“A hotel? You’re taking us to a hotel?” John Jr. whined as he looked at the sign in front of the Poets Inn in the town of Lenox, Massachusetts.
“First of all, it’s not a hotel. It’s an inn,” I explained calmly, nodding at the majestic white Victorian, complete with a turret and wraparound porch. “Second of all, yes, this is where I’m taking you.”
“I thought you said we’d be back at camp for dinner,” said Max through a frown. “Tonight’s pepperoni pizza night, my favorite.”
“Don’t worry, we’re not spending the night.” I put the car in Park, turning to the backseat. They looked like a couple of lumps sitting there. Mopey times two. “Just trust me, guys, okay? Can you do that? Please?”
They followed me inside, feet dragging, and I told them to wait by the entrance while I had a word with the owner, Milton, who was behind the front desk. When I’d called ahead before leaving Manhattan, I’d had only two questions for him: “Is the Robert Frost Room taken?” and “Do you mind if I borrow it for a few minutes?”
“It’s available,” said Milton to the first question, followed by “Be my guest” to the second. Talk about hospitality. Indeed, Milton was as nice now as when I first met him…fifteen years ago.
“Let’s go, guys,” I said to the boys after being handed the key. Yes, an actual key. No magnetic-strip card or annoying beeping red light after your first seven tries here.
We climbed the three flights up to the top floor and the Robert Frost Room. The rugs in the hallways were worn, the paint was peeling a bit along the moldings, but the feeling was far more cozy than worn. Just as I remembered it.
“Have you been here before, Dad?” asked Max, sounding a bit winded from taking two steps at a time to keep pace with his older brother and me.
“Yes,” I said as I unlocked the door and we walked in. “Once.”
John Jr. immediately glanced around at the four-poster and velvet curtains, a far cry from his camp cabin. “So why are we back?” he groaned.
“Because I owe you boys something,” I said. “And it starts here.”
Chapter 45
WE STOOD IN the middle of the room, halfway between the bed and the oversize fireplace, with its cherrywood mantel. Max and John Jr. were side by side, staring at me. In that very instant I could remember each of them as babies cradled in Susan’s arms.
I drew a deep breath and exhaled.
“When your mom died I stopped talking about her to you guys,” I began. “I told myself it would just make you miss her more. But that was a mistake. If anything, I was the one scared of missing her more. What I realize now is that even with her gone she’s still your mother, and she always will be. Nothing can ever change that. So for me not to talk about her, to not share with you boys the stories and memories I have of our relationship, is to deprive you of something very important. And I don’t want to do that, not anymore. That’s why we’re here.”
Max looked at me, puzzled. I knew this was a lot for a ten-year-old, but he wouldn’t always be ten. “I don’t get it, Dad,” he said.
John Jr. gave him a push on the shoulder. “He’s saying he stayed here with Mom.”
I smiled, the memories now rushing over me. “Fifteen years ago, with a foot of snow falling outside, your mother and I sat before that fireplace and drank a bottle of Champagne,” I said. “Then I did the smartest thing I’d ever done in my life. I proposed to her.”
“Really? Right here in this room?” asked Max.
“Yep, really,” I said. “In fact, I can prove it.” I stepped over to the closet, next to a chest of drawers, and opened the door. “Come here, guys.”
They walked over and looked. There were only a handful of empty hangers. “It’s empty,” said John Jr.
“That’s what you think.” I scooped up Max, lifting him above my shoulders. “Do you see the very last plank there in the ceiling?” I asked. “Push on it.”
Max stretched his arm toward the last plank, along the back wall of the closet. “Hey, wow,” he said as it gave way to the push of his small fingers.
“Now reach all the way to your left,” I said.
He felt around for a moment. “There’s nothing there,” he said, giving up too quickly. “What am I looking for?”
“Keep searching,” I said. “It’s small, but I’m sure it’s still there.”
The words were barely out of my mouth before he hit paydirt.
“Got it!” he practically shouted, so excited.
I lowered Max to the floor. He turned, opening his palm. The layer of dust notwithstanding, it was exactly as I’d left it fifteen years ago. The cork from the bottle of Champagne that Susan and I shared that night.
John Jr. leaned in to take a closer look. He didn’t say a word.
“Can you guys read it?” I asked.
Max placed the cork between his thumb and forefinger, spinning it slightly until he could see the date. JANUARY 14, 1998, I’d written in black felt-tip marker. Followed by SHE SAID YES!
Then Max saw what Susan had written. “Is that Mom’s handwriting?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Hi, kids!” he read aloud. His jaw dropped; he couldn’t believe it.
“It was her idea that one day we’d bring our children back here,” I said. “She thought it would be cool to show you this.”
I looked over at John Jr., who still hadn’t said a word. Now he couldn’t. He was too busy pretending it wasn’t a tear that had just fallen from his right eye. He wiped it away so fast that only I saw it, not his little brother.
Without a word, I reached out and gave him a hug. I squeezed hard. He squeezed back even harder. That was a first.
“So, like, what do we do with this, Dad?” asked Max. “Can we keep it?”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Sure,” I said. “You guys hold on to it, okay?”
“Or maybe we can put it back,” said John Jr. softly. “You know, where it’s always been.”
I turned to Max, who wasn’t so sure. He was biting his lower lip.
“Your brother might have a good idea, buddy,” I said. “There’s something comforting about knowing the cork will always be here. It’s like a great memory you can keep forever.”
I watched as Max’s face suddenly lit up. Now it was my turn to cry.
“Yeah,” he said. “Kind of like Mom, right?”
Chapter 46
TRUE TO MY word, I got Max and his brother back to camp in time for pepperoni pizza night. I should’ve grabbed a slice for myself. Less than halfway home, I was starving. Who knew all this catharsis stuff would give me such an appetite?
Salvation came soon enough with a place off the Taconic State Parkway called the Heavenly Diner. A handmade sign in the window read SINNERS WELCOME, TOO! Nice touch.
I passed on one of their blue vinyl booths for a seat at the counter and promptly ordered the Lipitor Special: a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate milk shake, extra thick.
“Coming right up,” said the seasoned waitress, whose blond wig needed a little tug to the left, to put it politely.
She shuffled off and I reached for my cell to check my e-mail. Nothing pressing. Unless, that is, you count that dead uncle I apparently have in Nigeria who left me thirty-five million dollars.
I was about to slip the phone back into my pocket when it rang in my hands. The caller ID didn’t come up with a name, but I recognized the number. It was police commissioner Eldridge down in Turks and Caicos.
“Hey, Joe,” I said.
We were now on a first-name basis with each other. In fact, he even threw out a “Johnny-o” at me the last time we spoke. That’s when I asked if he could find out how many Chinese passports had entered his country over the past couple of weeks.
The results were in.
“Seven,” said Eldridge.
A billion Chinese people in the world and only seven had traveled to Turks and Caicos. Oddly enough, that sounded about right.
“Anyo
ne jump out at you?” I asked.
“What is it your Sarah Palin says up there? You betcha.”
There were three Chinese couples—six people total—who arrived on three separate days, he explained. In each case, the hotel they listed on the customs declaration was the hotel at which they stayed. He’d checked it out.
“Not that the killer had to be staying at the same resort as Ethan and Abigail Breslow,” he acknowledged. “But guess who was?”
That’s right. Contestant number seven.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“His name is Huang Li,” he said. “He checked into the Governor’s Club two days before the murders.”
“When did he check out?”
“Two days after.”
“Do we know anything else?” I asked.
“Not really. A pool guy remembered seeing him, but that’s it so far. I’m having to conduct these interviews off campus, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ll look into the guy from here, see what I can dig up.”
“Let’s hope it’s more than I can find,” he said. “Of course, with all this I’m assuming that where the Breslows were honeymooning was public knowledge, right?”
I didn’t answer. In fact, I barely heard him. He might as well have been the adult in a Peanuts cartoon.
“John?” he asked. “You there?”
I was there, all right. But from the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw something that made me realize there was somewhere else I needed to be.
“Joe, I’ve got to call you back,” I said.
“Is everything all right?”
“I’m not sure.”
Chapter 47
THE PATHOLOGIST DIDN’T even bother to look up from his lunch. “You’re a friend of Larry’s, right?” he asked me.
Truth be told, I didn’t know Larry from Adam or the man in the moon, but I did know the woman with the Joint Terrorism Task Force who worked with Larry at the New York Port Authority, whose brother at the NYPD forensics lab was a friend of the guy in the Queens medical examiner’s office sitting before me at his desk with a diet peach Snapple in one hand and a half-eaten ham sandwich on rye in the other.
Call it six degrees of O’Hara needs a favor.
All starting with two words I saw on the television perched above the counter at the Heavenly Diner.
A CNN reporter was standing outside Kennedy Airport. The sound was muted, but the headline in big white type above the news crawl was screaming, at least to me. NEWLYWEDS DEAD.
As soon as I hung up with Joe, I immediately began calling in favors from my days with the NYPD. I needed details. I needed access.
Maybe these honeymooners dying so soon on the heels of the Breslows was nothing more than a coincidence, but as I learned the gruesome details of what happened at that Delta terminal, it was easy to think otherwise.
The hard part would be getting confirmation. Fast.
The totally uninterested pathologist—officially the deputy chief medical examiner—finally looked up at me in his cramped office in Queens. His name was Dr. Dimitri Papenziekas, and he was a Greek with a Noo Yawk attitude. “Hey, I’m not freakin’ Superman,” he informed me.
Yeah, and I’m not the Green Hornet. So now that we have that settled…
“How fast?” I asked. “That’s all I need to know.”
How fast could he complete a test to determine if cyclosarin was present in the airport couple’s bodies?
“Tomorrow afternoon,” he said.
“How about tonight?”
How about you go screw yourself? said his expression. And that was screw spelled with an f, by the way.
“Okay, okay…make it tomorrow morning,” I said as if I were the one doing him the favor.
Dimitri took a bite of the ham sandwich, his head bobbing in thought as he chewed.
“Fine, tomorrow morning,” he said. Then he wagged his finger. “Just don’t be one of those guys who call me in a few hours to see how it’s going. That’s when I really take my time.”
“Yeah, I hate those guys,” I said. “Those guys are dicks.”
Christ, good thing he said that. I would’ve called him for sure. That would’ve gone over well, huh, O’Hara? Like a fart in a crowded elevator.
No, the next morning was okay. I didn’t need to press him. Besides, more important than the “when” was the “who,” as in, Who else would know he was doing me this favor? No one, I hoped.
“So this is just between the two of us, right?” I asked, wanting to make sure.
“That’s what Tiger Woods said,” he shot back.
He laughed while I wondered if that was actually a yes or a no. Finally, he assured me that I had nothing to worry about. No one would know.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t sweat it. Any friend of Larry’s is a friend of mine,” he said. Then, of all things, Dimitri winked. “And if you actually ever meet Larry, you can tell him I said so.”
Chapter 48
HURRY UP AND WAIT.
That was pretty much the feeling I had as I returned home to Riverside for an overnight holding pattern, my next move at the mercy of a ham-sandwich-eating Greek pathologist who didn’t like to be rushed.
In the meantime, I still owed Warner Breslow an update. After dialing his office, I was told by his secretary that he was out. “But let me patch you into his cell,” she quickly added.
Clearly, I was on the guy’s short list.
“What’ve you got?” he asked right off the bat. There was no polite chitchat upfront. Hell, there wasn’t even a hello.
My update covered everything I knew on what I said was “our Chinese angle,” including the fact that I was waiting on a full background check on the one Chinese passport holder who’d stayed at the Governor’s Club.
What I didn’t say a word about, though, was my trip to the Queens medical examiner’s office and the possible connection—or lack thereof—between Ethan and Abigail’s murder and the death of those honeymooners out at the airport. Until I got my answer back on the cyclosarin question, there was no point getting into it.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to call my friends at our embassy in Beijing?” Breslow asked. “You know, maybe expedite that background check?”
The impatience in his tone wasn’t so much with me as it was with the general concept of waiting, something billionaires never seemed to be very good at. My only play was to make clear what exactly he was waiting on.
“With all due respect to your friends at the embassy,” I said, “the kind of background check we’re talking about doesn’t exactly come through official channels.”
That wasn’t me at my most subtle, but sometimes less isn’t more. More is more. Especially with a guy like Breslow.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Call me as soon as you know anything else.”
“Will do.”
I hung up the phone, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and quickly flipped through the mail that I’d brought in. There was no second coming of a Bible or any other mysterious package.
In fact, bills and catalogs notwithstanding, the only actual “mail” was a postcard from Marshall and Judy, who were on their Mediterranean cruise. On the front was a picture of Malta. On the back, in Judy’s handwriting, was a brief essay on the history of Malta. Of course. The only thing not Malta-related was her postscript. “Don’t forget to water my garden!”
Oops.
Beer in hand, I went out back and turned on the sprinkler, not a minute too soon. Judy’s garden was in dire shape. Droopy petunias and begonias everywhere.
After waiting a minute to make sure the sprinkler was reaching them all, I took a seat on a nearby chaise. Stretching my legs out, it occurred to me that this was the first time in days that I actually had a moment to relax. I drew a deep breath, closing my eyes. Maybe it wasn’t such a horrible thing, having a little time to kill.
Suddenly I opened my eyes.
“John O’Hara?” came a voice
behind me.
Chapter 49
THE BAD FEELING engulfed me well before I turned my head. When I saw who it was, the feeling only got worse.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.
It was far from a Christian welcome, but I couldn’t help it. Hit your thumb with a hammer and you’re going to scream. Step barefoot on a piece of glass and you’re going to bleed. See the lawyer for the guy who killed your wife standing uninvited in your backyard?
You’re going to be pissed off.
“I tried ringing the doorbell,” said Harold Cornish. “I think it might be broken.”
“I’ll put it on my to-do list,” I said.
Harold Cornish, perpetually tan and perfectly coiffed, stood before me wearing a three-piece suit and a tie with a Windsor knot. It was late June, hovering in the mideighties, and there wasn’t even a suggestion of sweat anywhere on him. Amazing. He was as cool out of the courtroom as he was in it.
I hated the guy.
And that’s what really pissed me off. Because deep down I knew that I was being completely irrational.
I didn’t hate Cornish for representing McMillan. Due process; I get it. Even the biggest pricks in the world deserve a lawyer.
No, I hated Cornish because he was a good lawyer. Facing a maximum sentence of ten years or even more, McMillan basically got the minimum. Three years. All because of Cornish.
“You certainly don’t owe me any favors, but I want to ask you something,” he said. “You’re aware that my client will be released from prison in a couple of days, right?”
I nodded. Nothing more. I wasn’t about to let on that McMillan’s release had preoccupied me to the point of near self-destruction.
“So this is what I’d like to ask you,” continued Cornish. “McMillan very much wants to apologize to you.” He immediately raised his palms. “Now, before you react, please let me finish.”
“Did I react?” I asked calmly.
“No, you didn’t, and I appreciate that,” he said. “I know my client apologized to you and your family in court, but after doing his time he wants to apologize again, in person. Privately. Would you consider that?”