by Triss Stein
No one knew what to say, including me. And then I did.
“Why the PI? Were you going to divorce him?
“What do you think? It’s about damn time.”
“But New York has no-fault divorce. So the why the photos?”
She smiled, almost pityingly. “Isn’t it obvious? He would prefer to avoid a scandal. He would not have wanted these to be all over the papers.”
“Get up to date, lady,” Nicole mocked. “There’s this thing called the Internet. It would be all over every social media.”
“Of course! But he was old school. He would have worried about newspapers. Especially that photo.” She put her finger on the one in the limo. “She’s a state senator. Married.” Her eyes sparkled. “Imagine how messy that could be.”
We all sat back, imagining. Nicole finally muttered, “I’ve got to hand it to you, Stepmom. You have learned a lot.”
“And then he went and outsmarted your whole plan by getting himself shot.” Annabelle sounded regretful.
“Here are some more photos. Does she look familiar?”
A photo shot through a window. Conti wearing a robe, sitting on a messy bed with a woman not young, not beautiful, in a matching robe. It was Mary Pat.
Annabelle named her before I did, adding, “Look how old she got. Not that she was ever pretty. But look how fat and saggy she is.”
“You can see it all in that robe.” Nicole shuddered.
“I meant her face, you dirty girl. Behave yourself.”
“Mom, I hate to break it to you, but you got old too.”
“As we all do,” Jennifer admitted. “Not that I am not fighting it every day and at great expense.” She waved the photo. “I only found out who she was when those annoying detectives came calling.” She pulled out another photo. “That visit seems to have been caused by this.”
It was Mary Pat and me, sitting on the bench at Grand Army Plaza.
“What? How…?”
“I told you my investigator was good. So, Ms. Donato, how about explaining this? Since it was you that sicced the cops on us?”
“I don’t have to explain anything and I’m not sure I should. In fact, I am ready to go home.” I stood. “I’ve told the detective involved and that’s all I need to do.”
“And that is how we all ended up talking to detectives. We did not like it.” Nicole emphasized each word.
“No, we did not. Not our style.” Even sitting, Jennifer seemed to be looking down at me. “Not in the lives we live.”
“My dear.” Annabelle’s voice was soft. “I apologize for giving you a hard time the other day. It was all such a shock. Very confusing. But we would all be so grateful if you could tell us about this. Please stay and tell us.”
There were murmurs of agreement, cheesecake passed back to me, a pat on the arm. So I stayed and told how Mary Pat had contacted me and what she wanted. They wanted to know how she knew about me and I could not tell them. As she said, she knew people.
Finally Jennifer said, “Sounds like she is the one woman in New York who would have missed him. Was the one woman.” She looked around the table. “Would have, right? I told you my detective said she is dead?”
“He said she was killed? Too?” Annabelle turned white.
Jennifer put up her hand. “That’s all he could find out, so far, so no questions. Michael is our problem for today. We all know, whoever it was who pulled that trigger, he had it coming. Right? Don’t we know it?”
They sat back, lost in thought, or perhaps memories, and then they all nodded together.
It was a moment out of a fairy tale or myth, three women at different ages, sitting together and talking about vengeance. The Fates? The witches in Macbeth?
It was creepy, the silence and their expressions. I had to say something.
Anything. The first thing that came to mind.
“Who else had reasons? Do you know?”
“Ha. Everyone. His first business partner. When they broke up their firm, somehow Michael ended up with most of the money. Oh, the shouting between them! Of course, that man died years ago. I do believe his grown children sued Mike. Jen, do you know?”
“Yes, they did. That went on for years.” She was silent for a moment. “Add my parents to the list. Michael Conti, older, married.” She stopped and looked at Annabelle, shrugging apologetically. “He was Brooklyn, Italian. A politician. Not what they had in mind for their baby girl. How do you think I learned about detectives?” She smiled bitterly. “I’ve never told that to either of you. I should have listened to them but no one could tell me anything then.”
Nicole chimed in. “He never had a friend he didn’t feud with or a family member, either. I mean, I’m his only child and we haven’t had a real conversation in years. I haven’t missed him, either.” She stopped. Her voice shook a little when she added, “At least, I don’t think I did.”
“Nicole!” Mrs. Pastore spoke up for the first time. “Look at your mother! She is exhausted.”
Very true. Annabelle had put her face in her hands, shutting out all of us, including her daughter.
“I’ll take her home. Come on, Mom. Time to roll.”
“I’ll take her,” Jennifer said, “and you too, if you want a ride. My driver is outside. But we haven’t quite finished here. What do we tell the detectives? In case they get back to us? That’s what none of us want. They can’t be allowed to rummage around in our mistakes and wrong decisions.”
Annabelle put her head up. “We tell them nothing and then they have no reason to come back. It’s too much pain to look at it all again. Agreed?”
All three Conti women put their hands together, looking deep into each other’s eyes. They were not looking at me. I was not going to be part of their pact.
Nicole helped her mother to her feet and into her ugly puffer coat. Jennifer wrapped her long fur around herself, ignoring Nicole’s critical glance, and the three women left, the middle-aged one and the young one supporting the oldest one. Mrs. Pastore looked at me, eyes wide and I looked back. She had a finger to her lips and whispered, “Not a word until we hear the car leave.”
I shook my head. “Not a word after, either. I am beat and I have work tomorrow. I’m going home.”
“I understand. And I have to get upstairs and see how my Sal is feeling. But tomorrow? You come by to finish the cheesecake and we can talk about this evening?”
I only had to step over to my own house. There was light coming from under Chris’ door, so I knocked and went in. She was still up, messaging away. Before I ordered lights out, I said, “Your mythology class last year. Three scary women? Do you remember who they were? “
“That came up in Mrs. Pastore’s kitchen? That’s pretty random.”
“One of those silly things. Too hard to explain. Do you know?” I was certainly not telling her about this evening.
“Of course.” She gave me that “Are you kidding?” look. “The three Fates—Past, Present, and Future. In some stories, they spun the threads of life, like create life or cut it off.” She made a scissoring gesture. “Sometimes they were girl, mother, and crone. You know, all the ages of a woman’s life.” She yawned. “Do you need more now?”
“No, you silly girl. I need you to go to sleep now. Right now. Me, too.”
“Did you think some more about my party? Grandpa says…”
“Sleep now! This is no time for a discussion.”
It wasn’t until I woke up suddenly, in the middle of the night, that I wondered why they all agreed to tell the police absolutely nothing. It wasn’t likely the detectives would accept that.
Chapter Fourteen
In the morning, I wondered again if the Conti women were hiding anything more than their own sadness and regrets, but I was soon distracted by Chris’ attempts to talk about her birthday over breakfast.
/> “No. Not now.” She looked ready to protest. “What part of ‘no’ do you not understand? Not first thing in the morning, for crying out loud. I said I would think about it and I will.” Before I buried my face in my coffee mug, I added, “Go to school before I get seriously angry.”
Her face was on the verge of crumpling when she stormed out the door. There was a loud slam too. I had a second’s worth of feeling ashamed and then decided she needs to respect my stance on this. Plus, respect my need for no serious drama first thing in the morning.
Instead, I worked. I needed to be at my museum job tomorrow, so today I needed to glue myself to the keyboard. Thoughts of Chris were only allowed to seep in occasionally, but during one of those moments, I e-mailed Darcy for a long overdue girls’ night out and some advice.
My new personal, not to say scandalous, material on Michael Conti did not belong in my dissertation. I regretted that. However, I had other, more acceptable information to write up. Add footnotes. Try to link the Navy Yard history to his series of jobs, some of them with mysterious titles such as “Senior Mayoral Liaison to Port Authority.” What the heck did that mean? The Port Authority is the joint New York-New Jersey body for matters affecting regional transportation, including the harbor. Very powerful. Any New Yorker would know that. But what exactly did he do on this job? I had no idea. I needed to dig some more.
And did it matter? Maybe my idea of using Conti’s life to explain and even personify all the changes was not so great after all. My advisor’s deadline was looming and I could not seem to sort it all out.
Maybe I needed to drop it and start writing my concluding chapter. Soon. I would, soon. But I wasn’t quite ready to give up.
Then I thought more about last night and the meeting of these angry women. Annabelle’s joke at our first meeting, that she always thought Jennifer might murder him. It was a joke, right?
I was struggling to dismiss that whole weird scene from my mind, and yet I found it fascinating too, that picture of the Three Fates in a Brooklyn kitchen. I finally admitted I was too distracted to write anymore, saved my work, and dug out Detective Ramos’ card. Maybe he would be interested in what I had learned. Or maybe I was being silly.
“I’ll take my lunch break soon, Ms. Donato. Would you like to join me? Somewhere nearby? We can talk in detail then.”
Out of my cave and into the real world? I looked down at my flannel pajamas.
“Uh. I have a little work to do first. Make it in an hour?”
I hustled to shower and find clean jeans and a sweater with no holes. I would have to tell Darcy about this moment. My stylish friend would laugh, but with me, not at me. I wouldn’t tell Chris, who would definitely laugh at me, and criticize my ancient running shoes, too.
An hour later, there I was, ready for a cheeseburger and with notes for Ramos.
We ordered and we exchanged small talk. When I called him Lieutenant Ramos he told me to call him Danny. So of course I told him my name is Erica. We established that Ramos was Puerto Rican and Donato was my Italian-descended husband’s name.
He glanced at my empty left hand. I said quickly, “He died,” and changed the subject.
After we ordered, he asked to hear about the estranged brother. He wanted to know everything I had learned. When I asked if it was actually useful, he shook his head. “Who the hell knows? A lot of people are happy Conti is dead. We need to look at all of them. It’s not confidential that no one is looking like the obvious perp.”
“Cops really say perp?”
“Not really.” He smiled. “Only TV cops. I can also say, presumed malefactor, but that’s a little pretentious, don’t you think? Bet you didn’t know cops can say long words.” He was still smiling. “Just like a scholar?”
“Ha. I’m a long way from being an official scholar. And actually, I’ve had a few cops in my life, including my late godfather.”
We immediately got sidetracked into a game of “Who Do You Know?” It turned out that we had not a single acquaintance in common in more than forty-five-thousand NYPD employees, but it was fun proving it. We were laughing, saying, “How is that possible?” when Joe walked in.
He was with a woman around my age, very thin and sloppily dressed. I had a twinge of jealousy until I realized she was not his usual type. That is, his usual type before I became his only type. Another glance told me she must be his sister. It was something about their body language. And she had a certain look that reminded me of him.
He stared at us from the doorway and I realized Ramos and I looked like two people having fun on a lunch date. That’s not what this was. It wasn’t. But Joe’s frozen expression said he thought otherwise.
He turned away and walked to a table at the other end of the small room. He was behind me, but I could feel his eyes on my back.
I turned my attention back to Ramos, and returned, deliberately, to the subject of Michael Conti and my evening at Mrs. Pastore’s. He wanted to hear all about it.
When I had finished, he looked at me appraisingly. I wondered if my lipstick smudged.
“Did you ever consider detective work? You’ve got the right mind for it. You’ve got good questions and you pick up the details better than half my supervisees. And there is a certain tenacity.”
I almost laughed. “I’ve thought sometimes that historians are kind of detectives. But you’re kidding, right?”
“Only partly. I know you have a career already. Just saying, if this academic thing doesn’t work out.”
“That’s ridiculous. I don’t want to begin another career.” I thought it was difficult enough to begin the one I had.
“And can you shoot?” He looked serious. All but his eyes. “No? So time on a range. Or you could skip all the rookie years on the job, and become a PI.”
Then his sober expression broke up and we both started laughing at the idea of me chasing crooks or firing a weapon. And I could still feel Joe’s eyes.
By then we had demolished our burgers and it was time to go. There was no way to leave without passing Joe’s table. I sucked in a breath and vowed to be a grownup.
I greeted him with a deliberately friendly voice and a casual smile, also deliberate.
“You remember Lieutenant Ramos, I think?”
He nodded but did not offer a handshake or a polite smile.
“There has been more about the Conti case. I can’t seem to get away from it.” Ouch. That sounded silly, betraying my discomfort.
“I see.”
“Joey! Introduce me? Where are your manners?”
“Yes, of course.” His expression did not change, though. “Erica, my sister, Alex. This is Erica Donato, Allie. She is a…a longtime friend and a client, too.”
She squinted up at me, then smiled politely. Carefully. “Very pleased to meet you.” Like a well-trained little girl. Her eyes looked like a little girl’s, too, uncertain about being with the grownups. That gave me a chill.
“And Lieutenant Ramos of the NYPD.”
“Pleased to meet you too.” She was reciting a script.
Joe looked at me, still not smiling at all.
“Is there another problem for you with this case?”
“Uh, no. Like I said, more involvement fell my way. Tell you later?”
I quickly threw out, “Have a great lunch” before leading the way to the door.
Outside, Danny Ramos gave me a considering look.
“So that guy? He’s not only someone who fixes your kitchen sink, right?”
“Right. Somewhat right. I guess.”
He seemed to consider that. “Well, does it preclude me from asking you to have dinner sometime?” He quickly added with a grin, “We can discuss your next career in detection.”
It made me laugh. “No. No, it does not preclude dinner.”
“Good. I’ll call you.”
I turned down a ride home, planning to do some errands. And I thought the walk would help me sort out…well, everything. It didn’t. My mind jumped from angry families to Joe’s sullen attitude to the murders of Mary Pat O’Neill Codman and Michael Conti. Nothing made sense, and damn, where had this day gone? Chris would be home all too soon.
I had a package when I got home, left on top of my steps where anyone could have seen it, a small item wrapped in brown paper and lots of tape, addressed in Phyllis’ rounded handwriting.
It was a diary, very old, with the leather flaking off the cover. It was faded blush color, perhaps red originally, or a true girlish pink. There was a strap to keep it closed, with a tiny lock. I pressed the brass button and it opened right up. On the first page, in ink turning brown it said: Philomena Palma. My Own Diary.
Tucked inside it was a note: “Darling Chrissie, I found this in the attic, in a box with old furniture doilies. No idea how it got there but I thought you might find it useful for your project. Hugs. Grandma.”
Whoops. I checked the wrapping paper and sure enough, it was addressed to Chris, not me. Now I would have to explain the mistake to her and apologize.
And since Phyllis wanted me to look into Philomena’s life, why in the world had she not sent it to me? I guess she was still angry at me for asking about Communism at the Navy Yard.
But in the meantime, before Chris got home? I had a lot of fast reading to do.
Philomena wrote in the rounded, schoolgirl hand the nuns used to teach. The diary began on the day she started work at the Navy Yard, and she’d pasted a photo on the page, tiny, black and white, blurry, a girl with big smile, in men’s working clothes. I read, and it felt like I heard her voice, breathless with excitement.
The first pages described what it had taken to get there. She wrote how glad she was that the diary had a lock. “I can tell you everything, dear diary.” It was the story Phyllis had told us, but with all the living details.
“My parents! They are so old-fashioned. I had to fight and fight for this. They said it was not nice for their innocent young girl. It was dirty, physical, definitely not dainty. And of course it meant working with men all day, with no supervision, so maybe they were protective about that, too. Anything could happen.
