That was true. Like most “old wives,” I never forgot when we had trouble making ends meet at the end of every month. Even after we made it, I kept our spending on the low side of our income. A new wife, marrying a man she considered rich, might think five million was real money, even now when “rich” meant Lear Jets and an indoor tennis court.
“I don’t think he was having much trouble. The divorce was only about a year ago, and trust me, his finances were sound then. And then he closed the big deal with Will Bowie.” Still, that was predicated on winning the lawsuit, the one he pretended didn’t worry him.
“No problem, then,” Vince said. “Just a stupid rumor.”
“But—” I wanted to prove it wrong. And Vince wasn’t giving me the opposition I needed. “Don wouldn’t do that to Tommy.”
“And no need to get so drastic, even in a business reversal. There’s always bankruptcy. Just look at Donald Trump.”
That Other Donald was one of my Don’s secret heroes, so I took heart from that. “That’s the way Don was. If a deal went bad, he’d brood for a while, then pick up and go on.”
“Yeah. Hey, did I tell you what the doc said about my knee?”
I responded as expected to his change of subject, and for the rest of our walk, the word suicide went unspoken. But when Vince left, I stood in the kitchen and listened to the echoes.
Suicide. Jumped. Killed himself. I couldn’t stop thinking it. Was that the message of the silver box, the returned ring? Was I again the last to know the truth about Don? No. It was crazy. Don wouldn’t desert his son. He wouldn’t.
Tommy barreled in then, followed by Jamie and Lily, and they contrived to banish all rational thought for an hour. I had to feed them and listen to them argue about basketball, and arbitrate a dispute about whether baseball or soccer was most boring. I didn’t let a thought that might hurt Tommy shiver through my mind, at least until his friends went home, and he to bed. Then the thoughts crowded in, the little demons of doubt and one great big devil of dread.
In my file cabinet, I found Don’s life insurance policy, signed eleven months ago. There, in the fine print, was: “In case of suicide within a year of initiation, policy is null and void.” That was what I’d feared, that the insurance company had reason to believe it was suicide.
But it wasn’t. The police said it was an accident. And I was going to believe that.
In the morning, I went to the office thinking if I just took care of this detail—and I hoped it was just a detail—I could get on with that essential task of moving on, burying the dead. So I got my shovel and started to fill the grave.
Well, at least I called the insurance agent. “Terry, just checking on that death certificate.”
“Uh—” She must have been taken aback by my breezy tone. I guess maybe I was shoveling too fast. She said, “I sent the death certificate and the claim to the adjustor.”
“Oh, good.” I didn’t know how to say this delicately. “The death certificate was okay? Could you fax me a copy?”
This was met by silence. She probably thought I was a ghoul, like I might hang it on my wall like a trophy. “Oh, right. You need it for your son’s social security benefits.”
“That’s it,” I said with relief. “I’ll get an official copy, but this will get the ball rolling.”
I hung up and stationed myself at the fax machine. A few minutes later, the page rolled out and I grabbed it. I searched till I found the line Cause of Death: Accidental Fall.
I sagged against the copier. No problem. No problem.
Then I found myself at the file cabinet, opening the folder with that last, odd message from Don. I missed you. If the rumors were right, it meant just after he mailed that card, just after he pawned that box and his wedding ring . . . Maybe he was saying goodbye.
The doorbell jangled. When I crossed into the reception area and looked out, I saw Brad. Automatically, I smoothed my hair, wishing I’d put my shoes back on before I came out of my office. Brad looked as beautiful as Milan tailors and an authentic English valet could make a man. I looked like . . . me. Oh, well, Brad had known me long enough that he had to be used to . . . me. I twisted the key and let him in to our little reception hall.
“I’m sorry I didn’t return your call,” he said. “I figured I’d try to catch you here. How about lunch?”
His disarming smile was like a beacon. After a week where I was snubbed by old friends at the funeral, treated like a nutcase by my former lawyer, and suspected of collusion by my one-time buddy Will, Brad’s warmth was comforting. I could ask him . . . Well, no. If he hadn’t heard the rumors, I didn’t want to tell him. But I could secretly find out what he thought, what he knew. I retrieved my shoes and purse and said, “Lead on.”
“I’ll drive.” Brad stopped at the curb and aimed a keychain at a handsome silver Lexus. Magically, the locks sprung up, the interior light came on, and the engine roared to life. I was impressed. I know, I know, it’s pitiful what little it took to impress me vehicularly.
“What happened to the Beamer?” I asked as we climbed in.
“Sold it.” He slipped the gear shift into reverse and backed out into the street. “I’m just leasing this for a few months, to see if I want to buy one.”
Some men—and Tommy, of course—would see the Lexus as a comedown, as it was half the price of Brad’s BMW. But Brad was old rich, and the price never mattered to him. As for me, well, I allowed myself a moment of auto-envy, as this “cheapo” car had thrice the value of my van when it was brand new, and hid no old Pokemon cards in the pretty upholstery either. “So are you going to buy one?”
He shrugged. “Finances are better now. I might trade up to a Benz. Can’t go wrong with a Mercedes.”
I guessed maybe even the old rich could be seduced by leather seats, German engineering, and big price tags. I sighed. Brad’s background had always seemed so posh to me, like something out of a Wharton novel. I never really figured out why he ended up tromping around construction sites with me and Don.
Unbidden came the thought—Don had a Mercedes. I guessed Wanda had it now.
I let Brad choose the restaurant, and his choice was no surprise. He drove us across East Bank to the Cellar, a dark cigar-perfumed bar with a twelve-page wine list. This early—it wasn’t noon yet—we were the only patrons. Once the waitress left us, there was an awkward silence as I sought a subtle way of introducing the subject of Don.
Brad finally did it for me. “How’s Tommy dealing with his dad’s death?”
“I don’t know.” It seemed a pathetic confession for an involved mother to make. “He’s maintaining. Most of the time, he goes about his business. He says he’ll deal with it later.”
“That’s good. I mean, well, better that he stay in control if he can. He’s probably afraid of falling apart, and when he finds out he can handle it, he’ll be able to get over it.”
I stared at his earnest face, slightly golden now in the glow of the candle. “Get over it? I don’t think he ought to get over it. This is his dad, after all.”
Brad flushed. “I just meant that, well, a boy that age feels stronger if he can stay calm and in control. And when he’s feeling strong, he can deal with the problem better. Later.”
Well, that was Brad. Even at the Ivy League school where I met him, Brad stood out as one of those old-money types F. Scott Fitzgerald alternately scorned and revered. The Munssen family coat of arms might as well have proclaimed Keep up a good front. I felt a rush of pity for him, for all the tears he couldn’t shed, and maybe I felt a bit of envy too. It must be a relief to put bad feelings into a safe mental compartment and shut the door. Instead, here I was, filled with that grim dread.
“I wish I had answers for him.” I launched into my subtle interrogation. “It seems so senseless, accidental death.”
He picked up hi
s drink and sloshed it a bit so that the ice cubes clicked against the glass. “I know. My sister Sylva died when I was 16. She was 12. A sailing accident. It never has made any sense. I thought I should have saved her. But I couldn’t.” Brad never got angry, but there was something hot in his voice. “All I could do was drill a hole in that damned boat and sink it.” After a moment, he added more soberly, “For years I used to ask myself why I hadn’t gone out on the boat with her that day. Why I didn’t watch from the shore.”
I’d known Brad for twenty years, and I’d never heard this before. Impulsively, I took his hand. “I didn’t know about your sister. I do that too. If only. If only we could change one little thing.”
“We have to let it go. Especially you. You have to stay strong for your son.”
“It’s hard. So many reminders.” Belatedly, I remembered my plan to extract information. “In fact, Don came to the house just before he died. He told me about some lawsuit. It was practically the last thing he said, and I’ve been wondering. Do you know anything about it?”
Brad broke a nacho chip, dipping one half in the salsa. “He said he bought some land from a farmer, and the farmer claimed he got it fraudulently. From what he said, it was just a nuisance lawsuit.”
“You think maybe it was more than that?”
Brad didn’t answer right away. Then, frowning, he said, “Don made some serious money on the resale, and the seller thinks it wasn’t fair, so he’s taking hostages.”
I nodded. Quick turnaround profits were hardly unknown in a recovering market, and perfectly legal, but Brad and I knew how easy it was to tie up a title with a lawsuit. “The filing said this guy was an inventor of fertilizer. That rings some bell for me. Do you remember Don had some bright idea about investing in some guy who was making a new fertilizer?”
“Vaguely.” Brad swirled the drink so that the ice chinked against the glass. “One of his brainstorms. It was right before we parted company. So did he go through with it?”
“Not while I was comptroller. Who knows what happened after that? It’s too strange to be a coincidence. Maybe he invested in the fertilizer, and that’s how he got this Murdoch guy to sell him the land last year. You know, gave him a big loan, then leveraged that into getting the land.”
“Sure.” Brad used his finger to draw a circle in the condensation on his glass. “But that’s not fraud.”
“What if he’d foreclosed on the loan? And taken the land as the collateral?”
“He would have had to file suit, and we would have heard about it. And we didn’t.”
“Right,” I said, still uncertain. “But let’s say he’d lent the farmer money, and then foreclosed. Do you think this new lawsuit might have some merit then?”
Brad huffed. “Really, Meg, this is all so arcane. Don had title to the land when he sold it to Bowie, right?
“Yes. So you don’t think Don did anything wrong.”
He shrugged. “Taking advantage of a naive property owner isn’t illegal yet. But could be a jury will want to stick it to the big city feller who stuck it to the poor old country boy. I wouldn’t chance a trial myself. Usually this sort of thing can be bought off cheaply.” He glanced at me. “I wonder why you weren’t served. You’re trustee for Tommy, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” I stopped before saying Tommy unfortunately inherited not a percent of his dad’s company, and thus, somewhat more fortunately, wouldn’t be inheriting the lawsuit either. “But it’s only been a week since Don died. The suit was filed a few weeks ago.”
“That’s right. I saw him right about then. He didn’t seem worried. But you know Don. Always positive, always minimizing trouble.” Brad shook his head ruefully. We’d both had to solve problems Don’s minimizing had caused for Ross-Munssen. Don’t worry! The bank won’t notice if we skip just one payment! Don’t worry! Brad and I had this in common—we worried.
I thought about the silver box with the ring. I couldn’t tell Brad about that. I could just imagine how someone else would interpret those little gifts. “Do you think all the stress, the lawsuit, distracted him?”
“Why do you ask?” His tone was sharp, then softened. “Meggie?”
Now I felt ashamed. I’d been sitting here, talking to my old friend, but with a secret agenda. He deserved better than that, sympathetic as he had always been. “I just wonder about it. You know, if he knew what was happening when he fell, and if he felt any pain.”
“Meg, I’m telling you.” Brad put out his hand in a halt motion. “Just focus on the here and now. Not the past.”
I wavered between Brad’s old-fashioned denial and my own inclination to anguish. If I were the actual widow, I could grieve long and loud and no one would object. But I was just the ex-widow, and I shouldn’t be so upset. It was just that the mental video kept playing, of Don falling, and no one there to catch him. No one even there for him. Weird, Will called it. And maybe not so weird. Deliberate.
“You’re probably right,” I said finally. “I wish I could stop thinking about it, wondering about it. Sudden death. By misadventure, isn’t that what they used to say?”
Brad lifted his hand for another drink, but must have thought better of it, because when the waitress arrived, he waved her away. “I admit it. I’ve been wondering the same thing.”
Oh, no. If Brad, the stiff-upper-lip man of rational denial, had been speculating too . . . “Really? I thought I was the only one who worried about that.”
“Meggie, let’s not, okay? Let’s not go down this road.”
I felt a chill shiver through me. “What do you mean?”
He picked up his glass, staring at the ice cubes. “Look, he was probably drunk. Maybe went that night to see what the workers had done and leaned over too far.”
“Drunk?” The video in my head went into edit-mode. Now the figure weaved across the floor, stumbled into the edge of the building, tumbled out, too sodden to feel himself land. I closed my eyes. It was awful. But it was better. Wasn’t it? “Don hardly ever got drunk. You know that. And he wouldn’t drink that much if he was going to drive. He was careful that way.”
“He was before. When he was with you. But lately—”
“Lately what?” I demanded.
“Well, that last time I saw him, he’d had a few too many. He didn’t make a fuss when I said I’d drive him home, but it stood out in my memory. You’re right, it wasn’t like him, before.”
“But now? You mean, he had reason to drink now?”
I was hoping he’d say something about Wanda. Well, what do you expect? But all he did was look at me for a moment, then reply, “Well, when I saw him, he was pouring it down. He started out agitated, but after a few drinks, he settled down. I thought he was, as they say, self-medicating. Maybe last week the stress caught up with him.” With some irony, he swigged the last half-inch of watery whiskey. “All I know is, if this got out, it would be pretty ugly. Tabloid stuff. Don was a prominent man in town, and the masses like to see the mighty fall.”
Neither of us commented on the Freudian slip. But it was true. What counted with scandal was not right or wrong, but win or lose. In the real-estate community (rivaling Tommy’s freshman class for backbiting), Don’s leaving me for a younger woman wasn’t scandalous, because he won—he got most of the money and a sexy wife too. I was the subject of whispers at the Metro Realty Board meetings, because I was, indubitably, the loser. And a loser is what Don would be if anyone started the rumor that he had died drunk. The scandal wasn’t drinking, only screwing up irretrievably while he was drunk. But there was already a much worse rumor going around.
I should have been relieved at this alternate option. “It all fits. It’s just so tawdry.”
“I don’t want to think about it.” With exasperation, he exclaimed, “Meggie, we should be celebrating his life, remembering the good times, not dissect
ing his death.”
I agreed, and after that there wasn’t much to say. I could count on Brad’s discretion. So I told him I was going to walk back the few blocks to my office, gathered up my things, and with his impeccable manners, he rose with me and kissed my cheek. I was touched. We’d never been kissy-kissy friends. Brad was so reserved, and anyway, casual physical contact with men was something I avoided. In fact, I worried a bit that I was still too reticent, now that I was single. But Brad’s kiss felt right, comforting and kind.
I whispered goodbye, and blinking in the sudden light as I left the bar, I walked back to the office. I tried to focus on the important issues. The lawsuit, for example. If it was serious enough to drive Don to drink, then maybe Will really had something to worry about. If it was serious enough to drive Don to drink, was it serious enough to drive him to—
I wasn’t going to let the speculation take up any more space in my mind. I didn’t believe it for a minute, but I hoped the insurance company never heard of it.
IN THE END, I bribed Tommy to write thank-you notes. He’d gotten a stack of condolence cards and resisted the notion that he had to answer them. I could hardly blame him. He was a teenager. He didn’t want to have reply to cards reminiscing about his father, and commiserating on his loss. There was nothing but frustration and sadness involved, and I longed to let him evade the duty.
But my mother-within (that is, my mother) takes over at times like this and does The Right Thing. “No, you can’t email them. No, you can’t make one generic form letter on the computer. A handwritten note, just a few lines, to everyone.” I set down a pad of black-bordered notepaper. (Well, that was what my mother said you should use for this occasion.)
“I’ll address and stamp the envelopes.” No response. A bit desperately—very desperately—I said, “You do this, and do well at driver’s ed, and when you turn sixteen, I’ll get you a car.”
Bribery is not my usual mode of discipline. But I rationalized it. I was planning to get him a car anyway, so he wouldn’t be borrowing mine, and this way he had to do something to earn it. And no matter how much long-term moral damage it caused, bribery usually worked.
Until Death Page 9
