The last point caused vehement discussion among the board members. Bailing out a criminal wasn’t like doing a fundraiser for a temple member who needed a kidney transplant, or an uninsured congregant whose twin daughters were joined at the ribs. This was assault and battery. Seven out of twelve temple board members said the temple had no business raising bail money in a controversial case such as this.
Ryan was fine with the temple’s decision. He was miffed, however, that his health club hadn’t take up a collection for him. At Mitzy’s bequest, their joint personal trainer had paid Ryan a visit. “Like I told you before, man,” said Frankie. “Anything you need, I’m here for you.” Yet, nothing had come to pass.
Born-again Christians fluttered into the visitation room to save his soul. When he declined to accept the light of Jesus, they steered off to another more compliant criminal.
Criminal. That’s what he was. Even if a jury found him innocent of saving his wife’s life, even if he went home, that word would forever lie tucked away in a chamber of his heart.
Home. A big “if.” Like the Statue of Liberty, Laurie had shone her light on him following the rescue. She’d come here expecting to reconcile. In return, all she’d asked was for him to accept his animal instinct; to acknowledge that, sans regret, he had passionately defended his woman. Instead, Ryan’s moral self-castigation sent her home to their son, confused.
He was a schmuck. He’d walked out on his health insurance company in protest over their refusal to pay the claims of catastrophically ill young adults, yet neglected to complete the complaint form he’d downloaded from the Insurance Board. He’d carted off a dead body and kept that secret from his wife. He’d permanently incapacitated the man who’d sexually attacked his wife, then disclaimed his achievement. Why? Because he wrestled with the moral ramifications associated with each action. Maybe incarceration was necessary to reset both his brain and his balls.
Just then, a tall middle-aged man dressed in a long black coat and a black top hat, a brown beard and long curly haired sideburns took a seat at a circular gray table welded to the floor. He pulled from his pocket a prayer book and an assortment of tiny black boxes. Ryan felt his penetrating gaze. “G-d sent me here to help you.”
*
“Elizabeth Grabowski?” Gerald’s voice boomed across the car lined side street. Certainly out of his volume comfort zone, but this one time he would make an exception.
The woman’s head shot up, her hand poised on the door of a newer model black SUV. From the white gray smoke streaming from the vehicle’s exhaust pipe, Gerald ascertained she’d left the engine on while running back into the apartment building for a forgotten item.
Gerald MacFerron’s heart thundered in his ears as he strode towards the woman. “Do you have a moment?”
The woman in the gray wool peacoat shrank back at his anxious tone. “I late for work.” Her words whooshed from her lips as she yanked open the driver’s door.
Gerald’s gut ached. “Do you not recognize me, Elizabeth?”
Blue eyes scanned his face. Her lack of visual recognition stung him more than the slash of a whip. With a toss of her head, the woman climbed into the SUV and slammed the door.
Gerald’s thoughts raced liked skittering ants. He skirted to the driver’s door and peeked inside. Elizabeth was clenching the steering wheel, her eyes staring straight ahead. He pressed his nose to the window and breathed in aromatic memories. The fresh scrubbed girl who’d bestowed her ruby lips upon his pale mouth. The heady scent of red roses Elizabeth snipped from his sister’s bushes. The whiff of two lovers entwined on freshly laundered sheets and comforters.
Elizabeth threw the car in reverse. Gerald’s cheeks slid along the windows, thrusting his head to one side. “Wait,” he called out, rubbing his face. He rushed into the narrow one-way street and stood like a crossing guard about to shepherd young children across a busy road.
The SUV came to a screeching halt just inches from his toes.
Elizabeth materialized from the car, brandishing a snow scraper. “Go away or I call police,” she demanded angrily, her fear transformed into rage.
Seeing her like this, her cheekbones grown angular, her eyes icy, Gerald’s voice softened. His hair was silver now. His forehead lined with fine wrinkles. Perhaps she didn’t recognize him. “Elizabeth, it’s me. Gerald,” he repeated.
“You not my Gerald,” she screamed. “My Gerald would come after me when I leave sister’s employ. My Gerald would tell parents I not ‘bad’ girl. My Gerald make me his wife.”
Gerald fell back as if he’d been punched. He wished he could implant new words to take their place. “When I returned from my business trip, my sister told me she’d sent you back to Poland because you stole her favorite crystal vase.” He cringed at her bitter expression.
“Please understand, my love. I was crazy with worry.” Even now, Gerald could feel that cancerous pit of anxiety lodged in his breast. “You never told me the name of your village. Helga destroyed your contact information. There was no Internet in those days.”
Elizabeth’s fur-gloved hand still clutched the snow scraper. The shrill beep of a car horn rose in staccato from behind the idling SUV, making them both jump. “Many years pass,” she shouted across the din. “I marry good man.” Elizabeth spun back towards her vehicle.
Adrenalin pumped through his leg muscles as he rushed towards her. “When I discovered my sister had concocted the stolen vase story to keep us apart, I left her house.”
“You go,” Elizabeth screamed, tears streaming down her face. She slipped into the black leather driver’s seat and locked the door.
Gerald’s heart beat painfully against his chest. Dizzily, he scanned the street. The neighborhood had switched into hustle bustle mode. A scattering of parents emerged from apartment buildings, hoisting their daycare-bound toddlers and pre-school children into green, black, or silver minivans.
Frantically, he grabbed the door handle and pressed his face against the window. “Were you pregnant with our child?” he mouthed. Elizabeth glanced at him, panic etched across her face. Then she hit the gas pedal, hard. The black SUV shrieked down the street and Gerald went flying. Lying in the road, his ears cradled by blasting car horns, Gerald reached into his pocket and pulled out a handgun. He waved it around like a gunslinger, the intoxicating power of the moment shooting through his veins like a speeding bullet. Then he pulled the trigger.
36
Silver clouds shadowed row after row of snow-clad monuments as Laurie drove through the frozen cemetery grounds. A hundred feet off to the side, the body of Gerald MacFerron was being lowered into a freshly dug plot. She pulled to the curb and threw the car in neutral. A couple dozen people shivered beneath a canvas canopy, watching as the priest made the final sign of the cross.
Better late than never, she muttered. Yet she made no move to open the car door.
A tall, black suited man stepped toward the minivan and motioned for her to roll down her window. “The service is over. You may want to park on the perimeter.”
Laurie noted his cemetery employee badge. “Thanks. I’m fine.” He gave her a perfunctory smile, then headed back towards the funeral party.
She could see perfectly well from inside her toasty warm minivan. All Ryan had asked her to do was pay his respects. That meant coming face-to-face with Gerald’s sister, a task she abhorred. Helga Beckermann would be shocked to learn that the summer home neighbor whom she detested also happened to be her estranged brother’s former employee. Laurie was in no hurry to roll that snowball.
As she debated her next move, Laurie considered offering Helga a polite “So sorry your younger brother committed suicide.” Visions of a manipulative woman packing a pregnant Elizabeth Grabowski off to Poland overshadowed that consideration. She could only imagine Gerald’s horror upon returning home to find his true love whisked away like dust bunnies.
All the more reason to stay put, thought Laurie. She peered out the front window, in
search of any Great Harvest employees she’d recognize from company parties.
The crowd was thinning now. Two middle-aged women in fur coats and high black boots sauntered over the icy grass to their late model cars. A couple of dark suited young men strode across the frozen landscape. Still no sign of Helga Beckermann. It didn’t make sense she’d absent herself unless she was protesting her brother’s suicide.
A sudden sourness overwhelmed her taste buds. Quickly Laurie pulled a tissue from the glove compartment and spit out the offensive substance. Nothing there. Not again, she prayed. But the unbidden memories were too strong. In slow motion, Ryan jumped on her attacker’s back, causing his cock to fall from her mouth. The creak of a neck twisting. The thud of a body crashing to the floor. The anguish in Ryan’s eyes as he cradled her body against him, reassuring her everything would be all right.
The whirl of sirens as paramedics loaded her into the ambulance and trucked her off to the hospital. Stadium-voltage lighting coursed through her closed eyelids as emergency room doctors loomed over her. Needles punctured her arm, their tubes hosting her own blood. The long wait to learn if Brad had bestowed a deadly gift. The blessed news her body was safe.
Another knock on the car door window. Laurie’s eyes shot open. She must have dozed off. Two pairs of eyes stared back at her. “Can we come inside?”
*
Laurie clicked the heat up one notch. Then she turned to her passengers. “How did you two connect?”
“Griselda and me meet today at service,” said Elizabeth.
“The majority of funeral goers were Great Harvest employees,” said Griselda. “Since I recently resigned the company, I experienced some disquiet in their presence. Then I came upon this lovely lady with auburn hair, and I knew. An older version of the picture on Gerald’s desk.”
“You know what?” asked Elizabeth.
“That you were my employer’s love of his life.”
Laurie warily eyed Elizabeth. Judging by her calm demeanor, she knew nothing about Gerald’s love letters.
“He come to me three days ago,” said Elizabeth, her eyes misting. “At first, I not recognize him. Not see for twenty-three years.”
“What did he want?” asked Laurie.
“Gerald apologize for not coming after me when his sister fire me.”
“Did you forgive him?”
“I tell him I marry good man. Send him away.”
Laurie peered at Griselda, perched stiffly behind the passenger seat. “How did he react?”
“Gerald act crazy. Grab car door handle. Scream I have his baby.” Laurie noted Griselda’s strained expression. Then she turned back to the housekeeper. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I drive away.”
For the first time, Griselda spoke. “You left Gerald in the street, not knowing?”
“He not come after me before. He have no right to know.”
“He did come after you,” Griselda whispered over the car’s steady hum.
Elizabeth looked at her strangely. “How you know this?”
Griselda enunciated each word. “There were letters.”
Elizabeth squinted at the secretary. “I not receive any letters.” Laurie gazed at the two women. The electricity between them felt palpable.
Griselda’s eyes sparkled. “Ten years’ worth of letters. I never mailed them.”
“No!” screamed the housekeeper. In a flash, she reached across Rory’s Xbox games and began pummeling Griselda on her head.
Griselda attempted to shield her head from the assault, yet made no move for the door handle. “I loved Gerald.” Her voice ricocheted off the ceiling of the minivan. “I thought if he never received a response from you, he’d love me, too.”
Her heart in her throat, Laurie slid to the carpeted area dividing the driver and passenger seats. Then she crawled towards the back of the minivan and reached for Elizabeth’s arm. “Stop!”
The housekeeper twisted away from Laurie and punched Griselda in the eye. “Beech!”
The car engine rumbling beneath her knees, Laurie traversed the final inches that separated her from the housekeeper. Then she grabbed her wrist. “Stop now, Elizabeth!”
Elizabeth crumpled to the floor. “All those lost years,” she keened.
“I did not set out to destroy your life,” said Griselda in a tight voice, still cradling her eye.
“You not think of me at all,” the housekeeper said, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Laurie sat on her rump and massaged her knees as she listened to the sad tale unfold. Here she thought she’d had it bad with Ryan.
“There were many women in Gerald’s life, yet you were my only contender for his love.”
“Did you ever tell Gerald how you felt about him?” Laurie asked softly.
Griselda shook her head. “I waited for him to make the first move. He never did.”
Elizabeth breathed in deeply and swiped at her tears.
“Once you moved back to Chicago, he hired private investigators to observe your daily life,” Griselda continued.
Elizabeth trembled. “Gerald track me like animal?”
Laurie reached out and touched her quivering hand. “He loved you, Elizabeth.”
“None of my attempts could defeat that love,” Griselda whispered.
“If only I tell Gerald he have son,” Elizabeth lamented.
“He already knew,” said Laurie.
The housekeeper gaped at her.
“She is correct,” said Griselda, sitting tall. “Helga wrote him a confession letter,” said Laurie. “She needed to cleanse her soul.”
“She is ill?”
“That is why she is not here today,” said Griselda. “In the letter, Helga apologized for sending you away. Her last line was ‘Somewhere in this world, you have a son.’”
“It better he not know his Terrence dead.” Elizabeth lowered her head into her arms.
An awkward silence ensued.
“Or that he try to kill his Aunt Helga,” said the housekeeper. Laurie’s jaw dropped.
Griselda nodded. “The private investigator kept tabs on her son.”
“You said nothing about that during your home visit,” Laurie accused.
“That was none of your concern,” Griselda said huffily.
Laurie’s head was hurting like hell. She turned to Elizabeth. “When did your son attempt to harm his aunt?”
“After group home job,” said the housekeeper. “In August he quick leave Chicago and take Greyhound bus back to Wisconsin.”
Laurie gulped. “By any chance, did your son own a yellow sleeveless jersey with the initials ‘TG’ and the number ‘7’ on the front?”
“His favorite shirt,” Elizabeth wailed. “He like because all other jerseys have letters in back. ‘7’ his birthday day. He wear this shirt day he leave.”
Laurie cradled Elizabeth in her arms. “How did Terrence discover Helga was his aunt?”
“At group home, Arnold say she hurt him with her fists. Terrence say he confront grandma, make things better for Arnold. I plead with him not to harm her. I warn him he go to jail.”
“What did Terrence do?” asked Laurie.
“He pack bags. I beat on his back. ‘Arnold’s grandmother is your aunt!’ I tell him about love of birth father and me. I tell him Helga is sister of his father. He must not harm her.”
Laurie’s heart sunk. “Oh my G-d,” she said aloud.
Both women looked at her.
“Your son died on the lawn of my summer home,” she cried out.
“What?” Elizabeth asked fearfully.
“He had a napkin with my family’s Wisconsin and Chicago home addresses in his pocket,” said Laurie.
“But he not even know you,” Elizabeth protested.
“Years ago, Arnold and I worked at the same summer camp. He told your son he’d had a crush on me but I snubbed him. This incensed Terrence.”
“What mean ‘incensed?’”
“Your son became upset with Laurie,” said Griselda.
Laurie shot her a quick look. “Right. Anyway, he took the Greyhound bus up to Milwaukee and hitched a ride to Oconomowoc, preparing to knock me off.”
“Knock off?” asked Elizabeth, obviously perplexed.
“Kill. He wanted to kill me.”
“Or at the very least, teach you a lesson,” said Griselda.
Griselda was becoming a veritable chatterbox, thought Laurie. “It was a scorcher.”
“Very hot,” Griselda interrupted politely.
This time Laurie paid the secretary no heed. “Terrence hiked towards my house. He was dehydrated and stopped to take a breather at the overnight camp where Arnold and I once worked. By the time he made it to my property, the heat was too much for him. He collapsed.”
Tears ran down Elizabeth’s cheeks. “My poor, poor boy.”
“A nutshell was found in his pocket,” said Griselda.
“My Terrence allergic to peanuts.”
“Odds are, he found a peanut in his pocket and ate it, ignoring his own allergy, because he was so hungry,” said Laurie. “Even his canteen was empty.”
Elizabeth eyed her suspiciously. “How you know about canteen?”
“I moved the canteen to give your son mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but it was too late. I ran inside the house to phone the police. By the time they arrived, your son’s body had disappeared.”
“His body disappear?” Elizabeth made the sign of the cross.
“Next morning, he turned up on Helga’s driveway,” said Laurie. “She never suspected the unidentified body was her nephew.”
“Bravo, Mrs. Atkins,” said Griselda. “However, one loose thread remains.”
No way could Griselda know about the videotape of Ryan removing the body. “What might that be?” she asked.
Just then, the driver’s door flew open. Laurie turned to find a gun pointed at her. A black gloved hand yanked her from the minivan.
*
Ryan sneered. “Find someone who deserves your help.”
Smiling gently, the bearded man placed his coat on a stool. “Every Jew deserves a second chance.”
“Who are you?”
Window of Guilt Page 23
