Someone Must Die (19 page)

C
HAPTER
32

The vein in Smolleck’s right temple throbbed as he stood in the foyer of her mother’s house.

Aubrey had been hoping to avoid him—not only because she wasn’t sure how she would talk her way out of where she’d been the last hour, but also because she was anxious to get to her computer.

I did the right thing,
she repeated to herself.
Letting her go was Ethan’s best chance.

“Can you come with me, please?” Smolleck didn’t wait for her to answer, just led the way to her mother’s office in the back of the house.

He sat down at the desk and gestured for her to sit on the other chair.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

She glanced out the window at the trees in the backyard. A blue jay was perched on one of the branches. Stay as near to the truth as possible. “Looking for my mother.”

“May I have your phone?”

She handed it to him, hoping he didn’t notice her hands were shaking. She had turned the phone back on when she had pulled into the driveway.

He examined it. “Why did you have it turned off earlier?”

“Were you trying to reach me? Is there news about Ethan?”

“There’s no news about Ethan, and yes, I’ve been trying to reach you. You received a call from your mother, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What did she say?”

Even though Smolleck had said they weren’t monitoring her calls, she wouldn’t be surprised if their entire conversation had been recorded. “My mother asked me to meet her at the Circle.”

“Which is?”

“Well, I thought she meant the park where we used to go when I was a kid.”

“What park?”

She hesitated. “Ponce Circle. It’s in Coral Gables.”

The vein in Smolleck’s temple wasn’t pulsing as furiously. “Was she there?”

“No,” Aubrey said. “I drove over and waited, but she didn’t show up. I guess I misunderstood where we were supposed to meet. She may have meant Alhambra Circle or Cocoplum Circle or even Miami Circle Park.” She was explaining too much. Giving more than he had asked for, something liars often did thinking it made them look innocent.

He touched the face of her phone, probably checking her Received and Sent call lists.

She looked back out the window. The blue jay was gone.

He put her phone down on the desk, apparently not finding anything of interest to him. “We’ve put out an ATL on your mother.”

“ATL?”

“‘Attempt to Locate’ bulletin. She’s a suspect in the death of Jonathan Woodward.”

“I assumed you would think so after I told you about the ransom note. But that’s not enough to arrest her.”

“So you’re a lawyer now?”

Her face grew warm.

“Then you probably know that harboring a fugitive is a serious crime.”

“Is my mother a fugitive? Has a warrant been issued for her arrest?”

“Not yet, but we have more than just your report about the note’s existence.”

“You do? What?”

They stared at each other until the vein in Smolleck’s temple began pulsing hard again. “I’m not about to give you information until you start leveling with me.”

“I don’t know how I can help you,” she said. “Are you certain Jonathan was pushed? Could he have fallen accidentally?”

“It’s highly unlikely that it was an accident.”

There was a discoloration in the oak desk where she had once spilled nail-polish remover when she was doing her nails. Her mother had been matter-of-fact about the ruined wood, but Aubrey had been very upset with herself. Would Mama forgive her if she told Smolleck the truth?

“I know you don’t trust me right now,” she said. “I understand why you wouldn’t, but I told you about the ransom note. If you think about it, whoever wrote it was probably more interested in hurting my mother than in killing Jonathan.”

“So why is he dead?”

“Maybe whoever sent the note intended to make it look like my mother killed him. They would know you or the police would automatically suspect her if you were aware of the note.”

“It’s a theory.”

It was. A good one. “My mother is not an impulsive woman,” she said. “I don’t believe she killed Jonathan.” Was she repeating the mantra to convince herself, or did she truly believe it?

Her eyes flitted over the photos of Ethan.

Some she had taken herself, but others she had gotten from her father and brother. She had sent them all to her mother, knowing how much joy she received from the photos of her grandson. There was one of Ethan on a horse, another at Disneyland, and a recent silly one Ethan had taken of himself making an ugly face.

He loved taking selfies and had learned how to send them to her.

Something about the “ugly face” photo stopped her. She got up and took the framed picture from the shelf. Ethan was in the foreground, but behind him was a woman she didn’t recognize. An older woman with gray hair, who was staring at him, her chin pushed forward, her brow in a frown.

“What is it?” Smolleck asked.

“This woman. There’s something familiar about her.”

“You don’t know her?”

Aubrey shook her head.

“Do you know where the photo was taken?”

She recognized the black-leather furniture and a black-and-white painting of a maze that was a favorite of her father’s. “This is my father’s apartment in LA. The photo was taken a couple of weeks ago. I can tell because Ethan was missing his front tooth.”

“The woman could be a neighbor or a friend,” Smolleck said.

“Yes. Probably.” She put the photo back on the shelf. She had the original on her computer where she could study it more carefully. There was so much to do, and here she was using up precious time.

“Anything else you’d like to distract me with?” Smolleck asked.

“Agent Smolleck. My nephew is missing. I’m concerned that Jonathan’s death and looking for my mother has shifted everyone’s priorities away from finding him.”

His shoulders stiffened. “Finding Ethan is our number one priority.”

“Good,” she said, as she headed out of the room. “I’m glad we’re at least agreed on that.”

C
HAPTER
33

Aubrey closed her bedroom door behind her. She had just lied to the FBI, but that was the least of her problems. Her mother was definitely a suspect, and Ethan was still missing.

She opened her laptop.

Earlier today, her father had told her he believed someone involved with Stormdrain or the explosion at the brownstone could be connected to Ethan’s kidnapping. He had hinted that he or her mother had played some role in that catastrophe, then denied it.

But Smolleck was also interested in Stormdrain, and Mama had gone off to do something related to her past.

Aubrey googled “Stormdrain, brownstone explosion, April 1970,” and viewed the search results. A few were travel websites, identifying the brownstone as an interesting, off-the-beaten-path place to visit. There were before-and-after photos—the blackened shell of the brownstone in 1970 after the explosion, and a modern, angular building with large windows and a plaque out front. Then there were blogs and articles going back several years about Stormdrain, and a Wikipedia article she decided to read first.

According to the article, Stormdrain had been an American, radical left-wing organization that began in late 1969 on the campus of Columbia University and was briefly a faction of SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, before it broke away. Its goal was to create a revolutionary party for the overthrow of the US government.

Aubrey still had a difficult time seeing her parents as revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow the government.

She read on. Stormdrain had conducted a campaign of bombings from December 1969 through April 1970, targeting patriotic statues, like one of George Washington in Union Square Park, as well as banks and government and corporate buildings. Stormdrain had taken credit for explosions in the lobbies of the Manhattan headquarters of Mobil Oil, IBM, General Telephone and Electronics, and Baer Business Machines.

Another connection to BBM and Prudence.

She continued reading about the bombings. Although there was destruction of property, no one was ever injured or killed. Stormdrain always took precautions that people would not be around when they detonated their bombs.

The article went on to talk about the founding members of the group, all Columbia University and Barnard College students, though neither of her parents was mentioned.

She read the names of the founding members: Steve Robinson, Jeffrey Schwartz, Albert Jacobs, Linda Wilsen, and Gertrude Morgenstern, noting that Schwartz and Wilsen were two people Smolleck had said the FBI was looking for. Twenty years ago, a psychotic man had claimed to be Jeffrey Schwartz, a publicized event that coincided with her parents’ big fight.

She clicked on the link to an article about Schwartz. The photo was a blurry black-and-white of a skinny, scowling man with longish dark hair and mutton-chop sideburns. She skimmed the article. Attended Columbia Law School. One of the leaders of Stormdrain Underground, a militant faction of Stormdrain that was associated with a number of bombings that occurred after April Fool, between late 1970 and 1981. Was involved in a foiled bank robbery in 1981, which resulted in the death of a teller, a security guard, and a police officer. Still at-large and on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

She read the paragraph entitled “Jeffrey Schwartz Sham,” which essentially said what Smolleck had told her. A man claiming to be Jeffrey Schwartz had insisted he knew who was responsible for the 1970 brownstone bombing but had turned out to be lying.

Although this seemed to be an inconsequential footnote, she wondered whether someone had set up the fake “Jeffrey Schwartz” for the purpose of frightening her parents. There was no way of knowing without speaking to the man who had posed as Schwartz, something Aubrey couldn’t do but planned to ask Smolleck to follow up on.

She pulled up the article on Linda Wilsen, the other person the FBI was looking for, hoping for a photo she could match to the one in her mother’s box. There were none, just a brief write-up on how Linda had survived the April Fool explosion but had suffered severe and disfiguring burns over most of her body. She had never been charged with any crimes but had dropped out of Barnard and returned home to Arkansas. There was nothing about her life since. She googled “Linda Wilsen Arkansas” but came up with no matches that could be a sixty-something-year-old woman. Of course, if it had been so easy, the FBI would know where she was.

She returned to the main article on Stormdrain and clicked on the link to the explosion at the brownstone. Her mother had said she’d been injured when she was walking by, but hadn’t provided any details.

Aubrey read on. Also known as April Fool, the explosion had taken place on April 1, 1970 in Morningside Heights, a neighborhood not far from Columbia University.

The explosion resulted from the premature detonation of a bomb being assembled by members of Stormdrain, which set off other explosives and reduced the brownstone to burning rubble. The bombs, according to Stormdrain member Steve Robinson, had been intended to be used to blow up the Lexington Avenue Armory.

Three Columbia University students had been killed on impact—Michael Shernovsky, Gary Cohen, and Gertrude Morgenstern. A fourth, Linda Wilsen, had escaped from the wreckage with third-degree burns and was hospitalized. A five-year-old child, Martin Smith, playing in front of the brownstone at the time of the explosion, was rescued from the scene, but died before he reached the hospital.

Damn. A child had died. This was something she hadn’t known before. The little boy’s parents might have held her parents accountable for his death if they believed Mama or Dad had had some connection to the explosion.

She returned to the article.

Over several days, a search of the rubble uncovered a “bomb factory” with several unexploded eight-stick packages of dynamite with fuses attached, six pipe bombs, remnants of Molotov cocktails, and timing devices.

All that, in addition to the makeshift bombs that had detonated in the explosion. The crime scene was gory, and it took a week to identify the three students. Gertrude Morgenstern was believed to have been holding the bomb when it exploded and suffered the greatest impact.

She was identified by her remains found at the site, including the tip of a finger, a scorched braid of hair, crushed wire-rim glasses, and shreds of clothing including a wooden clog shoe.

Aubrey sat back in her desk chair. Her father had said the people who died in the explosion had been their friends. She thought of her mother sitting in front of the fireplace this morning going through a box with photos in it.
Just some old friends.

Aubrey went across the hall to her mother’s room and closed the door after her. She opened the drawers in the dresser and bureau and sifted through the clothes. No box. She checked in shoe boxes and containers on the shelves of the closet. Nothing. She pulled out her mother’s luggage and unzipped each piece. There was an old blue suitcase that didn’t have wheels. Aubrey set it on the floor and opened the snap-down locks. The suitcase was filled with old clothes—worn jeans and tie-dyed shirts and peasant blouses, harem-style pants and a halter top—and a small box covered with neon peace symbols.

She pushed the suitcase back into the closet and returned to her own room with the box. If Smolleck came upstairs, she didn’t want to have to explain to him why she was snooping around her mother’s bedroom.

She put the box on her desk and opened it. Inside were folded papers and a handful of photos. On top were the photos Mama had shown her earlier of her father alone, and the one of both her parents. The papers were an assortment of class schedules, grade reports, and commendations from Barnard College for Diana Hartfeld.

Nothing culpable.

She opened a tiny envelope, the kind that usually accompanied a delivered floral arrangement. The envelope was yellowed with age. In it was a small note card. Although it was a little different from his handwriting these days, she recognized her father’s strong script, each letter pressed hard into the paper, revealing a high level of confidence, even back in college.

D-Our love is stronger than the pain. Love, L-

Her mother’s ringtone.

The song was clearly special to both of them. She put the card back in its envelope and examined the rest of the photos. Young men at a party. Her father was in a couple of them, the white scarf covering his hair. The men had longish hair and sideburns. Several wore beards. One of the skinny men with mutton-chop sideburns resembled the photo of Jeffrey Schwartz, but his face was turned away from the camera, so she couldn’t be certain it was he. She turned the photos over. No dates. No one identified.

She came to the photo of three women she had looked at with her mother. On the back, written in her mother’s neat script, was:
With Linda and Gertrude at antiwar demonstration, Oct. 15, 1969.

Linda Wilsen and Gertrude Morgenstern? Probably. Gertrude wasn’t exactly a common name.

Both women had been in the brownstone explosion. Linda had suffered severe burns, and Gertrude had died.

Aubrey looked again at the three young, happy women in the photo.

And Mama?

What exactly had she been doing by the brownstone that day?