Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  As Cam follows the rest of the passengers off the plane, she tells herself that she’s doing the right thing. Even though she’s scared to death, completely out of her element, and wondering how she’s ever going to summon the nerve to do what has to be done.

  The brasserie, located in an Art Nouveau building off Chestnut Street, is one of the most elegant restaurants in Philadelphia.

  The dining room’s soaring ceilings, marble floors, and arched windows bear testimony to its former life as a turn-of-the-century bank. Now cushy banquettes fill the room, along with tables set with linen tablecloths and bone china and vases of roses.

  At one of them sits Bitsy Sloan.

  “Ah, Lucinda, there you are.”

  Lucinda.

  Not “sweetheart,” or “darling,” or “honey.”

  No, Bitsy Sloan is not one for endearments—not unless she’s talking to her ridiculous squirrel-sized white dog, whose name Lucinda can’t even remember, as if it even matters, because again, her mother calls the dog “sweetheart” and “darling” and “honey.”

  “Hello, Mother.” Lucinda plants a perfunctory kiss on her mother’s powdered, papery cheek.

  Bitsy Sloan is tastefully, expensively clothed, bejeweled, coiffed, made-up, and perfumed. Her dyed brown pageboy brushes the shoulders of her red Dior suit, which drapes from her size zero frame just as it would from a hanger.

  Lucinda, wearing a slightly rumpled black Prada pantsuit she took from the back of her closet, takes the seat across from her.

  Immediately, a handsome tuxedoed waiter with slick black hair appears. He pours coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice and hands them menus encased in rich leather binders, their creamy stock embossed in Old English typeface.

  Lucinda surveys the choices. Escargot. Foie gras.

  She closes the menu, puts it aside, and amuses herself by fantasizing about treating her mother to breakfast at the Denny’s out on Industrial Highway, where she’d have to decide between the “Lumberjack Slam” and “Moons Over My Hammy.”

  Moons.

  Lucinda thinks about the Beethoven sonata that mysteriously appeared on her iPod, and about the movie that was ordered on her online account.

  Moonlight Sonata.

  Moonstruck.

  That DVD was no accident. When she called the online store’s customer service department, they told her that the order had been placed around Valentine’s Day, and that a receipt had automatically been sent to her e-mail account.

  She couldn’t find one.

  Not until she checked her recently deleted e-mail folder.

  She had never seen it—nor deleted it.

  But someone had—and from her home computer, right before she went away with Jimmy.

  She immediately changed the password for the online store account, and changed her e-mail address as well.

  “I wasn’t sure you were coming.” The words are spoken crisply from behind Mother’s menu, jarring her.

  In other words, You’re late.

  “I’m sorry, Mother. I had business to take care of.”

  When she left her apartment, Neal—who had come right over last night with Detective Rozyczka, as soon as she’d called to tell him about the flowers—was back.

  Today, he’d brought the detective again, along with a security consultant.

  “I want to make sure you’re safe here,” Neal told her as the consultant went around the apartment with a clipboard, a pen, and measuring tape, shaking his head every now and then.

  “I am safe. No one’s been here. It was a florist delivery this time, not a personal one.”

  “I realize that. But he’s been here before. He’s going to come back.”

  Not he might.

  He’s going to.

  He.

  Who is he?

  Neal assured her he’d take the information about the flowers to the Long Beach Township Police. “I’ll handle it, Lucinda. You just go to brunch with your mother, like you were planning.”

  This is the last place she wants to be.

  But then, so is her apartment.

  Really, the only place she wants to be is with Randy.

  She called him last night to tell him what had happened.

  “I’ll come right out there,” was his first response.

  “No, please don’t. It’s not urgent.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Someone sent me flowers, Randy. That’s not exactly an emergency.”

  “Don’t be cavalier. You and I both know you could be in danger.”

  “Not any more than I was before.” She kept her misgivings to herself. He had enough to worry about. “Anyway, Neal is coming. He’ll take care of things.”

  “I know he will.”

  The leather binder across the white linen tablecloth lowers abruptly, jerking Lucinda back to the present.

  Her mother’s frosted pink lips are pursed—either because she doesn’t like anything on the menu, or because she didn’t like Lucinda’s reason for being late to brunch.

  Probably both.

  The hovering waiter is there in a flash. “Have you decided, ladies?”

  Mother orders a poached egg on dry wheat toast.

  Lucinda, not hungry, nonetheless orders Crepes aux Framboise with caramelized bananas and candied pecans, apple wood smoked bacon, and a side of white truffle frites. And a glass of Laurent-Perrier, Brut Millisime, 1997 vintage.

  She is rewarded with a disapproving look from her mother—and an approving one from the waiter.

  “We’re celebrating, are we? Some champagne for you, as well, madam?”

  Madam’s lips purse harder, if that’s possible. “No, thank you.”

  “I wish you would, Mother.”

  “Why? Are we celebrating something?”

  “No.” It would just be nice to see you loosen up, for once.

  The waiter has discreetly vanished again.

  “Tell me what you’ve been doing lately, Mother.” Because God knows I can’t tell you what I’ve been doing.

  Bitsy tells her about her role in an art auction, a civic restoration project, a charity ball. About having the indoor pool resurfaced, and about trying to replace the chauffeur. Same old, same old.

  “Your father sends his best regards.”

  But not his love.

  “How is he?” Lucinda asks.

  “He was in the Orient last week. He’s in Europe this week and into next.”

  “No, I asked how is he? Not where.”

  Bitsy Sloan blinks her crepey, beige shadow-creased eyelids.

  Lucinda sighs inwardly. “I’d like to see him,” she says, “when he gets back and has some free time.”

  “So would I.” Her mother’s smile is brittle.

  Lucinda’s BlackBerry vibrates in her bag. She waits a moment, then slips it out and checks it, holding it on her lap, out of her mother’s view.

  It’s a link to a newspaper article, sent from an address she doesn’t recognize.

  Heart pounding, she blurts, “Mother, I need to use the ladies’ room.”

  Bitsy Sloan starts to protest, but she’s already up and striding away from the table.

  It smells like a funeral parlor in here.

  Neal reluctantly closes the door behind him, shutting out fresh air, and approaches the counter, where a woman with long, frizzy blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses is trimming thorns from long-stemmed roses.

  “How can I help you?” She sets the shears aside.

  He pulls out his badge. Her pale-lashed eyes widen.

  “I need information about the person who placed an order for flowers that were delivered yesterday from your shop.”

  “Why?”

  He just looks at her.

  She turns to a computer monitor. “Which order was it?”

  “The flowers went to a woman named Lucinda Sloan.” He gives her address, and waits while the woman presses keys and brings up the right screen.

  “Oh, I remember. The daffod
ils.”

  “You took the order?”

  “Yes, and I remember it because it was placed weeks ago, on Valentine’s Day. We were doing roses, you know, and reds, and pinks….”

  “Valentine’s Day stuff.”

  “Exactly. We were just swamped in the shop that day, delivery and carry-out bouquets, and in walks this guy wanting to order daffodils that wouldn’t be delivered for a month. And he paid in cash, too.”

  “What was his name?”

  She checks the screen. “Let’s see…. It was Randall Barakat.”

  That stops Neal in his tracks…but only for a moment.

  “What kind of man was he? Young? Old? Middle-aged?” Neal asked her.

  “Middle-aged, I think. Maybe.”

  “You think? Maybe?” Don’t lose patience, Neal. “So you’re not sure?”

  “Valentine’s Day is our busiest day of the year.”

  Yes, and I’m sure he was counting on that.

  “How old would you consider middle-aged?”

  “You know…. Maybe in his forties, fifties, sixties.”

  “That’s a broad range.”

  She shrugs.

  Randy, who is closing in on forty, doesn’t look a day over thirty.

  “Was he handsome?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  As far as Neal has ever noticed, there isn’t a woman alive who wouldn’t consider Randy Barakat handsome.

  “White? Black? Asian? Hispanic?”

  “White! Definitely!” She looks pleased with her recall skills. “And, you know, he had gray hair.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Not black.”

  “No, I told you, he was white.”

  “I meant his hair.”

  “It wasn’t white, really. It was gray.”

  Patience, Neal.

  “Can you think of anything else to describe this guy?”

  “Not really. I told you, this place was really—”

  “Busy that day. Got it. Do you remember anything else about him? Anything at all?”

  “Nothing other than the fact that he tipped me.”

  “He tipped you?”

  “Yes, with a bunch of ones. Most deliveries don’t pay cash, and they don’t tip the person who takes the order.”

  That’s interesting.

  It doesn’t shed much light on who they’re dealing with, but Neal would bet his life that it wasn’t Randy Barakat.

  Buffalo International airport is compact and nowhere near as busy as the metropolitan New York City terminal Cam just left. Without luggage, she’s in the rental car about five minutes later, consulting the driving directions she printed from the Internet the night before. According to them, it should take her all of fifteen minutes to reach the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

  With the roads slick and a light snow falling, it takes twenty.

  Cam arrives wishing it had taken an hour, at least. She doesn’t feel prepared to meet Janet O’Leary.

  What if she isn’t there?

  What if she is?

  What am I going to say to her?

  What if she tells me to get lost?

  Worst of all: What if she doesn’t even remember?

  I should just go home. What am I doing here?

  Looking for answers.

  Answers that have been a hell of a long time coming.

  The multibuilding complex, sleek brick and glass and steel, is still under construction, as she had known it would be. She did her homework on that, at least.

  But what do I do when I get to where I’m going?

  What do I say to her?

  I should just go home.

  But she parks the car and forces herself to push ahead, through the wet, wind-driven snow. She’d recognize that she’s reached the Roswell Park Cancer Institute even without the identifying sign.

  Everywhere, there are patients in various stages of the disease: some being helped from their cars into wheelchairs; others painstakingly using walkers or breezing along wearing telltale turbans and wigs.

  The lobby is a lovely, four-story atrium, complete with a granite information desk, a cappuccino bar, a pianist playing a jaunty show tune on a grand piano. If it weren’t for the fact that the place is filled with obvious cancer patients, along with medical staff wearing laminated ID cards, Cam could be standing in an upscale hotel lobby.

  For a moment, she wishes she had done that instead—hopped a plane to some island paradise and checked into a resort where she could hide away and pretend everything is normal, status quo.

  But it isn’t, and she didn’t.

  She came here, looking for answers.

  Looking for answers where there probably are none.

  Looking for a killer where there probably is none.

  This is a mistake.

  She has no business disturbing layers of dust settled over the secrets of the past. Ava is long gone, like their mother; soon, Pop will be, too. But Cam has a family that needs her now; she has a husband who loves her and a new baby girl and a daughter she almost lost.

  Whatever, Mom. Have a safe trip.

  This isn’t safe and it isn’t smart and she should leave well enough alone, get on with her life.

  Then a beautifully dressed, utterly hairless woman passes Cam, catches her eye, and smiles. She wears her baldness proudly—not, Cam realizes, having given up the battle, but having brazenly accepted it.

  If she can do this, Cam finds herself thinking, then Lord knows I can do anything.

  Jaw set, she walks toward the information desk.

  I’d rather be in Philadelphia.

  He read that someplace, a long time ago. Who said it? He can’t remember, but the quote has been ringing in his ears all morning, as he walks the familiar streets of Society Hill beneath a dank canopy of clouds, wishing he were somewhere else.

  Somewhere other than Philadelphia.

  He’s spent a lot of time here, but it doesn’t feel like home. Nor did the upstate New York city where he settled last June to become an upstanding citizen just long enough for the parole officers to relax a little.

  The Bronx neighborhood where he’d spent the first eighteen years of his life might have felt like home at one time—before his father was gunned down on a sidewalk right in front of their building.

  He and his mother stayed there, though, afterward.

  They stayed until he graduated high school, and Ricky Parker across the hall was murdered in his own apartment, and the killer wasn’t caught, and his mother decided the neighborhood was getting dangerous.

  He didn’t miss the old neighborhood.

  Nor does he miss the one that came after, in Yonkers.

  He can’t think of anywhere that ever really has felt like home—except, perhaps, for the maximum security prison where he was housed with over two thousand other men, most of them fellow violent offenders, career criminals mingling with first offenders. Like him. Ha.

  Oh, wait, not the prison—the correctional facility.

  That was back in the dawn of state prison reform; the governor-appointed Special Committee’s decision to change the name of the dismal concrete box didn’t change much of anything else.

  Still—you spend three and a half decades anywhere, it’s going to feel familiar. And as far as he’s concerned, when something is familiar, it’s home.

  It isn’t that he wanted to stay incarcerated, or would have if he could have, or would ever want to go back. Hell, no. Thirty-five years was long enough to spend behind bars for the inadvertent, sloppy murder of the only woman who had ever thought twice about him.

  He lost control that night.

  Never again.

  One of the neighbors heard Mother’s screams. Almost immediately, sirens wailed.

  How could this be happening, he wondered, as he fled into the night, panicked. He had executed so many flawless murders; he had sat back and laughed for a couple of years as the authorities hunted for the elusi
ve Night Watchman.

  One impulsive move, and he was living his worst nightmare. They chased him down in the dark like an animal.

  They got him.

  One of the arresting officers called him a crazy son of a bitch as he slapped on the handcuffs.

  He’s crazy, all right. Crazy like a fox.

  Ha. Fox. Funny.

  The law enforcement and judicial powers that be thought they had the upper hand, but right from the start, they were wrong.

  A little over a week after he killed his mother, the first Vietnam draft lottery took place for all men born between 1944 and 1950.

  The first number chosen was September 14.

  He had been born on September 14, 1950.

  When he heard the outcome of the lottery, he laughed his head off, knowing that his arrest had saved his life; knowing that the almighty draft board couldn’t touch him behind those thirty-foot concrete walls.

  Prison was bearable because he knew that one day, he’d get out.

  With Vietnam, there would have been no such guarantee.

  “I’m sorry about that, Mother.”

  Bitsy Sloan looks up from her hands, clasped in her lap almost as if she’s been praying.

  Lucinda knows better than that. She doubts her mother prays even at St. John’s Presbyterian, where she appears every Sunday morning without fail just as generations of supposedly pious Sloans have done before her.

  It’s just for show, as far as Lucinda is concerned.

  Why would Mother believe in God when she doesn’t believe in her own daughter?

  Bitsy nods at the seat Lucinda vacated, and the untouched meal that has appeared before it. “Sit down. Your food is getting cold, and so is mine.”

  Lucinda remains standing, looking longingly at the untouched flute of golden champagne at her place setting. She could use a swig right about now, to help face what lies ahead, well beyond the inevitable confrontation with her mother.

  Needless to say, this is not going to go over well.

  “I’m sorry, I have to leave.”

  Bitsy digests this with all the enthusiasm she has for the food in front of her. “Now? In the middle of brunch?”

  “It can’t be helped.” She hesitates, wondering whether to provide any more information than that.

  “Are you sick, Lucinda?”

  Would it change anything if her mother knew the truth?