“After. There wasn’t a whole lot of before.”
“Right, you met him, and he saved you . . . what was it? Your first five minutes on the job?”
“Third day. October 4, 1987, 4:36 a.m.”
“That’s precise.”
“It’s not something you forget.”
“Not something you ever let me forget when we started working together. You loved to remind me that your old partner took a bullet for you.”
“He didn’t take the bullet. He dove on top of me a split second before the perp fired.”
“Because you were green enough to open your mouth and not keep your head down in the first place.”
“Rookie mistake. They happen.”
“They can get you killed. You were lucky.”
“It wasn’t luck. It was Stef.”
Sully shrugs. She hadn’t known the man well, but he had a little too much bravado for her taste. Maybe she was just jealous of his relationship with Barnes—like a second wife resenting the first, even though everyone had moved on.
“So a few weeks after he saved my life, we were working the Wayland case.”
“Should I remember it?”
“It was in the tabloids. Perry Wayland—ring a bell?”
She shakes her head. “I was a mere tyke back then, Barnes.”
“Wayland was a Wall Street guy. Came from old money, had an Ivy League degree, the whole package. He disappeared not long after Black Monday. Do you remember that, or were you too busy stacking LEGO blocks?”
“I’m a girl, remember? I played with dolls.”
“You played with LEGO. And little Matchbox squad cars,” says Barnes, who knows all her secrets, just as she thought she knew his.
“So the stock market nosedives,” she prompts, “and this Wayland guy disappears . . .”
“And his Mercedes turns up parked on the GWB.”
George Washington Bridge.
Sully knows what that implies. “Jumper?”
“His wife swore he wasn’t suicidal. You really don’t remember this? She was in the press all the time. Aristocratic-looking, attractive blonde from Boston. Her maiden name was Billington, descended from one of the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
“I don’t remember any of this.”
“Okay, so the wife—her name was Kirstie—said he’d never kill himself. Swore he wouldn’t put her and the kids through that hell.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
They all say that, the bewildered families trying to make sense of a loved one’s disappearance.
My husband would never . . .
My daughter would never . . .
My sister would never . . .
All too often, they would.
“Kirstie was convinced it was foul play. Said he’d been acting strange, preoccupied, making phone calls at all hours, that kind of thing.”
“Not suicidal, so . . . an affair?”
“She said no way.”
Of course she did. They often do.
My husband would never . . .
“The family offered a huge reward, we set up a telephone hotline. We got the usual cranks and a few mistaken sightings—you know how it is.”
“I do. Little old lady calls and says she saw the guy hanging around on her porch and it turns out to be the mailman?”
“Or a stray dog.”
“Flower planter, shadow, sheer imagination . . .”
She nods. Been there, done that.
“But then an anonymous female caller leaves a tip that the guy’s staying at a dive beach motel in Rhode Island. Wayland’s from New England and went to college up there—undergrad at Brown, Harvard MBA. So Stef and I drive up there to check it out . . .”
“And it’s him?”
“I didn’t see him. Stef did. I was in the motel office talking to the night clerk, showing her pictures—of course she said she’s never seen the guy. Meanwhile, Stef’s out in the parking lot taking a leak when he spots a guy getting out of a beat-up car . . .”
“Wayland.”
“Lost some weight, has a beard, wearing a crappy stained T-shirt, but yeah. It’s him.”
Same old story. “Let me guess. He’s with another woman.”
“No.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Another man?”
“Stef said he was alone.”
“You didn’t see him?”
“No.”
“And you don’t believe Stef?”
“Of course I believe Stef. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Just the way you said it, like there was something more going on. Never mind. So he faked his disappearance, left the wife and kids, and I’m assuming he had a bundle of cash to make it happen. Why?”
“Why do people take off?”
“For love, but you said he was alone. Or for hate,” she adds, wondering if Kirstie Wayland’s husband saw her as a nagging shrew. Maybe she was a nagging shrew.
Been there, done that, Sully thinks, remembering her own ex-husband’s accusations. During their final miserable months together, he wasn’t so far off the mark.
“What else?”
“They’re trying to protect themselves or save their own life. They’re running from someone or something. They’re living a lie, and they’re willing to exchange it for another lie.” She thinks of Emerson Mundy’s mother, wondering which it was for her, as she asks aloud which it was for Wayland.
“Pretty much all of the above,” Barnes tells her, “and then some.”
In the neighbor’s yard, splashing, and someone hollers, “You’re it!”
“Okay, ready? Marco!”
Sully envisions the child, waist deep in water, eyes closed, arms outstretched, flailing toward the elusive voices and splashes, trying to grab hold of someone just out of reach.
She looks at Barnes.
Why do people take off?
“So what was the stupid thing you did?” she asks, though she can probably guess that more accurately than she did his underwear style. It’s written all over his face.
“I kept my mouth shut.”
“Dammit.” She shakes her head. “Wayland paid you off?”
“Wayland paid Stef. Stef gave me a cut. He told me it happened all the time, no big deal.”
“No big deal?”
“Stef said it, not me.”
“And you said, ‘My money comes the old-fashioned way. I earn it,’” she points out, remembering that night at the pub last summer, when she told him about the reward.
“It was a long time ago. Obviously I know better now, but I—”
“You knew better then! Come on, Barnes. Right from wrong. That’s straightforward stuff! Didn’t you think of that poor woman—and her children? How could you let them believe their father was dead?”
“Wayland’s a scumbag. Stef said they were better off not knowing the truth, and—”
“Was that up to Stef to decide?”
“No. But—”
“Or you?”
“It was—”
“I can’t believe you’re—”
“Would you let me defend myself for two seconds? Please?”
She clamps her mouth shut, certain nothing he says will make a difference. But she lets him talk.
“You know I lost my dad when I was twelve. He used to hand me a few bucks for the ice cream truck—‘Get us both a Drumstick,’ he’d say, ‘but don’t tell your mom because she has me on a diet.’”
Sully’s heard about his father before. He was a good man, young and afflicted with heart disease. A walking time bomb, and it exploded—a massive heart attack killed him before his fortieth birthday.
“I blamed myself when he died. My mother was always so worried about his health, because she knew what could happen. But I thought she was a nag, and my dad would brush it off. He’d take me to the park to shoot hoops, or to a ball game—huffing and puffing to the upper decks, eating hot dogs. I thought it was fun. It was killing him.”
“Those were his
choices. He wanted that time with you.” She wonders what this has to do with anything. They’ve been over this before, countless times. Squad car therapy.
Barnes’s marriage crumbled in part because his ex wanted a family, and he didn’t. The job was too demanding for him to devote the time to parenting that his father had, and it’s dangerous. He couldn’t stand the thought of his own child growing up fatherless.
His ex-wife considered his reasons “a big heap of BS.” Sometimes, Sully does, too. Wee hour colic, spit-up, and Gymboree wouldn’t just conflict with the job—they’d conflict with Barnes’s off-hours lifestyle, wardrobe, white sofa, exotic travel, and all.
“What does all this have to do with taking a payoff from Wayland?”
“Do you know what it’s like to lose the guy who’s supposed to have your back?”
Yeah, Barnes. I do.
She considers pointing out that after years of partnership, friendship, kinship, he abandoned her. He might say it was the other way around. But she’s the one who tried to maintain contact after she left New York.
We aren’t talking about us, though. We’re talking about his father, and I’m still not sure why.
Anyway, Barnes doesn’t wait for an answer. “After my dad died, my mom fell apart. That kind of grief can ruin your life. It ruined hers.”
“Not yours.”
“It could have. I had a lot of anger, and my dad wasn’t around to keep an eye on me, and my mother kind of gave up. I was headed to a bad place before Wash set me straight. You know that.”
She nods, familiar with that story, too—how an older neighbor, a retired cop named Washington, had caught Barnes trying to break into his car parked on the street. Instead of scolding him or reporting him, Wash took him under his wing. He guided a troubled kid onto the right path, becoming a father figure.
“Wash was the first guy who saved my life. Stef was the second. I owed him.”
“That doesn’t excuse what happened.”
“No, but maybe it explains it. You’ve been there. You know how it is. Inner city cop. Us and them.”
She shakes her head. No. She may know that, but she doesn’t know this. Doesn’t know him.
“You did this stupid, stupid thing, what? Twenty-five years ago?”
“Almost thirty.” He graces her with a brief smile, a flash of the old Barnes. “You never were a math whiz.”
“It’s the painkillers.”
“That was hours ago.”
“They’re strong. So it’s been almost thirty years, and you’re just now getting around to feeling guilty?”
Poof! The old Barnes vanishes.
“I’ve felt guilty for thirty years. But I had my reasons.”
“Yeah, you said. You owed Stef.”
“Not just that.”
“Then what?”
He shakes his head.
“I deserve more than this, especially from you.”
“I know you do.”
“But you’re not going to give it to me?”
“It’s not that simple. I need you to be patient until I—”
“If you wanted patience, you should have shown up on a saint’s doorstep.”
“You’re no saint, and neither am I. We all do things we wish we hadn’t done. Sometimes we don’t have reasons, sometimes we do.”
“Tell me yours.”
He sighs. “I didn’t know until recently that Wayland isn’t just some guy who took off on his wife.”
“No? Who is he?”
Barnes tilts his head, as if considering whether to confide in her. “It’s complicated.”
She waits for more, and doesn’t get it.
“Has he resurfaced? Is that why you’re here?”
Ignoring the first question, he says, “I’m here because I need time to sort this out and figure out what the hell I’m going to do about it.”
“You came barging into my life to sort things out? You couldn’t do that at home?”
“No,” he says simply, “I could not.”
So he’s hiding. Possibly in danger. Why else would he go to such lengths to make sure he wasn’t followed here?
“I know you deserve the rest of the story, and you’ll get it, I promise, just as soon as I figure out what I need to do. Right now, the less you know, the better off you’ll be.”
“Like Kirstie Wayland was better off?”
“Does it help you to know that it didn’t take her very long to lose interest in finding her husband? She moved on and was shacking up with an even richer guy a few months after I saw Perry in Rhode Island. She had him declared dead. Collected the insurance money, too.”
“Did it help you to know that?”
“You know what? It did. Yeah. And I—”
He breaks off at the sound of a scream.
When Ora Abrams offered her a cup of tea, Emerson refused as politely, quickly, and firmly as possible. She has no intention of ingesting even boiled water amid filthy dishes and rotting garbage that stinks to high heaven.
No wonder the place is infested with roaches, mice, and heaven knows what else.
She’d assumed Ora had made up the story about the kitchen having been ransacked because she was embarrassed. Now it’s apparent that the poor dear is senile.
Such a cliché, a little old lady eating cat food. A tragic cliché. Why isn’t someone helping her? Rowan, or Sully—surely someone must realize what’s going on here.
But then, how would anyone suspect?
The rest of the first floor is exquisite, the front rooms furnished with fine antiques and glass display cabinets. The air might be a little musty and dusty, and there’s more cat fur on the horsehair sofa than can possibly remain on the cat. Still, everything appears to be in order.
You’d never know the truth unless you ventured beyond the public museum space, or captured Miss Abrams in a less-than-lucid moment.
“Now, where do you fit into the family, dear?” Perched on a chair, gray eyes alight with wonder, spry Ora looks like a children’s librarian about to embark on story hour. There’s no evidence of dementia, as if it, too, has been safely tucked away behind a closed door marked Private.
“My father was descended from Aaron and Sarah Mundy.”
“Oh my goodness! Your father is Horace? No, that can’t be right. You’re much too young, and Horace has only sons.”
Should she remind Ora that Horace and his sons are long dead?
No. “My father is Jerome.”
“You mean Jeremiah.”
“Jerome.”
“But he was named after Jeremiah himself.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s only logical, as your grandfather’s middle name was Jeremiah.”
“I’m pretty sure my grandfather’s middle name was Xavier.”
“‘Pretty sure?’” Ora shakes her head. “My dear, Xavier wasn’t—”
“No, I’m positive. My grandfather was Donald X. Mundy.”
X marks the spot.
Ora shakes her head in denial, her wispy white bun wobbling like a tipsy crown. “That’s incorrect.”
“My grandfather’s father was Horace’s brother, Oswald.” Emerson feels like a frustrated mother trying to convince a stubborn two-year-old to open up and swallow.
“That’s impossible.”
“Why—” Something grazes her legs beneath the table, and her question gives way to a shriek.
Ora stoops to investigate. “Rosie! There you are, my sweet girl. Where have you been?”
Emerson half expects to see her petting an enormous rat, but it’s a fat orange cat.
“Don’t worry, she’s very friendly.”
Unsure whether Ora is referring to the cat or to her, Emerson watches the old woman gently petting the tabby.
“Are you afraid of cats, Miss—or is it Mrs.—Mundy?”
“It’s actually Ms.” Seeing Ora’s mouth tighten, she adds, “And I love cats. I’m just allergic.”
“Yes, wel
l, that runs in your family.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, Rowan Mundy mentioned it.”
“Rowan is a darling girl.” Ora is on her feet again, heading toward the cupboards. “Her husband Asa is descended from Jeremiah.”
“Asa?” Looks like the confusion is back. “I thought her husband’s name was Jake.”
“That’s what they call him. His name is Asa Jacob Mundy IV, descended from Aaron Mundy’s brother Ezra, born in 1842.”
“You know this off the top of your head?”
“Oh yes. I know everything.”
Emerson bites back a smile. “That’s why I’m here. I’d love to hear about my family.”
“It would take weeks to tell you everything. Shall we start at the beginning?”
“Why don’t we start with my great-grandfather and his brother? Did you know them?”
“Oh yes, but not well. You see, I was born in ’35, and by then, the boys were getting up there in years. Horace’s youngest son, Arthur, used to come visit from Philadelphia with his family in the summertime, and his boy, Artie, was my age. We were playmates. Poor Artie was just as terrified of his grandfather as I was. I remember Horace as an elderly man with white hair, sitting in his rocking chair on the porch of the Dapplebrook Inn. That used to be his home, you know. It’s where we used to play.”
“What about Oswald?”
“Oh, he was a terrifying creature.”
“Terrifying?”
“Ranting through the streets with his iron arm detached, waving it around like a billy club . . .”
Emerson is as disturbed by that image as she is to see Ora take a can of cat food from one cabinet and a small china plate from another.
“Papa told me to stay away from him, and even Aunt Etta avoided him,” she goes on. “Of course, she’d known him and Horace all her life. She always said it was a terrible pity, the way the tables had turned.”
“How so?”
“Oswald was the firstborn, and he was Aaron and Sarah’s favorite as a child.” Ora opens the can and takes a spoon from a drawer.
“What about Horace?”
“The boys were only fourteen months apart, but so very opposite. Oswald was dark and athletic and dashing. Horace was fair and scrawny and terribly nearsighted, with thick glasses. He didn’t have much personality back then—quiet and studious, a shadow of his big brother. But oh, how he idolized Oswald. Everyone did.”
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