Daddy's Gone a Hunting (8 page)

Jessica looked at Hannah. “I don’t agree. I am an attorney and a close friend of both Hannah and Kate Connelly. I detect an air of both suspicion and accusation.” She looked at Hannah. “May I put myself forward as Kate’s legal representative at least for the present, Hannah?”

Hannah looked at Jessie, her mind a kaleidoscope. When she had gone back to the hospital this afternoon, she had been thankful Jessie was there. The doctor had taken both of them in again to see Kate.

“Is she totally unresponsive, or is there some level of consciousness?” Hannah had asked Dr. Patel.

“We have her heavily sedated,” the doctor said.

She and Jessie had stayed for a few more hours. When they were almost about to leave, Douglas Connelly had arrived again, this time accompanied by a young woman. “Sandra met Kate last night,” Doug explained. “She wanted to come with me to see her.”

“You are not bringing a stranger in to look at my sister.” Hannah remembered that her voice had become high-pitched.

“I don’t want to intrude,” Sandra had said, her voice soothing.

Doug had gone alone into the ICU. After a moment Hannah had decided to follow him. She watched carefully as he bent over Kate. It appeared her sister’s lips were moving. Then as her father straightened up, Hannah saw the way the color was draining from his face. “Dad, did she say anything that you could make out?” Hannah had asked, frantic to hear that Kate was able to communicate.

“She said, ‘I love you, Daddy, I love you.’ ”

Something inside Hannah made her sure her father was not telling the truth. But why would he lie?

Jessie was looking at Hannah.

What was the question Jessie asked me? Hannah thought. About representing her and Kate. “Of course, I want my trusted friend Jessie to represent my sister in this situation,” she said.

“Then as Kate Connelly’s lawyer, I must insist that there be no attempt to see her at the hospital or talk to her unless I am present.”

The fire marshals left soon after that, saying they would be in touch. Relieved for the moment, she and Jessie sent out for sandwiches from the local deli. Then they went back to the hospital. Kate, deep in a coma, did not speak again.

While at the hospital, Hannah called Lottie Schmidt and gave her her heartfelt condolences, and promised to be at the services for Gus. Lottie said they would take place the next afternoon.

After that Hannah insisted that Jessie take her own cab home.
“You’ve had a long enough day with the Connellys,” she insisted. Then she hailed herself a cab.

Finally back home in her apartment, Hannah went straight to bed. She left her cell phone on the night table with the volume set to the highest pitch. She knew she needed to sleep but was afraid she might miss a call. Instead for over an hour she lay there, her eyes closed, her mind demanding to know what Kate might have said that made her father react like that. What was the expression that she had seen on his face?

As she drifted off to sleep, the answer came. Fear. Dad had been terrified by what Kate whispered to him.

Was it that she admitted she had set the fire?

17

K
ate was trapped in a well. There was no water in it but somehow she knew that it was a well. Her whole body was weighted down and her head was detached from her neck. Sometimes she heard the rustle of voices, some of them familiar.

Mommy. Kate tried to pay attention. Mommy kissing her good-bye and promising that someday she could go out at night on the boat, too.

Daddy kissing her good-bye. “I love you, Baby Bunting.”

Did that happen? Or was it a dream?

Hannah’s voice, “Hang in there, Kate. I need you.”

The nightmare. The flowered nightgown and running down the hall. It was very important to remember what happened. She was almost there. For a moment she had remembered. She was sure of it.

But then everything was dark again.

18

T
he fire marshals did not catch up with Doug Connelly until later Thursday evening.

They called the hospital and learned that he had made a second visit there in the late afternoon. He had been accompanied by a young woman and had gone in with his daughter Hannah for a brief visit with Kate in the ICU.

The marshals had grabbed something to eat, then had gone to Doug’s apartment building and waited, but he did not show up until after nine o’clock, with the young woman, Sandra, on his arm.

He invited them upstairs and promptly prepared a drink for himself and Sandra. “I know when you’re on duty you can’t have any,” he said.

“That’s right.” Neither Ramsey nor Klein was unhappy to see the already slightly drunk man pour himself a strong scotch.
In vino veritas,
Ramsey thought. In scotch even more truth may come out.

As they sat down Sandra explained, “Poor Doug completely fell apart after seeing Kate. So I insisted we go out to dinner. He hardly had a bite all day.”

Unmoved, Ramsey and Klein began to question Douglas Connelly. His voice was slurred and hesitant as he groped to explain his differences with Kate. “The business hasn’t been doing that well, but I tried to tell Kate that’s not a big problem. Think how much
all that land was worth in Long Island City thirty years ago. Peanuts compared to now. Long Island City is changing. People are moving there. They finally figured out how close it is to Manhattan. The arty types are flocking there, just like they settled in Williamsburg. Not long ago you could live in Williamsburg for next to nothing. Now it’s hot. Long Island City is the same way. Sure we have an offer on the land. Take it now and we’d be kicking ourselves in five years for all the money we lost.”

“But it seems from what others have said that your daughter Kate felt the company was losing money hand over fist,” Ramsey said.

“Kate’s stubborn. Even when she was a kid she wanted everything now . . . this minute . . . not tomorrow.”

“Do you think that in her frustration she might have teamed up with Gus Schmidt to destroy the complex?”

“Kate would never do that!”

To both marshals, Doug’s blustery tone was masking fear. They were sure they knew what he was thinking. If a member of the family set the fire and would benefit from the insurance, it was certain that the insurance company would refuse to pay the claim.

They switched to questions about Kate’s relationship with Gus. “We understand that she was very sympathetic to him when he was forced to retire.”

“Talk to the plant manager, Jack Worth. Gus’s work was getting downright sloppy. Everybody else his age had retired. He just didn’t want to give up. With all his other benefits, we even threw in a full year’s salary. He still wasn’t satisfied. He was a bitter old man.”

“Wasn’t it at Kate’s insistence that he got that year’s salary?” Ramsey shot the question at Doug.

“She may have suggested it.”

“Mr. Connelly, some other of your employees have come forth to volunteer what they know. Gus Schmidt was quoted as saying that there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Kate . . .”

“Certainly Gus was very fond of Kate,” Doug replied.

At the end of the questioning, as they left, the marshals, even though they were keeping an open mind, had a gut feeling that Kate had found a willing partner to help her do what she had told several people she wanted to do.

Blow up the entire Connelly complex.

19

A
fter leaving Douglas Connelly, Frank Ramsey and Nathan Klein decided to call it a day. They drove back to Fort Totten, called their supervisor, completed their reports, then each left for home. They had been on the job almost twenty-four hours.

Ramsey lived in Manhasset, a pretty suburban town on Long Island. He sighed with relief when he turned into his own driveway and pressed the garage opener. He was used to bad weather but the hours outside on a cold, damp, windy day had penetrated even his warm outerwear. He wanted to get into a hot shower, put on some comfortable clothes, and have a drink. And much as he missed his son Ted, who was a freshman at Purdue University, he wouldn’t mind just being with Celia tonight, he thought.

No matter how long you’re in the business, it still affected you when a dead man was taken to the medical examiner’s office and a young woman rushed away in an ambulance, he thought.

Frank Ramsey was a solidly built six-footer. At forty-eight, although he weighed nearly two hundred pounds, his body was strong and muscular thanks to meticulous workouts. Judging from the men in his family, he knew that genetically he would probably be white-haired by the age of fifty, but to his surprise and pleasure, his hair was pretty much still salt-and-pepper. His manner was naturally easygoing but that changed swiftly if he spotted any incompetence
among his underlings. In the department he was universally well liked.

His wife, Celia, had heard the car pulling into the garage and had the door to the kitchen open for him. She had had a double mastectomy five years earlier and even though her doctor had now given her a clean bill of health, Frank was always fearful that one day when he opened the door, she might not be there. Now the sight of her, with her light brown hair caught in a ponytail, a sweater and slacks enhancing her slender body, a welcoming smile on her face, made a lump form in his throat.

If anything ever happened to her . . . He pushed away the thought as he kissed her.

“You’ve had some day,” she observed.

“You could call it that,” Frank confirmed as he inhaled the welcoming scent of pot roast coming from the Crock-Pot. It was the meal Celia often prepared when there was a major fire and she knew that there was no way of telling when her husband would get home. “Give me ten minutes,” he said. “And I’ll have a drink before I eat.”

“Sure.”

Fifteen minutes later he was sitting side by side with her on the couch facing the fireplace in the family room. He took a sip of the vodka martini he was holding and fished out the olive. The television was set to a news station. “They’ve been showing the fire all day,” Celia said, “and they’ve dug up the coverage of the boating accident that killed Kate Connelly’s mother and uncle years ago. Have you heard any more about how she’s doing?”