Another Man's Treasure (a romantic thriller) (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 1) (28 page)

She was a year behind Dad, so she would have been a junior in this picture.  Not surprisingly, a handsome guy has his arm around her, and another guy, his face turned slightly away, is holding a big McGovern sign up in front of the three of them.  I read the caption:
Charlotte Perry, Spencer Finneran and Roger Nealon leading the charge for George McGovern.

I stare at the caption as if I’m deciphering a sentence in a foreign language, translating each word but still unable to grasp the total meaning.  The man in the picture is Spencer, younger, thinner, with dark hair, but definitely
the
Spencer Finneran, governor-elect of New Jersey. Spencer knew my parents, both of them, long before any of them came to Palmyrton. 

Another lie.

Why?

I slap the book shut.  My father would know.  I suppose I’ll have to go and visit him.  I dread making the trip, and without Ethel as a buffer, it will be even worse.  Tomorrow, I’ll deal with Dad tomorrow.

Despite my heartfelt desire to avoid my empty condo, I have no choice but to allow Ty to deliver me here. The place has never looked more barren.  We’re perfectly matched, this condo and I—empty, impersonal, stripped of everything that has ever mattered.  The featureless beige walls taunt me.  There’s nothing to distract you here, they seem to say.  Now you have to think about your mother, your father, the fire, Anne, Ethel.

Outside, a car door slams.

Looking out the window, I see Cal emerge from his BMW.

About time he shows up.  Even though I defended Cal to Coughlin, I feel a blossom of rage unfolding within me.  I’ve barely heard from him since Halloween, apart from that one blurry visit when I was in the hospital.  Sure, everything that happened to me was right before and during the election, but still, doesn’t even a low maintenance hook-up like me deserve a little more attention than this?  That damn Coughlin’s probably right—I shouldn’t even open the door.

I watch as he struggles to pull something out of the passenger side of his car. Probably some ginormous bouquet of flowers—he figures he can solve everything with his AmEx card and speed-dial to the florist.  Well, forget that—the novelty’s worn off.  I turn away from the window. Although making him stand on the front stoop begging for admission does hold some appeal, there’s a part of me that worries he might say, “OK, never mind,” and leave.  And I have a few things to say to Cal Tremaine.

When I hear his footsteps on the stoop, I fling open the door.

Cal stands there, arms stretched out before him, carrying something wrapped in a lime green beach towel. 

“What in the –”

The beach towel moves.  A flash of fluffy brown appears.

“Ethel!”

I’m out the door so fast I feel like I’m levitating.  I rip the towel back and Ethel struggles to lift her head.  She looks puzzled, as if she doesn’t know how she got into this mess but she’s counting on me to get her out.

I gather her into my arms.  “How?  Where?”

“Let’s get her inside,” Cal says.  “She’s really weak.  I tried to feed her something but she wouldn’t take it from me.  I figured it was best to get her straight to you.”

Ethel has been missing for five days.  Her fur is matted, there’s a nasty cut on her front right paw, and she looks about ten pounds thinner.  Her eyes are glazed and her nose is dry. 

“I think she’s dehydrated.  It hasn’t rained all week.  She probably couldn’t even find a puddle to drink from.”

Sure enough, when I hold her in my lap with a bowl of water in front of her, she laps it all up.

“How did you find her?” I ask.

“This past week has been so crazy.  The  election…the fire… you in the hospital…everything.  I felt so out of control.  And this morning I woke up and said to myself, “I want to make one thing right, one thing.  And I realized,”  Cal traces my jaw with his index finger, “I realized, I want to make something right for Audrey.”

The anger drains out of me.  Cal has spent the day, not with Spencer, not with his high-priced clients, but looking for my little lost mutt.

Cal jumps up and starts pacing. “I know I didn’t offer much support when Ethel got lost—too concerned with my own problems.  But today I sat myself down and tried to think like a dog.  When I was a kid, our dog got lost and he turned up a week later all the way across town at the nature trail where my parents used to walk with him.  The vet said dogs return to a place that smells familiar.

“I knew you took Ethel to visit your dad at his nursing home.  So I thought, maybe she’s there, maybe that’s a place that would smell familiar to her.  I went out there and walked around the grounds.  One old guy told me he’d seen a dog running around a few days before.  So I kept searching, and I found her curled up under some branches.”  Cal leans over and strokes Ethel’s head.  “She’d just about given up, huh girl?”

Ethel sighs and closes her eyes. 

I look at Cal’s perfectly manicured hand on Ethel’s matted fur and all my doubts and insecurities melt away.  He found Ethel.  No one has ever done anything kinder for me in all my life.

Cal and I spend the early evening at the vet’s where Ethel is cleaned up, patched up and dosed with antibiotics.  He doesn’t even suggest we go out to dinner, just meekly calls in my order for Thai carry-out and runs to fetch it after carrying Ethel back into the house and settling her on the sofa.  When he returns I’m sitting on the floor, my head buried in Ethel’s neck, breathing in her sweet, musty dogginess.  Cal slides down next to me and pulls me into his arms, kissing my tear-stained cheeks, my singed hair, my canine medicine-coated fingers.  We make love while the Thai basil chicken cools on the counter.  Later Cal runs me a bubble bath and sets me to soak while he dishes up the food.  We eat, sharing bites with Ethel. 

After dinner we snuggle in bed watching Seinfeld re-runs.  I stroke Ethel’s head; Cal strokes mine.  I have peace.  I have Ethel, and Cal, and sex, and affection and food, and rest.  Don’t I deserve this?  Can’t I simply enjoy it for a few hours?  Is that so much to ask?

And yet, and yet….  Other thoughts, awful thoughts, push insistently into my head.  Now that the extent of Dylan’s drug-dealing is known, does Cal still think Anne only wanted to talk to me…that the fire was an accident? How will he react when I tell him I plan to testify against Dylan?  And does Cal realize that Spencer knew both my parents in college, long before my mother worked on Spencer’s first campaign? 

“Cal?”

“Hmm.”  His eyes are riveted to the antics of George and Kramer on the screen as his fingers idly brush my bangs off my forehead.

“Cal, we need to talk about Anne and the fire and …things.”

Cal throws his head back on the pillows and closes his eyes.  “I know, baby, but this has all been so overwhelming for me too.  I can barely get my head around it.”

I sit up.  “So you believe me when I say that Anne started the fire and tried to trap me in the house.”

Cal’s eyes are open, but he’s looking up at the ceiling, not at me.  “I believe you, yes, but…but, there’s just got to be some explanation.  I mean, I’m mourning the Anne I knew—the kind, generous friend—at the same time that I’m coming to grips with the idea that she nearly killed the woman I—” He looks me in the eye.  “The woman I love.”

Ah, geez, I wasn’t expecting that.  Speechlessly, I let him kiss me.  For a while, his lips, gentle yet demanding, drive all rational thought from my mind.  But as his hand slides under my t-shirt, I come to my senses.

“Cal, did you know that Spencer knew both my parents at Princeton?  He and Anne lied to me about that—why?”

Cal pulls back as if I’d slapped him.  “Really? They lied?”

“Anne specifically told me that Spencer first met my mother when she was working on his first campaign.  But I found a picture in the Princeton yearbook that shows Spencer and my parents together in 1968.”

Cal massages his temples.  “I don’t know, Audrey.  I don’t understand anything anymore.  I tried to talk to Spencer yesterday, but he’s in shock.  The police, the press, Dylan’s lawyers, all his kids—they all want a piece of him.  And without Anne, he doesn’t know how to manage it.  He begged me to give him a little space. Of course I said yes.”

“Reporters have been calling me too.” I take Cal’s hand.  “I understand.  You’ve given so much of yourself to this campaign, and you won, and you should be celebrating, but instead—”

Cal sits up in bed and faces me. “A man who’s been my idol is suddenly a stranger to me.” 

The stress and confusion of the past week have actually altered his appearance.  The perfect regularity of his features has been disrupted.  Cal looks rumpled—not his clothes, because he’s only wearing boxers—but his very being.  And I’m glad.  His uncertainty draws us closer.  For the first time since I’ve met him, I don’t feel intimidated.

I open my arms and Cal curls into my embrace.  I twine my fingers through his and gently kiss his eyelids.  He moans and pulls me on top of him.  Soon, tee shirts are flying, legs are thrashing and Ethel, grumbling, abandons the bed. 

I awake to a sunny bedroom, a whining dog and a ringing phone.  9AM—my God, I slept like a rock.  No wonder poor Ethel’s crying.

“Okay, Eth—we’ll go outside in a minute.  Let me see who’s calling.”

The caller ID says Manor View.  Probably more planning for Dad’s discharge.  That can wait until after Ethel’s walk.  I’m not ready to deal with anything concerning my father yet.  As I swing out of bed, I notice a note on the pillow next to mine.

Thanks for making everything better.  Talk to you later today.

Love,

Cal

While I get dressed for our walk, I switch on the TV news. 

“…we’re seeing the coolest temps in Connecticut and Long Island, slightly warmer in the city.”

“Thanks, Al.  I’ll tell you where it’s really hot—New Jersey, where controversy continues to swirl around governor-elect, Spencer Finneran.”

Despite Ethel’s frantic scratching at the front door, I sink down before the TV, one sneaker on, one off.

The camera zooms in on the anchorwoman.  I watch her lips moving and her eyebrows bobbing under her helmet of stiff hair as she tells me that there’s no official word on what Anne Finneran was doing in the house on Skytop Drive that burned to the ground.  But sources who refuse to be named hint that her presence there may be linked to the arrest of her grandson, Dylan Finneran, on drug possession charges.  And then a picture of my own condo appears on the screen as the newsreader tells the world that the woman who lives here escaped the fire that killed the governor-elect’s wife.

I keep watching, waiting to hear if they’ll report that Anne set the house on fire, that Anne tried to kill Audrey Nealon.  But the anchor woman moves on to reports of suspected terrorists, impending hurricanes and Wall Street shenanigans.  I take Ethel’s leash and head out the door.  Across the street, twenty people mill around three vans sprouting antennae and satellite dishes. The reporters surge forward. I pull Ethel back inside and slam the door.  Now what?  The poor dog’s gotta go.  I look out my back window to the grassy courtyard shared by four of the condo development’s units.  There’s a path between the buildings that will eventually get us out to the street behind the buildings.  No reporters lurking there, so we make our escape.

How good it feels to be walking Ethel, following behind the familiar plume of her tail! Waiting while she sniffs her way through each pile of leaves on the curb, I vow I’ll never yank her leash again. With Ethel back in my life, everything seems manageable.  Even my dad.  Even Cal.  Even those reporters.  I keep glancing over my shoulder.  When I see two people approaching from far down the street, I decide it’s best for us to get back inside.

As Ethel settles herself on the sofa, I remember the call I declined to answer this morning.  I press the play button and listen to my message:

“Ms. Nealon?  This is Manor View Nursing Home calling.  I’m afraid we have some upsetting news.  Your father has had a second stroke.  He’s at Palmyrton Memorial right now.”

The reporters follow my car to the hospital and descend on me as I cross the parking lot to the front door.  I keep my head down, ignoring everything they say,  a hapless middle-schooler hounded by bullies, until I reach the sanctuary of the lobby and the security guard chases them away.

This freaking hospital is starting to feel like my second home.  The smell of institutional food mixed with decay and death, the constant squawk of doctors being paged, the blank, hopeless faces of the patients and their visitors.  How can people work here?  I’d sooner be a coal miner.

A bored nurse buzzes me in to the ICU, then returns to tending the machinery of impending death while pointing me to Dad’s bed.  He lies there slack and empty, tubes running into and out of him.  Beeping, blinking machines insist that he’s alive, but I have my doubts. 

“Dr. Morganthal is making his rounds,” the nurse says.  “He’ll be right over to talk to you.”

I sink into the chair beside his bed.  Dad’s pathetic condition should soften my heart, but it doesn’t.  Instead, the rage I’ve kept boxed up surges forward.    I want to scream at him, demand answers.  But the rage has no place to go.  He can’t hear me, can’t see me, can’t answer.

Once again, my father has evaded me.

His right hand lies on top of the white blankets.  A good daughter would hold it, murmur words of reassurance.  I stand like a soldier.  “Get better,” I say.  “We’re not done.”

A tall bald guy in a white coat strides up and yanks out the clipboard from the foot of the bed.  “You the daughter?” he asks without even making eye contact.

A prick this arrogant could only be a brain surgeon. 

“Yes.  How bad is it?  Does he need surgery?”

“Surgery?  That won’t help.”

The doctor might as well have added, “you moron” to the end of his sentence.  “He had surgery after his first stroke,” I remind him.

“I looked at his MRI—there’s no new damage to his brain.  No stroke, no heart attack.” He continues scribbling on Dad’s chart.

“What is it then?”

“I have to run some more bloodwork, but it looks like he ODed on sleeping meds.  Probably hoarded several day’s worth and took them all at once.”

“Huh?  You mean—”

The doctor snaps his clipboard shut.  “Suicide attempt.”

I stagger out of the hospital in a daze. The reporters, held in check by a burly guard, shout their questions, but I have more pressing ones of my own. Why did he do this now, when he was getting so much better?  Why now, when the secret he’d been trying to keep from me was finally out? We could have started over. Why is it that with every step I take toward my father, he runs a mile back? I stumble down the rows of parked cars, barely aware of what I’m looking for. 

The doctor said he’d been hoarding his medication, planning this. Was he angry that I finally made him tell me the truth about my mother?  How could he have done this, done it
to me
?  Because that’s what this suicide is—the ultimate act of one-upmanship, the final fuck you. My knees buckle and I sag against a shiny red minivan for support. Where the hell is my car? I’m so disoriented I have to press the panic button on my remote and follow the hoot of my horn two rows over. When I finally collapse into my Honda and turn my cellphone back on, I see that I’ve missed two calls from Cal.

“Where are you?” he asks as soon we connect. “Are you okay?  Is the press after you?”

“At the hospital.  My father--”  I can’t say the words. My heart is pounding and I can’t catch my breath.  “He’s sick.  They’re not sure if—”

“My God, Audrey—why didn’t you call me?  You shouldn’t be there alone.”

“Sorry.  I didn’t think…” I haven’t really gotten used to this concept that I have a boyfriend who loves me.  That boyfriends are people you call to report big events in your life.  Maybe I’ll get the hang of it eventually.

“I’ll be right over,” Cal says.  “We can have lunch.”

“No!”  I can’t cope with Cal right now.  This is too big, too raw. “I...I think I need to lie down.  I’m going to go home and rest.”

“Are you sure?  I could bring you something. Soup?”

I smile at the phone.  Cal’s offer, the fact that he was worried, is enough for me.  I don’t need his actual presence.

“I’m OK, really.   Maybe tonight?”

“Definitely.  I’ll call you later.  Get some rest.”

When I was outside, all I wanted was to get back to my bed and Ethel.  But now that I’m lying here, sleep won’t come.  My breathing has returned to normal, but my brain is churning.   I see my father’s suicide attempt like a hologram—one image and then another depending on the angle of the light.  Anger has morphed to guilt.   Telling me about the night of my mother’s death was traumatic for him.  Did I comfort him, reassure him?  No, I interrogated him, gave him the silent treatment, and dumped him back at the nursing home.  I killed my mother, and now it seems I’ve killed my father too. I twist the covers over my head, ashamed for even Ethel to see my miserable black soul.

Then anger reasserts itself, slithering out of the cracks of my conscience, a snake relentlessly seeking heat.  I’m giving myself way too much credit. My father would never kill himself because I, of all people, hurt his feelings. No, he did this to regain the upper hand, I’m sure of it.

I can’t take this anymore!  Flinging back the covers, I leap out of bed.  Ethel looks hopefully at her leash, but the vultures are still posted outside my door and I don’t have the strength to run that gauntlet right now.  I click on the TV, but what old sit-com or preposterous advice show could possibly hold my attention today?  Reading is equally hopeless and working on my accounts makes my head throb.  I’m like a tiger in one of those supposedly enlightened zoos with the “natural” habitats—my surroundings are pleasant but the bars are no less real. 

I need a project, some mindless yet absorbing task to keep my thoughts at bay.  The hall closet is open and I catch sight of the trunk of jewelry from Mrs. Szabo’s attic.  Now that the election is over, I guess we can give it to Sister Alice. I’ll ask Cal tonight.  In the meantime, I might as well go through it and get a rough estimate of what the stuff is worth.  I haul it into the middle of the living room and dump it out.   

The cascade of gold and gemstones takes me back to a day that now seems like eons ago.  So much has happened since this jewelry tumbled out of Mrs. Szabo’s attic, yet nothing’s been resolved.  I still don’t know how my mother’s ring got into this trunk, and I don’t know who else did just what I’m doing now—upended the trunk here in my condo to search through it. 

Empty, the trunk itself holds more interest for me.  Although the outside is dusty and scratched, the inside striped silk lining is pristine.  I’ve seen trunks like this before—they were popular at the beginning of the 20
th
century.  With a little clean-up, I could probably get two hundred bucks for this, but only if the inside partitions are sturdy.  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I run my hands along the inside walls.  Shit—the lining is loose on one side.  Water damage? Bugs?   Gently, I tug at the lining and it peels away from the side wall of the trunk.  Behind it are some papers:  Mr. Szabo’s discharge papers from the army at the end of World War II, the Szabos’ wedding certificate, the title to a 1952 DeSoto, and an envelope that looks less yellowed with age than the other items. The glue has dissolved over time. I unseal it and remove a single sheet of paper.

The gasp of air I draw in burns my wounded lungs.  I know this handwriting.  The long loops of the “g”s and “p”s,  the  dramatic swirls of the capital S and B.  This is the handwriting on the Christmas decoration boxes of my childhood.  This was written by my mother.

The paper trembles as I read:

My darling,

I know you can never forgive me for what I am about to do-- I will not ask so much of you.  I’m not good at keeping secrets.  I feel better now that the truth is out. Believe me when I say that if I thought there were a chance that any of us could achieve happiness by following some other path, I would take it.  I cannot keep going over the rational reasons for staying; I must follow the
true
reasons for leaving. I will not separate you from Audrey.  I know how much you love her.  I love her too (that’s why I cannot continue to poison her with my misery). It’s best for me to leave right now--I’m sure Audrey won’t wake before you return.

All I ask is that someday you will understand.

C

  I read the letter a second time, then a third.  Ethel approaches and lays her head on my knee.  I let the letter slip to the floor, and speak out loud to the empty room. “Goddamn it to hell.  She was going to leave me behind.”