Window of Guilt (28 page)

Laurie put the teakettle on. “Tell me why you’re here or you can take your tea in a doggie bag.”

“That sounds horrid, what with the tea soaking through the bag,” joked the woman.

Laurie frowned as she sponged down the flannel-backed Thanksgiving tablecloth.

Griselda cleared her throat. “I was Gerald MacFerron’s private secretary for twenty-five years.”

Ryan had introduced Laurie to Mr. MacFerron at the company’s holiday party several years back. He’d struck her as an old-fashioned courteous gentleman, chatting with her while everybody else was at the watering hole.

“I left Great Harvest last month,” said the secretary. “Too much spying and intrigue.”

“Spying?” Brad Jr. had told her the company had been spying on her and her family.

“Great Harvest contracted with private investigators to track the daily routines of its health insurance claimants so they wouldn’t have to pay out,” Griselda explained. “One claimant we kept tabs on was a young veterinarian grad student who required a heart transplant. A lifetime of hospital stays combined with a botched pacemaker surgery deleted his entitlement. When your husband protested the decision, Brad hired an unscrupulous individual he’d met at a bar to visit your summer home and convince him to keep mum about his suspicions.”

Laurie lifted the whistling teakettle from the burner. Then she poured boiling water into two mismatched tea mugs. “My husband already shared the intricacies of the situation with me.”

“If you’ll bear with me for just a few more minutes, Mrs. Atkins, I think you’ll find what I have to say quite illuminating,” Griselda said.

Laurie nodded while she surveyed a shelf of herbal tea boxes, finally selecting Bitter Lemon. A most fitting choice for the occasion.

The older woman leaned her face over the cup. “Smells lovely. May I trouble you for cream and sugar?”

Laurie fetched the supplements, along with a teaspoon, and placed them before the woman. Then she took a seat facing Griselda.

“Over the last twenty-five years, I edited and mailed Mr. MacFerron’s personal and professional correspondence. Ten years into my employ, Mr. MacFerron asked me to author a letter to a Miss Elizabeth Grabowski.”

Grabowski. Where had she heard that name before?

“He wished to assure his family’s housekeeper that, should she need professional references, she could rely on him. These one-way correspondences continued quarterly for another decade. Each correspondence included a personal check.”

The housekeeper she’d met on Helga Beckermann’s doorstep! “You say one-way. She never responded to his letters?”

Griselda shook her head.

“What about the checks?”

“They were never cashed.”

“You think they were lovers?” Laurie asked.

“What I do know is that Mr. MacFerron remains a bachelor. He’s kept a framed picture of a young woman on his desk all these years. She had the fresh clean look of a farm girl, with her wavy blond hair and ruddy cheeks.”

“Did Elizabeth and Gerald have a child?”

“My employer recently received a correspondence from his estranged older sister indicating her desire to clear her conscience on that particular matter,” mused Griselda. “In that letter, Helga alludes to the
single family dwelling they shared during Gerald’s early years at Great Harvest. Elizabeth had been hired to cook and clean. Unbeknown to his sister, Gerald and the housekeeper fell in love. Six months into their relationship, Gerald left Chicago for an extended business trip. Helga found their young housekeeper vomiting into the toilet, her belly swollen. Elizabeth pleaded a case of the flu. Her employer believed otherwise.

“A doctor confirmed Helga’s suspicions. She envisioned her brother’s career aspirations wilting in the wind. The next day, she packed Elizabeth home to Poland, along with one hundred dollars in cash. Helga directed Elizabeth to give the baby up for adoption. The last line of her letter to Gerald read:
Somewhere in this world, You have a son.”

Laurie had not expected the secretary’s revelation. “But why are you telling me all this?”

“It is my understanding you are seeking answers regarding the identity of a ‘TG?’”

“There are people

who have an appetite

for grief;

pleasure is not strong enough,

and they crave pain.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

32

Temporarily incarcerated.
Ryan paced back and forth across his eight-foot cell, tasting the foreign vocabulary which coated his tongue like lead mouthwash. Words alien to his lexicon. Until now. The first person in his family to be placed behind bars. Thankfully his mother was not alive to share his shame.

Ryan’s father hadn’t visited him since “Black Friday.” The day Detective Maggie O’Connor confronted him with the insidious videotape. The same tape that had caused his distraught wife to exile him from home and family. Burying his head in his arms, he racked his brain over who had installed the hidden video recorder. When it came to technology, Laurie was no wizard. Her parents even less so. Helga Beckermann and their renter were the only other key holders to their summer home. All this conjecture was driving him nuts. Right now he needed to focus on repairing his relationship with his wife.

Ryan’s thoughts centered on the unspeakable abomination to which Laurie had been subjected. Would that bastard’s prick ever be erased from her mind? Would she ever be able to resume a normal sex life with him or would her carnal interest skitter into a mousetrap? Ryan wondered if Laurie had been preoccupied with those same thoughts.

Why hadn’t his wife notified the police of the videotape the night she packed his bags and said good riddance? His ego shouted the answer he longed to hear:
Laurie still loves you. She believes this temporary separation will rekindle the spark you once shared.

His superego whispered an alternate truth:
She’s not sure if you killed TG and she’s erring on your innocence. She doesn’t want Rory to lose his father.

Ryan closed his eyes to pray for his redemption.

*

Laurie sipped her herbal tea as she immersed herself in Griselda’s tale. Focusing on something other than her jailed husband, even an intrusive visitor, provided a welcome diversion.

“After the fifteenth year flashed by with nary a response from Elizabeth, my employer sought the assistance of a private investigator,” said the secretary.

“He does that a lot,” said Laurie grimly.

Griselda reached across the table and patted her hand. “Mr. MacFerron meant you no harm by trailing your family.”

No harm? Laurie enunciated each word as if her life depended on it. “What does your employer and his former lover have to do with us?”

“The private investigator traced Elizabeth Grabowski to a two-flat in Edison Park,” said Griselda. “Elizabeth and her husband lived on the top floor and let out the apartment on the first floor to a family of three. However, the only person to come and go from that first floor abode was a blond, blue-eyed teenager, birdlike in stature. He appeared to be a wary sort, looking to and fro each time he exited the apartment building.

“One day, a tight-lipped police officer confronted the young man and pushed him into the back seat of his squad car. Mr. and Mrs. Grabowski argued vehemently with the officer. The husband was restrained by another officer when he attempted to extract the boy from the vehicle. Mr. MacFerron’s private investigator deduced this young man was a close family member.”

“Did Gerald suspect this boy was his son?” asked Laurie, sipping her tea.

“Patience, madam,” Griselda said, smiling politely. “The downstairs apartment remained vacant for the next three years. Prospective renters were refused. Then one day, a blond haired young man with muscled yet lean arms rang the second floor apartment bell. Elizabeth buzzed him upstairs. She greeted her visitor with kisses and hurried him into the apartment.”

“The investigator reported all this?” asked Laurie. People’s lives were so transparent.

Griselda nodded. “Miniature video cameras in the hallway. Evidently, the boy had been adopted at birth by a loving Polish couple that already had three children of their own.

“A sickly sort, Terrence had been the victim of schoolyard bullying. He developed an affinity for violence. By the time he was fifteen, he’d been in juvenile detention for beating up his brothers after they’d told him he was adopted. Somehow, the young man learned of his birth mother’s whereabouts. He escaped from detention and arrived on the Grabowski’s doorstep. Elizabeth and her husband hid the boy for several weeks, culminating in the police confrontation.

“Terrence dabbled in assorted mischief while in juvenile detention. He remained at the center until his eighteenth birthday, at which time he was released. The young man then returned to the home of his birth mother.”

“What’s taking you so long in there, Mom?” Rory’s voice echoed into the kitchen. “You said we could go to Blockbuster!”

“Give me five minutes,” Laurie yelled into the family room. Then she turned back to the older woman. “Was Helga in contact with Elizabeth?”

“The PI’s report indicated no telephone records or personal encounters between Helga and the housekeeper until last June.”

“Gerald must be rolling in dough to track his ex-lover for twenty years,” mused Laurie. “Especially when all his letters to her came back unopened.”

Griselda’s eyes flashed for a moment. “Mr. MacFerron is a persistent man.”

“Did Gerald keep in touch with his sister after he found out she’d sent Elizabeth away?”

Griselda shook her head. “Upon learning of his sister’s duplicity, he ceased all contact with her. Helga recently desired to reunite Elizabeth with her younger brother, thereby easing her own way back into his life. Yet she wanted to ascertain whether her former housekeeper was worthy of her efforts. Thus, she arranged a temporary job placement at the group home.”

“Apparently Gerald wasn’t the only one with inside information on Elizabeth and her son,” Laurie said wryly.

“Helga moved up to Oconomowoc soon after the dissolution of her relationship with her brother,” Griselda said patiently. “She married a farmer who passed away in 1975, leaving her with a formidable first and second mortgage on their home. It is doubtful Helga would have had the financial ability to track Elizabeth.”

“She assumed Elizabeth returned from Poland and was working as a housekeeper in Chicago,” Laurie theorized. “Helga couldn’t command the woman to appear before her, so she set out to create a believable scenario. When the temporary housekeeping position at Arnold’s group home became available, Helga made her move. Establishing a relationship with Helga’s grandson would be unlikely. Elizabeth was there to clean, not fraternize with the residents.”

The older woman applauded. “Bravo, my dear. You are a woman of great insight, which leads me to now reveal why I phoned one week ago to warn that your life was in danger.”

Laurie pounded the kitchen table so hard her visitor’s teacup jumped. “You called to warn me to be on the lookout for Brad Jr.”

Rory skipped into the kitchen, waving a plate and cup in the air. “Here you go,” he said, plopping the dirty dish in the sink.

Silence permeated the cracks in the wall. Finally Griselda spoke. “Bradley was not the focus of last week’s telephone call.”

*

Gerald MacFerron stood over the hospital bed of his business partner’s son. Try as he might to conjure up empathy for the corpselike figure attached to a mass of tubes, disgust was the only emotion he could invoke.

“Gerald MacFerron?” A deep-throated woman’s voice called his name from the door.

“Yes?”

Detective Maggie O’Connor flashed her badge. “Would you mind following me, sir? Just need to ask you a few questions.”

“I’m here to pay a hospital visit.”

The detective smiled brightly. “This won’t take long, sir.”

Gerald followed the detective into a small conference room. “What relationship do you have with Brad Hamilton Jr.?” asked Detective O’Connor.

“You must know that answer if you know my name,” Gerald said in a haughty tone.

“We know Hamilton is the son of Great Harvest Insurance Company’s CEO, as well as the vice president of the company. We also know you and Brad Hamilton Sr. are business partners.”

Gerald smiled condescendingly. In reality, he was the brains behind the insurance company, while Brad Hamilton Senior was just a handsome face.

“Brad Jr. is accused of attacking your former employee’s wife.”

“Glad somebody finally brought him down,” Gerald muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“Bradley’s a womanizer. This time he took it too far.”

“What was your relationship with Brad Jr.?”

“Bradley routinely sought my counsel. I attempted to steer Bradley in the right direction. Little good that did.”

“You advised Brad Jr. about the insurance business?”

Gerald nodded.

“Did you cover for him, too?”