Before I Say Good-Bye (10 page)

Nell shook her head, a gesture she had picked up from Mac, his unconscious sign of displeasure when he didn’t want to give voice to his objection to something. “All right. Come over if you must,” she told Brennan crisply, and then hung up.

eighteen

O
N
W
EDNESDAY AFTERNOON,
Lisa’s next-door neighbor, Brenda Curren, and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Morgan, arrived to pick up the Ryan kids, Kyle, Kelly and Charley, and take them to a movie and then out to dinner.

“Go get in the car with Morgan,” Brenda ordered, “I want to talk to your mom for a minute.” She waited until the three were outside before saying, “Lisa, don’t look so worried. You know they’ll be fine with us. You were right to keep them home from school today, but now you need some time to yourself.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lisa said dully, “all I see stretching out ahead of me is time. When I think about it, I wonder what in God’s name I’m going to do with all of those hours and days.” She looked at her neighbor, saw the look of concern in her eyes. “But you’re right, of course. I do need some time alone. I have to go through Jimmy’s desk. I have to file for Social Security for the children. At least that will offer some income while I figure out what I’m going to do.”

“You do have insurance, don’t you Lisa?” Brenda’s pleasant face creased with worry. “I’m sorry,” she added hastily. “It’s none of my business, of course. It’s just that Ed is so insurance conscious that it’s the first thing I think of.”

“We have some,” Lisa said. Enough to bury Jimmy, she thought, but that’s about it. She kept the thought to herself, though; she would not admit that even to a good friend like Brenda.

Keep your business to yourself
—that was a warning she had heard all her life from her grandmother:
It’s nobody’s affair what you have or don’t have, Lisa. Keep them guessing.

Only there’s not much to guess about, Lisa thought, feeling the weight over her pressing harder. We still owe $14,000 on credit cards, computed at 18 percent interest a month.

“Lisa, Jimmy always kept up this place so well. Ed isn’t nearly as handy as Jimmy was, but he asked me to tell you that if anything comes up that needs fixing, he’ll do his best to take care of it for you. You know what I mean. Plumbers and electricians cost a fortune.”

“Yes, they do.”

“Lisa, we’re all so sorry about Jimmy. He was a great guy, and we love you both. We’d do anything to help you out. You know that.”

Lisa saw the tears Brenda was trying to blink back and tried to will herself to smile. “I know you would. And you are helping me. Go ahead now and take my kids off my hands.”

She walked Brenda to the door, then headed back down the narrow hallway. The kitchen was large enough for a table and chairs, small enough to feel perpetually
cramped. The writing desk was built in, a feature the real estate agent seemed to consider a stunning addition when they had first looked at the house all those years ago.

“You just don’t get built-ins in this price range,” the agent had gushed as she pointed it out.

Lisa looked at the stack of envelopes on the desk. The mortgage, gas and phone bills were already almost a week overdue. If Jimmy had come home, they would have sat there together and paid them over the weekend, to avoid late charges. My job now, Lisa thought, something I get to do alone with all the time I have.

She wrote those checks and with a sinking heart pulled out another stack of envelopes, this one held together with a rubber band. The credit-card bills; so many of them. She didn’t dare to make more than a minimum payment on any of them this month.

She debated about cleaning out the one desk drawer. Deep and wide, it had become a catchall for the junk mail that should have been thrown out immediately. Here are coupons we never got around to using, Lisa thought. And even when we didn’t have any extra money, and no way to afford them, Jimmy tore pictures of tools out of catalogs—all things he’d want someday, when we got caught up.

She grasped a handful of loose papers and caught sight of an envelope with columns of figures. She didn’t need to examine it to know what it was. How often had she seen Jimmy sitting at this desk, adding up the bills, agonizing as they mounted? It had become a familiar sight these last years.

And then he would go downstairs and sit at his workbench for a couple of hours, pretending to be fixing
something, Lisa thought. He didn’t want me to see how worried he was.

Why didn’t he stop worrying once he went back to work? Lisa wondered, asking herself once more the question that had plagued her over these last months. Almost without thinking, she crossed the room and opened the door to the basement. As she walked down the stairs, she tried not to think about how hard Jimmy had labored to transform the dreary space below into a comfortable family room and a workroom for himself.

She went to the workroom and turned on the light. The kids and I almost never came in here, she thought. It was like a sanctuary for Jimmy. He said he was afraid that someone would pick up a sharp tool and get hurt. It hurt Lisa now to see that the space was painfully neat, unlike the times when the broad table had been cluttered with the tools necessary for whatever had been Jimmy’s current project. Now they were all in place, all lined up on the Peg-Board over the table. The saw horses that often held sheets of beaverboard or plywood were standing together in a corner next to the file cabinet.

The file cabinet—Jimmy used it for income tax records and papers he thought worth keeping. It was one other thing that she’d have to examine carefully eventually. Lisa opened the top drawer, glanced at the carefully labeled manila folders. As she had expected, they contained sequentially numbered income tax statements.

Opening the second drawer, she saw that Jimmy had taken out the dividers. Neatly folded blueprints and specification sheets were piled on top of each other. She knew what they were: they were his plans—plans for
finishing the basement, plans for the built-in bunks in Kyle’s room, for the screened-in porch off the living room.

Maybe even the plans for our dream house, she thought, the one we were going to have someday. He made them for me as a Christmas present two and a half years ago, before he lost his job. He asked me to tell him exactly what I wanted to have in a house, and he drew plans to accommodate everything I asked for.

Thrilled at the prospect, Lisa had given full vent to her imagination. She asked for a kitchen with a skylight, and she wanted that room to flow into a family room with a raised-hearth fireplace. She also had asked for a dining room with window seats, and a dressing room off the master bedroom. From what she had described, he’d made a model to scale.

I hope he kept those plans, Lisa thought. She reached into the drawer and lifted out the stacks of papers. There weren’t as many of them as it had appeared, however, and under them, at the bottom of the drawer, she saw a bulky box—no, two—sealed with brown wrapping paper and twine. They were wedged in tightly, though, and she had to kneel on the floor and slip her fingers underneath to wrench them loose.

She placed the boxes on the table, then reached for a sharp-edged tool from the Peg-Board, slashed the twine, unwrapped the heavy brown paper and lifted the lid from the first box.

Then, with a mixture of fascinated horror and disbelief, she stared down at stacks of currency lying in neat rows inside the box: twenties, fifties, a few one hundreds—some worn, some mint new. The second box was mostly fifties.

An hour later, after a careful count, followed by an even more careful recount, Lisa dazedly acknowledged that $50,000 had been hidden in this basement room by Jimmy Ryan, the beloved husband who had suddenly become a stranger.

nineteen

I
N THE TWO YEARS
since she had moved to New York from Florida, Bonnie Wilson, psychic and medium, had developed a solid clientele she met with regularly in her West End Avenue apartment.

Thirty years old, slender, with black hair worn straight and full across her shoulders, pale skin and enviable features, Bonnie perhaps looked more like a model than a master of psychic phenomena, but, in fact, she had become quite well established in her profession and was especially sought after by all those anxious to be in touch with a loved one who had passed on.

As she would explain to a newcomer, “We all have psychic ability, some more than others. It can be developed in all of us; however, mine came already finely tuned when I was born. Even as a child, I had the ability to sense what is going on in other peoples’ lives, to intuitively hear their concerns, to help them find the answers they are seeking.

“As I studied, as I prayed, as I joined groups of others who share these special gifts, I found that when people came to consult me, the ones they loved, now on the higher plane, began to join us. Sometimes their
messages were specific. At other times they simply wanted to let the grieving know that they are happy and well and that their love is eternal. Over time, my ability to communicate has become more and more precise. Some people find what I tell them to be disturbing, but most draw from it only the greatest comfort. I am anxious to assist all those who come to me, and I request only that they treat me and my abilities with respect. I want to be of help, for God has given me this gift, and it is my obligation to share it with others.”

Bonnie regularly attended the New York Psychic Association meetings, held on the first Wednesday of every month. Today, as she had expected, Gert MacDermott, a regular attendee of these sessions, was not present. In hushed tones, the members discussed the terrible tragedy that had befallen her family. Gert, a loquacious person to begin with, was almost uncommonly proud of her successful young niece and frequently spoke of her psychic abilities. She had even talked of having her join their group but so far had not coaxed her to one of these meetings.

“I met the niece’s husband, Adam Cauliff, at Gert’s house at one of her cocktail parties,” Dr. Siegfried Volk told Bonnie. “Gert seemed extremely fond of him. I don’t think he had much interest in our studies and our psychic efforts, but he certainly pleased her by showing up for the party. A charming man. I sent Gert a note expressing my sympathy, and I plan to call on her next week.”

“I’m going to visit her too,” Bonnie said. “I want to help her and her family in any way I can.”

twenty

E
ARLIER THAT DAY,
Jed Kaplan had set off on his favorite walk, starting at his mother’s apartment at Fourteenth Street and First Avenue, and ending up on the Hudson River at the North Cove Marina at the World Financial Center, where Adam Cauliff had kept his cabin cruiser. It was the fifth day in a row that Jed had made this journey, a walk that usually took him a little over an hour, depending on distractions along the way, and each time he enjoyed it more.

And now, just as he had on the previous days, Jed sat staring out over the Hudson, a slight smile on his lips. The thought that
Cornelia II
was no longer arrogantly bobbing in the water there sent a thrill throughout his body so pleasurable it was almost sensual. He savored the image of Adam Cauliff’s body being blown to bits, starting with the startling, instantaneous recognition that must have registered in Cauliff’s brain, the knowledge that he was indeed dying. Then he thought of the body being torn to pieces, hurtling into the air before dropping into the water—it was an image he relived over and over in his mind, relishing it more each time.

The temperature had been dropping all day, and now that the sun was going down, the breeze from the river had become cold and penetrating. Jed glanced around, noticing that the outdoor tables in the plaza, which had been crowded each of the last four days, were now all but empty. The passengers he saw arriving on the ferry boats from Jersey City and Hoboken
walked quickly toward shelter. A bunch of sissies, Jed thought contemptuously. They should try living in the bush for a couple of years.

He observed a cruise liner being piloted toward the Narrows and wondered where it was heading. Europe? he thought. South America? Hell, maybe he should try going to one of those places. Clearly it was time for him to push off. The old lady was driving him crazy, and he could only guess that he must be driving her crazy too.

When she had fixed him breakfast this morning, she said, “Jed, you’re my son and I care about you a lot, but I can’t put up with you upsetting me all the time. You’ve got to get beyond all this. Despite everything you believe, Adam Cauliff was a nice man, or at least
I
thought so. Now, unfortunately, he’s dead, so you have no reason to keep hating him. It’s time for you to get on to something else. I’ll give you money to make a fresh start somewhere.”

Initially she had suggested giving him five thousand bucks. By the time he finished his breakfast, he had gotten her up to twenty-five thousand, plus she had let him see her will, which showed that she was leaving everything to him. Before he finally had agreed to leave town, he made her swear on his father’s soul that she would never change the will.

Cauliff had paid her $800,000 for the property. Chances were, given the way his mom scrimped, most of that money would still be there when she turned up her toes.

It certainly wasn’t the amount he had hoped for—that property was worth ten times that—but it was the best he could do, now that she had practically given his
inheritance away. Jed shrugged and went back to visualizing Adam Cauliff’s death.

A witness to the explosion who had been on a boat coming back from the Statue of Liberty had been quoted in the
Post
as saying, “The boat wasn’t moving. I figured they’d dropped anchor and were having a couple of drinks or something. The water was getting choppy, and I remember thinking that the party wouldn’t last much longer. Then all of a sudden
boom.
It was like an atomic bomb hit it.”

Jed had cut out that account of the explosion and kept it in his shirt pocket. He enjoyed rereading it, enjoyed visualizing bodies and debris hurling into the air, carried by the force of the explosion. His only real regret was that he hadn’t been there to see it.