Family Matters

by New York Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime

  “Or the father could have visited Terry,” Jimmy said, “that’s the husband, right? Made a scene, intimidated him, got the shrink’s name out of him somehow.”

  “Josh hated his father,” I said. “But would he blow the whistle on him if he thought he’d murdered Beryl?”

  “That’s where that crazy ACOA family loyalty might kick in,” Barbara said. “I wouldn’t take a bet on it either way.”

  Lucas was the only one left on the list. I didn’t think he loved anyone but himself. But he was the most guarded of all of us in group. Who knew what secrets he’d been keeping, or more importantly, what secrets he’d revealed to Beryl? He could be dealing steroids, for all I knew. How would she react to that? Would she keep it confidential? Would she press him to do the right thing?

  We needed to know more.

  Beryl had discouraged us from outside contact with each other, but she’d let us make up a phone tree in case of emergencies. The only number I had was Vanessa’s. But I started with Josh, because I thought he’d be more likely to let his hair down with me. I found him in the inevitable church basement at a gay AA meeting down in the Village.

  He was willing to dish the dirt and he didn’t think it was impossible that one of the others in the group had killed Beryl.

  “Not Olivia,” he said. “She was so crazy about Beryl that she’d rather have died herself. And Vanessa was always sucking up to her, don’t you think? Killing her wouldn’t win her approval, that’s for sure. But that girlfriend of hers sounds scary. Possessiveness and jealousy are ugly character defects.”

  “Are you speaking from experience?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that was me when I first got sober. I did a lot of hard work on it when I went through the Steps. To tell the truth, Terry would have left me if I hadn’t. But as far as I know, Claudia isn’t in recovery, so she probably thinks making scenes, opening Vanessa’s email, and listening to her private voice mails prove how much she loves her. Maybe she decided to eliminate the competition.”

  “Did you do those things with Terry?”

  “Yeah. I got so good at following him around I could have become a private eye. But the real result was that I could have lost him. I’ve left that far behind.”

  “How about Lucas? I’ve never been able to figure him out.”

  “I’ll tell you what pissed him off,” Josh said. “He’s the only one who won’t admit he has an alcoholic father. He’ll tell you all about his mother’s drinking. But his father is very high functioning. He’s a politician, so his reputation matters. Maybe Beryl was trying to crack his denial one-on-one, and Lucas thought it threatened his dad’s career.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “For one thing, Beryl wouldn’t tell anyone something a client said in therapy. Unless one of us told her we were planning to murder someone. Then she’d be legally required to warn the victim, or the family could sue her after he got killed.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope, it’s the law. My friend Barbara is a counselor. She told me. Anyhow, I thought Lucas started lifting weights so his father couldn’t beat him up any more. How come now he’s protecting him?”

  Josh shrugged.

  “Hey, you know what alcoholic families are like. And denial has nothing to do with reason.”

  I called Vanessa next. She was reluctant to meet me. She’d never even kissed a man, but that wouldn’t stop her girlfriend from freaking out if she caught her having coffee with one. She finally agreed to meet me at an AA meeting, the one place Claudia never followed her in, though she’d been known to lurk outside the door. She chose one I hadn’t been to for a while, in the cafeteria of a school on the Upper West Side. We had to arrive and leave separately, or she wouldn’t talk to me at all.

  “I don’t think it was one of us,” Vanessa said. “Maybe it was one of Beryl’s other clients.”

  “The concierge didn’t see anyone go up.”

  “So he says.” Vanessa sniffed. “That guy is a chain smoker if I ever saw one. I don’t believe he watched the door for an hour without sneaking out to smoke around the corner. Or maybe he killed her himself.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “What would his motive be?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Blackmail? Therapists never tell you anything about themselves. We don’t know a thing about Beryl’s private life. Maybe he saw something she didn’t want anybody to know, nothing to do with her practice. I bet the police are looking into that guy and the rest of Beryl’s life, too.”

  When I told Barbara, she didn’t think Vanessa’s suggestion was so far out.

  “Or maybe Beryl had a secret that did have to do with her practice,” she said. “She could have been doing something unethical.”

  “Like what?”

  “Sleeping with a client is the classic one,” she said. “Any helping professional could lose her license for that. And it’s something the concierge could have seen. His whole job is watching everyone in the building’s comings and goings.”

  “I can’t think how we’d follow that up,” I said. “If the concierge is a blackmailer, he’d be a fool to talk to us. And if he’s a murderer, he’d be even more of a fool.”

  “I’m sure there’s a way we could get him to talk to us,” Barbara said. “But give me some time to think about it. I’m exhausted.”

  “Tough day at work?”

  Barbara worked at an outpatient alcohol program in a hospital in the Bronx.

  “No, I had a required workshop. It was pretty intense.”

  “What was it about?”

  Some of Barbara’s trainings sounded interesting, like the one about reporting murders in advance. Others were bizarre, like when the hospital made them watch a video about how to wash your hands.

  “Mandated reporting of abuse.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you’re any kind of counselor or a shrink, you’re required by law to report it to the state if you even suspect a child is being abused.”

  “You mean a client might tell you they were beating their kid, and you wouldn’t have to keep it confidential?”

  “You wouldn’t be allowed to keep it confidential. But that’s not how it usually happens. Say I have a woman client who’s in recovery, and she happens to mention her little girl said something about mommy’s boyfriend touching her. I have a duty to report that he might be molesting the child, and Child Protective Services would send somebody to investigate.”

  “What would happen if they decided it was true?”

  “They might make the boyfriend leave, or they might remove the child from the home.”

  “They could take your client’s kid away from her? How could she ever trust you after that?”

  “That’s the catch. It usually kills the therapeutic relationship stone dead. She loses her boyfriend or her child or both, so she hates the therapist, quits treatment, and goes back to drinking and drugging.”

  “That’s terrible. So what if you don’t report it, because you don’t want that to happen?”

  “For starters, it’s an ethical violation. Then there are civil and criminal penalties.”

  “Sounds like the therapist is screwed either way.”

  “That’s why the workshop was intense.”

  Not until I was lying in bed that night did I think of who might have a motive based on what Barbara had told me. I remembered Mary Anne going on about how much her new boyfriend liked her little girl. She thought that proved she’d finally picked a better man. But her choices had always sucked before. Why should this time be any different? What if this Warren guy liked Mary Anne’s daughter too much? What if Mary Anne told Beryl something suggestive that either he or the kid had said? Even if Mary Anne dismissed it as a harmless remark—not a stretch, considering the power of denial—Beryl would get it, and she’d have to do something.

  First thing the next morning, before I even had my coffee, I called Barbara and asked her if she thought Beryl would have told Mary
Anne in advance that she was going to make the call and that she didn’t have a choice.

  “She was a good therapist, right?” Barbara said. “Ethical? Experienced? Then I’d say yes, absolutely.”

  It made a fine motive for murder.

  As we found out later, Beryl had documented her suspicions and intention to report after Mary Anne’s last session. She hadn’t gotten through yet—as Barbara said, the CPS hotline was part of the state bureaucracy—when Mary Anne came to see her, desperate to talk her out of it. She couldn’t, so she picked up the letter opener and took her chance.

  Give the cops credit. They not only figured out the motive. They had evidence. A detective from Homicide North contacted me to confirm that I’d seen Mary Anne wearing the gold chain and pendant that she’d always been fiddling with in group—except on the day of the murder, when I’d noticed that she didn’t have it on. They’d found it under the body, chain broken, like Mary Anne’s heart.

  THE HOUSE BY THE BAY

  Dorothy Mortman

  IT stood on Cropsey Avenue in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, at the lower end of Gravesend Bay, just before the bay joined the Atlantic Ocean and about three miles south of the Verrazano Bridge. A wooden house, two stories high, three if you counted the attic, which was only used for storage. Surrounding the upper level was a narrow balustrade, sometimes called a widow’s walk, where the seaman of yesterday and his family could watch for ships arriving and sailing, and see the warnings of the lighthouse at Norton’s Point. In more recent years, one could see the Parachute Jump at Coney Island.

  I stood holding onto the front gate, mustering up the courage to go inside. It had been thirty years since I saw Isabelle. She’d be in her nineties. What would she look like now? All I could visualize was the painting. A young Isabelle captured in the lushness of youth. Black hair and fair skin. Large, dark eyes and red lips parted in a faint smile. I couldn’t even remember what she looked like when I left. Marriage and children, and my relocation to California, had parted us. My whole life, for as long as I could remember, I’d called her Aunt Isabelle, even though she was but a distant cousin. The children were grown and gone now, and Lawrence dead. Retired from my job, I was at loose ends, and then the letter came. Could I possibly visit and stay for a while?

  Still dressed for California warmth, I could feel the sharp winter wind through my coat. I pushed open the gate and climbed the porch steps. Amanda must have been watching from the window, because she answered the door on the first ring. I couldn’t help but stare. How old she looked. She was staring at me. Of course, the years hadn’t been kind to me either, especially those last years with Lawrence, as the hydrocephalus slowly took his sanity and mine.

  “Elizabeth! I’m so glad to see you. Isabelle has been counting the days, the hours.” I felt Amanda’s wet kiss on my cheek. “Have you eaten? I have some hot soup and sandwiches.” While Amanda busied herself in the kitchen, I wandered into the living room.

  A log burned slowly in the fireplace, casting a faint glow up towards the painting of Isabelle that hung above it. A memory returned. “So lucky he took her off the streets,” commented my cousin Mathilda before she was shushed, the adults realizing little Elizabeth was nearby and listening.

  As a young adult, I realized Isabelle had supported herself as a lady of the evening, until the handsome prince, the artist, saved her. Sounded so exciting to a teenager. The artist, not widely known, and not young or unusually handsome, amassed a large enough fortune to buy this house, which he left to Isabelle upon his death.

  A flood of other memories rushed forward. The long ride from our home at the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge to Gravesend on the elevated line, built before Brooklyn became part of New York City. The train would inch so close to the windows of the small houses it passed, you could view the inhabitants. I marveled at the carefully cultivated trees of Gravesend, so different from the wild trees that grew in Williamsburg, pushing up in every crack in the sidewalk, and dubbed the trees of heaven.

  “Come, the soup’s on the table, and I’ve set out the cold cuts. I’ll join you with a cup of coffee while we talk.” Wonderful Amanda, Isabelle’s housekeeper of many years, and so kind to a lonely little girl with no siblings or close cousins. I savored the clam chowder, just hot enough to warm the innards, spiced enough to entice the taste buds. “How is Isabelle?” I ventured.

  “Not too well, I’m afraid, but she’s so anxious to see you.” Amanda paused. I heard a car honk as I waited for her to continue. “We redid the back parlor into a bedroom and sitting room for her. She couldn’t take the stairs anymore. You know she’ll be a hundred in June.”

  I gasped. “I didn’t realize she was that old.” Her centennial, I thought. An hour later, we joined Isabelle in her room.

  The walls were painted soft yellow, and the drapes and upholstery were a complimentary shade of blue. Isabelle’s favorite colors, I thought. She was sitting in an armchair near the bed. The lamp nearby was shining on her face, as wrinkled as old parchment. Full lips and large eyes shrunken with age. I hesitated for a moment before I rushed forward to hug her, to kiss her.

  “Elizabeth, how are you?” The voice still lilting with that faint trace of accent. The grandfather clock chimed many times as we sat and talked, sharing old memories and filling each other in on our lives. It was near eleven by the time I climbed up to the guest room and fell into bed completely exhausted.

  The following days became a pattern. I would join Isabelle in her sitting room for breakfast that Amanda brought in on a tray, and we’d spend the balance of the morning in conversation. When Isabelle tired out and dozed off to sleep, I’d retreat to my room to read. I was usually left with the feeling she was trying to tell me something, a secret so long hidden it was difficult to voice. Always she seemed on the brink of speaking it. The beginning of a sentence, a pause, and then silence. The sentence never completed. What was it she was so desperate to say that she could not?

  On the second day, I wandered up to the attic to rummage among the assorted accumulation of the years. The water of the bay glittered in the sun, sending waving lines across the ceiling. I felt as if I was on a boat. I could hear Isabelle’s description of her trip to the United States.

  “A terrible storm broke out. The ship heaved and turned. People threw up, dishes fell. Women screamed, and I was so terrified for little Josef. I held him so tight in my arms.”

  “Josef? Who was Josef?” I’d asked. I was a child, sitting and listening, fascinated by stories of another time and place.

  “Josef . . .” She’d paused for a second. “My friend Bessie’s little boy.”

  Now I wondered if I should write her story. I’d written a few short stories, even had them published.

  Isabelle arrived at dinner in a pale blue dress that reached her ankles. Friday night dinner was always special, and I, too, had dressed more elaborately. By the dim light of the Shabbos candles, I saw the young Isabelle, the marks of age hidden in the shadows. “Towards the past and the future,” I toasted as I lifted my glass of wine.

  Isabelle’s thoughts drifted to times long ago. “Seems like only yesterday when I landed in the States, just got off the ship. Even remember the name, like our president, the Mount Clinton.” The dreamy look drifted away, apparently replaced by a sad memory.

  I reached for her hand. “What is it?”

  “Nothing, nothing.” She turned her face from me, but not before I saw the pain in her eyes, the tears that rolled down her cheek.

  Suddenly, she claimed to be very tired, and went to her room as soon as we finished dinner, while I retired to mine, nursing the ache I felt. What painful memory did I bring back to her?

  I saw very little of Isabelle the rest of the weekend. She claimed to be more tired than usual. I couldn’t forgive myself for having caused her pain. Yet, I had a burning desire to know its cause.

  I buried myself in the mound of papers lying disordered in the attic. Receipts for donations,
receipts for work done on the house, a myriad of receipts, but nothing that gave me any useful information. The yearly donation to St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church gave me pause.

  Vaguely, I remembered a cold winter day just after my sixth birthday. Isabelle taking me to F.A.O. Schwarz to pick my birthday gift, and afterward, stopping by a church with a fancy cross. She’d just stood looking at it, not even going in, but she seemed so unhappy. I’d moved close to her, pressing against her hip. “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She hugged me tight. “It’s okay Liz. They were so good to me once. It was a day just like today. Promise me, Liz, you’ll tell nobody of this visit. Promise me, promise me.”

  Later, I joined Amanda for lunch, tuna sandwiches and coffee in the kitchen. A pigeon landed in the backyard and was soon joined by another. Amanda banged on the window and they flew away. “Pesky pigeons. I leave crumbs out in the yard for the birds, and these greedy pests come to eat them.”

  Amanda relented and let me help her clear the table, all the while my mind a jumble of thoughts, of plans. Finally, I settled on one.

  Early Monday, I stood in the freezing wind at the bus stop, waiting for the express bus to Manhattan, mingling with the commuters headed for work. I was delighted to be free, but nostalgic for the excitement that came with my job. We huddled together, trying to extract warmth from the bodies close to us.

  The Federal Records Archives for New York City was on the twelfth floor of 201 Varick Street, an old building in an old section of Greenwich Village. In a small room at the end of the hall, with windows that needed washing, two women sat poring over records, so intent on their activity that they didn’t look up as I entered.

  A small, balding man sat at the front desk. He peered at me through thick eyeglasses. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I wish to examine ship records. Their arrivals, the passenger lists.” “If this is your first time, you will have to fill out this form.”