The Good Stranger (A Kate Bradley Mystery)

by Dete Meserve

  “The storm was massive,” Scott continued. “Its ferocious winds dumped three inches of rain, downed power lines and trees, and spawned countless tornados in the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas in early August. Yet the Secret Four—the people who are behind the kindness movement in Manhattan—were four strangers engaging in one simple act: getting a rental car to escape the storm. What happened after they left Dallas is still unknown, but ANC is piecing together the story of who these people are and why they engaged in the largest ongoing giving event in recent history.”

  Mark didn’t scowl when he saw the report, which was the closest thing I’d seen to him being happy with my work. The story snapped up tens of thousands of views online within a few minutes. Then millions. For a story that wasn’t about a political scandal, a string of murders, or a natural disaster barreling toward a major city or coastline, the response was surprising.

  Still, we had no foothold on finding any of them. We hadn’t yet located anyone named Joe Raley at White Sands. And we had no way to find a guy named Logan somewhere in the state of Kentucky. At least none of the other networks had anything concrete either. ABC even had anchor David Muir reporting live from the streets of Manhattan on what they were calling the “Secret Good,” but they had come up empty handed too.

  As I was packing up for the night, a text buzzed through. From my landlord: I’ve fixed the window. Changed the lock. New key in your mailbox. Sorry about what happened.

  My apartment.

  Consumed by the search for Marie, I’d forgotten all about the destruction there. Now the anxious feelings rushed back at me. I sank into my chair, closing my eyes for a moment.

  “Everything okay?” Scott asked.

  I opened my eyes. “Yeah. Just gathering the courage to deal with the cold, harsh reality of my apartment cleanup.”

  “Want some help? I’m pretty good with a broom.”

  I laughed. “I’d like to see these broom skills you’re claiming.”

  “I won the Broom Championships two years running. You doubt my skills?”

  Our eyes met, and I fell into his gaze. “You’ve already done more than enough.”

  The next thing I knew, we’d been standing in front of the ANC studios talking for fifteen, maybe twenty minutes longer. Somehow, we ended up talking about the time he spotted a sleeping humpback whale while shooting underwater near Tahiti last season. “She’d doze—vertically—for about ten minutes at fifty feet, then drift to the surface for a few breaths. Those minutes with her were surreal. You almost don’t believe it’s really happening to you.”

  Despite his beautiful tale, I found my mind wandering. In the orange-red glow of the fading sunset, he seemed even more handsome, if that was even possible, and although we were standing a professional distance apart, it felt as though a magnet were pushing us together.

  I forced my mind to pay attention to what he was saying. But my emotions didn’t follow along. Instead, as I listened to him tell his story, I felt a spark of the unexpected. Something I couldn’t describe. Some might call it joy. But this was more. It felt as though my whole world was filled with possibility and unfolding in front of me.

  “I see Gavin is still waiting to take you home, so I should let you go,” he said. Then he leaned in for what I thought would be a quick, casual hug.

  It started that way, but then neither of us pulled away. And the moment suddenly became liquid and warm, vibrating with promise. My heart was pounding so hard I wondered if he could feel it through my blouse. As we lingered in that hug for longer than we should have, I was certain he could read my feelings, even though neither of us moved or said a word.

  “Be safe,” he murmured in my ear. I heard the silky warmth in his voice, and it only made me want to stay longer, just exactly where I was.

  The apartment was worse than I remembered. In addition to everything being in complete disarray, fine sprinkles and shards of shattered glass were everywhere. And maybe I was imagining it, but the apartment had a sour chemical smell. Maybe from the window repair?

  Gavin had inspected every inch of the apartment and confirmed it was secure, but as he stood in the living room taking it all in, he shook his head. “I think you should get a cleaning crew and stay in a hotel for a few more nights.”

  “Yeah,” I said, because it was the only word I could manage.

  “Want me to drive you? The Hilton’s up the street.”

  “No,” I said. “I need to get some things together first. I’ll take a cab.”

  He squared his jacket. “You shouldn’t head there alone.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He didn’t move. “You’ll get me fired if I don’t take you.”

  “Okay, how about you get something to eat and come back in an hour?”

  He seemed to like that idea and took off. Then I went to work assessing the damage, putting a few things back in their place, and packing a suitcase. Thirty minutes later, I heard a knock at the door, and figuring Gavin was returning early, I flung it open.

  Artie was standing in the hall, his hands shoved in the pockets of an oversize hoodie.

  “We thought you were home,” he said.

  “I am,” I said uneasily.

  “I’m Artie. From upstairs.” For the first time, I got a good look at him. Thin and pale with dark circles under his eyes. He didn’t make eye contact.

  I tightened my grip on the door handle. “What can I do for you?”

  His speech was halting, unsure. “Cora told me to have you come to the apartment upstairs.”

  “What for?”

  He looked down. “She said to come get you.”

  “Don’t you think it might be good if I knew why?”

  His voice was monotone. “Will you come with me and find out?”

  I thought about closing the door. Calling the police. But what would I tell them? A strange guy in my apartment building was asking me to meet a neighbor in another apartment? Instead, I grabbed my keys and the pepper spray the production coordinator had given me the night of the power outage. “Lead the way.”

  I followed him at a safe distance up the stairs, but even though I’m sure I looked calm and maybe even brave on the outside, inside I was worried I was making the stupidest move of my life. I placed my fingertip on the trigger of the pepper spray, ready for anything.

  Artie didn’t say a word.

  The second-floor hallway was empty and completely quiet, save for the muffled sound of a TV set coming from one of the apartments. It was also dark. One of the lights wasn’t working, which made the already dirty-gray walls look more depressing.

  We headed down the hallway. Then suddenly he whirled around. “Did you lock your door?”

  “Yes,” I said, but my answer sounded weak. Why would he ask me a question like that?

  “Good.” He turned back around and headed into the apartment at the end of the hall.

  I knew better than to follow him inside. “Ask Cora to come out here if she wants to see me.” I planted myself firmly in the hallway.

  He looked at me strangely. “Okay.”

  Then he opened the door, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. If he came back with a knife or some other weapon, I’d be ready. Or at least I thought so.

  Instead, Cora rushed out into the hallway. “Why are you standing here? Come inside.” She beckoned to me with her hands. “You must see.” She took my hand and hurried me into the apartment.

  Raymond, Artie, and a couple I didn’t recognize were gathered around a table in the living room. Steam rose from a pot of soup. My stomach rumbled at the scent of fresh bread.

  “Surprise!” they all shouted.

  “I don’t understand . . .” Did they think it was my birthday?

  “I talked to the owner,” Cora said. “You can stay here until you get your apartment fixed.”

  “And my company’s cleaning crew will come tomorrow to do a full cleanup of your apartment,” Raymond added. “Free, of course.”
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  I looked at him, then Cora, searching for an explanation. “This is all . . . great. But why?”

  She took my hands in hers. “I know you left the money under my door so I could go see my daughter. Because of you, I’m getting on a plane tomorrow morning.”

  “It was a nice thing you did, Kate,” Raymond said. “On my end, I know that you put up with a lot of crap from me. Just glad you didn’t blow my head off the other night.”

  “You were so loud,” Cora said, frowning. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “I appreciate what you said to me,” he said quietly.

  I was so overcome with emotion I couldn’t speak. I tried to let their words settle in, but all I kept thinking was how strange and wonderful it felt to be appreciated for something so small. So easy. And then another feeling floated in, layering itself on the wonder: I felt like I belonged to these people. To this moment.

  “You must see what the Andersons got for you,” Cora said, taking my hand and leading me into the bedroom. “Beautiful, yes?”

  The room was stunning, like something out of a high-end furniture catalog. The kind of bedroom I wished I’d have time to shop for and the eye to put together: a gorgeous turquoise patterned duvet with perfectly coordinated throw pillows in rich textures.

  “They both work at West Elm,” she whispered. “So they got it on discount.”

  “I don’t—”

  “We’re the Andersons,” a woman’s voice said from behind me. “Holly and Dan.” She extended her hand.

  “Thank you. This is beautiful. But I don’t understand why you are—”

  “We’re your upstairs neighbors,” Dan said quietly. Neither of them looked like the people I imagined when they were playing their music at earsplitting decibels. Instead, they seemed like any other couple you might see on the street—he a little on the hipster side, with a scruffy goatee, and she the companion to that, with a blonde ponytail and wearing a vintage seventies dress.

  “You probably want to kill us right now,” Holly said. “We don’t blame you. We just wanted to find a small way to thank you.”

  I felt my cheeks flush. “For what?”

  Dan laughed. “Well, for putting up with our loud music, for one.”

  “And for your note and the treats,” Holly said.

  I shook my head. “Those are hardly reasons to give me . . . this.”

  Holly lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “They are, actually. This is hard for me to say, but . . . we’ve been trying to have a baby, and . . . I miscarried again.” Her voice cracked. “We’ve been in shock. Dealing with it, for the third time. We’d lost hope. Your note came at the right time.”

  She reached out to hug me, and suddenly I felt connected to her even though we had just met.

  “Hug later. There’s more,” Cora said, ushering us out of the bedroom.

  Then she walked me through every sumptuous dish on the table. Manti dumplings, kebabs on a bed of rice pilaf, stuffed peppers.

  “Artie made this for you,” she said.

  “He’s a line cook at Cafeteria,” Raymond said, sampling a stuffed grape leaf. “One of those twenty-four-hour joints. Which is why he has such odd hours.”

  “These are my recipes,” Artie said, slowly. “I hope you like them.”

  I drew a deep breath. “It all looks amazing.”

  “I’m sorry if I frightened you earlier,” Artie said.

  I didn’t know what to say. Moments before, I had thought he might harm me. I’d pegged him as dangerous. But instead, he seemed to be someone who struggled to be comfortable engaging with other people. In place of fear, I was overcome with the realization that even the person who looked away, who seemed to ignore us, might also be struggling to find connection.

  “No worries,” I said. “I’ve been a bit jumpy since the break-in.”

  “I am happy I can do this.”

  My eyes misted. I knew I hadn’t earned any of this; nor did I deserve it. But somehow their beautiful gestures were stealing my breath away. And the people who were once frustrating, annoying strangers were beginning to look like friends.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “It’s time to move on,” Andrew was saying in his office the next morning.

  I’d had a restless night’s sleep in the upstairs apartment, and even the double espresso I’d just finished wasn’t taking the edge off my exhaustion. Or helping my patience.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said, my voice raw. “This story is getting bigger every day. Even the president mentioned it in his press conference yesterday.”

  His face tightened with frustration. “Can I be straight with you? I want you to drop it.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Drop the story that’s been getting record ratings?”

  “What are the chances we’re going to find these people among the thirteen million who live here? Police and FBI aren’t looking for them. All we have is a gaggle of reporters trying to chase them down. And not even you have a solid lead.”

  My cranky tone didn’t seem to be working, so I tried a softer approach. “Look, bad things like fires and murders, they happen fast, right in sync with our news cycle. But good stories like this, they take time to discover. And uncover. I just need more time.”

  He shifted in his seat. “Let me give you some advice, Kate. You know what story you should be covering right now? What story would be moving your career forward? Millions of taxpayer dollars have gone into settling employment-discrimination claims against a handful of state representatives and—”

  “The news can’t be only about what goes wrong,” I interrupted. I saw a quick flash of surprise flicker in his eyes and had the feeling reporters didn’t interrupt him often. Or if they did, they didn’t have long careers at ANC. But I was already in too far to back down. “It can’t just be about chaos, unrest, and people doing bad things. This story we’re trying to tell is just as important as ones about spikes in crime waves, escalating violence, and how divided we all are. This story is proof that small acts can bring about big change.”

  He looked at me, a defeated sigh escaping his lips. He wouldn’t win this argument by claiming the story wasn’t worthy of more time. He knew I was right. And that meant that he had to reveal his actual motives for wanting me off this story.

  He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “When we talked about you coming to ANC, you told me you wanted to cover stories of substance. Right now that’s the Supreme Court, rising hate crimes, immigration policy.”

  “Politics,” I said quietly.

  “It’s a big step for you, but that’s what we want you to do.”

  I looked down at my hands. I didn’t come all the way here to lose everything I cared about: my boyfriend, my friends, and the stories I wanted to cover. I swallowed my anger and leveled the only weapon I had left: the truth. “Andrew, I want to stay on this story because I’m in awe of what these people are doing. When was the last time either of us can say that about a story we covered?”

  He looked out the window, his jaw tight. “I do remember what it’s like to be passionate about a story you simply must tell. But let me give it to you straight: clinging to this story is a bad career move.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it.

  “You probably already know this, but a lot of eyes are on you here. A kind of scrutiny you didn’t have in LA.”

  “Why?”

  He waited a long time before answering, letting the seconds tick by. That’s when I knew he was finally going to tell me what his real agenda was. “Because the top brass at the network don’t like seeing a prominent senator’s daughter fail.”

  His words sliced through my confidence. They thought I was failing.

  I took a shaky breath. “I’ll work harder then,” I said, more solidly than I felt. “I know—”

  “You can’t fail on this one, Kate. Either find who’s behind it—today—or you’ve got to move on.”

  “Her last na
me is Rivera. Marie Rivera,” Linda from Compass was saying on the phone later that morning.

  “Can you give us a physical address? Email?” I asked, jotting quickly in my notebook.

  She sighed. “Well, that’s where it gets interesting. The email address we have on file isn’t working. It’s been returned as undeliverable.”

  I rested my head in my hands and rubbed my eyes. “What about her driver’s license? That must have an address.”

  “It does. It’s an address in Crown Heights. But when we googled it, we saw that the apartment building had been demolished about six months ago.”

  I tried to hide my frustration. Unsuccessfully. “So we don’t even know for sure that she lives here in New York City anymore?”

  “No, we don’t. But when she was at the counter, she told us she had to get ‘home’ so she didn’t miss an important appointment. That’s at least something.”

  At least something. But not proof.

  After I hung up with her, I looked up the name Marie Rivera in the Whitepages online. There were plenty. Twenty-three, to be exact. Then Scott and I began eliminating possibilities. From the photos, we’d guessed that Marie was over fifty, so we excluded anyone who was under forty and over seventy. That narrowed the list down to a dozen.

  But as I was scrolling through the listings, I noticed the “Family Members” section and remembered talking to the woman named Jordan who had met Marie after she had accidentally left a voice mail for her nephew with the same first name.

  We found only one Marie Rivera with a relative named Jordan. She lived in the Bronx. Could this be her?

  Even though we knew that the “relative” databases online weren’t always reliable, it was the strongest lead we had to date, and with time slipping away, I knew I had no choice but to pursue it. Minutes later, we were heading to the Bronx in an ANC news van, with Chris at the helm.

  My pulse was hammering as we pulled up in front of the crumbling two-story house with faded yellow vinyl siding. A tiny concrete “front yard” was fortressed by a white iron fence. A battered green Ford baked in the hot sun out front. It hardly looked like the launching pad for the country’s largest giving event.