Dead at Breakfast (26 page)

When Buster had docs or images on his phone and needed hard copy, he'd forward them to Janet Torrey in the Bergen Town Hall from wherever he was, and she'd print them for him. He'd swing around to pick them up on his way to Just Barb's, where he was bound to go sooner or later. On Thursday afternoon he reached Janet at about four. She was a large woman with a ready smile and beautiful glossy dark hair. The previous day had been her birthday. Her counter was covered with birthday cards, and she was wearing a circlet on her head made of silver paper covered with colored foil stars.

“I see you've been crowned,” said Buster as he strolled in.

“My granddaughter made it. And my grandson made me a cake from scratch, without a recipe. They saw that movie, about the rat that becomes a French chef, the Disney movie? and Nathan started baking. I didn't tell him what I'd do if I found a real rat in my kitchen.”

“How old is he?”

“Nine.”

“How was the cake?”

“Real good. It took my daughter all night to clean up the kitchen, but that cake was delicious. Chocolate with blue icing and gummy bears. Now what
is
this?” She was looking at the image that had just emerged from the printer.

Buster stood to look over her shoulder. It was a picture of a page of handwritten notes from what was pretty clearly a standard issue police notebook. The writing was large and clear, but in two places, lines had been crossed out and corrections were hand-printed in the space above the original note.

“Are you supposed to have these?” she asked, a crease of worry between her eyebrows.

“Have what?” said Buster, taking the papers and slipping them into a backpack that had seen better days.

“Oh,” said Janet. “Right. Lost my head for a minute and thought we'd done some printing. You give Brianna my best.”

“I will. You look good in that crown.”

“I thought so too. I told the selectmen, I'm wearing it from now on.”

On the sunporch at the inn in the late afternoon, Maggie was explaining what Jorge had learned about Albie Clark, at least in the world according to his children.

“Remind me to write a new Living Will when we get home, will you?” Hope said to Maggie.

“I wish you'd met him, Toby. He seemed so normal,” said Maggie. “I mean, for a widower in a clinical depression.”

“I still don't see that this amounts to his killing her, even if it's all true. And he sure had a grudge against Antippas.”

“I know,” said Maggie.

“I'd like to know about Mrs. Clark's autopsy report,” said Toby.

“Jorge is on it,” said Maggie. “Don't you love that expression? I learned it from a television show. Now, what did you find out in town?” Maggie had asked him to trace Antippas back as far as he could. When did he emigrate, did he have a driver's license, how did he earn a living, where did he meet Jenny's mother. Whoever she was.

“Quite a lot,” said Toby. “First, Celia Little shouldn't be representing a cocker spaniel. I've made some calls, and we'll get a real lawyer for Cherry by tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” said Hope. “Maggie wouldn't let me interfere.”

“And I was right. But Toby can interfere all he wants.”

“Thank you. Second,” said Toby, “Alexander Antippas doesn't exist before 1982, the year he turns up in L.A.”

“You're kidding,” said Hope.

“No visa records, no green card, marriage license, nothing. I notice Maggie doesn't look very surprised.”

“No, I must say, I was expecting that.”

Just then Buster arrived in the sunroom. He produced his sheaf of papers and laid the first one on top of the jigsaw puzzle, with the sheet that had caught Janet's attention on top. Hope put on her glasses and Toby took his off. The three stood over the puzzle table, reading.

“‘Why would I do that?' is crossed out and he's written ‘Why
did
I do that?'” said Toby.

“
She's
written. These are the notes from the policewoman Cherry supposedly confessed to in the bathroom, the night she was arrested. Carly Leo, her name is.”

“Shep Gordon is pressing the people who worked the case to make sure their proof supports his theory,” said Toby.

“Who told you that?”

He smiled. “I'm a reporter. People will talk to me who would never tell the same thing to the police.”

“Carly Leo is a total brown nose,” said Buster, then glanced at his mother and added. “pardon my French. She'd do anything Shep asked her to and insist they never discussed it.”

“We can use it. What else have you got?”

The rest of the pages were the photographs of the condolence book Detective Prince had sent him from L.A.

“Oh well done!” said Maggie.

“That was fast,” said Hope, and gave Buster a proud smile. They each took pages and settled down with them.

In under a minute, Maggie said “Yes!” and pumped her fist in the air.

“What?”

She pointed to a name in spindly old-person handwriting. “Melina Kouklakis.” She put up her hand and Hope slapped it triumphantly.

Toby was next. “Whoa! You are good!”

Buster was trying not to laugh. His mother giving high fives? What was next, fist bumps? Gangsta rap? He said, “I have to admit, Mrs. Detweiler, you are scary.”

She beamed. “Can you get your man in L.A. to find out who she is? Sister? Aunt? And—can he check the registry for missing and exploited children? For a Jenny Kouklakis, or Kouklas or Koukla, in case Alexander shortened the name?”

“He can,” said Toby, “but that friend of yours from the FBI could do it faster, and he wouldn't attract interference from Shep Gordon's people.”

J
orge had spent
the night
at The Maidstone in East Hampton. Thought he might as well, since Mrs. Babbin was paying. He had called five hospice care services in Suffolk County before he found the one Albie Clark had used. The woman on duty gave him contact information for three nurses who had been assigned to the case. The first was at home when he called, but said that he never met the patient because she died before his shift began. The second was on vacation out of state. The third was named Valerie Ramos and was pleased when he addressed her in Spanish. He reached her just as she got home from a night shift and had things to do, but would be willing to see him in an hour. She gave him the address.

Ms. Ramos lived in a bungalow in an area of East Moriches too close to the highway to be attractive to developers. Yet. She was wearing street clothes when she came to the door, stretch jeans and a turquoise angora sweater. He tripped over her cat who had threaded itself between Jorge's feet as he came in, so the conversation began with an apology.

“Never mind, he does that to everyone,” Valerie Ramos said. The cat indeed seemed unsurprised and unresentful over the incident, but went into the sitting room and hacked at his carpet-covered scratching post, just to show that he was entirely at home and the interloper wasn't. Ms. Ramos and Jorge followed him into the small,
dark room, where a TV was playing soundlessly, and the upholstered furniture was covered with fitted clear plastic covers. On the mantel was a photograph in a frilly gilt frame of a white-haired woman with an oval face and dark eyes who looked very much like Valerie. There was a votive candle in red glass burning beside the picture.

Ms. Ramos offered Jorge a seat on the flowered love seat and took a stiff chair near the cat.

“Thank you for seeing me, Ms. Ramos,” said Jorge.

“You're welcome. I'm sorry for what happened to Mr. Clark,” she said.

“Yes, terrible. I imagine you saw a good deal of him, while you were with his wife.”

“He was there, but he didn't want to talk. His wife was in a great deal of pain.”

“She was conscious, then?”

“Briefly, when I first got there. But often when we arrive, especially when the patient has planned her final things and knows what it means when we come, they cross over quickly.”

“I see.” Jorge looked around the room, taking in the picture on the mantel, the cross made from a palm frond, now very dry, tucked behind the frame of a little mirror on the wall, and the small spinet in the corner. He knew rooms like this. He knew there would be a glass jar with hard candies in it, or gumdrops, on the piano, before he saw it. Wait—surprise. Candied ginger.

“You must feel like the angel of death, sometimes,” he said.

“Emphasis on angel,” she replied calmly. “When someone has suffered so much we bring relief.”

“And you felt that with Ruth Clark?”

“I did.”

“You were giving—what?”

“Morphine. Pain is pointless, at that stage.”

Jorge thought about this. She was so peaceful, this woman.

“And Mr. Clark? Was he ready for it to be over?”

“Her suffering was terrible to him. If she frowned, or made a sound, he'd say ‘she can still feel it.'”

“And could she?”

“We don't know. She could just as well be reacting to something she was seeing or hearing inside her head. There is much going back and forth over the line, at that point.”

Jorge, a lapsed Catholic since his teenage years, envied her calm certainty. He wondered, though, if he was at the end, if he would be comforted to see her coming, or want to scream for help.

He asked, “When Mr. Clark said she could still feel it, did he mean you should increase her dosage?”

“He never asked me to do that. I followed protocol.”

“How was the drug being administered?”

“A drip.”

“Did she have one of those buttons? Could she self-administer?”

“She had a button, but she was past using it.”

Jorge was trying to think of how to phrase his next question when she added, “Patients react differently. Some keep on fighting, even when you can't imagine how they're doing it. Others slip off quickly, as if someone opened a door to heaven. Mrs. Clark saw the opened door.”

After a silence he said, “Were her children with her?”

“Not while I was there. Just the husband.”

“And you were there when she passed?”

“No. I like to be there at the end; it's a profound moment. But she was still with us when my shift ended.”

“And Hank Armor was the next nurse on duty?”

After a tiny beat, she said, “Yes. Hank.”

“And was there an autopsy?”

“I have no idea. But why would there be?”

Martin Maynard called Maggie right before lunch. She was waiting in her room for his call, not wanting to take it in a public place.

“I hope I haven't put you to too much trouble,” she said.

“It's been a long time since I got down in the weeds myself, I admit,” said Martin, “and this was never my department.”

“I don't think I ever asked, what
is
your department?”

“I'm a forensic accountant.”

Maggie laughed. “This
was
a bit out of your way.”

“It made me feel young. And you'd already done the heavy lifting. Jennifer Ann Kouklakis was born in 1980 in Washington, Pennsylvania. She was abducted in 1982, nonstranger abduction, presumably by the father. He said he was taking the baby to buy her new shoes. Never seen again. You want me to fax you her birth certificate?”

“Could you e-mail it to Buster?”

“Glad to.”

Maggie gave him the address.

“Nina sends her best,” he said.

“Mine to her too.”

They broke the connection.

The address in his GPS had brought Detective Prince to Culver City, to a large, fairly modern apartment block made of white brick. The clerk at the desk never looked at his ID, he just waved Prince toward a bank of elevators.

Melina Kouklakis came to the door on a fancy walker with wheels, a handbrake, and a basket. She was wearing a pink velour tracksuit. Her hair was cut short and had been given the kind of shapeless perm that women get when they don't want to have to look in the mirror more than once a day.

“Detective Prince,” he said, presenting his badge, which she studied carefully. “Thank you for seeing me.”

She made a dismissive gesture, and led the way to her seating alcove. On the kidney-shaped glass table there was a Sudoku book, Brainteaser level, and a box of tissues. She maneuvered herself into her chair and gestured Prince to the couch, Danish modern with red cushions.

“I'd offer you something,” she said, “but the girl isn't back with the shopping. There's water. You want water?” Her accent was slight, but enough to tell him she was foreign-born.

“I'm fine, thank you, Mrs. Kouklakis.”

“Miss Kouklakis. Born that way and I'll die that way. Soon, I hope.”

In Prince's experience, when old people said things like that, they were asking you to jolly them out of it. “Even on a beautiful day like this?” he said. He pointed at her window, which was right at tree level. “You don't want to look out the window and see those leaves in the sun?”

She looked at him as if trying to see if he were a fool or not.

“You can have your leaves,” she said.

There was a silence. Okay, he got it, skip the small talk.

“Miss Kouklakis, I notice that you attended the funeral of Alexander Antippas.”

“Oh, you did. And how is that your business?”

“Could you tell me your connection to the family?”

“Not ‘connection.' I
am
the family. I'm the closest relative he had left.”

“Didn't he have a wife and children?”

She made a disgusted noise and waved a hand in dismissal.

“You aren't close to the Antippas family?”

“That wife. Alexander brought the children to me when they were small. Later he stopped even doing that. That wife didn't want me there at Christmas and birthdays, because then I'd be in the pictures. She didn't want to have to explain some Greek immigrant
in the pictures when she was telling the world that her husband sprang full-grown from the head of Zeus. Or Donald Trumpet.”

“How about Jenny? Were you close to her?”

The old woman closed her eyes for a moment, as if waiting for a sudden pain to pass.

“
She
came to see me. She kept up.”

She sat, looking sad and angry.

“Can you explain that to me?”

“Why should I? It's over now.”

“It could help us find out what happened to your—Mr. Antippas. Your cousin?”

“My
nephew,
she said with the disgust of a teacher for a student who hasn't done the reading. “He was my nephew. The only child of my brother who died in the Peloponnese.”

“And you were born there, in the Peloponnese?”

“Of course. Born there, raised there.”

“And then?”

“Then what?”

“Then . . . how did you come to California?”

“I didn't, I came to New York. I moved to Athens with my mother's sister when I was sixteen, and got a job making ladies' hats. Someone told me I would make better money in New York, so I came. Ladies were not wearing hats so much in Greece anymore.”

“And in New York?”

“I got a job right away, at Saks Fifth Avenue.” She pronounced it as if it were all one word, Saksfithavenue. “The pay was much better but ladies in New York weren't wearing hats either.”

“So . . . then what?”

“This and that,” she said, bored with this. “It was a long time ago. You didn't come here to hear my life story.” She looked at her watch, a miniature pocket watch she wore on a chain around her neck. Her wrists and ankles were painfully swollen.

“All right. When did your nephew come back into your life?”

“Alexander. Well. He wrote me when he first arrived to say he was married and living in Ohio or someplace. He wrote in English to show me he was a real American. I wrote back to say he should come to pay his respects and
he
wrote to say that he would but they'd just had a baby. He was working very hard, but he'd come and bring the family soon. I hadn't seen him since he was a little guy.” She held out her hand to indicate a five- or six-year-old.

“And did he do that? Bring the family to meet you?”

“No. He did come himself, though. He called a year or two later and said he was in Los Angeles. I was living in Tarzana then.”

“Making hats?”

“Hats? No. I was in retail. He had some big deal brewing in L.A., he said. He showed up on my doorstep one evening with a bottle of raki.” She chuckled.

“Raki. Is that like ouzo?”

“Sort of. They drink it on
Creta
.”

“Creta?”

“Crete. But mostly in Turkey. He had changed so much; I wouldn't have known him except he looked just like my brother Stavros. An Adonis. He stayed all evening. We talked about old times and finished the bottle. He had been the last of us in our village back at home. He'd sold the house and land. That was strange to think of. I doubt he got much for it.”

“And then?”

“Well, then, some time passed, and then they came to me.”

“Came to you.”

“Yes, they came to me, Alexander and little Jenny. I guess the raki night was a test, to see if I'd have them. Jenny was a toddler then, just beginning to talk. Alexander's English had improved a lot. He was smart, that one. His clothes were fancy and he said he had a job with some muck-a-muck in Pasadena. He ran because his
wife had a mental thing.” She twirled a finger beside her temple. “Tried to hurt the baby. He even had to change his name, he was afraid of what she'd do if she found them.”

“Change his name? That seems extreme.”

She shrugged. “Lots of people do it. Immigrants. We picked something out of an Athens telephone book.”

“Never got past the alphas,” said Prince.

She made a sour face. “He was in a hurry. Nothing to do with me. Kouklakis was hard to spell, and someone told him it sounded like ‘Ku Klux,' so.”

“And they lived with you for—how long?”

“A year, year and a half. I had a house then; I had room. I was working of course, so there was a sitter for the baby.”

“Nice of you to take them in.”

She shrugged. “Least I could do for my brother. Stavros had no luck.”

“And why did they leave you?”

“Alexander got married.”

“Oh! So he was courting Lisa Poole when he lived with you?”

“Courting both of them, as far as I could tell. We didn't discuss it much but I had the impression he'd already known those girls for a while when he moved here.”

“And are you in touch with Mrs. Antippas now?”

She snorted. “That one? The first time I saw her was their wedding day, and the next time was his funeral.”

“Was that because you weren't invited?”

“I was invited, once or twice. I wouldn't go. You know what I heard her call me? She was talking to the sister. She called me ‘the babushka.' I was a very stylish person! I worked at Neiman Marcus!”

Jorge found 42 Maple Lane in Riverhead in mid-afternoon. He was on his way back to town, but it bothered him to leave a gap unfilled and he decided just to have a quick word with Hank Armor, the nurse whose shift with Ruth Clark was over before it began. What could it hurt, right? Middle of a Friday afternoon, either the guy was at home or he wasn't.

He had his ID in his hand, prepared to flash and then pocket it as he stood on the front step of the small, dark clapboard house. There were cars in the driveway, so he knew someone was home, but he had to ring three times before anyone answered the door.