Killer Tied

by Lesley A. Diehl

  “Who are your auditors?” asked Nappi.

  “We used a new firm this year,” Selma said. “Our old firm informed us they couldn’t handle the job because one of their accountants left and they were short-handed.”

  “Where did you find the new auditors?” asked Nappi.

  “The old firm recommended them to us. They have great references. In fact, they do a lot work for prestigious law firms,” said Selma’s father.

  “Firms like Teller, Markowitz, Sterns, Babcock and Tranho?” asked Nappi.

  That was the firm Freddie the Bull said he was working for before Nappi shooed him off. Nappi and I exchanged knowing looks.

  “You know who took the file?” said Selma. “Can we get it back before the board finds out it’s missing?”

  “You think you’re off the hook because the file is gone. I assume it’s the only file missing?”

  “We think so,” said Selma. She sounded relieved there was only the one file stolen, but she was wrong.

  “We don’t know what else is gone from the files, Selma,” her father said. “The board needs to know about this situation. We’ll need to go through all our patient records now. The board will want to know the details about the theft, too.”

  Selma fell back into her office chair. “I am so screwed.”

  I pointed at her. “It’s not just about you, Selma. I have a stake in this too. You read that file earlier. You need to tell me everything you remember from it.”

  “I’m not going to tell you anything. This is all your fault.”

  “My fault?” I grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the chair and shook her like a dog with his favorite chew toy. “How is this my fault?”

  The door to Selma’s office opened.

  “Hi, everyone,” came a voice from the doorway. It was Jerry, and behind him was Eleanor.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I found Eleanor. Aren’t you glad?” Jerry sounded disappointed, as if he expected me to offer him some kind of a reward for his work.

  “I was going to tell you this morning, Eve,” Nappi said, “but the news about the missing file got in the way. I asked Jerry to meet us here.”

  “Did you find her?” asked Eleanor. “Did you find our mother?”

  Selma and her father looked confused at Eleanor’s words. It was an issue I wasn’t keen on delving into right now, so I hustled Eleanor and Jerry out of Selma’s office and closed the door behind me.

  “We’ll deal with this later,” I told them. “Sit.” I pointed to some chairs in the waiting area. “I’ll be back as soon as I finish in there. I may have some news for you then, Eleanor.”

  Nappi was patiently explaining what Selma needed to do about the stolen files. Jerry’s appearance seemed to give her some kind of hope that the theft could be kept from the authorities and the board. Selma was grasping at straws.

  Her father took her arm and shook her gently. “This will not go away, my dear. You made a mistake and now you need to own up to it. We must let the authorities know there has been a break-in, and we’ll need to do a more thorough search of all our patient records to determine what all was taken.” The firmness in his voice signaled he would brook no argument from her. He picked up her desk phone and held it out to her.

  Her father looked at me and shook his head while she made the call. The lines on his face seemed to deepen in sadness. His daughter had disappointed him.

  “The police are sending someone right out,” said Selma.

  “Good,” I said. “You have time to review with me what you know about that file. Perhaps your father can help, since he was the director here at that time.”

  “I’m not certain if I can remember much about the woman. She was your mother, is that right?” asked Dr. Sandhurst.

  “I don’t think so. I think she was posing as my mother. My mother died when I was a child. Her stay here seems to have been after, but perhaps you can corroborate that by telling me the dates she was here.”

  “I can’t give you the exact year, but Dad and I had our discussion about your unusual last name when both of us were in college, so it had to have been shortly before that.”

  I remembered from our conversation over dinner a few weeks ago that Selma had mentioned her father had asked about my name when Selma and I were college friends.

  “How can you not remember the year at least? You just read that file a short time ago, or did you skim it for just enough details to throw in my face and make me squirm?” I felt the heat rise in my chest. I wanted to put my hands around her throat and squeeze.

  Selma almost made me act on that impulse when she said, “I did make you squirm, didn’t I?” She gave me a smug little smile of triumph. She might lose her job for her ethical lapse, but she would make me pay by withholding information about the file.

  “Selma …” her father said with warning in his voice.

  “Oh, all right. Let’s see. I do remember we changed our filing system about the time I did my residency here. Your mother’s file,” she shot me another smirk, “was in one of the older folders—folders that went back fifteen or twenty years.”

  Dr. Sandhurst nodded. “That would be about right. I remember the name was fresh in my memory when Selma introduced you to me. That had to have been when the two of you were freshmen in college.”

  That would have made me around eighteen and Eleanor, at least ten years my junior, about eight.

  I must have spoken out loud without realizing it.

  “You told me when we were in college that your mother was dead. Now we find that not only was she alive but that you have a younger sister,” Selma said. Her tone was haughty, as if I had betrayed her trust by withholding family secrets.

  “That’s not the case.” At least I didn’t think it was.

  Both Sandhursts seemed to prick up their ears.

  “You see …” I began and told them everything I knew about the Montroses.

  Both of them were silent after I finished.

  “Now you understand why that file is so important,” said Nappi.

  Dr. Sandhurst nodded. “Shouldn’t Eleanor be here when we discuss the file then?”

  I shook my head. “That’s not the way she should learn about her mother’s identity. She’s still convinced we share the same mother.”

  “Isn’t that possible?” Dr. Sandhurst said. “What if your mother didn’t die in that boating accident? Surviving an accident like that might have resulted in amnesia and what we now call post-traumatic shock syndrome.”

  I tried to dismiss his words. I didn’t want to circle back through what I had believed and now didn’t want to believe.

  Selma broke in before I could say anything, “I remember when I read through the file that Mary Appel repeatedly said someone was trying to find her—her husband, I think.”

  “But did she say it was her husband?” I asked.

  Selma was silent for a moment. “I can’t remember. I didn’t read the file for details.”

  “So it could have been one of her delusions that her husband was trying to harm her?” I said.

  “Some of the details about her are coming back to me,” said Dr. Sandhurst. “She had a lot of delusions, and she felt someone was after her, but I can’t say whether it was her husband.” Dr. Sandhurst fell silent, his lips moving as if he was working through some memory, trying to bring it to the surface.

  I let him think and turned the conversation in another direction. “Hopkins is an expensive place. Did the file indicate how she paid for her therapy here?”

  “That wouldn’t be in her patient file, but in the business file,” Selma said.

  “Can we look at that?” I asked.

  “It’s gone also,” Selma said.

  “Whoever wanted to find Mary Appel’s files did a thorough job of removing her from our records. It’s as if she was never here,” said Dr. Sandhurst.

  “I think that’s what they wanted to accomplish. Mary Appel or the woman po
sing as her never existed,” said Nappi.

  “Except we know she did,” said Selma.

  “That may not be to your advantage,” said Nappi, a note of warning in his voice.

  Dr. Sandhurst seemed to understand what Nappi was suggesting. “We might be in danger then.”

  “Let’s not overdramatize this. Someone took some files. That’s it,” said Selma, flipping her hand in dismissal.

  Selma’s secretary knocked and opened the door. “The police are here,” she said.

  “Look,” said Selma, “since there are no records to say Mary Appel was ever a patient here, can’t we just tell the police I made a mistake and there are no files missing? Who’s to know and who will get hurt by not admitting the break-in?”

  My God. Selma was still trying to save her ass.

  Dr. Sandhurst heaved a deep sigh of disappointment in his daughter.

  “Oh, all right, then. I’ll talk to them.” Selma straightened her shoulders and tried to look professional, but her hand shook when she ran it through her hair to smooth it back.

  “No, Selma. We’ll talk to them together. I should never have mentioned Eve’s mother’s name. It was what began this whole thing.”

  Dr. Sandhurst was an honorable man, but I wanted to tell him he wasn’t doing his daughter any favors by sharing the blame with her. I wondered if this was how he had raised her, sharing responsibility for deeds that were hers alone.

  “Dr. Sandhurst,” I said to him before he followed his daughter out of the office, “did you raise Selma by yourself?”

  His brow wrinkled, but he didn’t seem altogether surprised by my question.

  “Selma’s mother died when she was beginning kindergarten. Breast cancer. You think I did a bad job with her, don’t you?”

  “I’m sure you did what you thought was right. It can’t be easy being a single parent.”

  “That’s kind of you to say, but when I see what Selma has become, I think I failed as a father.” As he spoke the last words, his eyes lit up. “That’s it. Now I remember. Mary Appel was committed here by her father.”

  Chapter 17

  I was almost shocked into silence, but I blurted out, “Her father? She was admitted here by her father? Are you sure?”

  “I can’t believe I forgot about our conversation. He told me he hadn’t been involved in Mary’s upbringing, but he was trying to do better. That’s what he said, ‘I’m trying to do better for her now.’ ”

  “What was his name?”

  “I don’t remember that. I assumed it was Appel. I don’t recall any other name being used.”

  “But she was in a relationship with Henry Montrose, Eleanor’s father. The name couldn’t have been Appel,” I insisted.

  “I’m sorry. It was so long ago, and we have so many patients. I wouldn’t have remembered him if it hadn’t been for our shared circumstances, our feelings about our daughters.”

  I followed him out of the office as his daughter was showing the police into a conference room next door.

  “I think we’ll just leave you to explain the situation to the police,” I said to Dr. Sandhurst. “Don’t let Selma put the blame on you for this one. She can stand on her own two feet.”

  I signaled to Jerry and Eleanor, who followed Nappi and me down the hallway toward the exit.

  “The cops may want to talk with us also,” said Nappi.

  “Later is soon enough. It will just muddy the waters to have us around here now. I think we all could use a coffee break. Somebody has a lot of explaining to do,” I said.

  “Me? I found her, didn’t I?” Jerry said.

  “For once you’re off the hook. No, I mean Eleanor.”

  Eleanor’s mouth opened in an expression of surprise. “I didn’t—”

  “You can ride with me, and we’ll talk.” I grabbed her arm and steered her toward my rental car. “There’s a diner down the road. We can meet up there,” I called to Jerry and Nappi.

  “I don’t know why you want to talk with me. I didn’t do anything wrong,” said Eleanor. Tears filled her eyes.

  “Your father was murdered, and you could be in danger also. Your mother has her issues, as you well know, but she’s right. Someone is trying to harm her, trying to harm the entire family. You were in a safe place in the apartment in Sabal Bay. You knew that. Why did you leave there?”

  “Mother got in touch with me and told me to go back to New York. She said it was safe now, that she would meet me there. The reason she went to Florida was to find you, to protect you from your violent father, to warn you he might be after you too.”

  It was a crazy story, but one Eleanor and her father had lived with for years—Eleanor’s belief and Brenda’s delusion that I was her daughter, that her name was Mary Appel. Her feeling of being pursued might have been dead on, but the identity of her stalker was not what her delusional mind told her it was.

  After talking to Eleanor, I had two important tasks to accomplish: I needed to make a phone call to my Great-Aunt Irene, who was still keeping family secrets she needed to let go of, and I had to find Eleanor’s mother, who held the key to this whole mystery. I hoped I was right to believe she might now be capable of differentiating between delusions and reality.

  “She didn’t show up at the house in Tillahook, did she?” I asked Eleanor.

  “No.” Eleanor cried quietly, wiped away her tears, and then asked, “Was she ever a patient at Hopkins?”

  “Yes, she was. You would have been around eight when she was admitted there. You don’t remember it?”

  She shook her head. “She was in and out of places, but when I was in second or third grade, she came home after a hospital stay and said she was never going to any institution again. Dad said she could stay home. She said something strange: ‘They won’t find me, will they?’ And Dad said, ‘No, he promised me they wouldn’t find you.’ ”

  He. Who was that?

  “He who?” I asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe the doctor.”

  “Do you remember anything else your dad said?”

  She shook her head. “I was glad Mom was back with us, but then her bad dreams and her hallucinations began again. As I got older, she got meaner to me. She wanted you back. I don’t know why she let you go. I guess for your own safety, because she claimed your father was a bully. I didn’t know your identity until she told me who you were and that she was going to find you and warn you.”

  I pounded on the steering wheel. “Enough!” I shouted.

  Eleanor jumped.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry, but I can’t let you go on like this. We don’t share a mother, Eleanor. You mother assumed my mother’s identity. My mother was dead, and your mother used my mother’s name.”

  Eleanor shook her head. “No. No, Eve. Why would she do that? Why would she use a dead woman’s name and identity?”

  “Because the real Mary Appel was dead. It protected your mother. She was delusional, but some of what she believed was true.”

  Eleanor continued to stare at me, but the look of shock and disbelief on her face was soon replaced by another expression—pity.

  “Oh, poor Eve. You don’t want to believe your mother is still alive because it means people you loved betrayed you. What can I do to make you understand?”

  I had just the answer for that. “I need to talk with your mother face-to-face. So, where is she?”

  Eleanor’s face changed again. This time it took on a sly look. “You’re trying to make me tell you where she’s hiding so you can inform your friend Frida, that detective. Then she’ll arrest my mother for the murder of my father and your father-in-law will be able to leave his place of hiding. I’m not telling you a thing, even if you are my sister.” She sat back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest in defiance.

  Well, at least she had revealed her mother’s location when she said Frida would arrest her. That meant she had to be near Sabal Bay and not in Connecticut or New York. I smiled to myself
.

  “How about one more little thing?” I said as I pulled into the diner parking lot.

  She drew her lower lip under her top one and thought for a moment. “I’m not saying yes or no until I know what you want.”

  “I want you to get in touch with your mother and ask her to meet with me. We’re going back to Florida this afternoon.”

  No one had spotted Brenda since this whole saga began. I wasn’t even certain she was still alive. We had only Henry and Eleanor’s word that she had come to Florida looking for me. Maybe they’d lied. Sure, Eleanor said her mother had told her to return to New York, but maybe Eleanor was lying about that conversation also. Or she was having her own set of delusions. Given how the poor woman was raised, it wouldn’t surprise me if she had emotional issues. This detecting business was making me skeptical of almost everyone I knew.

  I parked and got out of the car. Eleanor remained in the passenger seat. Rolling down the window, she said, “I don’t want to talk anymore with anyone. I’ll wait here.”

  I opened the door and pulled her out of the car. “No you won’t. You led us on a merry chase trying to find you, and that’s not going to happen again. I also don’t want you in touch with your mother without my hearing what you’re saying.” I grabbed her purse and tried to extract her cellphone, but she snatched the purse back and held it behind her back.

  “Leave me alone or I’ll scream,” she warned.

  “No, you won’t, because if you do, it will draw attention to us. You don’t want that. The police will get involved, and you’ll have a lot of explaining to do when I tell them I’m a PI and responsible for bringing you back to Florida as a witness in a murder.”

  “I’m not a witness!”

  “Who do you think the authorities will believe?” I gave her a minute to think about that, but I needn’t have bothered. Jerry came over to us and put his arm around Eleanor.

  “What’s wrong, Pookie?” he asked, rubbing her shoulder in a comforting manner.

  Pookie?

  She leaned into his caress. “Eve is threatening me.”

  “Evie, how can you do that? Eleanor is very fragile right now with her father murdered and her mother missing.”