Before I Say Good-Bye (30 page)

Nell sat in stunned silence, a look of confusion in her eyes.

“There’s also another possibility, Ms. MacDermott,” Brennan said. “Someone else—a fifth person—may have been on the boat, perhaps hiding in the engine room. We know from tests that’s where the bomb was set.”

“But even if that child was right about what he saw,” Nell said, “I still don’t understand why anyone would want Winifred’s pocketbook.”

“We’re not completely sure either,” George Brennan told her, “although we think we have the answer. The only object that we found in that purse that has any potential value is a safe-deposit key that carries the number 332.”

“Can’t you just take it to the bank that issued it and find out what is in the lock box?” Nell asked.

“Perhaps, but we don’t know which bank issued it. The key has no other designation, and the task of going to every bank in the area is going to take time. But that’s what we’re doing, and we plan to keep looking until we find it.”

“I have a safe-deposit box,” Nell said. “If I lost the key, couldn’t I just call the bank and ask them to make me another one?”

“You
could,”
Sclafani said promptly. “But you’d need proper identification. Your signature would need to be on file at the bank, of course. And it would cost you about one hundred and twenty-five bucks to have the locksmith come and open the box for you and make another key.”

“Then the key in Winifred’s pocketbook is only useful to the owner?”

“That’s right.”

She looked at them. “It was Winifred’s pocketbook. And Winifred was a champion swimmer, or at least she was once upon a time. The walls of her apartment are covered with gold medals and photos of her winning swimming meets. I realize that was a long time ago, but maybe she kept at it.”

“We’re already checking out that angle. We know she was a member of a health club and that she swam in the club’s pool every day, either before or after work.” He hesitated. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask you another question, and I’m sure you can understand why: Was your husband a good swimmer?”

Nell thought for a moment, stunned to realize that she didn’t know the answer. It was not something she had ever thought about, but it disturbed her not to be able to answer the question. That is one more thing I don’t know about Adam, she thought.

After a long pause, she spoke: “I nearly drowned when I was fifteen. Since then, I’ve never completely gotten over my fear of water. I went out on the boat with Adam only a few times, and I was miserable. I can handle a cruise ship, but not a small boat, where I’m conscious of the water being so close. All this is a long way of saying that I can’t really answer your question. I
know
Adam could swim, but as for how well, I’m just not sure.”

The two detectives nodded to each other and then stood up. “We’ll be going to see Ms. Ryan; I’m sure you realize that it is necessary to try to get to the source of this money. But if you talk to her, please assure her we’ll
do our best to keep her husband’s name out of this part of the investigation, at least as far as the press is concerned.”

“Can you just tell me this?” Nell stood and faced the men. “Do you have any hard evidence that my husband was involved in the bribery or the bid-rigging scandals?”

“No, we do not,” Brennan replied promptly. “We
do
know that Winifred Johnson was the conduit for the transfer of a lot of money, perhaps millions of dollars. Based on the evidence you’ve given us here, it now appears that she was the one who prepared the money for Jimmy Ryan’s payoff. The people who paid Winifred money have come forward, and they apparently had the impression it was all going to Walters and Arsdale themselves, but so far there’s no proof of that.”

“And am I right that so far there’s also no proof that Adam was receiving any payoff money?” Nell asked.

Sclafani paused, then answered. “Yes, you’re right. We don’t know what role, if any, your husband played in all of the stuff that was going on at Walters and Arsdale. Winifred could have been working on her own, and she may have concocted a scheme to feather her own nest. Or she may have been working with the mysterious Harry Reynolds.”

“What about Peter Lang?” Nell asked.

Sclafani shrugged. “Ms. MacDermott, this investigation remains wide open.”

In a way, what she had learned today was a comfort, Nell thought as she closed the door behind the detectives. In another way, though, it was unsettling. What Sclafani was saying basically was that no one had been cleared, including Adam.

Earlier in the day, Nell had noticed that her plants were in need of attention. Now she collected them from the foyer and living and dining rooms and brought them into the kitchen. With swift, expert movements she stripped away the dry leaves, turned up the soil and sprayed the leaves and buds.

She could almost see the plants begin to perk up. You were bone dry, she thought. A flash of memory came to her. Just before I met Adam, I was doing this job one day, and I realized I felt like one of these plants. Emotionally I was dry. Mac and Gert had just gotten through really rough cases of the flu. I’d realized then that if something happened to them, I would be absolutely alone.

I knew I needed to be loved the way those plants needed water just now.

And so I fell in love. But with what? she asked herself. Maybe I just fell in love with love . . . Wasn’t there a song with those words?

I’ve always felt condescending toward Winifred, Nell thought. I was nice to her, but I thought of her as a faithful little drudge. But I’m coming to believe that underneath that meek and submissive exterior there lurked an entirely different person. If she had been heart-hungry, and had met someone who made her feel loved, who knows to what lengths she might have gone in order to please him—and to keep him?

I gave up my political career to please Adam, she thought. That was my sacrifice for love.

She finished working with the plants and started returning them to their posts around the apartment. Abruptly she took one and set it back on the kitchen counter. It was something she had never fully acknowledged,
not even to herself, but the truth was, she had never liked the spider plant Adam gave her on her birthday two years ago. Impulsively, she took that one and put it out by the incinerator. One of the maintenance men will be glad to have it, she told herself.

The other plants she put back on the windowsills, the coffee table and the Bombay chest in the foyer. When she was done, she stood in the foyer and looked into the living room.

As an anniversary surprise, Adam had had their wedding picture copied by an artist. The portrait, too large for her taste, was hanging over the fireplace.

Nell walked up to it, took the frame in her hands and lifted it off the wall. The artist had been, at best, pedestrian. There was something lifeless in her smile, and Adam’s smile seemed flat as well. Or perhaps the artist actually was very good, one who caught what the camera missed? Nell pondered the possibilities as she carried the portrait to the storage closet and exchanged it for the watercolor of the village of Adelboden she had bought years ago while skiing in Switzerland.

When the picture was hung, she once again stood in the foyer and looked around. She suddenly realized that all traces of Adam had been expunged from the living and the dining rooms.

Then she remembered the clothes and decided she was going to finish that job. She went back to the guest room. It took only fifteen minutes more to complete packing the suits and jackets in the boxes. She closed and marked them.

Then she noticed the navy jacket, still hanging on the back of the chair, and she was hit with another sudden
memory. Last summer, she and Adam were out to dinner. The air-conditioning in the restaurant had been bone chilling, and she’d been wearing a sleeveless dress.

Adam had stood up, taken off this jacket and draped it over her. “Go ahead, put your arms through,” he had urged.

But he was wearing short sleeves, and I told him that now
he’d
be cold; then he said that as long as I was warm, he’d be fine.

He was the master of the small courtesies, of the tender phrase, Nell thought as she picked up the jacket and slipped her arms into it. She wrapped it around her, trying to evoke once more the feeling of comfort and warmth she had felt when Adam gave it to her that day.

It was this jacket that he wore home that last night, she remembered. She held the lapel to her face, wondering if she could pick up any trace of the scent of Polo, the eau de cologne he used. Perhaps there was the faintest trace there, she decided, although she could not be sure.

Bonnie Wilson had told her that Adam wanted her to give his clothing away to help other people. She wondered if the fact that he had not been generous with his unused garments until he met her had been a reproach to him after his death.

She decided she definitely would give the jacket away with his other clothing. She put her hands in the side pockets to be sure he had not left anything in them. He had always cleaned out his pockets when he undressed, but he had planned to wear this jacket again that last day, so Nell knew she should check it thoroughly just to be sure.

There was a pristinely ironed handkerchief in the left-hand pocket. The right pocket was empty. She put
her finger in the breast pocket. That too was empty.

Nell folded the jacket, reopened the last box she had filled and put it in. She had begun to close the top when she remembered that this jacket had several inside pockets as well. Just to be on the safe side, she decided to check them too.

Within the inside pocket on the right side of the jacket there was a small sac that buttoned for security. It was flat, but Nell thought she could feel something under her fingers. She opened the button, reached in and withdrew a tiny manila envelope.

From it, she removed a safe-deposit key. It was stamped with the number 332.

seventy-one

A
T THREE O’CLOCK,
Lisa Ryan received a phone call at work that she had been both anticipating and dreading.

Detective Jack Sclafani said it was necessary for him and Detective Brennan to have a meeting with her when she got home from work.

“We just left Ms. MacDermott,” Sclafani told her.

Lisa had to take the call in the manager’s office. “I understand,” she replied. She turned her back, not wanting to see the naked curiosity in her boss’s eyes.

“We’ll need to talk frankly,” Sclafani warned. “I know that wasn’t possible for you last week once the children came home.”

“I have a friend who will take the children out for dinner. Would 6:30 be all right?”

“That would be fine.”

Feigning a lightness of spirit she did not feel, Lisa somehow got through the rest of the afternoon.

W
HEN THE TWO DETECTIVES ARRIVED,
she opened the door, and gesturing with a cup of coffee in her hand, said, “I just made a fresh pot. Would you like some?”

It was a perfunctory offer, but Jack Sclafani accepted even though he didn’t care about having coffee without a meal. He could sense that despite the cordial way in which she had greeted them, Lisa Ryan was clearly frightened and on the defensive. He needed to get her to relax, because he wanted her to feel as if they were her friends.

“I wasn’t going to say yes, but it smells good,” Brennan responded, smiling.

“Jimmy liked my coffee,” Lisa said as she took mugs from the shelf. “Said I had a magic touch. It sounds silly, of course. We all make coffee the same way. I guess he was just prejudiced.”

They took their coffee into the living room. Sclafani noticed immediately that the model of the dream house was no longer on the table.

Lisa followed his glance. “I packed it away,” she told him. “It was kind of hard, seeing it every time the kids and I were in this room.”

“I can understand that.”

It was what Kelly wrote in her diary that made me put it away, she thought.

Every time I look at Mommy’s dream house, I think of how Daddy let me see it when he was making it. He said that it was our secret, that it was his present to
Mommy for Christmas. I never told a single soul. I miss Daddy so much. I miss looking forward to living in the dream house, especially the room he was going to build for me.

There was another secret Kelly had written about in her diary that Lisa knew she was going to have to share with the detectives. She decided not to wait for them to ask questions. “I believe you both said you have children,” she began. “If something happened to you, I don’t think you’d want them, or anyone else for that matter, to judge you by one mistake that you felt had been forced upon you.”

She looked at the detectives. Their eyes were sympathetic. Lisa prayed that they weren’t just pretending, that this wasn’t a professional trick, designed to make her believe they understood what must have happened to Jimmy.

“I’ll tell you everything I know,” she continued, “but I am pleading with you to keep Jimmy’s name out of this investigation. Those boxes with the money were sealed. For all I know, someone asked him to hold them for them and he never even knew what was in them.”

“You don’t believe that, Lisa,” Jack Sclafani said.

“I’m not sure
what
to believe. I
am
sure that if Jimmy knew anything about substandard construction on a job that might later cause a tragic accident, he would have come forward eventually. And I know also that since he is not here to speak for himself, it has to come out now.”

“You told Ms. MacDermott that you found the sealed packages in your husband’s file,” Brennan said.

“Yes. The file cabinet is in his workshop. I was going
through it, looking for any records I might need to keep, like income tax statements.” A hint of a smile touched Lisa’s lips. “I grew up listening to the story of how my great-aunt found an insurance policy in my great-uncle’s desk that she never knew he had. It was for twenty-five thousand dollars, which in 1947 was big bucks.” She paused and looked at her hands, clenching and unclenching them as they lay in her lap. “I didn’t find an insurance policy downstairs. Instead, I found the packages.”