The Pride Trilogy: Kyle Callahan 1-3 (25 page)

Chapter 15

Margaret’s Passion

D
anny found himself
in a quandary. For the decade he had worked for Margaret Bowman the two of them shared a trust few people have with another. Best friends. Couples. Occasionally a boss and her assistant. A mother and son. That had always been a sensitive matter for them both, since Danny’s mother, Eleanor, was alive and well in Astoria, Queens. She was retired these past fifteen years, living comfortably in a row house on 28
^th
Street with her husband, Big Bob Durban, also retired. Danny and Kyle had Sunday dinner with them almost every week. Eleanor,
Ellie
, was a strong willed woman, a good mother, but possessed of a certain jealousy when it came to her son. She didn’t like having to share him with anyone, including Kyle, and Danny had been careful all this time not to speak too much of Margaret in front of her.

He’d kept his relationship with his two mothers distinct. There were things he told Ellie, and things he told Margaret, and each of them told him everything. So it was strange for Danny to be fidgeting at work Tuesday morning wondering what Margaret was withholding from him, and how to go about asking her. He had never had to pry information from her before, and as far as he knew she had never kept a secret from him.

Something had been going on for the past several weeks. Margaret’s new lawyer Claude Petrie, while having been referred by the old gentleman he replaced, struck Danny as an odd duck. Maybe it was the way he avoided looking directly at you, or the perspiration that seemed always present on his upper lip.
Shifty
came to mind. And now he was bringing in two strangers to speak with Margaret. He had been mulling it over for days, not wanting to question her judgment, yet worried something might be wrong. She might be ill, or preparing in some other way to leave. He wanted her to know he and Kyle were there for her. If she needed care, there was always the spare room, though he doubted someone as proud as Margaret Bowman would submit to being looked after. He had to know what was going on.

Danny slowly climbed the staircase Margaret and Gerard had built behind the kitchen. There were only twelve apartments in the entire building, six on each of the two upper stories, including the Bowmans’, with the restaurant taking up the entire first floor. The restaurant had been their one true love, aside from each other, and they had wanted to be able to come and go easily, at any time of the day or night, without having to go outside. The staircase was no secret, except to the city, from whom they had never sought or received the proper coding to build a staircase. At this point nobody cared.

Normally Danny would call up and tell Margaret he was visiting, but he wanted an element of surprise. He knew she would be there – she was always there, and when she went out, she used the staircase and left through the restaurant when it was open. He told Trebor he’d be back and to please seat any guests who came in. Patricia, one of three day servers, was already stocking. Lunch was still an hour away, there was no reason to think he’d be needed for the next twenty minutes, so he climbed the stairs and gently knocked.

He was startled when the door opened before his knuckles hit the door a third time.

“Come in,” Margaret said, opening the door. She was wearing a powder blue dress with a white sweater, looking much as she would were she heading to dinner with someone. She was always dressed as if company might be coming – except for the house slippers.

“No call, Danny?” she said, referring to his habit of letting her know he was coming.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said. He followed her wave and sat at the kitchen table. A kettle, anachronistic in this age of coffee machines and iPhones, was just on the verge of whistling above a stove flame.

“Tea?” she said, shuffling in her slippers to the stove.

“Yes, please.”

Margaret set about pouring boiling water into two cups and dropping in tea bags. Neither of them said anything until she’d brought the cups to the table and taken a seat herself.

Danny looked around the kitchen. He’d seen it a thousand times, and it always reminded him of his grandmother’s kitchen. There was a permanently outdated feel to it. Not old, but out of time, as if from another era.

“Chloe tells me Claude was here again yesterday, with two men,” Danny said finally. Unlike Claude, he looked directly at Margaret. She was no-nonsense, and would not expect anything but directness.

“Investors,” she said. Just like that. “Money men. I quite liked them.”

Danny didn’t know what to make of it. Was this simply about her investments? Were they financial advisors? Why the secrecy?

“Do they handle your … estate?” he said, uncomfortable with talking about things that might bring up her death, her will, or the fact she was now in her eighties.

“No, nothing like that.” Now Margaret was the one who looked away. She was hesitant, embarrassed. Finally she turned back to him and said as plainly as possible, “I’m in trouble, Danny. I’m broke.”

He was stunned. Margaret’s Passion was a very successful restaurant in its fourth decade, in a city where restaurants came and went like tourists. He knew the numbers, he did the budget and the ordering. While his position was day manager, he really was the overall manager. He saw the receipts. The idea that Margaret was broke was like finding out someone who appeared perfectly healthy had a month to live.

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t,” she said. “You remember all the news last year about Rebecca Effron?”

“The Ponzi scheme lady? ‘Bride of Madoff’ or whatever they called her?”

“Yes, always clever, these news people. Well, she was very successful at making people believe she was successful. I was one of those people, Danny.”

He knew where she was going with this and his heart sank.

“Just over a million dollars,” she said. There was no other way to put it. She had given a thief her life savings and now it was gone.

“I see.”

“I don’t think you do, Danny. It was everything I had.”

“But the restaurant …”

“It does well, yes. The tenants are reliable for the most part. But I’m eighty years old! The margins.”

He knew she meant the profit margins, on the restaurant and the tenants. There was very little for either. The tenants essentially paid for the taxes and upkeep, with some left over, and the restaurant provided Margaret’s regular income. What she was telling Danny also let him know that it had taken Margaret and Gerard nearly fifty years to save up that money she had lost in a bad bet, probably the only bad bet she had ever made.

“I’m not a greedy woman,” Margaret said, her voice now thick with sadness. “Not even much of a needy woman. But I’m old. I may want to go somewhere warm soon, while I still can, and that takes money. And even if I stay here … well, I may not be able to keep living on my own, you understand.”

Danny felt his throat tighten. The last thing he wanted to do was cry, and he held it in check as best he could.

“The point is I’m going to need help sooner rather than later. The management company does well enough with the building,” she said, referring to the small company that collected rent and took care of the day-to-day maintenance of her property, “but I’m hardly a fit landlord anymore.”

“You don’t need to be,” he said, quickly trying to think of alternatives.

“Messieurs Tierney and Gossett, the two investors, are interested in buying the building.”

“What about the restaurant?”

“Well, Danny, the restaurant is
in
the building. But they’ve made me a most generous offer: the restaurant stays, and I stay, until I pass.”

There it was again, Old Man Time coming for them all.

“I don’t like it.”

“I didn’t expect you would, which is why I was waiting to tell you.”

“How can you trust them?” Danny asked.

“It’s called a contract.”

Danny stood up. He began pacing the small kitchen, from the table to the stove and back. “I don’t know, Margaret, it just feels wrong.”

“You’re letting your emotions make that determination for you. You’ll be safe as long as I am.”

“I don’t care about being safe! I don’t want to be safe. It’s not about that. It’s about your legacy. Gerard’s legacy.”

She sighed and put her teacup down. “Dead people do not care about their legacies.”

“What if I had a counter offer?” he said, stopping in front of her.

“What does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like, Margaret. What if I came up with a counter offer? I can’t promise a million dollars, but maybe half that, for the restaurant. You keep the building.”

She thought a moment. “I pay you well, Danny, but I don’t pay you that well.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re not the only one who can find investors.”

“I didn’t find them. They found me.”

“What?” Danny said, struck by that bit of information.

“They came to me, through Claude.”

I see, Danny thought. Young, new lawyer Claude knows Margaret has lost all her savings, and just happens to know two characters looking for a building to buy. Danny began to notice an unpleasant smell.

“Just don’t make any decisions,” he said. “Not until I do some research. You’ve trusted me for ten years, don’t stop now.”

Margaret sat staring into her tea a long moment. Finally, she said, “Okay, Danny Durban. I have trusted you since the day I met you. I don’t even remember where you were working …”

“The Lamb Rack, East 63
^rd
Street.”

“Yes, dreadful place, it didn’t last long.”

“Which you saw coming, and you offered me a job.”

“Oh, yes, you’re right. But I really offered it to you because I was impressed. You know that, don’t make me flatter you again.”

He blushed. “I won’t. But I will ask you to please give me till the end of this week.”

“That’s when Kyle’s show is. Aren’t you busy enough with all that?”

“I’m never too busy for Margaret Bowman,” he said. “Now, speaking of busy, it’s lunch hour and I imagine people are arriving right about now.”

Danny leaned down and kissed her cheek. He had several things to think about, important things. Who were these men? Who were these men
really
? And how was he going to save his beloved Margaret from her own mistakes without making too many of his own?

“I’ll let myself out,” Danny said, and he headed back downstairs, quietly pulling the door closed behind him.

Chapter 16

Lunch at the Stopwatch Diner

Y
ou can’t miss
the Stopwatch Diner, with its colorful neon “Stopwatch Diner” sign, complete with a stopwatch in the middle, and its throw-back design that lets you know this is a diner, not some high-end, overpriced Midtown Manhattan eatery. It’s also directly across from the Seventh Avenue entrance to Penn Station and just a half block from Macy’s, which is where Linda Sikorsky was shopping and why she was late.

Kyle had been punctual, arriving at the diner’s entrance at precisely 12:30. He’d walked from the Japan TV3 studio, a short stroll on a sunny April day. Spring was in bloom and it always rekindled Kyle’s love for New York City. Once the summer heat kicked in with its humidity and its smells he would again think there were a number of places he’d rather live, but spring and fall reminded him what he loved about this place.

The restaurant was packed, as it always was for lunch. Kyle was led through the crowd to a booth and handed a menu by a hostess who seemed distracted, eyeing the customers, looking for the next empty table. No sooner had he sat down and started looking at the overstuffed menu than Linda arrived. He saw her. The two of them waved at each other and were soon hugging before Linda slid into the booth. They hadn’t been together since the Pride Lodge murders. They spoke on the phone every few weeks, and emailed every other day, but no amount of virtual communication can take the place of being physically near those with whom we share our lives.

“I like the hair,” he said, noticing immediately she’d let it grow out. He also noticed a touch of makeup, something Detective Linda had done without until recently. He made no comment on it, unsure if she would take his notice as compliment or criticism.

“It was Kirsten’s idea,” she said. “The makeup, too. Or maybe her influence. ‘Idea’ isn’t accurate.”

“I wish she would have come.”

“Me, too,” she said, holding out her hand to show Kyle the small but sparkling diamond on her finger. “It’s a friendship ring, not quite at the engaged stage. It’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”

Kyle smiled. He and Danny had worn rings since their first anniversary. Back then they couldn’t marry in their home state of New York, but it had been important to both men to wear rings as a way of telling themselves, and the world, they were a couple. Kyle did not consider them engagement rings at this point, they were well past that, but he briefly wondered if they would get new rings when the time for a ceremony came, or just slip the ones they already had onto each other’s fingers.

“I have things to talk to you about, too,” Kyle said.

The waiter came over, in the harried way waiters in busy diners do, and held pen to pad for their order. Kyle told him they needed a few more minutes, and off he went for a more decisive table.

“Please don’t tell me it’s about murder.”

“Yes, and no.”

“I’m on vacation.”

“Death doesn’t take a holiday.”

“No, but Linda Sikorsky does. And it is Linda Sikorsky, by the way. ‘Detective Linda’ will be no more in a few months.”

“That’s impossible,” he said. “You’ll always be Detective Linda, even if you’re working in a car wash. Now what’s this about?”

“I’m tired of police work,” she said. “I want to do something different. Something I’m doing because I care about it, not because my father was gunned down by some thug when I was eight years old.”

Kyle listened patiently. He wondered how much of this was Linda’s decision, and how much had been suggested, subtly or overtly, by the new woman in her life.

“I became a cop because my dad was a cop. You know that, we’ve had that conversation before.”

Indeed they had, that conversation and many more. Kyle was the first person Linda told about the real estate agent she’d met at a New Year’s Eve party, a party just four months ago. But what could he say about moving too quickly? Kyle had essentially moved in with Danny sooner than that.

“You’re not listening to me,” Linda said, seeing the look on his face.

“Yes, yes, I am. You want to do something else, fair enough.”

“I’ve wanted to own my own business for years,” Linda went on. “A vintage store, like this one in Doylestown I love. They have everything there, just everything, and it’s a very successful place. Jenny, the woman who owns it, has already agreed to be my mentor. And I have a name:
For Pete’s Sake
.”

Kyle knew that Pete was her father’s name. He started to comment that this wasn’t quite the clean break she thought it was, then stopped himself.

“Wow,” he said. “Friendship ring. Retiring from the police force – you are retiring, right? You’re not walking away from a pension.”

“Retiring. I’ve got my twenty years in come September.”

“Good. Good.”

“So okay,” Linda said. “I’ll give you this. Since I’ll always be Detective Linda to you, what’s your question.”

“My question?”

“Murder. I know that’s what you want to talk about.”

“Right, well … it’s two murders for sure, and one death, the cause of which remains undetermined, except that it was a subway train. How she got in front of it is a mystery.”

“Ah, Kyle Callahan loves his mysteries,” Linda said.

“I don’t love them. I just feel compelled to solve them. I would be perfectly happy if no mystery ever presented itself.”

“No, you wouldn’t. If dead bodies didn’t pop up, you’d go looking for them, and you know it.”

The waiter came back, displaying some impatience this time, so they did him the favor of ordering lunch. He paid just enough attention to write the order down and scurried away.

With the waiter gone, Kyle said, “I was hoping I could convince you to do some sight seeing in Brooklyn this afternoon. Imogene’s covering a town hall on the east side, then she’s heading to Gracie Mansion for the mayor’s press conference. She won’t miss me.”

“I wonder,” Linda said. “Might Brooklyn be where one of these murders occurred?”

“I just want to ask around while the memories are still fresh. The news said no witnesses, but that’s impossible in a city like this. People just don’t always know what they saw. There’s a coffee shop and an all-night laundry near where Devin – that’s one of the victims – was killed. I scoped it all out online, easy to find, won’t take long, and I could show you were I used to live in Carroll Gardens.”

“I don’t know, Kyle. You have a show opening on Friday, isn’t that what you should be focused on?”

“I think stopping a killer is more important. If all these people are connected, there may be more to come. I can’t take that chance.”

She thought about it a moment. “Fine, it’s been thirty-five years since I was in this city and I’ve never seen Brooklyn.”

“Excellent,” Kyle said. “Next stop Brooklyn.”

With their afternoon plans set, the two of them caught up over lunch. Linda became more animated as she told Kyle about the woman in her life, her mother’s reaction, what was different for her now that she had come out to her colleagues on the New Hope police force. It was as if they were continuing their last phone call, but this time with the added pleasure of seeing each other across a small diner table. For the next twenty minutes there was no talk of killers or motives, whys or whens or hows, just two friends cementing a relationship they both knew would last a lifetime.