Dear Old Dead

by Jane Haddam

  It was seven o’clock in the morning. Julie’s roommates lay huddled in lumps and curls under blankets and around pillows. They hadn’t noticed that Julie had pulled up the shade and let in the sun. Julie pulled the shade down again. She had thrown away all her makeup. She didn’t have a single thing with which she could paint on another face. The other girls had lots and lots, grocery bagfuls, that they shoplifted from five-and-ten-cent stores on Broadway. Julie could borrow a lipstick from Karida and a blusher from KelsiAnne. Neither one of them would ever notice there was anything missing, and if they did they wouldn’t mind. Julie picked up her history books instead. This was a very delicate moment. This was make or break. If she put makeup on her face this morning, it was as good as over. She might stay at the center another day or week or month, but sooner or later she would be out on the street again, looking for another john, looking for another pimp. Thinking of what all that was like—of what wanting it was like—scared her, because by now there were times she did want it, even when she didn’t want it, it got all confused. It was as if “normal” was feeling dead and getting beat up. Feeling alive and not getting beat up was better, but it was also terrifying, Julie didn’t know why. She just knew that she had to get past it. The rational part of her, the sane part of her, the part of her she was actually coming to like, didn’t want to end up back on the street at all.

  Julie had two history books, the textbook for the course she was taking and a book by Oswald Patterson, who was black and taught at Harvard University. Before Oswald Patterson, Julie hadn’t known there were any black people at Harvard University, except maybe to play sports. African-American, she reminded herself. These days you were supposed to call yourself African-American. She had a green canvas bookbag with the words “St. Rose’s Academy” and a logo printed in black on one side. She tucked her two history books into that and slung it over her shoulder. Then she let herself out of the room and into the hall. There was a self-locking door at the end of the corridor. It let girls off the floor but wouldn’t let anyone on. To get on, you had to ring the bell and wait for someone to answer it. That way, the girls didn’t have to lock the doors to their individual rooms all the time. Julie had a passionate ambition in her life. She wanted to live for one full year in a place where nobody ever locked their doors at all.

  There was a dining room in the east building, for the children who came to day care and Afterschool (the dining room served breakfast, lunch, and snacks) and for the girls in the refuge program. It was early enough for Julie to have been able to get breakfast there. Instead, she went straight down to the first floor and out the front door. Then she went up the steps to the west building. The street around her was empty and cold. Nothing about it called to her. She remembered nights spent sleeping in abandoned buildings and sitting on steaming grates. She went to the back of the building and down the stairs. The cafeteria there was open twenty-four hours a day. At seven o’clock in the morning, it was reasonably crowded. Julie took a tray, loaded it down with sausages and hash browns and bacon and eggs and toast, and got out her resident’s card. If you had a resident’s card, you could come to the cafeteria and eat anything you wanted for free.

  Augie was sitting by herself at the big round table under the steam pipes, looking through a newspaper with a scowl on her face. Julie put her tray down on Augie’s table and pulled out a chair. The newspaper was the New York Sentinel, and it was lurid. Julie caught a grainy black-and-white photograph of Rosalie van Straadt’s dead body lying on a stretcher. There was another photograph of Dr. Michael Pride in a sea of uniformed policemen. It made him look as if he had been busted, even though he hadn’t been. On the front of the paper there was a red banner over the masthead, announcing the Father’s Day contest for the millionth time. Julie had read through the contest rules once, just to see what they were like. If she’d had a father, she would have entered.

  Augie put the paper down. “Good morning,” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  That was Augie, Julie thought. Straight to the point. “I’m having one of those days. I came looking for company to talk me out of it.”

  “Out of what?”

  Julie looked up, toward the doors out of the cafeteria, toward the street.

  “I’ll lock you in a closet, if that’s what it takes,” Augie told her. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Not really. Not exactly. I’m just—nervous.”

  “We’re all nervous.”

  “I know. Augie, listen. You don’t think Michael did it, do you? Killed those two people?”

  “Of course not.” Augie was astonished. “Julie, what are you thinking of?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, they were really terrible people, weren’t they? The two people who died. I saw the last one, that woman, I used to run into her all over the center. I didn’t know her name then. She was a real—uh—”

  “Bitch,” Augie said dryly.

  “Right. Exactly. She was always—saying things, to people. You know. Asking Karida if it was really necessary to wear quite that much makeup on her face. Telling me once that she supposed I was going to get a free ride right through college, so why should I study, since nobody was going to care if I knew anything or not.”

  “Did she really say that to you?”

  “She did. In here one night. I was with Sister Kenna and Ida Greel. Is it true that Ida is that woman’s cousin?”

  “Oh, yes,” Augie said. “She’s Martha van Straadt’s cousin, too. I forget how it works, whose mother and whose father and all that, but they’re all related. There’s a boy, too, Victor. He volunteered here several years ago. It was before your time.”

  “Everything was before my time. Anyway, she said things to people. And her grandfather, that Charles van Straadt—he was the old man in Michael’s office that night, I mean, he was there in person and then his body was after he died. If you know what I mean.”

  “Not really. If you’re trying to say that Charles van Straadt spent some time in Michael’s office before dying there, the answer seems to be yes. The way the police have worked it out, Charles and Rosalie got to the center at about six o’clock or a little after and went straight up to Michael’s office. Then Rosalie ran around doing errands while Charles stayed in the office doing God only knows what. He made at least one phone call, over to the east building, looking for Martha. Sister Edna answered the phone. After that, nobody knows what he did. Nobody saw him anywhere else in the building. The assumption is that he stayed in Michael’s office, or at least on the third floor of the west building until he died.”

  “Mmmm.” Julie looked down at her sausage and bacon. Her eggs seemed to be congealing into an art form. Her toast looked wet. She pushed the tray away and reached into the back pocket of her jeans for her cigarettes. The cafeteria and the emergency-room waiting area were the only places in the west building where you were allowed to smoke. In the east building, you could smoke anywhere you wanted, except in the classrooms for the Afterschool Program. The nuns had given up trying to enforce discipline.

  There was a round black plastic ashtray in the middle of the table. Julie pulled it toward her and dropped in her spent match. Then she took in a deep lungful of smoke and breathed it out again.

  “Augie,” she asked carefully, “did you ever see Charles van Straadt anywhere except for here?”

  “You mean in person?” Augie looked confused. “I don’t think I have. I’ve seen his pictures, of course. Parties at the White House. Benefits with movie stars. Old Charlie did tend to get around.”

  Julie shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. You used to work at Covenant House, didn’t you?”

  “I volunteered there once, years ago. Why?”

  “I don’t know. You never saw him there, in that neighborhood?”

  “Charles van Straadt? No, of course I didn’t. Why should I have? Does he contribute to Covenant House?”

  “I don’t know. I never went to Covenant House myself. But it’s i
n the right neighborhood.”

  “Right for what?”

  It was always hard to predict what nuns knew and what they didn’t. When you expected them to be naive, they surprised you, but when you expected them to be hip they surprised you, too. Julie took another drag on her cigarette. Everybody else in New York knew what that neighborhood was good for. Everybody else in the world knew.

  “Augie,” Julie said, “do you know this man, this Gregor Demarkian, that the Cardinal hired?”

  “I don’t think you can actually hire him,” Augie said. “I don’t think he takes money.”

  “Do you know if he can be trusted?”

  Augie shrugged. “I know he’s good at his work. The Cardinal wouldn’t have sent him if he weren’t. What’s the matter? Is there something you know about one of those deaths? You shouldn’t keep it to yourself if you do. It could be dangerous.”

  “No,” Julie said. “I don’t know anything about the deaths. It isn’t that.”

  She pulled the tray of food back toward her and looked down at the hash browns. Augie was staring at her oddly, but she couldn’t help that. The hand grenades that had become the neutron bomb were now turning into fragments of shrapnel. She felt as bad as the time she’d had the flu and no place to sleep at the same time.

  “Julie,” Augie said.

  “I’m all right,” Julie told her. “I’ve just got an awful pain in my head.”

  2

  VICTOR VAN STRAADT HAD never much liked his cousin Rosalie, and he had liked her even less after it began to look as if their grandfather was going to leave Rosalie every cent of his personal fortune. Two weeks ago, he could have contemplated her death with cheerfulness. Two weeks ago, however, was two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, Grandfather had still been alive. Or was it longer than that? Victor only knew what day of the week it was because the day of the week (along with the date) was always written on a large chalkboard set up in the lobby down at work. “Monday, January 10,” Victor would read when he got in in the morning, and then he would know where he was. It didn’t matter. The problem was this. Having Grandfather found dead in Michael Pride’s office at the Sojourner Truth Health Center was one thing. That was a death that could have been caused by anyone for any reason. Having Rosalie also found dead in Michael Pride’s office at the Sojourner Truth Health Center was something else again. That looked deliberate. That looked planned. In short, that looked like one of the family—in spite of the fact that now that Grandfather was dead, there was no good reason for any of them to kill Rosalie at all. Victor didn’t think the police were very logical about reasons. They liked to make their arrests and hand their suspects over for trial. They liked to see their names in papers like the New York Sentinel so that they could send the clippings to their parents who had retired to Florida. Victor had no doubt that he would make an excellent subject for a tabloid clipping. He was scared to death.

  It was ten o’clock on Thursday morning, and he was standing in the reception area of the offices of Grandison, Harcum, Slater & Cole just off Wall Street, waiting for Bartram Cole to stop blathering and lead them all back to a conference room. Today was the day that had been set for the reading of Grandfather’s will, and it was going off as planned, in spite of what had happened to Rosalie. Martha and Ida had both come down from the Sojourner Truth Health Center. Martha looked pinched and angry, the way she always looked. Ida looked oddly attractive in an ugly way, dressed in jeans and a shirt and a bright red linen blazer. When they had handed out the brains in this generation, Ida and Rosalie had definitely gotten all there were. Victor knew that almost everyone thought that Martha was more intelligent than he was, but he didn’t credit that. He knew Martha.

  Bartram Cole was a small man made entirely out of globes. He had globular cheeks on a globular head over a globular belly. Cole made his expensive suit look as if it had come off the rack at Sears. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, keeping time to the rhythm of his monologue.

  “Well,” he said after a while. “I suppose we ought to go back there and get down to business.”

  “He charges three hundred and fifty dollars an hour,” Ida said into Victor’s ear, in a whisper so soft Victor was sure he was the only one who could hear her. “At those rates, I could learn to bore people to death for hours on end, too.”

  In Victor’s estimation, Ida could bore people for hours on end without being allowed to charge anything for it. Ida always made him tired. Victor hated serious people. They never had any fun. His sister and his girl cousins were all serious. Ida and Rosalie were at least useful, every once in a while—at least, Rosalie had been—because they helped him with that infernal contest. Martha couldn’t even do that.

  Bartram Cole was leading the way back into the bowels of the office suite. The bowels of this particular office suite might as well have been lined with mink. It might have been cheaper than what it had cost to outfit them as they were. The last time Victor had been up here—which was for his twenty-first birthday—the decor had been rather drab and office-y. Now it was high-tech pink, with lots of shiny metal surfaces and tinted glass. Victor knew decorators. This was the trademark of a famous one. Victor put the price down at about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, no structural changes included.

  The office suite was not quite so pink and shiny as the rest of the suite. The big custom-carved teakwood table that had been with the firm since its founding in 1867 had been retained. It had been surrounded by what Victor put down as a Ralph Lauren Polo version of English country-house chic. It had also been decked out in too many flowers. The room smelled like perfume.

  Victor sat down in one of the chairs near the head of the table—you could always tell the head of the table at Grandison, Harcum, Slater & Cole; it was the seat closest to the Sargent portrait of the founder, old William Grandison the First—and stretched his legs. Ida sat down next to him and tapped him on his arm.

  “I don’t see why we have to go through this,” she said. “I don’t see why he can’t just mail each of us a letter with the particulars and that would be that.”

  “That’s so modern,” Martha said. “We’re in the wrong place for modernity. They wouldn’t know what to do with it around here.”

  “Well, they ought to find out.” Ida was indignant. “I had to get someone to cover for me this morning, and it wasn’t easy. I have work to do. The days when nobody had anything more important to do than attend meetings like this one are over.”

  “They’re not over for me,” Victor said. “I intend to be as idle and indolent as I possibly can, as soon as I get my hands on some cash. I’m certainly going to quit my job. Somebody else can present the grand prize check to the lucky Father’s Day winner.”

  “Can’t you just imagine what they say about us around here when we’re not around?” Martha demanded. “They’ve probably got an office pool going on which of us did it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Ida said. “You always exaggerate everything. Nobody thinks we did it.”

  Martha shrugged. “That police detective does. Sheed. And I think Gregor Demarkian agrees with him.”

  “Hector Sheed thinks nothing of the sort.” Ida sounded ready to explode. “He thinks Michael did it. You would have realized that if you weren’t always so self-absorbed. And as for Gregor Demarkian—”

  “I don’t think Gregor Demarkian is half as frightening as I thought he’d be,” Victor put in.

  The women ignored him. They always ignored him.

  “Gregor Demarkian is definitely the one we have to worry about,” Martha said. “He insinuates himself into places. Have you noticed that? He’s everywhere.”

  “I don’t think we have to worry about anyone,” Ida said. “None of us did it. None of us is in any danger of being accused of doing it. Grandfather got killed by some stray crazy who wandered up to the third floor without anyone realizing it.”

  “Is that what happened to Rosalie, too?” Martha asked. “Maybe the stray crazy is hi
ding in somebody’s closet up there. Maybe he’s like the phantom of the opera, always waiting in the wings.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Ida snapped. “Just stop it. I don’t know why I put up with you.”

  Victor didn’t know why he put up with either of them. He didn’t know why he put up with sitting in this chair. The conference door opened and Bartram Cole came in, carrying a sheaf of papers in one hand and a cardboard accordion file under the other arm. He bounced and bustled to the head of the table and sat down.

  “Well,” Cole said. “Here we are. Pleasant news in the wake of tragedy. A deeply felt tragedy, of course, but here we are. Pleasant news nonetheless.”

  “It’s pleasanter than it could have been,” Victor agreed. “You know, now that I’m thinking of it, what happens to Rosalie’s money? The money she inherits under the will, I mean?”

  “Oh, Victor,” Martha said.

  Bartram Cole shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that. Miss van Straadt—possibly she would have said Ms. van Straadt—wasn’t a client of ours. She preferred to retain a separate firm of attorneys. Of course, we would have been more than happy to oblige her. It’s so often true that one can avoid a great deal of red tape, of duplication and expense, if all of a family’s affairs are under one legal roof, so to speak. But Miss van Straadt was adamant. She wanted her own firm.”

  “It all depends on if she made a will,” Ida explained to Victor. “If she did make a will, then her money goes to whoever she willed it to. If she didn’t, then it goes to her next of kin. That would probably be her mother, if she’s still alive.”