Before I Say Goodbye

  The two detectives nodded to each other and then stood up. “We’ll be going to see Ms. Ryan; I’m sure you realize that it is necessary to try to get to the source of this money. But if you talk to her, please assure her we’ll do our best to keep her husband’s name out of this part of the investigation, at least as far as the press is concerned.”

  “Can you just tell me this?” Nell stood and faced the men. “Do you have any hard evidence that my husband was involved in the bribery or the bid-rigging scandals?”

  “No, we do not,” Brennan replied promptly. “We do know that Winifred Johnson was the conduit for the transfer of a lot of money, perhaps millions of dollars. Based on the evidence you’ve given us here, it now appears that she was the one who prepared the money for Jimmy Ryan’s payoff. The people who paid Winifred money have come forward, and they apparently had the impression it was all going to Walters and Arsdale themselves, but so far there’s no proof of that.”

  “And am I right that so far there’s also no proof that Adam was receiving any payoff money?” Nell asked.

  Sclafani paused, then answered. “Yes, you’re right. We don’t know what role, if any, your husband played in all of the stuff that was going on at Walters and Arsdale. Winifred could have been working on her own, and she may have concocted a scheme to feather her own nest. Or she may have been working with the mysterious Harry Reynolds.”

  “What about Peter Lang?” Nell asked.

  Sclafani shrugged. “Ms. MacDermott, this investigation remains wide open.”

  In a way, what she had learned today was a comfort, Nell thought as she closed the door behind the detectives. In another way, though, it was unsettling. What Sclafani was saying basically was that no one had been cleared, including Adam.

  Earlier in the day, Nell had noticed that her plants were in need of attention. Now she collected them from the foyer and living and dining rooms and brought them into the kitchen. With swift, expert movements she stripped away the dry leaves, turned up the soil and sprayed the leaves and buds.

  She could almost see the plants begin to perk up. You were bone dry, she thought. A flash of memory came to her. Just before I met Adam, I was doing this job one day, and I realized I felt like one of these plants. Emotionally I was dry. Mac and Gert had just gotten through really rough cases of the flu. I’d realized then that if something happened to them, I would be absolutely alone.

  I knew I needed to be loved the way those plants needed water just now.

  And so I fell in love. But with what? she asked herself. Maybe I just fell in love with love . . . Wasn’t there a song with those words?

  I’ve always felt condescending toward Winifred, Nell thought. I was nice to her, but I thought of her as a faithful little drudge. But I’m coming to believe that underneath that meek and submissive exterior there lurked an entirely different person. If she had been heart-hungry, and had met someone who made her feel loved, who knows to what lengths she might have gone in order to please him—and to keep him?

  I gave up my political career to please Adam, she thought. That was my sacrifice for love.

  She finished working with the plants and started returning them to their posts around the apartment. Abruptly she took one and set it back on the kitchen counter. It was something she had never fully acknowledged, not even to herself, but the truth was, she had never liked the spider plant Adam gave her on her birthday two years ago. Impulsively, she took that one and put it out by the incinerator. One of the maintenance men will be glad to have it, she told herself.

  The other plants she put back on the windowsills, the coffee table and the Bombay chest in the foyer. When she was done, she stood in the foyer and looked into the living room.

  As an anniversary surprise, Adam had had their wedding picture copied by an artist. The portrait, too large for her taste, was hanging over the fireplace.

  Nell walked up to it, took the frame in her hands and lifted it off the wall. The artist had been, at best, pedestrian. There was something lifeless in her smile, and Adam’s smile seemed flat as well. Or perhaps the artist actually was very good, one who caught what the camera missed? Nell pondered the possibilities as she carried the portrait to the storage closet and exchanged it for the watercolor of the village of Adelboden she had bought years ago while skiing in Switzerland.

  When the picture was hung, she once again stood in the foyer and looked around. She suddenly realized that all traces of Adam had been expunged from the living and the dining rooms.

  Then she remembered the clothes and decided she was going to finish that job. She went back to the guest room. It took only fifteen minutes more to complete packing the suits and jackets in the boxes. She closed and marked them.

  Then she noticed the navy jacket, still hanging on the back of the chair, and she was hit with another sudden memory. Last summer, she and Adam were out to dinner. The air-conditioning in the restaurant had been bone chilling, and she’d been wearing a sleeveless dress.

  Adam had stood up, taken off this jacket and draped it over her. “Go ahead, put your arms through,” he had urged.

  But he was wearing short sleeves, and I told him that now he’d be cold; then he said that as long as I was warm, he’d be fine.

  He was the master of the small courtesies, of the tender phrase, Nell thought as she picked up the jacket and slipped her arms into it. She wrapped it around her, trying to evoke once more the feeling of comfort and warmth she had felt when Adam gave it to her that day.

  It was this jacket that he wore home that last night, she remembered. She held the lapel to her face, wondering if she could pick up any trace of the scent of Polo, the eau de cologne he used. Perhaps there was the faintest trace there, she decided, although she could not be sure.

  Bonnie Wilson had told her that Adam wanted her to give his clothing away to help other people. She wondered if the fact that he had not been generous with his unused garments until he met her had been a reproach to him after his death.

  She decided she definitely would give the jacket away with his other clothing. She put her hands in the side pockets to be sure he had not left anything in them. He had always cleaned out his pockets when he undressed, but he had planned to wear this jacket again that last day, so Nell knew she should check it thoroughly just to be sure.

  There was a pristinely ironed handkerchief in the left-hand pocket. The right pocket was empty. She put her finger in the breast pocket. That too was empty.

  Nell folded the jacket, reopened the last box she had filled and put it in. She had begun to close the top when she remembered that this jacket had several inside pockets as well. Just to be on the safe side, she decided to check them too.

  Within the inside pocket on the right side of the jacket there was a small sac that buttoned for security. It was flat, but Nell thought she could feel something under her fingers. She opened the button, reached in and withdrew a tiny manila envelope.

  From it, she removed a safe-deposit key. It was stamped with the number 332.

  seventy-one

  AT THREE O’CLOCK, Lisa Ryan received a phone call at work that she had been both anticipating and dreading.

  Detective Jack Sclafani said it was necessary for him and Detective Brennan to have a meeting with her when she got home from work.

  “We just left Ms. MacDermott,” Sclafani told her.

  Lisa had to take the call in the manager’s office. “I understand,” she replied. She turned her back, not wanting to see the naked curiosity in her boss’s eyes.

  “We’ll need to talk frankly,” Sclafani warned. “I know that wasn’t possible for you last week once the children came home.”

  “I have a friend who will take the children out for dinner. Would 6:30 be all right?”

  “That would be fine.”

  Feigning a lightness of spirit she did not feel, Lisa somehow got through the rest of the afternoon.

  WHEN THE TWO DETECTIVES ARRIVED, she opened the door, and gesturing with a
cup of coffee in her hand, said, “I just made a fresh pot. Would you like some?”

  It was a perfunctory offer, but Jack Sclafani accepted even though he didn’t care about having coffee without a meal. He could sense that despite the cordial way in which she had greeted them, Lisa Ryan was clearly frightened and on the defensive. He needed to get her to relax, because he wanted her to feel as if they were her friends.

  “I wasn’t going to say yes, but it smells good,” Brennan responded, smiling.

  “Jimmy liked my coffee,” Lisa said as she took mugs from the shelf. “Said I had a magic touch. It sounds silly, of course. We all make coffee the same way. I guess he was just prejudiced.”

  They took their coffee into the living room. Sclafani noticed immediately that the model of the dream house was no longer on the table.

  Lisa followed his glance. “I packed it away,” she told him. “It was kind of hard, seeing it every time the kids and I were in this room.”

  “I can understand that.”

  It was what Kelly wrote in her diary that made me put it away, she thought.

  Every time I look at Mommy’s dream house, I think of how Daddy let me see it when he was making it. He said that it was our secret, that it was his present to Mommy for Christmas. I never told a single soul. I miss Daddy so much. I miss looking forward to living in the dream house, especially the room he was going to build for me.

  There was another secret Kelly had written about in her diary that Lisa knew she was going to have to share with the detectives. She decided not to wait for them to ask questions. “I believe you both said you have children,” she began. “If something happened to you, I don’t think you’d want them, or anyone else for that matter, to judge you by one mistake that you felt had been forced upon you.”

  She looked at the detectives. Their eyes were sympathetic. Lisa prayed that they weren’t just pretending, that this wasn’t a professional trick, designed to make her believe they understood what must have happened to Jimmy.

  “I’ll tell you everything I know,” she continued, “but I am pleading with you to keep Jimmy’s name out of this investigation. Those boxes with the money were sealed. For all I know, someone asked him to hold them for them and he never even knew what was in them.”

  “You don’t believe that, Lisa,” Jack Sclafani said.

  “I’m not sure what to believe. I am sure that if Jimmy knew anything about substandard construction on a job that might later cause a tragic accident, he would have come forward eventually. And I know also that since he is not here to speak for himself, it has to come out now.”

  “You told Ms. MacDermott that you found the sealed packages in your husband’s file,” Brennan said.

  “Yes. The file cabinet is in his workshop. I was going through it, looking for any records I might need to keep, like income tax statements.” A hint of a smile touched Lisa’s lips. “I grew up listening to the story of how my great-aunt found an insurance policy in my great-uncle’s desk that she never knew he had. It was for twenty-five thousand dollars, which in 1947 was big bucks.” She paused and looked at her hands, clenching and unclenching them as they lay in her lap. “I didn’t find an insurance policy downstairs. Instead, I found the packages.”

  “You have no idea where they came from?”

  “No. But I think I can pinpoint when he did something to be given them. It was this past September 9th.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “My daughter’s diary.” Lisa’s voice faltered. She twisted her hands together. “Oh, God, what am I doing?” she cried. “I swore to Kelly I’d never read her diary.”

  She’s going to clam up again, Jack Sclafani thought. “Lisa,” he said, “you’re right that we’ve both got kids. We don’t want to hurt a child any more than you do. But please, tell us what she wrote that pertains to September 9th, and why you think it is important. After that, we’ll get out of here, I promise.”

  At least for now, Brennan thought as he looked at his partner. Jack is good. He’s acting like Lisa Ryan’s big brother. What’s better is that he means it.

  Lisa kept her head down as she spoke. “After reading the diary, I remembered that on Thursday, September 9th, Jimmy came home late. He was working at a site on the Upper West Side, at about One Hundredth Street. I think it was a renovation project on an apartment building. Before he got home, I had a phone call from someone who asked to talk to Jimmy and said it was urgent, even wanted to know if he had a cell phone. Jimmy didn’t believe in those things. I asked if I could take a message.”

  “Was it a man or a woman who called?”

  “Man. He had a low, nervous voice.”

  Lisa got up and walked to the window. “The message he asked me to give Jimmy was, ‘The job is canceled.’ I was so afraid it meant that Jimmy was out of work again. He finally got home around nine-thirty, and I told him about the call. He was terribly upset.”

  “What do you mean by ‘upset’?”

  “He turned almost ghostly pale and began sweating. Then he grabbed his chest. For a moment there, I thought he was having a heart attack. But then he pulled himself together and said that the owner had demanded some changes that he’d already made and now couldn’t undo.”

  “Why do you remember this episode so clearly?”

  “Only because of something Kelly wrote in her diary. At the time, I thought that Jimmy was just terrified that something would happen to make him lose the job. After that night, I didn’t think anything more about it. I remember that I went to bed about an hour after Jimmy got home. He said he wanted to have a beer and unwind, that he’d join me in a little while. Kelly wrote in her diary that she woke up and heard the television on. She went downstairs because she’d been asleep when Jimmy came home and she wanted to say good night to him.”

  Lisa crossed to a desk and took a piece of paper out of a drawer. “I copied this from her diary, dated September 9th.

  “ ‘I sat on Daddy’s lap. He was so quiet. He was watching the news. Then, all of a sudden, he began to cry. I wanted to run and get Mommy, but he wouldn’t let me. Then he said that he was all right, and it was our secret that he felt sad. He said he was just tired out and had had a very bad day at work. He brought me back up to bed, and he went into the bathroom. I could hear him throwing up, so I guess he just had a flu bug or something.’ ”

  Deliberately, Lisa folded and then tore up the paper she was holding. “I don’t know much about law, but I do know that in a court, this is not considered evidence. If you have any decency in you, you’ll never refer to it publicly. But I would suggest that whatever the job was that Jimmy described as ‘too late to cancel’ is at the center of this whole issue about the money and a payoff. I think the apartment building renovation Jimmy was working on last September 9th may need to be inspected.”

  The detectives left a few minutes later. Once they were in the car, Sclafani said, “You’re thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “You bet I am. We need to get a tape of all the September 9th late-night news broadcasts and see if there’s anything reported on one of them that might be connected to Jimmy Ryan’s big payoff.”

  seventy-two

  “MS. NELL MACDERMOTT on the phone, sir.” The secretary’s voice was apologetic. “I told her you were not available, but she’s quite insistent that you accept her call. What shall I tell her?”

  Peter Lang raised an eyebrow and thought for a second, looking across the desk at his corporation counsel, Louis Graymore, with whom he had been meeting. “I’ll take it,” he said.

  His conversation with Nell was brief. When he replaced the receiver, he said, “That’s quite a surprise. She wants to see me immediately. How do you figure that one, Lou?”

  “When you saw her the other day, didn’t you say she practically threw you out? What did you tell her?”

  “I told her to come ahead. She’ll be here in about twenty minutes.”

  “Want me to wait?”

  “I
don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “I could gently remind her that your family has been supporting her grandfather’s campaigns since before either you or she was born,” the lawyer offered.

  “I don’t think so. I tried a gentle hint that I’d be happy to support her candidacy if she runs for his seat. I never got the freeze so fast in my life.”

  Graymore got up. Silver-haired and urbane, he had been chief legal advisor on real estate matters to Lang’s father, as well as to Peter. “If I may offer you a word of advice, Peter, you made a tactical mistake when you were less than honest about your proposed use of the Kaplan parcel.” He paused. “With some people, straight talk works.”

  Lou may be right, Peter thought as, not long after that, his secretary ushered Nell into his office. Though she was dressed casually, in a denim jacket and chinos, she had a bearing that bespoke class. He also found her very attractive, noticing the way loose tendrils of hair framed her face.

  Even his most sophisticated visitors usually commented on the superb view and his exquisitely furnished office. He had the feeling that Nell, however, was totally unaware of any of it—the view, the furnishings, the expensive art on the walls.

  With a nod, he indicated to his secretary that she should escort Nell to the chairs at the window that looked out toward the Hudson River.

  “I have to talk to you,” Nell said abruptly as she sat down.

  “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” he said, smiling.

  Nell shook her head impatiently. “Peter, we don’t know each other well, but we have met any number of times over the years. I’m not interested in any of that now, though. What I am interested in is how well you knew my husband and why you lied to me the other day about your proposed use of the property Adam bought from the Kaplans.”

  Lou was right on target, Peter Lang thought. Dissembling was not the way to go with this woman. “Nell, let me put it this way. I met Adam a number of times while he was with Walters and Arsdale. My firm has been involved in construction projects with that firm for many years.”