Before I Say Good-Bye (27 page)

As soon as they were married, Adam had asked Mac to help him get a better job. That was how he happened to go to work for Walters and Arsdale.

Then he left them to open his own firm, using the rest of the money he borrowed from me.

The last two weeks had been so terrible. First she had lost her husband, and then came all the suggestions that he wasn’t the man she thought him to be. I don’t want to believe he was in on that bid-rigging and kickback scheme, Nell told herself. Why
would
he have been involved? He didn’t exactly need the money. The boat was his only extravagance. He wouldn’t have had to borrow money from me if he was also getting paid off under the table, she reasoned.

But why didn’t he tell me that his design had been rejected by Peter Lang? That was a question for which she would have to find an answer.

And why did he do such a complete turnaround when I began to talk seriously about wanting to run for Mac’s seat? He blamed his anger on Mac. He said Mac would never let me be my own person, not so long as he held any sway over me, and that I would just end up being a puppet for my grandfather. Well, I fell for it, but now I have to wonder if I wasn’t really just being manipulated by Adam.

What reason—other than his disdain for Mac, and perhaps politics in general—would Adam have to keep me away from the glare of the media? she wondered.

As she looked back over what she had learned in the past few days, an answer to the questions that were plaguing her began to form in Nell’s mind, one that made sense and that chilled her to the bone. Adam knew that if I ran for that office, then the media and my opponents would dig deep and hard into our personal histories to see if there were any skeletons in either of our closets. I’m confident I’m clean, she thought. So what was he afraid of?

Could there be some truth to the suggestion that he had been taking kickbacks? Was he in any way to blame
for that defective renovation job on Lexington Avenue, where the façade collapsed the other day?

Anxious to put these questions out of her mind, Nell decided to tackle one of the chores she had been putting off. The maintenance men had brought up to the apartment a pile of boxes for her to use in packing Adam’s clothes. She went into the guest room and put the first box on the bed. The neat piles of underwear and socks disappeared into it.

Questions beget questions, Nell thought. As she continued to pack away Adam’s clothes, she allowed herself to face the one question that she had been most determinedly avoiding these past few days:
Was I truly
in
love with Adam, or did I merely
want
to be in love with him?

If I hadn’t rushed so quickly into marriage with Adam, would the initial attraction have worn off? Did I see in him what I wanted to see? Wasn’t I always denying the truth to myself? The truth is, it wasn’t a great marriage—at least, not for me. I resented having to give up my career goals for him. I also wasn’t sorry when Adam would take off for the weekend on his boat, fishing and cruising. I enjoyed the time alone, and it gave me time to spend with Mac as well.

Or could all my doubts be something else? Nell asked herself as she closed a box, set it on the floor and picked up another one. Is it simply that I have grieved enough in my life, and that now I am trying to find a reason not to grieve deeply again?

I’ve read that people are often angry at the loved one who has died. Is that what’s happening to me? she wondered.

Nell carefully folded sports clothes—chinos and jeans and short-sleeve shirts—placing them in boxes; ties and
handkerchiefs and gloves were the last items to be packed away. The bed was now clear. She had no heart to start in on the closet. That can wait till another day, she thought.

The Ryan woman had called earlier in the afternoon and insisted that she had to see Nell that evening. The call had been abrupt, almost rude, and Nell had been tempted to tell the woman where to get off. Still, she knew that Lisa Ryan was in great pain, and she deserved to be given time to come to terms with her loss.

Nell looked at her watch. It was after six. Lisa Ryan had said she would be there by seven-thirty; that gave Nell enough time to freshen up and relax for a few minutes. A nice glass of chardonnay would also help, she decided.

T
HE ELEVATOR OPERATOR
helped Lisa carry the two heavy packages into Nell’s apartment. “Where shall I put these, Ms. MacDermott?” he asked.

It was Lisa who answered. “Just put them there.” She was pointing to the round table under the window that overlooked Park Avenue.

The elevator operator glanced at Nell, who nodded.

When the door closed behind him, Lisa said defiantly, “Nell, I have nightmares that the cops will come in with a search warrant, find this cursed money and arrest me, right in front of my children. They’d never do that to
you.
That’s why
you’ve
got to keep it here until you can give it back to someone.”

“Lisa, that is absolutely impossible,” Nell told her. “I respected your confidence, but there’s no way under the sun I can hold on to or send back money that was given to your husband because he went along with something illegal.”

“How do I know your husband wasn’t involved in this?” Lisa demanded. “There was something very strange in the way Jimmy got his job in the first place. He sent a résumé to everyone in the building trade, but only your husband responded. Was Adam Cauliff in the habit of being a bleeding heart for a guy who was blackballed because he was honest? Or did he get him a job with Sam Krause precisely because he thought poor Jimmy might just be desperate enough to be useful? That’s what
I
want to know.”

“I don’t know the answer,” Nell said slowly. “I do know that no matter who gets hurt, it’s important to find out just how and why Jimmy was useful to someone.”

Lisa Ryan’s face drained of color. “Over my dead body will Jimmy’s name come into this,” she cried. “I’ll take that damn money and throw it in the river first. That’s what I should have done the minute I found it.”

“Lisa, listen to me,” Nell pleaded. “You’ve read about the building façade that collapsed on Lexington Avenue. Three people were injured, and one of them may die.”

“My Jimmy never worked on Lexington Avenue!”

“I didn’t say he did, but he worked for Sam Krause, and it was his company that did that renovation. If Krause did shoddy work on that building, then chances are he did the same on others. Maybe there’s another job that Jimmy was on, in which corners were cut and inferior materials were used. Maybe there is another structurally unsound building, an accident waiting to happen. Jimmy Ryan hid that money away and never spent it, and from what you tell me, he was terribly depressed. I have a feeling that he was the kind of man who would now want you to do whatever you could to help avoid another tragedy.”

The defiant anger in Lisa’s face faded, and she collapsed into deep, wracking sobs. Nell put her arms around her. She’s so thin, she thought compassionately. She’s only a few years older than I am, yet here she is, faced with the responsibility of raising three kids with basically no money. And still she’d throw fifty thousand dollars into the river rather than feed and clothe her children with money that was dirty.

“Lisa,” she said. “I know what you’re going through. I also have to face the fact that my husband may have been involved in bid rigging, or at the very least guilty of closing his eyes to the use of substandard materials. True, I don’t have children to protect, but if knowledge of Adam’s complicity in anything illegal comes out, it could cost me my political career. And having said that, I want your permission to talk to the detectives investigating the explosion.

“I’ll ask them to do whatever they can to keep Jimmy’s name out of the investigation, but Lisa, do you realize that if Jimmy knew too much,
he
may well have been the target in the explosion that blew up the boat?”

Nell paused, then went ahead and said what had been in the back of her mind ever since Monday, when Lisa first told her about the money. “Lisa, if someone is worried that Jimmy told you what he did to get that money, you also might be considered a threat. Had you considered that?”

“But he
didn’t
tell me!”

“You and I are the only ones who know that.” Nell gently touched the other woman’s arm. “Now do you understand why the detectives need to be told about the money?”

Thursday, June 22

sixty-four

O
N
T
HURSDAY MORNING,
Jack Sclafani and George Brennan were once again at Fourteenth Street and First Avenue, visiting the apartment of Ada Kaplan.

“Is Jed home?” Sclafani asked.

“He’s not up yet.” Ada Kaplan was once again on the verge of tears. “You’re not going to search my house again, are you? I can’t take any more. You’ve got to understand that.” The dark circles under her eyes accentuated the extreme whiteness of her face.

“No, we’re not going to search your house again, Mrs. Kaplan,” Brennan said soothingly. “We’re sorry we have to inconvenience you at all. Would you just tell Jed to get dressed and get out here. We want to talk to him, that’s all.”

“Maybe he’ll talk to
you.
He hardly says a word to
me.”
She looked at them appealingly. “What would he have to gain by hurting Adam Cauliff?” she asked. “Sure, he was mad because Cauliff talked me into selling my building—and Jed thinks for too little money—but truthfully, if I hadn’t sold it to him, I’d have sold it to that big-shot realtor, Mr. Lang. I
told
Jed that.”

“Peter Lang?” Brennan asked. “Did you speak with him about your property?”

“Sure I did. Right after that fire in the mansion, he came to see me. Had a check in his hand.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “He offered me
two million dollars,
and only the month before, I’d sold it to Mr. Cauliff for less than
one
million! It broke my heart to have to tell him I didn’t own it anymore, and I didn’t dare let Jed know how much more I could have gotten for it.”

“Was Lang upset when he learned you’d sold the property?”

“Oh, my, yes, he was. I think if Mr. Cauliff had been standing there, he’d have strangled him with his bare hands.”

“Are you talking about me, Mom?”

All three people turned to see an unshaven Jed Kaplan standing in the doorway.

“No, I wasn’t,” Ada Kaplan said nervously. “I was just telling the gentlemen that Peter Lang had been interested in buying my property too.”

Jed Kaplan’s expression became ugly.
“Our
property, Mom. And don’t you forget it.” He turned to Brennan and Sclafani. “What do you two want?”

They got up. “Just the chance to make sure you’re as charming as ever,” Sclafani remarked. “We also don’t want you to forget that until we say it’s okay, you shouldn’t be planning any vacations or anything like that. While this investigation is ongoing, we need to know where you are. So don’t be surprised if we drop in again for a little visit.”

“It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Mrs. Kaplan,” Brennan said.

On the way down in the elevator, Sclafani spoke first. “You thinking the same thing I am?”

“Yeah. I’m thinking that Kaplan’s nothing but a two-bit hood, and that we’re wasting our time on him. Lang, on the other hand, deserves a little closer scrutiny. He had motive in wanting Adam Cauliff out of the way, and he very conveniently saved his own life by missing the meeting on the boat.”

They arrived back at headquarters at eleven o’clock to find an unexpected visitor waiting for them. The receptionist explained: “His name is Kenneth Tucker. He’s from Philadelphia, and he wants to speak to whoever is handling the investigation into that boat explosion a couple of weeks back.”

Sclafani shrugged. There’s never a high-profile case that doesn’t get its share of loonies with hot tips or crackpot theories, he thought. “Give us ten minutes to get some coffee.”

He tried not to raise his eyebrows when Tucker was escorted into the office. He looked like the typical young executive, and his first words, “I may be wasting your time,” convinced both men that that was exactly what he would be doing.

“I’ll get right to the point,” Tucker said. “My son and I were on a boat in New York harbor when that boat exploded two weeks ago. He has been having nightmares ever since.”

“How old is your son, Mr. Tucker?”

“Benjy is eight.”

“And so you think that these nightmares are related to that explosion?”

“Yes, I do. Both Benjy and I witnessed it. We were returning from a visit to the Statue of Liberty.
Truthfully, the whole episode was kind of a blur to me, but Ben saw something that I believe may be significant.”

Sclafani and Brennan exchanged glances. “Mr. Tucker, we spoke to a number of people who’d been on the ferry at the time. Some of them witnessed the explosion, but they all agree that the ferry was too far away for them to see anything distinctly. I can understand why a little boy might have nightmares if he happened to be looking at that boat when it blew up, but I can assure you that from that distance, he did not see anything significant.”