Stunner (20 page)

“I set up an account for her, so that she could go to school.” He sees my expression. “Don’t get the wrong idea. We were friends, not involved…yet. She refused the money, but I told her to take it and get her degree—no strings attached.”

“Really? No ulterior motive, John?”

“I told her even if I never saw her again, that I would still want her to have an education.” Palmer finishes his beer. “I mean, I’d never met anyone who so thirsted for knowledge the same way I did. So I helped her. It was my own quiet scholarship fund. After all, I had plenty of money.”

“So did she go to school on your scholarship?”

“She made plans, registered, and our relationship developed. We got…you know, close. But a part of her life was off limits to me. She was very honest that she had things in her past she wasn’t proud of, and I picked up hints that somebody had bothered her at various times.”

Don brings the cappuccinos and takes away the beer glasses and plates.

“Did she ever tell you more about that part of her life?” I ask. I pick up the small spoon on the saucer and dip it into the foam at the top of the cup.

“No, and I didn’t press her on it.” Palmer chuckles shyly. “Hey, I was crazy about her.”

“Were you soul mates?” I drink the coffee. “That’s corny, huh?”

Palmer smiles. “When I look back at that time, I didn’t have a lot of social skills. And here was this young woman who, like me, couldn’t get enough knowledge but who had great social skills. She had a lot going for her in general. Well, we made plans to marry.” He shrugs his shoulders. “At the last minute, she took off.”

I shake my head that such a thing could really happen. “Where’d she go? What became of her?”

“I don’t know. I should have tried harder to find her,” he says. “But I was shell shocked that she was gone, kind of paralyzed.”

We both sip our coffees. “You never heard from her again?”

“Two months later I got a letter with a New York City postmark. She was sorry. Could I please forgive her. She was taking classes at a community college.” Palmer stares down at his cappuccino and then looks up.

“A few months after that, we bumped into each other one evening at a restaurant in the Village. It was great, like the split had never happened. The next morning, she was gone.” He finishes the coffee. “I kept hoping she’d get in touch. Anyway, after several months more had passed, I called on a guy at my company, a retired NYPD detective. I figured he could track her down. But I’d waited too long. I don’t know if she changed her name, since even the detective couldn’t find her.”

“John, that is an amazing story.”

“Haven’t talked about it in years,” he mumbles. “Not sure why now.” He takes a final drink of his coffee, and I can see in his eyes that his thoughts are elsewhere.

~~~~~

John Palmer did squeeze me in for an appointment the next day, and I arrived prepared with plenty of questions about his venture fund. When he told me the minimum dollars required, I tried not to let him see me gulp—even though I already knew the amount from my friend who arranged the meeting in the first place. Big numbers like that always make me gulp.

I told Palmer I needed to confer with my brother, who helps me evaluate all investment opportunities, and thanked him for his time. I couldn’t help but wonder why up-by-her-bootstraps Terry-Teresa Gonzalez-Jones had bailed on their wedding so many years before. It certainly didn’t make much sense, because John Palmer really is a charming, lovely man. Did threats from Bobby Taylor get in the way? Was he the person bothering her who Palmer mentioned at dinner?

After the morning meeting with Palmer, I text Will Benson to ask him to track down the retired NYPD detective who worked for Palmer during those years. I don’t know the guy’s name and can’t ask Palmer without raising a red flag, but I’m sure Will has ways of finding him.

That detective may be my only hope to learn what might have happened next. Where did Teresa/Terry go to school? What did she study? Did she get her degree? Did she work while she went to school? Did she stay in the city? How could her life get any better than a marriage proposal from the fabulously rich, and most importantly, very nice John Palmer?

“Hi, Rita.” I greet Meadow Farm’s housekeeper by handing her two boxes with pies. “Picked these up at the farmer’s market. How’s Frank feeling?”

“Better. Getting there. It’s three days since the attack, and I’d say he’s at ninety percent.” She smiles, takes the boxes, and puts them on a kitchen counter.

“Where is everybody?”

“Well, let’s see.” Rita ticks everybody off on her fingers. “I think Frank’s in the library reading or napping. And Laura’s got a break in her tutoring schedule today, so she and Mrs. Wentworth are on the side terrace playing chess.”

“Really,” I say. “Well, that doesn’t totally surprise me, I guess. Laura’s been playing since she was five, but I thought she gave it up in college.”

“They’ve been playing out there for quite a while.” Rita sniffs the boxes. “Mmm. These smell great, Ronnie. Let me guess. One peach? One rhubarb?” She opens the boxes to look.

“You got it.” I take two plates and a pie server. “Think I’ll take them to our chess players.”

Laura and Juliana don’t even look up as I walk out with pie and iced tea on a tray. “Hello, you two. How about a break?”

“In a moment.” Laura’s eyes flick up at me for a nanosecond. “Need to concentrate here.”

“Laura, hasn’t it been a long time since you last played?” I ask, slicing the pies.

“Took it up again so I could to teach the twins for my nanny job.” She’s still focused on the chess board.

“Juliana, how about a cool drink and some delicious pie?” I ask. “Is this a good time?” For Frank’s sake, I can at least try to be nice, even though I’m having her background checked out and don’t really trust her. She also gives me a signal to wait.

My niece makes her move, and Juliana says, “Excellent, Laura! And this is a perfect moment for a break.” She looks at the pie. “Ronnie, you’re spoiling us—a choice of peach, and let’s see, rhubarb? May I please have a sliver of each?” Her voice is friendly, but her eyes aren’t. I get the sense that the friendly part is just for Laura’s benefit.

“Juliana, who taught you chess? Were you a child like Laura when you learned to play?” I slice the pie and give her the plate. “Frank was always trying to teach me when we were kids, but I never really took to the game.”

“No, I started in my mid-twenties.” Juliana takes a fork and cuts into her pie. “An old, old friend taught me.”

“An old, old friend, huh?” I say. “Hmmm. That sounds like an interesting story. Do you still play with your teacher?”

“We’ve lost touch.” Her eyes quickly glance toward me and then back to the chess board. She moves a piece.

Laura slaps her forehead. “Wow. I didn’t see that coming. No offense, Aunt Ronnie, but we need quiet to play. Thank you for the pie and iced tea though.” My niece, who got me going with the Juliana investigation, has politely told me to take a hike, so that she can focus on her chess game with, of all people, Juliana. OK.

As I take the tray with the two pies back inside, something on the large, circular, front hall table catches my eye. I quickly deposit the tray in the kitchen and walk back to the foyer.

There on the table is a clear bag that contains Juliana’s black pumps. They’re polished, and the broken heel has been repaired. Again, something flickers at the edges of my memory, just as it did the other day when Juliana, wearing these shoes, broke the heel.

I pick up the bag and walk into the dining room to where she caught her shoe. It’s close to the place on the carpet where I had found her on a different day, on her knees examining the old, faded spot left by a sauce spilled years ago. I look at the shoes through the bag and see they’re made by Chanel. I look back at the carpet. I feel the same vague but familiar memory. What is it that I can’t recall?

I put the shoes back on the front hall table, but whatever it is that I can’t quite remember continues to nag at me. I grab a flashlight from the closet. Jogging up the steps to the third floor of the house, I feel something in the deep recesses of my mind propelling me up toward the attic.

The third floor consists mostly of small rooms that used to be servants’ quarters when the house was first built. Those rooms were still used for staff when my parents lived in the house and my siblings and I were children. By the time Frank and Joanie raised their kids here, the space was used for playrooms.

Stepping on several creaky floorboards, I remember as a kid how spooky it seemed on the third floor. I smile, give a slight fake shiver, flick on the light switch, and head for the attic door at the end of a confining dark hallway.

I open that door and walk up the narrow steep flight of stairs into a world of fifty years before when my brothers and I played oh so many games of hide-and-seek. At the top of the steps, I tug on a string hanging from an old light bulb, and it clicks on.

Not a lot of light, but it’s enough to make my way to other strings to click on more lights in the vast attic that sprawls from one end of the house to the other. Finally, I stand in the middle and rotate three-hundred-and-sixty degrees to find the space filled to the rafters. Frank and I, with kids, ought to clean this out.

I would bet some relics up here go back to the original owners, mixed among the things that belonged to my grandparents and my parents. I walk around the many ancient steamer trunks and footlockers, using my flashlight to read travel stickers and name tags. I look for a group of cases that I packed with my mother’s things after she died. Even though I gave away a lot of her clothes, I packed up my favorite vintage items of hers thinking I’d get to them one of these days.

Light from a round window at the front of the house illuminates three trunks. Pay dirt. Flipping open the two clasps and lifting the lid of the closest of these trunks, I carefully touch the beautiful clothes by Oscar de la Renta, Valentino, and Dior—and I sigh. I still vividly remember my always elegant mother wearing these dresses. Closing the trunk, I push it aside. This isn’t the one I’m looking for.

I open the next trunk and gaze at an amazing mélange of handbags and perhaps two dozen pairs of shoes, all well cared for. When I was in my twenties, I had no interest in these beautiful accessories, but now I often use one of my mother’s Hermés pocketbooks, and Laura carries one of her grandmother’s Chanel bags.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I pull out a half-dozen pairs of beautiful shoes. Then I spot it—a Chanel shoe bag—and I find the pumps with the broken heel. Thinking back to when my mother last wore them, I wiggle the heel, and in an instant I’m back in that moment.

I had been taking some glasses out of a cabinet when my mother entered the dining room carrying a dish filled to the brim with her tomato basil sauce. Suddenly, a little dark-haired girl darted into the room through another door. She was shrieking and laughing as she chased one of our dogs. Was it Glory, our black Lab? This was in the late-1970s, so, yes, the dog probably was Glory.

Gleefully running around the table after the dog, the girl bumped into my mother, who, startled, tried her best not to spill the sauce. I dashed over and caught the dish from my mother, but it still splashed on the carpet.

I should have rushed to my mother’s rescue instead as she teetered on the very same Chanel heels I now hold in my hands. “Oh, dear,” she cried, as she lost her balance, trying to break her fall against the sideboard and crashing to the floor.

Glory and the little girl stopped running, and the girl stood frozen in horror. As my mother moaned in pain on the floor, the child burst into howling tears, hiding under the table with her arms wrapped tightly around the beautiful black Lab.

“Mother, are you all right?” I dashed over as she sat up to rub her ankle and take off the shoe with the broken heel.

“I’ll be fine, Ronnie,” she said. “I noticed earlier that this heel felt a little loose. But, you know, they’re my favorites. Oh, well, off to the cobbler for repair.” I helped Mother stand up and hop to a chair, while the little girl continued sobbing under the table.

Rosa, our housekeeper, entered the dining room, drawn by the commotion. She looked at my mother massaging her ankle, the spilled sauce on the carpet, and the girl glued to the dog under the table. “Oh, Mrs. Rutherfurd. I’ll clean this up immediately.” She shifted her gaze to the child, who couldn’t have been more than four or five. “Maria! What have you done?” she scolded. “Let go of Glory, and go straight to the kitchen.”

The small, dark-haired girl released the dog, who rushed over to lick up the spilled sauce. Maria ran out of the room, now crying even harder.

“Oh, Rosa. Don’t be so tough on her,” my mother said. “It was just an accident…”

Gosh, I haven’t thought about Rosa in years. Funny how an old memory can pop up out of nowhere. Obviously, the broken shoe was the trigger. Wonder why my mother never got this shoe fixed?

I put the broken-heeled Chanel back in the trunk filled to the brim with shoes and all those handbags. Mother had so many and all equally gorgeous. I remember, as a little girl, shuffling around in her high heels and feeling so pretty. Definitely where I got my love of beautiful shoes.

As I come down the steps from the third to the second floor, I encounter Juliana standing in the wide hall staring at me with a look that telegraphs
what are you doing up there?
Before I can say a word, she walks into her room and shuts the door. I guess the chess game downstairs is finished.

I get it. She probably wonders whether, if she marries Frank, she’ll have her sister-in-law wandering into this house at any hour of the day. If they marry, I’ll have to be sensitive to their privacy. But she’s not his wife yet.

~~~~~

That evening I join Frank and Juliana for supper at our nearby club. We sit with several friends at a round table on the terrace that looks out over the gently rolling contours of the golf course. Frank gives me a small glance with a quick sad smile, and I’m betting that we’re both missing our brother, Peter, who should be with us on this beautiful, balmy evening.