Brooklyn Graves (20 page)

Well, damn! Had he just walked in my own front door?

I got a hammer and banged with all my stress energy on the rusted old dead bolt on the front door. It has not been used in decades, but it would, by God, work now. Finally it budged and satisfyingly inched its way closed. Ha. He would not be able to break in again while I was inside.

Before I was done panting from the effort, the phone rang. It was from Illinois. Who the hell could that be? If it was a fund-raising call, I did not have the patience right now. Or the money. Just before it was too late I remembered that I did know someone in Illinois.

“Ms. Donato! I am so pleased to be talking to you! First, let me thank you for sending me on a hunt. It made quite a change from my usual requests. I had to dig right into the storage area. I mean that literally as we don't have the paper digitized that far back. In fact, I can hardly remember the last time I was asked for something that old. Really, it was such an exciting challenge.”

Her excitement was encouraging but I had to stop the flow of words.

“Does this mean you found something?”

“I most certainly did. It isn't much but it should be very useful, if I correctly understand what you are trying to do. Now, what is the best way to send it to you? I could fax it, or we could send by express service, but you would have to pay for that. It's not a big package.”

“Would it be possible to just scan and send to my e-mail?”

“I honestly don't have the time to do that today. Our equipment is so antiquated it would take forever. Tell you what? Why don't I just describe what I have, and then you can decide for yourself?”

“Yes, that would be great.” Let's just get going, I thought, but did not say. The speed of business is not the same outside of New York, I reminded myself. She's doing me a favor, I reminded myself.

“Well, what makes it slow to scan is that there are many separate items. It's a series from the paper called “Our Hometown Gal in the Big City.” They were letters Maude Cooper wrote about her experiences. It was quite unusual, you know, for a young lady to move from a small town like this to New York, and local folks were all agog to read about her adventures. At least, those are the responses they printed. If anyone disapproved, the
Daily
was kind enough not to print those comments. And there are twenty columns over a year or so, plus local responses. Then they stop, just like that, and the paper never said why.”

“Nothing like a farewell or announcement that she was moving on? Nothing at all?”

“Not a blessed word that I could find, and I did look. Strange, isn't t?”

“I'll say. That's kind of the mystery I am trying to solve.”

“Well, there was not another word from her, or news about her either, except that her mother died a few years later, and then, soon after, there was an announcement of a house sale with all contents, and that her sister was relocating to Chicago. And that's it.”

I thought fast. The letters probably were similar to what I already had. Maybe they were exactly what I had.

“Probably you could mail it all to me. Maybe fax the obituary and the other item? I'll give you the number at my job.” Faxed to work meant I would not see it until tomorrow. “You have been so helpful, I hate to take more of your time, but I am anxious. Could I ask you to just tell me what is in those two items?”

“My dear, of course! I understand perfectly and they are very short anyway. Now just hold on. Yes, here they are. Now, her mother's name was Edith Cooper, maiden name Hart. Here goes…”

The usual details were there. Date of death. Viewing hours. Location of the funeral. Some description of the family in the town's history. Then the gentle voice said, “Mrs. Cooper is survived by her daughters, Miss Katherine Cooper of River Bend, and Mrs. Gerard Konick IV, nee Maude Cooper, of Brooklyn, New York.”

When I could breath again, I asked her to read it one more time. Maude was married to a Konick? The Konicks of Konick Park? And Konick Avenue?

And more importantly, the Gerardus Konick III who built the neglected mausoleum with the Tiffany window? There was a connection between Maude and that family? Is this—could it possibly be—where her window designs come in?

“Ms. Donato? Are you still there?”

“Yes, I'm sorry, I am just—just trying to process this. “

“So that was helpful?”

“I can hardly explain. It is—it is a big surprise.” I took another deep breath. “In fact, I can hardly talk.”

She laughed. “How exciting. Tell you what. I will make time to scan everything and get it to you today! And in return, when you put all the pieces together, will you share it with me? I do love a good puzzle.”

“Yes, yes I will. Of course. Thank you. Thank you!”

We thanked each other back and forth a few times, and then at last I was free to move on. I had access from home to some of the history sources I used at work. Now that I knew what to look for, I had it in minutes. There it was on the screen: a 1910 census record for Mr. Gerard Konick, IV, age 35, and spouse Maude, 30. They had two daughters. They lived on Gramercy Park. So he had modernized his name to Gerard. And in the 1920 census they lived at Bright Skye's address.

That seemed pretty clear, but I immediately sent off a request to the city clerk's office for a copy of their marriage license. Then I checked every source I could think of for a newspaper wedding story, but there was not a trace of one.

That was odd. The Konicks were society folks, the kind of people whose weddings were covered in detail, including the gowns and the refreshments. Debutante parties and private balls, too. I had many examples right in front of me on the screen, from old newspapers, but not the one I wanted. That told me something, right there, I thought. No big wedding at a Gothic revival, pipe-organed, impress-with-splendidness society church like St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue.

I continued to scan for any mention of Konicks around the time of Maude's letters, any clue at all. I looked until my eyes felt like sandpaper, and found only one item that mattered:

“An engagement has been announced between Lucy Beekman of New York and Southampton, and Gerardus Konick IV, of New York and Saratoga. Nuptials are planned for August at the bride's parents' estate in Southampton. The announcement was made at an elegant reception held at the Beekman home on Madison Avenue. The bride-to-be was glowing in jonquil satin.”

The item was dated a year before Maude's last letter home.

Well, Maude, I said to myself. No wonder you were so secretive. You were having a romance with an engaged man who was also the son of a Tiffany client. Did you meet him while working on that chapel for his father? Was there a scandal around the broken engagement? Or did you just run off together? How did his family react? Not well, I was sure. Maude Cooper, however charming, could never have competed with a Beekman.

I pictured a wedding at a city office, Maude in a walking suit, perhaps with a fashionably narrow skirt and certainly an elaborate, swooping hat. Did it have feathers? Gerard would have been in business attire from Brooks Brothers. Did he carry a fashionably dashing cane? Did she at least have a lovely bouquet? Did he give her a wedding ring? Perhaps it came from Tiffany.

I went right back to my copies of Maude's letters and here it was, her first reference to the son. And a chilling description of the parents.

If the design she was creating was for the Konick mausoleum—and that seemed the most likely way for her to meet Gerardus, as she certainly did not travel in his social circles—then I knew just where there might be a few more clues.

I would have to go back to Green-Wood, look at paper records, and look again—hard—at the Konick chapel. But not now. It was too late and I was too tired by this endless and endlessly strange day.

Ha. Take that, Dr. Flint and your buddy, the museum director. I am still the Research Goddess. Chris used to call me that sometimes. Today I was earning it.

And then my e-mail did ping. It was Darcy who wrote “At airport. Heading home at last. I am bringing you dinner tomorrow and a great bottle of Washington State wine. And stories about my kids when they were horrid—HORRID!—teens. Everything will work out. Seriously. Say it out loud. Rinse and repeat as often as necessary. Hugs.”

The voice of sanity. I smiled for a second, and stretched out on the sofa with a cozy afghan. I would watch the news, all those disasters that had absolutely nothing to do with me. I suspected I would never make it upstairs to my bed tonight.

Chapter Nineteen

I woke up on autopilot, brain still half-asleep. My body ached everywhere from sleeping on the sofa.

“Chris? Are you up? Breakfast in ten.” In my fog, I shouted it upstairs before I remembered she was not there.

Somehow I was also thinking about my desk. What? Why? Yesterday was coming back to me. Volodya.

My desk. I forced my eyes open enough to go upstairs. Last night I was so preoccupied by locks to keep him out I never thought to ask myself why he had broken in. I couldn't be just for the fun of scaring me. He was not the usual burglar and I was pretty sure, even in my fog, that he could not be interested in my ten-year-old television or my outdated computer. But I remembered only now that when I confronted him the noise of the printer at work was coming from upstairs.

My docs about Maude were up on the screen, easy to find and open. And some of them were opened. They weren't protected. Why should I use a password? Nobody was interested in stealing my work, no bank accounts were involved, I had no important secrets. The information meant nothing to anyone outside of a small group of academics and art historians.

Did I have that all wrong?

There were papers scattered on the floor. My crappy ancient printer had jammed up, it seemed, as he was trying to print documents.

So that's what he wanted? Information almost a hundred years old? The more I looked, the less sense it made. I was sure Volodya did not share my obsession with learning Maude's secrets. Why would he even know about her? More than ever, everything I knew seemed like a collection of pieces from a few different jigsaw puzzles. I was trying to use bits of the Grand Canyon to complete a picture of the Grand Canal.

I would go back to Green-Wood today. The heck with my dissertation. This was more important. I had an e-mail from my advisor, scheduling a meeting. I responded to say that I would be there if I was recovered from the nasty stomach virus I had. I would never tell Chris any of this, but I didn't even feel guilty about the lie. It would cover my recent lack of productive work.

Back to Green-Wood Cemetery. I could find it with my eyes closed by now. I trudged right up the hill to the sad Konick mausoleum. I was so excited I forgot it might be closed and locked, and it was, but there were cemetery workmen nearby and when I presented my museum ID, they were persuaded there was no reason not to let me in. The NYPD warnings were gone
.

This time I was not studying the magnificent window, the spooky atmosphere, or the crumbling architecture. I half-remembered something and there it was, a plaque to the memory of Mr. and Mrs. Gerardus Konick III. It was deeply carved into a marble panel and painted in gold: her maiden name, their parents' names, and a mention of the Gerardus Konick who first traveled from the old Amsterdam to the new one, in the year of our Lord 1663. Gerardus III listed out all his children and grandchildren. There were five children, and an odd, smeary patch at the beginning of the list, where presumably the oldest, the father's namesake, the son and heir should have been.

He had been painted out. I was sure of it. I wondered if there was a family Bible somewhere, with his name also slashed through by an angry parental pen. Well, that seemed an extreme reaction. Was it anger over his marriage? I stared at it for a while, willing it to give up its secrets, but of course that was silly.

Then I stared at the large window, which was not so silly. I had copies of some of Maude's sketches with me. Yes, there were forest animals and tulips, and here I saw similar themes, glowing in stained glass. No coincidence. I felt like I could almost see her, right here, studying the walls just as I was, and envisioning beauty blossoming there. Making sketches. Watching Mr. Tiffany work, while, perhaps, someone else, fascinated and charmed, was watching her?

“Maude,” I said out loud, “I am learning your secrets. They don't seem very dreadful, but maybe then it was different. What happened to you after? Were you happy?”

I saw ahead days of slogging through public archives, trying to find the little bits and pieces that would fill in the details. Even in this day and age, only some of it is online. More census records. The city register which might tell me more about where they lived. That marriage license. Death certificates. I would learn everything I could about the once-important Konicks and I would enjoy it. Had they died out, even with that large Victorian family? I hoped that somewhere there was a hint of gossip about the younger Gerard's presumably shocking love affair. Some avid letter-writer or diarist must have mentioned it, or talked about what this prominent young man did later in life.

Or would they be part of the vanished past, one of the many self-important families that had now disappeared utterly? A century later, were the Konicks less real than the characters in an Edith Wharton novel? No one knew about them or cared about what they had done. Except me.

Digging up that particular past was my immediate future. Yes, I needed to impress my bosses with my brilliant historical sleuthing, but of course there was more to it than that. I was making a promise to remember Maude.

I told myself to stop daydreaming and get to work. The place to start was right here, with any cemetery records relating to this building. I looked around for the workmen who had let me in and instead found Bright Skye, sitting cross-legged on the ground right in front of the door, playing a kind of flute, her eyes closed in trance-like absorption.

She sat in front of a jar of lit incense sticks. The stifling scented smoke mixed with the autumn smell of wet leaves made me want to choke.

Other than that, the scene made me want to burst out laughing. I stopped my coughing just in time, and said her name softly. I could not leave without either stepping over her or knocking her to the ground.

“Bright? Uh, excuse me?”

Her eyes snapped open but her gaze was completely unfocused for a moment. Whatever she was seeing, it was not me.

Then she blinked, flushed, put her flute down, and stood up clumsily, knocking the incense over herself. She stepped backwards, away from me.

“I'm not doing any harm! There is no problem here.”

“All right,” I hypocritically agreed, “but do you have permission? I'm sure there are issues about using matches here, at least.”

She continued to look both nervous and defiant. Her head lifted. “It's my right to be here. I consulted with my shaman and my spirit guides and they said, right here there is a ley line
for me. This whole place is throbbing with psychic energ
y.
Can't you feel it? But this place is my most connected. I found out I am related to the Konicks. It was in a book I found in my attic.”

“Yes. Yes! I think I know how you are connected to them.”

“It doesn't matter how. I know it here.” She tapped her heart. “But why in the goddess' name didn't you tell me before?”

“Because I just found out myself. But what are you trying to do here? You said you are not interested in your family history.”

“I'm not. Screw that. I found my missing papers so I am trying to say thank you. I put the right energy out into the universe and the right energy came back to me.” Her eyes glowed. “My shaman back home told me just how to do it. You must know Sedona is a major, major power center and he is greatly respected.” She looked up at the sky and back to me. “In fact, you just interrupted me. Now I have to begin all over.” Her eyes started to have that faraway look again.

She turned away, and began rearranging the incense, but I was not about to let her get away with that

“You got the letters back? How is that possible? I'm sorry but this is just as important to me and to Ryan's family as it is to you.”

“They were gone and then they were there, back in my attic. That is all.” She smiled. “Now I am at peace and I can sell them and have something useful from my useless family. It's a gift from the universe.”

I thought fast. “Let me help you. I could work with you on getting fair value for those documents. A museum exhibit would certainly increase the price. And I know experts. If I could only take another look at them.”

“Help? You? Not a chance.”

The light went out of her eyes. She turned even further away, carefully rebuilding a pattern with the incense sticks. She pulled out some matches, and a sheet of music.

“Did you ever read them?” I plowed ahead anyway. “They are just fascinating, charming, really. I feel like I know her. It's a wonderful picture of the life of an early career woman. And I've learned some new and important things just today. Does it mean anything to you that…”

“I already told you.” She stared at me like a stubborn child. “I told you. None of it means anything to me. Not. One. Thing. I grew up in that falling-down old house, full of dust and mold and gloom. My mother and my grandmother just loved it—loved it!—and put every penny they could scrape up into it. ‘No, dear, no going away to camp, we need a furnace.' ‘No, dear, no car, we need a new roof.' I was out of there the day I turned eighteen.” She took a deep, shaky breath.

“I finally—finally!—ended up in Arizona and when I saw all that sunlight and empty space, I knew I was home for good.” Her whispery voice had grown louder with each sentence. “That is why Amanda is helping me go through all that—that junk!—so I can sell it all. I only want the money and I definitely don't want any of the damn memories.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you.” I had no idea what I was saying. Her only response was to turn her back to me, and begin playing her flute. The more I talked, the faster and louder she played.

“Is Amanda Mrs. Mercer? Is she here today, with you?”

She finally stopped playing to take a breath. She waved her fingers.

“Off wandering. She does that a lot. She's been working here forever and she knows this place backwards and forwards and upside down, too.”

She went back to playing and I thought I'd keep an eye out for Mercer while I walked down the hill, the breathy flute music following me. Maybe Mrs. Mercer could be persuaded to answer a few questions.

As it turned out, I didn't have to look very long. She was right around the next bend and we almost collided.

“Why, Ms. Donato! What brings you here?”

“I'm still researching the Konicks and their mausoleum. In fact, I just met Bright Skye there.” Deep breath. “In fact, she mentioned that you know everything about Green-Wood. I hadn't realized that before.”

“Oh, she flatters me, but, yes, I do know a great deal. Perhaps I can help you in some way?”

Her friendly offer took me by surprise but of course I jumped at the chance. “I have been taking a good look at the Konick mausoleum, now that it is finally open again. There are a few mysteries there.”

“Oh?” She looked at me with curiosity. Or maybe the sun was in her eyes.

“What do you think? Is there any chance the archives here might have an old photo or sketch?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, they might have one. Chances that they know where it is? About zero.” She paused and then started over. “I don't want to give you the wrong impression. They are making huge efforts to get all the backlog catalogued but the neglect went on for years. What were you looking for? If you could be more specific?”

“I'm almost sure that a name was removed from the wall where there is that carved scroll and the family names.”

She nodded. “The east wall. What makes you think that? It would be a very odd kind of vandalism.”

“Ah, I didn't mean vandalism. I have some information that suggests that it happened. And I took a good look. Of course it's so dirty and neglected, I hope what I think I saw wasn't just a century's worth of grime!” I smiled, trying to say it was a kind of joke, that I wasn't being critical.

She did not smile back. “People certainly don't desecrate their own memorial chapels. That crosses so many lines, I can't even imagine such a thing.”

She didn't look as if she was trying to imagine it. Her expression was skeptical and disapproving.

“You said mysteries, in the plural. What else is there?” She didn't say it in words but I was pretty sure she was thinking, “What other insane ideas do you have?”

I had nothing to lose. “If you know this place so well, what have you heard about the window that was stolen?”

She looked shocked. Good. So I went on. “Yes, I know about it. Dr. Flint does, too. The Konick chapel wasn't closed because of an accident. It was closed because of a robbery. And I thought maybe you had heard something? Anything at all about what happened here that night? Even gossip?”

“I never gossip.” Frost dripped from her words.” And I don't know anything, except that someone criminally desecrated a place of peace and respect. Hard to understand, isn't it?” She wasn't looking at me as she spoke, and not at our surroundings, either, but off somewhere else. “These islands of serenity deserve to be protected, don't they? Cared for and cherished? Probably those thugs chose to pick on this memorial because it is so neglected. That is the crime, isn't it, as much as the theft?” She turned back to me, her face infinitely sad. “Maybe they thought there was no one to notice.”

She turned and walked away. Our conversation seemed to be over.

I had things to do, too. I went to the records department and learned the boxes I would need to see were in deep storage. They would be ready if I wanted to come back in a few days. I didn't want to wait, but that was the best they could do.

***

Later, at home, puttering around, the phone rang. It was Darcy. “I'm on my way over. I have dinner—two shopping bags full. And Washington Pinot, as promised. Or sparkling—I had a good trip, we can celebrate.”

Oh my stars. I'd completely forgotten about her promise to come over and bring a meal. I could barely stammer out that I didn't care which wine.