Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series) (15 page)

“Back to the murder, guys?” I pleaded.

“Valium by itself won’t kill you,” Barbara said, switching gears effortlessly. She’s had lots of practice.

“But it’s cross-tolerant with alcohol,” Jimmy said.

“Addiction docs know this,” said Barbara, “but did Dr. Weill? He might have hoped it would trigger cravings and then relapse. If God got drunk, he wouldn’t be organized enough to follow through on any plan he might have had to change his will or whatever it was he threatened to do. My guess is that he would have cut the Weills off from any money he controlled, or at least tied it up so that Emmie but not Sam could get at it. But as a way of killing someone, it’s a nonstarter.”

“And God didn’t drink that day,” I said.

“That leaves codeine,” Barbara said. “Marlene mentioned codeine, too. I’m not sure how much codeine is too much and or what’s the worst it can do. I’ll have to look it up. Or ask the psychiatrist at work. In any case, too much codeine for a chemical dependent might be a lot more than too much for someone nonhabituated, like me. How many pills can you dissolve in coffee with the recipient sitting right there? Unless God went out for a minute, to use the rest room, maybe, which Marlene would naturally not have mentioned to me.”

“We’ve still got a lot of unanswered questions,” Jimmy said.

“But more information than we started out with.” Barbara grinned. “And I managed to do it without having to confront the doctor and get myself yelled at. And I saved my nose.”

At the church door, we separated. Jimmy and I made our way to the big room where maybe a hundred alcoholics were celebrating one more day of sobriety. At the Al-Anon meeting, Barbara’s luck held. Not only did she find Emmie there, but Emmie actually raised her hand and shared. This is a big deal for a newcomer. I still hadn’t done it myself, in spite of much prodding—they called it encouragement—from Jimmy and my sponsor. Barbara told us later what Emmie had said. Barbara thought murder trumped anonymity among the three of us. But Jimmy going along? Amazing. I guess he wanted me to stay sober so bad he’d sacrifice even his beloved twelve-step principles. Humbling.

According to Barbara, Emmie said it was hard not to blame herself—not for her brother’s death, but for the aftermath. She had let the family tidy him away because she couldn’t bear the scene she knew her husband would make if she protested. The doc had been the most vehement in wanting to keep things quiet. It was exactly the information we’d wanted, and she actually told the whole meeting this. Dr. Weill was evidently averse to any noise he didn’t make himself. She said enough to make it clear that it was he who’d pushed the hardest to refuse the autopsy and whisk God right to the crematorium.

Now he had convinced the rest of them to put off any kind of memorial service indefinitely. That didn’t make them guilty of anything but misplaced embarrassment. Like the rest of us, God must have been a lot more embarrassing when he was alive and drunk. But it sure sounded like Emmie’s husband was the bad guy who didn’t want any light at all cast on this unexpected death. Nobody gives advice at an Al-Anon meeting, as Barbara keeps telling us. But after the meeting, Emmie got a lot of sympathetic pats and murmurs and a few hugs from people who had learned the hard way that blaming yourself for everything doesn’t help and isn’t even good for you.

Jimmy and I made our way through the crowd of mingling AAs and Al-Anons and moved as casually as we could toward Barbara. We figured out who Emmie was because Barbara hovered within six inches of her and warned us away with her eyes. Emmie looked fragile and ladylike and haunted.

It was an East Side meeting. Barbara had already told us that if Emmie was at the meeting, she would try to walk her home. It was only a few blocks. So we trailed discreetly behind as Barbara waited for her outside the door and fell into step beside her. Once the crowd from the meeting dispersed, the streets were quiet. By stretching our ears a tad, we could hear their conversation.

“I hope you don’t mind my asking,” Barbara said. “I don’t want to pry.”

“The reluctant crowbar,” Jimmy muttered to me. We went into what would have been a fit of the snickers if we hadn’t had to keep quiet.

Barbara ignored us.

“How come your husband minded so much about your brother?” she asked. “Were they close? Had they been seeing a lot of one another right before or anything?”

Emmie was new enough to the program that she didn’t realize that Barbara was not what she called “recovery side up” when she got gratuitously nosy.

“They never liked each other,” she sighed. “I wanted so much for them to be friends. But each of them thought the other was arrogant and prone to take advantage of me.”

They had that right. We could see Barbara nod encouragingly and hear her zip the lip.

“Once Guffy’s troubles got really bad, Sam didn’t want anything to do with him. He didn’t want him near the children, either. He and Guffy had one altercation that frightened me. I know it was about Brandy, my son, but neither of them would tell me what was said. Sam insisted that he didn’t want any of us communicating with Guffy in any way. I asked my son if he knew what they could have been talking about, but he said he had no idea.” She sighed again. “Actually, he shrugged and went into his room. He didn’t slam the door, that’s not his way, but he closed it in such an excluding way. My little boy. He used to tell me everything.”

Her voice faded off into a depressed murmur, and we missed the next couple of exchanges. Then she spoke more loudly.

“So of course I didn’t tell him.”

“Tell who, Brandy?”

“No. Sam.”

“Tell him what?” Barbara asked. She pitched her voice to make sure we could hear. Emmie automatically increased the volume too.

“That Guffy came by that afternoon,” Emmie said. “The day before he died.”

“So the two of you had a chance to talk?”

“And had a cup of tea,” Emmie said. “I had made fresh scones, but he said he wasn’t hungry.”

That struck me as sad. God’s failure to seize the moment and enjoy a final scone stood for all the failures of omission and commission of a lifetime.

“And he was sober,” Barbara said.

There are worse epitaphs than “He died sober.”

“Yes.”

Good. We’d needed that confirmed.

Emmie turned to Barbara impulsively. For a moment, it looked as if she might hug her. “I’m so grateful to you for introducing me to the program. I didn’t understand before how important that was.”

She paused and drew a sobbing breath.

“Crying,” Jimmy mouthed at me.

“At least he wasn’t drinking when he died. The children got to see him sober one more time. They were running in and out. Duncan, the little one, doesn’t remember Uncle Guffy as he used to be, before all this started.”

Ouch. I’m afraid I skipped the stage when anyone could overlook my drinking.

“Even Brandy said good afternoon,” Emmie said. “He was rather sullen, but at least he was civil. I didn’t know how much it would matter. I wasn’t sure, after Guffy left, whether I ought to warn the children not to say anything to Sam. In the end, I left well enough alone. Now I wish they could somehow have had one last time together. Maybe they would have made peace.”

The tears got away from her and started rolling down. We saw Emmie reach into her buttery kidskin Coach bag for a delicate little white handkerchief. No red bandanna up her sleeve for Emmie.

Barbara made soothing program noises.

“You did the best you could at the time. We’re powerless over other people. This too shall pass.”

It may be hard to believe anybody finds this trite stuff comforting. But people do.
We
do.

“The most important thing is that you loved him. And I bet it meant a lot to him that you didn’t turn your back on him. You accepted him. He knew you loved him.”

As we all walked on in silence, I thought about what we had heard. It seemed God had visited both his sister and his brother-in-law the day he died. First, tea and scones with Emmie and the kids. Then, on his way out, coffee in the doctor’s office. And neither husband nor wife had told each other that the family black sheep had stopped by.

“I’ll make amends to Emmie as soon as this is over,” Barbara said. “I’ll never interfere in anybody else’s business again.”

Yeah, right.

“I’ll never get anywhere near another murder.”

Now, that I could go along with. I hadn’t exactly planned on this one.

“I’ll be really nice to Emmie, with no ulterior motive whatsoever, as long as she goes to Al-Anon. And if she quits the program, getting out of her life will be part of my amends.”

“I know you will, pumpkin,” said Jimmy.

Barbara can be a real fruitcake, but she tries very hard to work the steps.

“We still know next to nothing,” Barbara said, “about God’s other sisters.”

Lucinda, the one who was still using her birth name, lived in New York. I found out the low tech way, by looking her up in the phone book. She lived way west in Greenwich Village.

“How do I find out what Lucinda’s into?” Barbara demanded.

Jimmy, hunched over the computer as usual, didn’t even lift his fingers from the keyboard.

“Google her.”

“Duh,” Barbara said. “Shove over, let me do it.”

“Just a second,” Jimmy said, his fingers flying. “Let me finish this and save. Okay, here.”

“Here’s a bio,” Barbara said about two minutes later. “Lucinda Kettleworth. Wow. Lucinda’s been a busy girl. She’s a tenured full professor of psychology at NYU. Can’t lose her job, gets paid as well as anyone in academia, and on top of that she can walk to work. She’s published scads of stuff. There’s an instrument named for her, some kind of depression index.”

“Instrument?” I asked. “Like an astrolabe or a speculum? For measuring depression?”

“No, silly, like a test.”

I knew that. I was just jerking her chain.

“She’s written a lot about depression in women,” said Barbara, scrolling. “She has impressive feminist credentials.”

“Depression and addictions can go hand in hand,” Jimmy commented.

“Go together like a horse and carriage,” I said.

“You’d think she would have had compassion for her alcoholic brother,” said Barbara, “if she really knows about addictions.”

“It usually doesn’t work that way, my sweet,” said Jimmy. While Barbara used the computer, he wandered restlessly through the room, looking indecisive and oddly naked.

“I know, I know,” Barbara said. “I have a theory—don’t groan, either of you!—that helping professionals choose their field based on whatever way they happen to be screwed up, so that they can try to fathom the problem without having to admit they need help. That accounts for the prevailing belief, unfortunately based on reality, that many therapists are more or less nuts.”

“So what’s Lucinda’s loony state? Depression?”

“We might know if we met her. She studies, she doesn’t treat. Distances herself, but I don’t know if that’s so she doesn’t have to wallow in psychopathology or to avoid personal connections. She could be schizoid or a highly empowered woman with a healthy ego who doesn’t give a hoot about her dysfunctional family. Since she’s a feminist, I’d like to think she’s cool. Like me.” Barbara grinned. “But it doesn’t necessarily follow.”

“It could mean that she was mad at men,” Jimmy pointed out. “That might color her feelings about her brother and his addiction.”

“I want to meet her,” Barbara said, “and not through Emmie. I don’t want to blow my cover.”

“Right,” said Jimmy. “You don’t want the Kettleworths connecting the dots.”

Barbara had her elbows on the keyboard and was enjoying the conversation. When Jimmy noticed, he shoved her out of his chair and took over. He could search about a hundred times as fast as either of us.

Like her sisters, Lucinda did a lot with fashionable charities. I don’t quite get these thousand bucks a plate dinners. Sure, they raise money for good causes. Why can’t the rich folks just give the money to the causes? Anyhow, small world. Lucinda was on the board of BURS, for Bowery Urban Rehabilitation Services, the parent agency of our detox. Barbara had been doing her internship when they chose the name. They had tried a competition, with staff and clients suggesting alternatives and everybody voting. But the contest was canceled when it became clear it was going to be a landslide in favor of Bowery Agency for Rehabilitation Services—BARS. I wondered whether Lucinda’s connection with BURS had anything to do with God ending up there. They weren’t supposed to be speaking, but the Bowery is in walking distance of the Village. Lucinda was also on the board of ARFSU.

“What’s ARFSU, Jimmy? Animal rights? It sounds like a dog sneezing.”

“Or doggie litigation,” I put in.

“Let’s google it and see,” Jimmy said. “Australian rugby, can’t be that—oh, here it is. Aid to Refugees of the Former Soviet Union. Wonder why she’s interested in that? BURS I can understand, with alcoholism in the family. And they’re both below Fourteenth Street.”

A Manhattan urban legend: People who live in the Village never go uptown.

“What else is she involved in?”

“Feminist stuff, psychology stuff. And art museums.”

“There’s a lot of Russian art floating around these days. That could be the connection.”

“I wish that thing could tell us if she saw her brother on January second,” Barbara complained.

“That thing?” said Jimmy, miffed, or at least mock-miffed. “It’s a computer, not an oracle.”

We had both heard that before.

Jimmy really could find anything in cyberspace. It took him no time at all to find a way for us to see Lucinda. She would give a public lecture in a few days. In the meantime, he managed to get some information about her finances. Gleaning information from an investment chat he dropped in on periodically, as well as a couple of academic bulletin boards, some online real estate contacts, and what he called “a little hacking that you don’t want to know about,” he ascertained that Lucinda Kettleworth was strapped for cash. Academic salaries were not so great, even for full professors, if their expenses were high enough. And having tenure meant that she had job security at the price of being stuck at NYU forever. Lucinda had been there for a long time, accumulating pension money all those years. This would have been great if the economy were soaring, but it wasn’t. Jimmy said her equities had slid badly, and one fund she was in was in trouble with the SEC.