he’s incidental to my life. We haven’t been in touch in some time.” Then he had smiled, “of course, I do have a very pretty stepmother, and two former ones.”

  She made a mental note to call Mac and tell him to expect a call from Dan.

  Promptly at 11:30, Gert got up. “I’ve got to be on my way. Nell, a quick thought. Anytime you’re really down and want company, you know who to call.”

  Nell hugged her. “You.”

  “That’s right. And listen, I hope you’ve followed up on giving away Adam’s clothing. Bonnie thinks it’s important.”

  “I’ve started to pack his things.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “Not really. The superintendent is getting me some boxes. I’ll load them in the car and drop them off Saturday morning. That’s still the day they accept donations, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. And on Saturday, I’ll be there. It’s my day to check in whatever we get.”

  A small church on First Avenue and Eighty-fifth Street ran the thrift shop at which Gert volunteered, and where Nell left all her discarded clothes. It accepted only what it called “gently worn” garments, and sold them at minimal cost.

  With a stab of emotion, Nell remembered how, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, she had gone through her closet and gathered up all the stuff she never wore anymore, and then she had bullied Adam into doing the same. Afterward they had packed everything up and taken it to the thrift shop.

  Then, feeling virtuous about having done a good deed, they had lunch at a new Thai restaurant on Second and Eighty-first. Over lunch Adam had admitted how difficult it was for him to give away clothing that was still wearable. He said he got that from his mother, who never parted with anything, saying that she would “keep it for a rainy day.”

  “I’m kind of like her in that respect, I guess,” he had admitted. “If you hadn’t prodded me, that stuff would have been in my closet until the hangers collapsed.”

  It was not Nell’s favorite memory of him.

  fifty-nine

  IN ONE GESTURE, Liz Hanley tapped on and opened the door of Cornelius MacDermott’s private office. “I’m on my way,” she told him.

  “I was just going to remind you to get started. It’s 2:30.”

  “And I’m due at three.”

  “Now, Liz, I feel a little guilty asking you to do this, but it is important.”

  “Mac, if that woman puts a hex on me, it’s your fault.”

  “Come straight back here when you get finished with her.”

  “Or she gets finished with me.”

  LIZ GAVE THE ADDRESS of Bonnie Wilson’s West Side apartment to the cabbie, then she leaned back and tried to calm her nerves.

  The problem, she admitted to herself, was that she actually believed that some people do have genuine psychic ability—or ESP, or whatever they wanted to call it. She had shared this misgiving with Mac, and, as usual, he had an answer.

  “My mother didn’t think she had psychic ability, but she was darn sure she could read psychic signs,” he had told her. “Three raps at the door in the middle of the night, or if a picture fell off the wall, or a pigeon flew in the window, and she would get the rosary out. She swore that any one of those events was a sure sign of impending death.” He paused, obviously enjoying his monologue.

  “Then, if six months later she got a letter from the old country saying that her ninety-eight-year-old aunt had died, she’d say to my father, ‘Now, Patrick, didn’t I tell you when I heard those three raps that night that we’d be getting bad news?’ ”

  Mac is convincin
g, and he does make it sound ridiculous, Liz thought, but there are hundreds of documented cases where, as people died, they visited their loved ones to say good-bye. Years ago there was a story in Reader’s Digest about Arthur Godfrey, the old-time television star. When he was a kid on a navy ship during World War II, he dreamed that his father was standing at the foot of his bunk. The next morning he learned his father had died at that exact moment. I’m going to look up that article and show it to Mac, Liz thought. Maybe he’ll at least believe Arthur Godfrey.

  Not that that would do any real good, she admitted to herself as the cab pulled up to the curb. Mac will find some clever way to dismiss anything I say.

  HER FIRST REACTION to Bonnie Wilson was similar to the one Nell had described over dinner at Neary’s. Bonnie was a startlingly attractive woman and younger than Liz had anticipated. However, the atmosphere in the apartment was more in keeping with her expectations. The gloomy foyer made a startling contrast to the brightness of the June afternoon she had just left outside.

  “The air-conditioning is being repaired,” Bonnie apologized, “and the only way to keep the apartment from being impossibly warm is to keep the sun out. These buildings have wonderful big rooms, but they are aging, and it shows.”

  Liz was about to say that she lived in a similar type building on York Avenue, when she remembered just in time that she had made the appointment as Moira Callahan of Beekman Place. I’ve never been a good liar, she thought nervously, and at nearly sixty-one, it’s too late to start learning how to be one.

  Meekly she followed Bonnie Wilson the short distance from the foyer to a study on the right side of the long hallway.

  “Why don’t you sit on the couch?” Bonnie said. “That way I can pull up my chair. I’d like to hold your hands for a few moments.”

  Feeling increasingly nervous, Liz sat down and obeyed.

  Bonnie Wilson closed her eyes. “You’re wearing your wedding band, but I sense you’ve been a widow for a long time. Is that true?”

  “Yes.” My God, can she really pick that up so quickly? Liz wondered.

  “You’ve just passed what would have been a special anniversary. I see the number forty. You’ve been rather nostalgic the past few weeks because you would have celebrated your fortieth wedding anniversary. You were a June bride.”

  Dumbfounded, Liz could only nod.

  “I hear the name ‘Sean.’ Was there a Sean in your family? I don’t think it’s your husband. It’s more like a brother, a younger brother.” Bonnie Wilson raised her hand to the side of her head. “I feel the most intense pain here,” she murmured. “I believe it means Sean was killed in an accident. He was in a car, wasn’t he?”

  “Sean was only seventeen,” Liz said, her voice thick with emotion. “He was speeding, and the car went out of control. His skull was fractured.”

  “He is on the other side, along with your husband and all the members of your family who have passed over. He wants you to know they all send you their love. You are not destined to join them for a long time. However, that does not mean that we are not constantly surrounded by our loved ones, or that they do not become our spirit guides while we are here. Be comforted, knowing that is true.”

  Later, almost in a daze, Liz Hanley followed Bonnie back down the shadowy hallway. A table with a mirror over it was against the far wall at the turn that led back to the foyer. A silver dish on the table held Bonnie’s business cards. Liz paused and reached to take one of them. Suddenly her blood went cold, and she froze in her tracks. She was looking into the mirror, but there was another face there, a face behind her own image, staring back at her. It was only an impression, of course, and it was fleeting, gone almost before she caught it.

  But on the ride back to the office in the cab, a shaken and troubled Liz acknowledged to herself that she was positive Adam Cauliff’s face had materialized in that mirror.

  She was equally positive that she would never, never, never even hint to anyone that she had seen that apparition.

  sixty

  BEN TUCKER HAD NIGHTMARES AGAIN on both Monday and Tuesday nights, but they weren’t as scary to the young boy as the ones he had had earlier. Ever since he had drawn the picture of the boat exploding, and he and Dr. Megan had talked about how any kid would be upset and frightened after seeing something that bad happen to people, he had begun to feel a little better.

  He didn’t even mind the fact that coming here today meant that he would be late for his Little League game—and they were playing the second-best team in their league. When he walked into Dr. Megan’s office, he told her so.

  “Hey, you make me feel pretty good, Benjy,” she said. “Do you feel like drawing any more pictures for me today?”

  This time he found it was easier, because the snake didn’t seem so scary. In fact, Ben realized that the “snake” didn’t even really look like a snake. In the dreams last night and the night before, he hadn’t been so afraid, and he had been able to see it more clearly.

  As he drew, his concentration was so intense that he bit his tongue. Sputtering at the oddly unpleasant sensation, he told Dr. Megan, “My Mom laughs at me when I do that.”

  “She laughs at you when you do what, Ben?”

  “When I bite my tongue. She said her dad always did that when he was concentrating hard.”

  “It’s nice to be like your granddad. You just keep concentrating.”

  Ben’s hand began to move with quick, sure strokes. He liked to draw and was very good at it, something he took pride in. He was not like some of the kids in his class who made a joke out of everything, and who kept drawing dumb things instead of trying to make something that looked real. He thought they were real jerks.

  He was glad that Dr. Megan was off to the side, writing on some papers, and not paying attention to him at all. It was a lot easier this way.

  He finished the drawing and put the pen down. Sitting back, he looked closely at his creation.

  He thought it looked pretty good, although what he had drawn surprised him. He could see now that the “snake” wasn’t a snake at all. That was just what it had looked like to him at the moment of the explosion. He had been mixed up just then, because everything had been so scary.

  It wasn’t a snake he saw sliding off the boat. It looked more like someone in a tight, shiny black suit and mask who was holding onto something that looked like a lady’s pocketbook.

  sixty-one

  AT WORK ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, Lisa Ryan received a phone call from Kelly’s guidance counselor, Mrs. Evans. “She’s grieving terribly for her father,” Evans said. “She started to cry in class today.”

  Instantly heartsick, Lisa said, “But of the three, I thought she was doing the best. At home, she seems to be just fine.”

  “I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t say very much,” Mrs. Evans said. “She is, however, very mature for a ten-year-old. I get the feeling that she’s trying to spare you, Mrs. Ryan.”

  It’s not Kelly’s job to spare me, Lisa thought despairingly. It’s my job to spare her. I’ve been too wrapped up in myself, and I’ve been too worried about that damn money. Well, I’m going to do something about that before another day goes by.

  She fished around in her purse, found the number she wanted, and went to the pay phone. Then, while her client looked pointedly at her watch, she hurried into the office and told the manager she had to cancel her last two appointments.

  As he voiced his protest, she told him flatly, “I have some business to take care of tonight, and it is absolutely necessary. Before I do it, though, I have to give my kids dinner.”

  “Lisa, we gave you a week off to get your affairs settled. Don’t make this a habit.”

  She hurried back to her station and smiled apologetically at her client. “I’m so sorry. I had a call from school. One of the kids was upset in class.”

  “That’s a shame, but Lisa, can you please finish me up. I’ve got a million things to do myself.”

  MORGAN CURRE
N was coming to baby-sit at seven o’clock. At 5:30 Lisa had dinner on the table. She had followed the funeral director’s advice and moved the chairs around. Because there were only four of them now, she had taken the extra leaf out of the center, so the table was again a circle. It had been that way until Charley was out of his high chair. With a pang, she remembered how they had made a big event of moving him to a “big-boy chair.”

  With senses newly attuned to the pain her children were experiencing, she saw the troubled expression on Kyle’s face, as well as the deep grief in Kelly’s eyes, and she understood the unnatural silence of little Charley.

  “How was school today?” she asked, trying to sound cheerful, not talking to anyone in particular.

  “It was okay,” Kyle said stiffly. “You know that overnight trip the guys are going on next weekend?”

  Lisa’s heart sank. The trip he was referring to was a father-and-son outing to the Greenwood Lake home of one of Kyle’s friends. “What about it?” she asked.

  “I know Bobby’s father is going to call and say he really wants me to be with him and Bobby, but I just don’t want to go. Please, Mom, don’t make me.”

  Lisa wanted to cry. Kyle would be the only boy at the outing without a father. “It wouldn’t be much fun for you,” she agreed. “I’ll tell Bobby’s dad that you’d rather skip it this time.”

  She remembered another bit of advice from the funeral director: “Give the children something to anticipate,” he had said. Well, thanks to Brenda Curren, she could do that.

  “Good news,” she said brightly. “The Currens are renting a bigger house at Breezy Point this year because they want us to stay with them every weekend. And are you ready for the best part? This house is right on the ocean!”

  “Really, Mom! That’s awesome,” Charley said with a big sigh.

  Charley the water rat, Lisa thought, rejoicing as she watched an ecstatic smile brighten his face.

  “That’s really good, Mom.” Kyle, now visibly relaxed, was obviously pleased.