Brooklyn Legacies

by Triss Stein

  “When?”

  “You won’t give up. Am I right?”

  I nodded my head.

  “Later tonight, okay? Call me after nine?”

  I didn’t say a thing, but I stepped aside. Reluctantly

  It was time to go home and try to drain off my frustration. I didn’t realize until later that my emotions must have showed in my face. Joe and Chris were clearly avoiding me as I stamped around the kitchen eating their leftovers. That continued as I stamped on upstairs and closed my office door firmly. All right. Maybe I slammed it.

  Nancy never called. Coward. She texted. “If you must, tomorrow at six-thirty a.m., same place. Only time I have.”

  I suspected she was trying to discourage me with that uncivilized hour. A challenge? Too bad for her. I set my alarm and went to bed.

  She was there in the morning, corner table, looking bland and wide awake. I, on the other hand, probably looked cranky, tousled, and half asleep. I was in the right mood to take no prisoners.

  “You had such an urgent need to talk?” Her voice dripped sarcasm. “I can’t imagine why. I’m not that interesting.”

  “Oh, I think you can so imagine it.” I loudly sucked down some more coffee, stalling until I was completely under my own control.

  “I dunno. You like Louisa. I like Louisa. We both know Joe. I don’t see anything to discuss there.”

  “I don’t think it’s about Louisa. I don’t know. Everything seems to tangle up with her somehow, but no. This is about my efforts to write something about Brooklyn Heights. Efforts she supports, by the way.”

  I was happy to see she looked more unsettled now. Serve her right for setting up this absurd meeting.

  “Well, what? And why me? I can’t talk about any of my clients. Not if I want to stay in business.”

  “So you’ve built this business over time,” I said, slowly and carefully. “You must have worked your ass off to do it.”

  She nodded, her expression the very definition of wary.

  “I would guess, knowing a contractor well, that you maybe had years you didn’t do anything but work. A woman in a usually man’s field and on your own?”

  Another nod.

  “But that’s not true now, is it? You’re well established. Much in demand.” I sprang my trap. At least I hoped that was it. “What do you do besides renovate old houses? In your spare time? You must have some now. What do you do in your other place, the one that is not your home or your business?”

  Her voice said, “I don’t know what you are talking about,” but her eyes were full of panic. Secretly, I smiled.

  She looked away from me, drummed her fingers on the table, and refused to meet my eyes. I waited.

  Finally she said, “I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness.”

  “Yes. I remember. And you said something bitter about Daniel Towns.”

  “I shouldn’t have. It was indiscreet. I’m sorry you remember it.” Her voice sounded calm but her expression got harder. “I’d be lying if I said I cared about his death, and I know damn well I’m not the only one who has wounds he caused. If the detectives do their job, they’ll get that, but me? I have a full life, in spite of him.”

  I was wondering what she meant, with my mind scattering in many dreadful directions. Should we even be having this discussion? Was I in over my head? How far over my head?

  She looked up at me and almost smiled, in a mocking way. “Don’t look so appalled. Not abuse but plenty abusive enough. His influence took my family away from me when I was still young. With them, you’re either in or out. No questions, no gray areas. And he was already a leader, close to my very, very, very devoted family.” Her calm voice was less calm with each word. “Disfellowshipped. That’s what they call it. My loving family cut off all ties, and I was on my own unless I came back to their faith. So much for God’s love.” She stopped. Closed her eyes, opened them with no expression whatever. “So I built another life, one nail at a time, and the hell with them all.”

  I’d hit a nerve. A lot of nerves.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to …”

  “Cut the crap. We both know you did. You wanted to ask questions. But nothing to be sorry about. Now you know. But it’s my own life and not anything to do with his death or with Louisa, either. I eventually heard that old saying about living well is the best revenge. That was much later, ’cause that’s for sure not how they think about things.” The sarcasm was unmistakable. “But I did and I do, in my own way. Both living well and get revenge.” She nodded. “Yes, I do for sure.”

  “What do you do?” I was fascinated, drawn in deeply by curiosity about how she had made another life. Perhaps because I had done it myself, when I became a widow at twenty-four. There is no story more compelling to me than one about reconstructing your life.

  “I steal.” She laughed at my shocked face. “No, no, no, not actually stealing. Get a clue! “ She sighed. “You’ve been stalking me—yes, you have!—and I’ve spilled everything else to you. How did you get me to do that anyway? Might as well spill this. A little drop, anyway. I run a support group for kids who are thinking about leaving. Share my experiences and my, uh, learned wisdom. For what it’s worth.”

  How had I not seen it?

  “At the apartment building?”

  She nodded.

  She looked at me, the glimmer of goodwill gone again. “But you can’t imagine I would tell you more? I don’t tell anyone else’s secrets.”

  “No, no, I know you don’t. You protect their privacy, too, right?” I was also thinking this was perhaps a touch of paranoia.

  “We’re done here.” She stood up. “I have work to do. I said more than I intended, and you got more than you had any right to expect.”

  And she was gone, just like that. I had work to do too. Did I have time to scrawl a few notes? One last gulp of coffee, a few lines in my notebook, and a fight with traffic to get to the museum.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I wanted to think more deeply about Nancy’s extraordinary story, wishing I could get more details from her, in spite of her clear message that there would be none, and figure out how to fit it into my essay for Fitz. And I also couldn’t stop thinking about Sierra.

  My motherly instincts toward a youngster were battling with my curiosity and my concern about Louisa. I couldn’t shake the belief she could tell me more even if she didn’t know herself what it might be. Surely she must have stumbled on some of Louisa’s secrets?

  At the same time, I had badgered this young girl and probably frightened her. It’s hard to see myself as scary. True, I can be mouthy, but I am a small person with a soft voice. Through Sierra’s eyes, though? I would be an adult, brimming with self-confidence and authority. Maybe. Or maybe I was deluding myself.

  Those were all the underground thoughts that rippled through my daytime responsibilities, no matter how much I tried to suppress them.

  That night I asked Chris if I ever came off as scary. She gave me a strange look, started to laugh, then stopped. “You can be.” She responded to my disbelief with, “Yes, you can. You come on sort of like, ‘I’m here to take charge, and I’m taking names.’”

  Joe came in then and added, not helpfully, “I think you are the scariest woman I know.” He thought it was funny.

  “What?”

  “I mean it as a compliment.” He hugged me. “My mom liked that song, ‘I am woman, hear me roar.’ Remember?”

  “Oh, the Dark Ages. Geezer music.” Chris making fun of both of us. “Actually, it’s popular again these days. So, yes, Mom, you can be scary.” She raised a single eyebrow. “But remember that doesn’t apply to me. I know better.”

  Honestly, I was kind of flattered, but it did not help my dilemma. How to make Sierra talk to me without actually bullying her?

  The answer that came to me was that I needed to
check in again with Louisa, see how she was doing, and maybe ask her a few questions about her helper. A bonus would be if Sierra was there herself. It was a long shot, but it’s not as if I didn’t have plenty of reasons to talk to Louisa anyway.

  The first evening with both Chris and Joe out around dinnertime, I made the call, and using my experiences with Leary, asked Louisa if she’d like me to bring over some dinner. She would. She liked everything, and dessert. She would welcome company, too. She would find me some interesting family artifacts to discuss. I deviously mentioned how useful it would be to have Sierra help with serving and cleanup.

  Two days later, I arrived at her door, toting heavy shopping bags with baked pasta, meatballs, garlic bread, salad, a bottle of red wine, and a box of assorted cupcakes. Bribery at its most blatant. One of my areas of expertise.

  And it paid off, because Sierra answered the door. She didn’t look happy to see me, but I smiled warmly and lifted my bags.

  “Dinner for Louisa. Did she tell you?”

  “Yes. She said I don’t need to leave her a meal when I leave for my other job.” She did not smile or welcome me, only stepped aside to let me in.

  Louisa called from the parlor. “Come right in. We have the little table set up in here. Sierra will serve before she leaves. We are doing much better today. Sierra, how many days has it been since we heard from the police?”

  “Two.” She was reaching for the heavy bags.

  I thought, they are not done with her, and wondered what they were up to in the meantime. Like investigating the murder from every other angle. Interviewing a few dozen other people. Forensics. Their job, in other words. Really, I knew that.

  I greeted Louisa and followed Sierra downstairs to help unpack the bags. The kitchen was a warm room with French doors opening directly into the garden and a tiny old stove, enameled mint green, next to the modern one. I would have liked to explore—was that open space in the back once a large fireplace?—but that was not why I was here now.

  As Sierra served salad on Louisa’s dainty flowered china and poured the cheap wine into gold-banded stemware, I helped unwrap the rest of the meal.

  “I did not mean to pry the other day.” Yes, I did, but I’d intended more subtlety. “I hope I did not upset you.” That much, at least, was true.

  She was silent and unimpressed.

  And then she started crying, the wine bottle shaking perilously in her hand. I took the bottle away, moved the wineglasses out of danger, and handed her a paper towel from the roll on the counter.

  She sniffled and stopped. “My own family hates my life. They’re all on a straight-and-narrow highway, and I was looking for some detours. Like the scenic route through the woods.” She stretched out her tattooed arms. “I don’t miss them at all. I don’t.” She sighed. “But I appreciate Louisa being like family. Anyone wants to hurt her goes through me.”

  “Wait! Are you one of Nancy’s Witness runaways?”

  Her look was almost comical. “What? Oh, hell, no. No. I was just dying in small-town USA. Ya know? I was looking for the bright lights. I got to know Nancy when she did a job at the home and I needed more work and she introduced me to Louisa.” She jumped up. “Hey! Louisa’s waiting for dinner, and trust me, she does not like to wait for her food. Here!”

  She opened a door in the wall, loaded the plates onto shelves, locked the door, and pushed a button.

  “Yeah! A dumbwaiter. Cool, isn’t it? Those old-time dinner parties had acres of china and dozens of courses, so I guess this got it upstairs still hot.” She leaned in to whisper a secret. “She showed me some of those old menus, and I didn’t even know what the food was. Madeira sauce this and supreme that. Turtle soup? Eww.”

  Upstairs the plates were waiting for us, and Sierra set them up on the table in the bay window so we could eat and watch the activity on the street.

  She was calmer and almost cheerful. I thought the tears had helped ease some burdens. That’s a dynamic I knew from my own teen. She placed the cupcakes where we could see them, and reminded Louisa that there was a thermos of hot coffee on the sideboard.

  When she was ready to leave, I walked her to the door to ask a question.

  “You work at the Downtown Care Home?”

  She nodded. “Night shift, mostly, after I leave here.”

  “I remember seeing flyers. I think. Was there a man who disappeared?”

  She nodded. “It was so sad. Mostly he was my friend Willow’s patient. He was troubled in his mind. Like, some kind of old breakdown maybe? Nice man when he wasn’t having his visions.” She whispered. “Willow thought he was an old Witness. Some of the things he said. But he wasn’t too coherent.”

  “Did they ever find him? Was he all right?”

  She shook her head. “They found his body. Near here, actually.” She pointed to the benches across the street and whispered again, “Right out there. I didn’t tell Louisa. He was sitting there, dead as could be. Not attacked or anything, just, like, gone. But I figured it might upset her. Got to run.”

  Shaken, I returned to the table to find Louisa had finished her meal and was anxiously eyeing the dessert.

  “I couldn’t overcome my mannerly upbringing. It would be rude to start dessert before you. But I was very tempted. Do come and finish eating!”

  Scolded, I ate while Louisa watched the street and told me a few stories about grand dinners in the house, using this very china, when she was child. I wanted to record it all, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to put a smartphone on the table with her elegant old silver and china. The garlic bread was incongruous enough, though Louisa didn’t seem to mind. She ate three pieces right down to the crumbs.

  I made a joke about the garlic, and she responded, “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure it never appeared in my grandmother’s kitchen, but delicious is delicious. Believe me, I don’t want to live on lobster Newburg, and those cupcakes will be as tasty as Baked Alaska. Which Grandmama did serve for parties.” She tapped her sterling silver fork. “I once had three generations’ worth of silver service. Dozens of place settings and all the side pieces, too. Bet you’ve never seen grape scissors.”

  “You’d lose that bet! I worked on an exhibit about Gilded Age parties. But where in the world did you keep it all?”

  “Up in the rooms that used to be for the maids who polished it! But I sold most of it many years ago to pay for a new furnace, and good riddance, too. When am I ever going to have a banquet for two dozen? I can’t remember the last time it was used. A lifetime ago.”

  I gently confronted her about follow-up from the police. “Is it true, what Sierra said, that they are leaving you alone?”

  “For now. They seem to be off invading some other person’s privacy.” She held up a hand to stop me questioning further. “And, as we are having a pleasant visit, we do not need to discuss any of this tonight.”

  I disagreed.

  “You will have to answer their questions eventually. And Louisa? Why won’t you? They will certainly come back.”

  “Don’t think so. I have chased them away.” She winked. I was unconvinced, but she put a finger to her lips and then passed me the dessert plate. The subject was closed for now.

  I poured the coffee from the insulated carafe, and she invited me into the library, the room behind the parlor.

  “I found something the other day that you might like. It turned up while I was looking for something else. If you promise to take very, very good care of it, you may take it home for a short time.”

  It was an album stuffed with both photos and keepsakes. I could barely get the excited words out, that I was a historian, worked in a museum, knew how to take care of such items better than she could even imagine.

  “It was my grandmother’s. I remember others, but I don’t know where they are.”

  She’d bookmarked a few pages, including one show
ing a banquet table set with the very tableware we had just used. Twenty-four places at a long table, with three wineglasses at each setting and more cutlery pieces than I could count in the photo. There was a menu, too, elegantly handwritten, with seven courses.

  As soon as I got home, I would attack this book. I could hardly wait. I would love looking, I do love looking, but more important, maybe some street views would be useful to my research. Or to Sergeant Torres.

  “Louisa, did you ever look in here for early photos of your property? It might be useful evidence in your property dispute.”

  “Why, no. Does that sound foolish? I’d forgotten it even existed until I stumbled on it yesterday. Grandmama was not keeping legal papers in there, though. That was not her sphere.”

  “What was her sphere?”

  “Do you need to ask? Fashion. Wait till you see the hats she wore. And giving parties.”

  We wrapped the book carefully in layers of plastic and put it in a tote bag. She chuckled. “Grandmama would be appalled to see her album wrapped in garbage bags. Not that she would ever know what garbage bags are. Or garbage, for that matter. She had a staff to take care of those messy details.”

  We had a final cup of coffee and admired the streetlights casting their glow.

  “So many memories looking out at night. I did see the World Trade Center from right here, you know. And troopships out there when I was a young woman during the war.” She pointed. “See that bench right over there? Someone died there. Not long ago.”

  That got my instant attention.

  “Sierra thinks I don’t know about it, but I do. I saw the ambulance and the police. Poor crazy old man.” She looked at me and added, “Don’t took so shocked. I used to talk to him sometimes.”

  I managed to croak out, “Tell me more.”

  “He’d sit there, all quiet and lonely, and disappear, and then come back. He was… He looked like he was homeless. Very shabby. We talked. Sometimes what he said didn’t make any sense at all. Very, ah, apocalyptic would be the word. He would obsess about cleansing and sin. And then sometimes we just had a nice exchange about the weather.”