Killer Tied

by Lesley A. Diehl

  The father of one of the women I attended college with many years ago was head of the Hopkins Institution, the private hospital on the Connecticut shore near Madison. Connecticut was a small state in geographical size and in people-to-people connections. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. It was many years since I had contact with Selma Sandhurst or her father. The chances were he wasn’t even head of the place now, or he might not remember me. If Eleanor’s mother hadn’t landed in Hopkins, Dr. Sandhurst might know where she could have been a private patient. Would he tell me? Probably not, but maybe if I told him the circumstances surrounding Mr. Montrose’s death, he might help me. I remembered Selma introducing me to him once. My impression was that he was an okay guy, pleasant and genuinely interested in others.

  There was just one problem. Selma and I hadn’t spoken since college and for a good reason. Jerry had been her boyfriend before he was mine. We hadn’t parted on friendly terms. I thought I recalled her yelling, “You’re a skinny, man-stealing bitch.” Yeah, that was what she said. Maybe she’d forgotten all about it by now. Maybe she hadn’t shared this episode with her dad.

  Probably nothing would come of contacting her father, but I had to give it a try. I dialed the Hopkins Institute and asked to talk with the director, Dr. Sandhurst. There was a slight delay, then a female voice came on the line and informed me the doctor was in session and would call me back if I left my name and number. While I waited, I mulled over how much time I should let pass before I called again. Maybe Sandhurst would never return my call. What would I do then? I settled back into the pillows on the bed to consider my next move and was startled from sleep by my cell ringing.

  “Well, hello, Eve. How is the man-stealing bitch?”

  I recognized the voice even after all these years. She still sounded as enraged as she had the night Jerry and I hooked up. That was a plus. She hadn’t forgotten me.

  I decided to ignore her words, assuming they might have slipped out in her surprise to hear from an old school chum.

  “Selma. Did your dad tell you I was in town?”

  “No. My secretary told me you called. I’m the director of Hopkins now.”

  “So, how about dinner tonight, if you’re not busy?”

  “You’re assuming I’ve got nothing to be busy about. No man in my life. Like I can’t keep one. Is that what you’re implying?”

  “We could do it tomorrow night.”

  “No. Tonight is just dandy.” She pronounced the words in a snappish tone, then added, “Meet me at the Wren’s Roost. Seven.” She disconnected.

  The Wren’s Roost is where the guys took dates when we were in college. It was the place she and Jerry frequented on weekends, and I’d seen them there, laughing, dancing, drinking. She seemed into the guy while he—in true Jerry form, I was to later learn—seemed interested in me. We’d exchanged stares across the dance floor, mine filled with romance, his with lust. At the time I couldn’t tell the difference. I came in with my date that night. The four of us got real drunk, and I went home with Jerry while she left with my date. So why was she mad and I wasn’t? Maybe it was because my date that night was her cousin. I went on to marry Jerry and she went on to medical school. Given the course of our marriage, I think she got the better deal. But, from the way she answered the phone, maybe she didn’t see it that way.

  To be honest, I’d never liked Selma. I know that’s no excuse for stealing Jerry from her. I thought he was a hot item. I wanted him and figured a gal with her family connections could find other, more desirable men. I was right, of course, but Selma always had a temper and an attitude about what she thought was hers. She thought everything was hers. Like that cat book that says, “Everything I see here is mine.” Selma was like that. She thought being the Selma Sandhurst entitled her to anything and anyone. Jerry was lucky to get away from her. And I was unlucky enough to marry the guy. Maybe I could convince Selma she was better off without Jerry. I know I was. Maybe she’d forgive me. Maybe.

  I could bring Nappi along tonight and lead her to believe he was my boyfriend. Then she could steal him away from me, and the score would be settled. I didn’t think Nappi would like being used that way, so I discarded that scenario and decided to meet Selma alone and hope for the best. How mad can a person stay for, what … over a decade, plus?

  I told Nappi I was having dinner with an old college friend, someone I could get information from about Eleanor and her family. Nappi had his own plans for the evening. This was, after all, his home state, and he had many contacts here. I assumed he hadn’t seen them for a while so I envisioned him sitting in a room filled with cigar smoke talking over old times—old times being when he and his pals divvyed up territory and decided who their friends were.

  The Wren’s Roost hadn’t changed much since my college days. There was the same dark-wood paneling, red-velvet upholstered seats, and booths—now worn down to show grayish patches—the same dim light that made it easy to be friendly with your date without alerting everyone in the room. I found Selma sitting at the bar sipping a very pink drink—a cosmopolitan, I guessed. I slid onto the stool next to her and ordered a Scotch on the rocks from a bartender so bent with age that he could have been the same guy who served us the night I nabbed Jerry.

  “So how’s your cousin?” I asked. That was not the best of opening lines, but I wanted to keep her off-balance. I do not do apologetic. I am no wimp.

  “Well, he’s not still yearning for you, if that’s what you think.”

  “Yeah, well, neither is Jerry. We’re divorced.”

  She turned toward me. “Well. Here’s to good-old Jerry.” She held up her glass and took a sip.

  “You didn’t miss a thing, you know, by not marrying him.”

  “I heard he had zipper problems.”

  “He still does, but for now, he’s interested in a young woman whose name you might recognize.”

  “Did you call me to try to pump me for information I shouldn’t be giving you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then let me tell you something up front before we get started. I was damn glad you left with Jerry that night. I was trying to figure out a way to get rid of him. He was such a leech. You came into the bar, and the plan fell into place. I’d pawn him off on you with a big scene about how you were stealing him from me. I knew Jerry would like that idea—so desirable that sassy Eve Appel wanted him as well as me. It worked.” She held up her ring finger. “I married Frederick Banyon. We’ve got a house in the Hamptons, one on the shore, a ski chalet in Vermont, and a condo in Cabo. Life is good. What do you have, Eve?”

  Now, you might think I’d want to put this snarky broad in her place, but I needed information, so I decided to play nice. For the time being.

  “I have a secondhand shop in rural Florida and a shack in the swamps.”

  She had another drink at the bar, where she told me more. After college, she’d gone on to get her medical degree, then did a residency in psychiatry at Hopkins. When her father retired several years ago, she was appointed director. She kept her maiden name professionally, and that’s why my call to Dr. Sandhurst went to her. I let her talk. Unlike her father, she seemed genuinely uninterested in others, but intensely interested in impressing others. She was the same Selma Sandhurst I remembered. I felt sorry for her patients. When she took a breath to finish off her drink, I suggested we nab a table and she agreed.

  All that talking about herself must have put her in a better mood about me. Or maybe the booze warmed her up because we began to reminisce about our college days. I should say, she began to reminisce. I could hardly get in anything other than a “um-hum.”

  As if finally remembering her manners, she turned her attention to me.

  “So tell me why you looked me up,” she said after we had gotten our wine and put in our orders.

  “I’m working a case. I’m a PI now.”

  “You won’t get me to break confidentiality if you’re trying to snoop into some poor individual’s
hospital records.”

  “I know, I know. I thought I’d run a name by you to see if you recognized it. All you have to do is nod, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  She poured herself another glass of wine. “Go ahead.”

  “Did you ever run into anyone with the last name of Montrose? Or hear that name among your colleagues?”

  She rolled the name around on her tongue, then said, “Nope.”

  “I’m trying to track down family members because of the murder of a Mr. Montrose, and I have information that his wife was in an institution for some time.”

  “You think she might have killed him?”

  “I need to know more about her. She’s gone missing.” I decided not to tell Selma about any mob connection or that my father-in-law was suspected of the murder. I wasn’t surprised she couldn’t provide any information. Montrose was the name Eleanor’s mother had assumed when she and Henry met. I didn’t know her maiden name.

  The conversation lagged. Selma signaled for another bottle of wine when our entrees arrived. “I assume since you’re working on a case you can declare this dinner a business expense and bill your client.”

  “Sure.” Now that I knew she had nothing to tell me and we were finding it difficult to find other topics of conversation, I wanted to hurry her through dinner and end the evening. She poured herself another glass of wine from the bottle and held it up to me. I shook my head and indicated my still half-full glass. A Scotch and a glass and a half of wine were enough for me.

  She sipped her wine and chased her food around the plate with her fork, then she gazed at me across the table and set down her glass. She appeared to have made some kind of decision. “You never talked about your parents back in college, only your grandmother. Didn’t you say she raised you?”

  I nodded. I never talked about the sailing accident that took my parents. I saw no reason to say anything to my college friends about it. I didn’t need to see the sympathetic looks on their faces or hear their murmurs of regret.

  Selma’s eyelids drooped with what I thought was the impact of the booze, but then she opened her eyes wide in a feigned look of innocence that came across more as a sly grin. “Does the name Mary Appel mean anything to you?”

  It did. I held my breath for what came next.

  “Dad mentioned the name to me before he retired. He remembered meeting you years before when we were in college. I told him your name was Eve, not Mary. I then inquired why he brought you up, and he said it was because your last name was so unusual. He dropped the topic then, and so did I. I forgot all about the conversation until you called. It seemed like a good time for me to go through some old records. And guess what I found?” She leaned forward and giggled. “A Mary Appel came to Hopkins, admitted by family, I believe. She claimed someone was trying to kill her, but she was wildly paranoid about everything. She stayed here for over six months, then left. Her family didn’t know where she went. Could she have been your mother, Eve?”

  I sat very still and let her continue to talk.

  “No wonder you didn’t say anything about your parents back then. And no wonder your grandmother had to raise you. The file indicates Mary Appel was a paranoid schizophrenic, Eve. A dangerous woman, according to the records. Her family couldn’t control her. She went into wild rages and tried to stab a family member. You poor, poor dear.”

  Okay, I was wrong. Selma wasn’t still mad at me for Jerry. She was just plain mad, crazy, insane. What kind of woman was she to wait all these years for such cruel payback?

  I looked across at her as she rose from the table. “Thanks, Selma. You’ve been more helpful than you know.”

  She examined my face as if looking for some indication that her words had hit home. I wouldn’t give her that. I glanced around the room, and spying the waiter, held up my hand for the check.

  I waited until she left, then paid the bill and called for a cab. Back at the motel room, I shut off my phone and fell into bed for a good cry. That took more than half an hour, kind of a surprise for a gal like me, not given to tears, much less a downpour like that. I sloshed cold water on my face and turned my cellphone back on.

  Chapter 12

  Nappi answered after one ring. “Eve? Is something wrong?”

  “I booked a seat on a flight back to Sabal Bay tomorrow, early. I hate to bother you, but would you be willing to take me to the airport around six a.m.?”

  “What’s going on? Is someone ill?”

  “No. I’ll tell you on the way to the airport.” I disconnected before he could probe, and again turned off my cell. I didn’t want to talk with anyone back in Sabal Bay tonight. Tomorrow I would be there, and I would straighten everything out. Well, that wasn’t quite true. It wasn’t up to me to do anything. It was up to Grandy to tell me the truth this time. And for me to try to forgive her for not telling me the truth all these years.

  My mother—my insane mother—had been in an institution, just as Eleanor’s mother had. Coincidence? I knew better. Eleanor’s crazy story that she and I had the same mother wasn’t so crazy after all. Mary Appel had survived that boat accident, perhaps even caused it, and left her husband—my father—to die. But he didn’t and came searching for her, was still searching it seemed after all these years. Was she responsible for the death of Mr. Montrose, her partner? Or had my father found the family and tracked them down, following each one to Florida? I was grateful for one thing: Selma Sandhurst didn’t have all these pieces of the Mary Appel puzzle at her fingertips to inflict more harm.

  I spent a sleepless night. Either the air conditioner blew too much cold air on me or it was too warm in the room. I suspected even a room with perfect temperature wouldn’t have allowed me to sleep. In the morning, I felt sick to my stomach and had a headache although I had had one drink and a small amount of wine. Funny how alcohol turned on you when you added emotional distress to your mixed drinks. I called on Bacchus to bring Selma the worst hangover ever. I had just finished brushing my teeth for the third time after upchucking yet again when Nappi knocked on the door.

  He carried two coffees with him and a bag holding pastries.

  “Thanks for the thought, but I don’t think I can eat anything.”

  He put the coffee and bag on the dresser and sat, patting the bed next to him. “Can you tell me what happened last night to make you decide to go back to Sabal Bay? Talking might help. We have time before your plane leaves.”

  I told him everything, and I didn’t cry, but afterward my stomach felt worse than before, and I ran back into the bathroom for another round of vomiting.

  “You’re right to want to talk with Grandy in person. This isn’t something you should do over the phone,” he said when I rejoined him.

  I nodded.

  “But,” he held up a finger to stop me from interrupting, “do you want to take the word of a woman who had issues with you and continues to hold them over your head? Talk about coincidences. Selma Sandhurst has reason to hate you for taking Jerry from her, or so she says at first, then changes her tune and says she’s happy about it. In yet another about-face, she tells you a story about your mother, one meant to hurt you. She may be a psychiatrist, but she’s not a healthy person. The other piece of the story you got from Eleanor. She’s not the most grounded woman, is she? And where is she now? Your memories of your parents are loving ones, but this story is saying there was a lot of conflict, enough to make your mother try to kill your father and for him to try to hunt her down over several decades. Why didn’t he tell the police she tried to kill him? Do you trust the stories of these two women over your own memories of your mother and father? Then there’s this: what’s the mob connection here? Freddie was hired to do a job, hired by a Connecticut family with money. How does that figure into this story?”

  Nappi was right. Nothing fit just right. “Maybe my father changed his name after the boating incident. He could be wealthy now and trying to find my mother, uh, Eleanor’s mother and kill her. Maybe Freddie’s
men got to Mr. Montrose and killed him.”

  “In a swamp in Florida? That’s an unlikely place for a mob hit, and with your father-in-law’s knife? That’s not Freddie’s usual style, but maybe it’s evolving.”

  I held my head in my hands. Nappi’s questions were not helping my physical symptoms, nor were they helping me think straight.

  “I’m not trying to confuse you, Eve. All I’m saying is don’t go all accusatory on your grandmother before you let her tell her side.”

  “What side can she have? She must have known about my mother being alive. I have a crazy mother. No, correction, Eleanor and I have a crazy mother running around here. And a nutty father who is out there trying to find her so he can do her in for trying to kill him years ago. Who the hell am I?” My voice broke, and I broke down in tears again.

  “Let’s suppose your mother and Eleanor’s are one in the same. Maybe Grandy didn’t know about it.”

  “How could that be?” I wanted to believe him.

  “Can you see Grandy keeping the truth from you all these years? And not wanting to find your mother, her daughter? You know she’d be looking for her.”

  Nappi was making sense, but his words didn’t have much of an impact on my thinking. I was too upset, and I wanted too much for it to be true that my mother was alive. I’d take her back in my life, crazy or not, killer or not.

  Nappi had to have seen my confusion, the push-pull of having my mother back versus having my life with Grandy as I knew it. He tried to provide comfort by putting his arms around me.

  I held up both my hands to hold him back. I could not tolerate that much acceptance, that much love. “Please, please no more. I can’t focus on this any longer. I need to know ….” What did I need to know? I gave up trying to sort out my tangled thoughts, and I felt giddy from emotional and physical exhaustion.

  I squared my shoulders, gulped and looked Nappi straight in the eye. “I need to know whatever Grandy can tell me.”