Brooklyn Graves (11 page)

“Grandpa? You went with Grandpa?”

“We were talking and he didn't have anything to do so I asked him to take me. You know, grandkid bonding. Plus, I really needed to get going on this project.”

“Well, good for you.” I wanted to be encouraging. “And did Grandpa have a lot of useful information to offer? I thought I would be the best person to get you started.”

“No, he didn't,” she said in that fake patient tone all teenagers use. “But he did do whatever I asked him. Which you wouldn't. And you are so busy and he had nothing to do. So it was a win-win all around.” She didn't actually say “Ha!” but she didn't have to.

“So he drove me over to the ferry—you know it would take forever if I had to go by subway and change trains—and he paid for parking and it was a great day for a ferry ride, so sunny out there on the water, and that whole downtown view from the boat. We looked around the museum a little. He was never there before. Did you know that? How come you never took him?”

I put the plates on the table a lot harder than necessary. “Well, Chris…”

“It was a treat for him. So he wandered around some more while I got to work. Did you know they have a whole family research department? All way cool and computerized, documents and even pictures of the ships and everything, and the nicest people to help?”

“Did I know? What exactly do you think I do for a living?”

She put her entire attention to lining up the lettuce and tomatoes perfectly on her sandwich. Then she was gone.

Chapter Nine

That morning, I couldn't wait to get to work. After last night, I had had enough of crazy people. Ryan was eccentric, but he was not full-out crazy. And he was a little afraid of me, which frankly made a nice change from everyone else in my life.

He greeted me with, “There was a message from the boss. He's coming back sooner.” He looked even paler than usual. “In fact he'll be back tomorrow and he expects to see great progress. And we are way behind! I feel sick.”

We quickly divided the fat envelopes of letters. If we each read half, we hoped we could do a quick summary of all of them by the end of the day. That should assure Flint of our diligence.

We sat in silence and read, and entered data, and read some more. Every once in a while I would pass him something to look at, or he would pass something to me.

I would have liked to read deeply, absorb, think, even daydream, but we could not take the time today. I would have liked to follow up on Leary's cryptic hint, too.

Finally, Ryan left the room and I did a fast jump to the 'Net. Tap, tap, tap the URL in, and up popped a page that resembled a newspaper. In large letters, a column was headed, “Night of crime at landmark cemetery?” Yes, it was cleverly written, but there was a lot of innuendo and a little bit of fact: an anonymous source said police cars were seen driving in early in the morning. A section of the cemetery was closed to visitors. No one was offering any news or information. Ryan came back in and I hurriedly switched back to our work document.

“Ya know,” Ryan said finally, “he should be pretty happy with us after all. There's tons of stuff here about Tiffany and we are capturing it all.”

So there was. Young Maude was thrilled and fascinated by everything and she wrote all of it. Phones were a brand new invention then and still rare. People wrote letters, and for those so inclined, every thought and bit of news or gossip might go down on paper. How lucky for us, the historians.

Today I had the second half of her story, when the city was not so new to her and she was not so naïve, but had established ongoing friendships and was digging in deeply at the Tiffany studio. And here was a letter that made me sit up and pay attention:

“Dearest Mama and Katie,” she wrote, “I believe my chance has come at last. They have received a commission for a large glass window, and Mr. Tiffany (himself!) told Miss Driscoll I might contribute a design for part of it. I don't know if they will choose mine. But they will, they must! My head is swimming with ideas and my fingers itch to start. I can't tell you any more than that, as the client wishes it to be confidential until it is completed and unveiled. I know it is foolish, as you do not know anyone who would care, and even if you did, you would never betray a secret, but oh! I don't want to do anything that might put a bad spell on this for me.”

“You go, girl,” I thought. “Good for you.”

I read ahead very quickly, not stopping even to take notes. A letter of a few weeks later said:

“They loved my designs. They will become part of a larger project. Can you believe that? I am so excited I don't know which way to turn. Oh, yes, I do, I shall turn right to my worktable. As soon as I am done with this happy letter, I will begin refining the designs to make them as perfect as they need to be for a—can you guess how happy I am to write these words?—a Tiffany window.”

Then I read this set of letters again, very slowly to see if they really said what I thought they said. I felt flushed with excitement as I handed them to Ryan, saying, “Drop everything to read this.”

When he finished, he said “Holy cow. Holy freakin'
cow.” Then he turned to his computer, typed madly without saying another word, while I walked around and looked over his shoulder.

He had pulled up a database with Flint's name on it, but created, I suspected, by him. It seemed to be a comprehensive list of glass windows produced by the Tiffany studios, sorted by date for the period of the letters. He hit a few keys and it was sorted again by location. We read it together, and found nothing that came close to what we had just read about.

“Is it possible?” He squinted up at me. “A window no one knows about?”

“Maybe. They do turn up. They found one hidden behind a closet in a very old Brooklyn high school not long ago.” He looked skeptical. “No, they really did. They built high schools to be impressive back then. I wonder if Maude's window was ever made? I'll zip through the rest of the letters to see if I can find out.”

Over the next few months she continued to write about her life in general, the project, how she helped select some of the glass and how it would be fabricated at a Tiffany plant in Queens. But the exuberant tone was gone. The letters became shorter and either she was writing less frequently, or some were lost. They seemed to trickle away, and then they just stopped. I felt like I was reading a book that had lost the final chapters. What happened to her? Then, and after? I wanted to find out, but at this moment, Ryan was there, waiting expectantly, mind on our job at hand.

“It looks like it went into production,” I said at last, my voice sounding strange even to me.

Ryan grinned and I realized, even in the midst of my own excitement, that it was the first time I had seen him smile. “The boss is going freak at this. Just freak. It's huge.”

He did some more intense typing and said, “You okay with this?”

It was an e-mail to Flint, telling him what we had found. I nodded and he hit “Send” with a decisive punch.

“Okay. Wow.” I actually felt a little dazed. “Um, let's get to the rest of these letters, so we'll be finished when he comes in tomorrow. I'm not supposed to work tomorrow, but I'll be here for this. So we can move on to the next phase, whatever that will be.”

It only took a few hours for a message came back from him. It must have been after dinner in Italy. “Tomrow will come strait from JKF.” He must mean Kennedy airport, JFK. “Must see IN person what fund.” Fund? Ah, “found.” “You not authoities. So tell no one until I ok.” Of course not. Did he take us for fools? Probably the answer to that was yes.

And Detective Henderson called, finally connecting in person. Could he stop at my house in the early evening to get the phone and ask a few questions? Yes. I was tired of playing telephone tag.

“Ryan, I don't think I can handle any more excitement for today.”

He stared at me until I added, “That was a joke. A joke! But I do need to go home early.” The detective was not making a social call, but that didn't mean I wanted him sitting in my cluttered living room, with my belongings and Chris' scattered all over and dirty dishes stacked in the open kitchen. And going home and saying to his brother, my old friend, “That Erica sure is a slob.” As if anyone would care. Really. I thought, “Mom, why are you still here, whispering in my ear?” The housekeeping maven, setting high standards for what was right even from the next world. There was something about my visitor being a piece of my past that made it hard to ignore.

At home, dishes and pots quickly went into the dishwasher. Did I have clean cups and glasses, to offer refreshment? Check. Assorted random possessions scooped up all over the first floor, into a laundry basket and upstairs to my room? Check. Accumulated mail all over the table tossed into an attractive basket? Check.

Splash of cold water in my face and a tall mug of iced coffee, extra sugar, for me? Double check. I poured the coffee just before the bell rang. He stood on my top step with a tentative smile and a plastic bag of takeout food.

“Do you like sushi? I never had lunch today and when I passed a place after I parked, I made a stop. There's plenty for two.”

“What a nice surprise. Lunch is feeling a long time ago.”

We settled at my just-cleared dining table, I put out plates and chopsticks, and we munched while we talked.

“Thanks for calling us, Ms. Donato. Of course I have a lot of questions.”

“Of course you do. And it's Erica.”

I handed him the mysterious phone.

“Tell me about how this came to you.” He pointed his chopsticks at the containers on the table. “And I recommend the salmon roll.”

I tried to skim over Alex coming to me instead of his mother, and I tried to make Henderson promise to be careful about that. He wasn't altogether sympathetic.

“That kid may have held up this investigation a few days. That's not okay. You know that, don't you?” I nodded. “But does
he
know that? It's important that he understand.” He stopped. “Oh, hell. His father was just murdered. And he's only what, fifteen? Never been in any trouble that we have found. Yeah, we checked.” He looked straight at me. “Okay, I do get it. I can't make any promises about who will know and all that, but I'll do my best to see that he's not in any real trouble.”

“You mean with your guys, or his mother?”

He laughed. “Who's scarier? Okay, both. Both, to the best of my ability. That's all I can do.”

“I've gotten sucked into this because they are my friends, and I'd like to help them if I can.” I thought for a moment. “Uh, that's not exactly the whole truth. Dima was my friend, too.”

Henderson raised his eyebrows when he played Dima's odd greeting. He jotted down a few points as I spoke, until I gulped hard and said, “I have to add something to this.” And I told him about my excursion to Dima's property.

“Right next door? With a gun? Why didn't you say so? Did he tell you anything at all?”

“Just that he doesn't like Russians. Otherwise he seemed, I don't know. Cagey. Crazy, maybe, but sly. Does that make any sense?”

“In my line of work? Are you kidding? I meet people in that category on a regular basis. Actually, I've met him.”

“You did? But how? How did you know?'

He looked amused. “Well, it's what we do, you know. Mr. Ostrov owned the property and we found some records, so we went to canvass people on the block, just to see what we could dig up. We've got his name in the notes. The old codger refused to talk to us at first. Even when we pointed out it was a murder investigation and that he would talk to us whether he liked it or not, he hardly said anything.”

“So you think what I told you is useful?”

“Oh, yeah. We will be having another talk with him right away. It will be real interesting to see if he has a license for that gun. And it is also useful to have the numbers in that phone. I have some special curiosity about the man whose message is ‘don't leave a message.' That's an unusual way to do business.” We'll be talking to all of them.

“The crazy neighbor…is there any chance at all that he was the one who did it? I mean, it's hard to believe and yet he was so full of rage. And his gun?”

“Oh, we'll be asking to see that gun, that's for sure. In fact, I'm thinking about paying him a visit before I go home tonight. Funny how he didn't happen to mention owning one. There's no way to know, or even guess, about anything until we talk to him some more. You may have heard we need some evidence?” I could tell he was joking. “He seemed a little frail for hauling a body around but who knows what friends he has?” He shrugged. “We'll be digging.”

Then he looked over the littered table. “I think you should keep the leftovers. Does your daughter like sushi?” Was he changing the subject?

“So how are you doing, overall? Are you learning anything? Is Natalya right about her brother-in-law? I met him. He seems pretty scary or at least he's got the scary style. Does that make sense?”

“Sure. Sometimes it's only styling, kind of delusions of being Tony Soprano. But sometimes it is the real thing, too.”

“So which is it with Vladimir?”

He smiled. “Kenny told me you were an inquisitive kid even in high school.”

“What?”

He shrugged and smiled again. “He wouldn't tell me why he said it. Just laughed. He said to ask you.”

“I'll have to think about that. High school seems a century ago most of the time.”

“A lot of life lived in between, right? Do you want to talk about the old days over dinner sometime?'

I didn't see that coming. He didn't wear a wedding ring, and I'd known him when I was young. Sort of known him. When he added, “It could be fun,” I wondered how long it had been since I'd had plain old fun?

“Well, sure. Why not?”

He ran his eyes over his notes, stood and said, “I think I've got it all. I'll call you.”

“If you have any questions.”

“Yes, and about dinner, too. How's Tuesday? I see you like Japanese?” I probably turned red. I had gobbled down more than my share. He laughed. “It's fun to have dinner with a woman who appreciates the food. How do you feel about Middle Eastern? Or Argentine steak?”

“Funny, isn't it, how sophisticated we have become? We sure didn't have all these choices when we were young.”

He laughed. “Oh, yes, that's me, the epitome of sophistication! Yeah, the good old days when it was either spaghetti joints or imitation Chinese, right?” He left and then turned back.

“I can tell you this. We don't believe no one knows why Mr. Ostrov walked out on his job and what happened after. We will find that someone eventually.”

After he left, I was hit with disappointment. It would have meant mean a lot to Natalya for me to say, “They are right on top of it. There's great progress.” It would have meant something to me to be able to say it but I knew I was being silly. I knew a cop was not going to confide in me. Or gossip with me either. But I wouldn't mind trying again over dinner.

***

The next day I wasn't scheduled to work but no one needed to tell me I had to be there when Dr. Flint arrived in the afternoon. What to do with my own morning? My own work? Overdue house-cleaning?

Something to pacify Dr. Flint about our failure to find out what happened at Green-Wood? Before I finished breakfast I had a panicky note from Ryan. Was I ever that young and scared? I didn't think so. I was raised to be mouthy and opinionated. Of course my parents were a little shocked when I turned that on them. It's only now, with an adolescent of my own, that I understand their reactions, but I was never a wimp. And Ryan was. Besides, I didn't have the time. By Ryan's age, I was married and maybe had a baby.