Family Matters

by New York Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime

  This was the point at which Millie jumped up. She really didn’t want to hear any more. Therapy, this wasn’t. She had all she needed: the bonehead’s routine, his cell phone number, his picture. And of course, Dr. J had signed on the dotted line and handed over a nice retainer.

  Millie walked around the desk. “Got it,” she said.

  “Oh, okay.” Dr. J gathered herself together, stood and looked down at Millie. In her four-inch heels, she was about a foot taller than Millie. “You sure you have enough information?” she asked.

  “More than enough,” Millie said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Millie opened the door to her office, which exited right into the hallway. She pointed to the elevator, and her newest client reluctantly headed out, her mascara in black rivulets streaming down her cheeks.

  When she got back to her desk, Millie saw her message light flashing. The phone had rung during her meeting with the good doctor, but she’d let it go to voice mail. She dialed in for the message.

  “Millie, it’s your sister, Sophia. Long time, no talk.” Then there was a hesitation, and the voice on the message continued: “Call me, please. I really need to talk to you.” There was a slight pleading in Sophia’s voice. It was so unlike her sister. What could Sophia want? She thought for a minute—she hadn’t spoken to Sophia since their dad died, about six months ago. Later, she thought, I’ll call her later.

  Millie wanted to see if she could spot Neal coming out of his office around lunchtime, escaping for some afternoon delight. She left her office and walked to the Borough Hall subway station. She only had to wait on the platform about five minutes before a Manhattan-bound Number 2 train pulled in. She stepped onto the train. A young woman looked at her and practically jumped up to give Millie her seat.

  Shit, Millie thought. Did she look like she was about to croak or something? So what if she had just turned sixty; she didn’t feel sixty and she didn’t feel like she looked that old. This was happening all the time now. It pissed her off. She didn’t want to make a scene, so she forced a smile at the young lady and sat down.

  As the train was pulling into Fulton Street, she stood by the door and winced as she confronted her own image in the dark window. Her short, gray hair was thinning and receding. And when had those lines snuck in around her mouth? And those dark circles under her eyes? She had to face it—even she would have offered herself a seat. She straightened her shoulders and stood as tall as she could as the doors opened.

  She hustled out onto the street, wanting to find a lookout to settle in before the lunch crowds descended. Straight ahead, she could see the Freedom Tower—a structure of steel and glass, cutting through the sky like a big middle finger raised to those who doubted the World Trade Center site could come back.

  Neal’s office was in one of the tall buildings on John Street that were now nestled between newly-converted luxury rentals. People moved fast on these streets, as if the narrowness of the thoroughfare forced the speed, like water going through a narrow pipe.

  Millie aimed for the Starbuck’s on the corner. When she was through the door, the smell of strong coffee assaulted her. She loved the smell; it brought her back to her desk in the station house years ago. Of course, back then the coffee was the day-old, burnt variety. But the smell was still a trigger for that time in her life when she felt connected and alive.

  She ordered a tall decaf Americano, took her coffee to the counter against the window, and climbed up onto the stool. She reached into her bag and took out the folder with Neal’s picture and her special eyeglasses. They looked like ordinary reading glasses—but these babies were state-of-the-art binoculars that she’d bought online from Spies R Us.

  Millie put on the glasses. They made her a little dizzy, until she used the small wheels on the side of the eyepieces to adjust the focus. Now she could see people coming in and out of 110 John Street, down to the names on the ID badges that many wore hanging on lanyards around their necks. Perfect.

  She nursed her cup of coffee and her mind drifted to Sophia’s call. Sophia had five years on Millie, which she’d lauded over her since they shared their bedroom growing up in Bay Ridge. When Millie was about five, Sophia had taken a big thick permanent black marker and drawn a line on the wooden floor down the middle of the room. “This is a magic line,” she’d said. “If you cross it, a big, hairy monster will come out at night and eat you.” When their mother came in the next day and saw that black line on her polished wooden floor, she’d made Sophia scrub it and scrub it. But permanent is permanent, and while the line may have faded, Millie could still feel the terror she’d felt about crossing that big, black line.

  Now she looked at the thirty-something man, with light brown hair, walking quickly out of the building. Whoa, was that him? She took a quick glance down at Neal’s picture, and almost fell off her chair as the binoculars made her wobbly. She whipped them off to focus on the picture. Yep, that was him and he was walking right toward her.

  Millie jumped down from the high chair, gathered her things, and ran out the door just as he passed in front of the window. He was moving fast. It was easy to blend into the lunchtime crowd here, but she needed to weave in and around people to keep him in sight.

  He crossed Broadway to the City Hall side. Millie ran to make the light and hit the sidewalk on the other side in time to see him hustling up the street. He got to the next light and crossed the street with a group of tourists. Now Millie knew where he was heading; she just didn’t know why.

  She followed him and the crowd onto the walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge. He was keeping up a good pace on the long, uphill ramp. Keeping her eyes on his bobbing head, she slowed a bit and took a deep breath. Neal was either on a lunchtime workout walk or he had an assignation. She was counting on the latter. In the middle of the bridge, the woven cables swooped down to reveal an open view of Lower Manhattan, and further in the distance, the Statue of Liberty.

  Millie was so distracted by the view that she almost walked right past Neal. He had stopped and was sitting on a bench. And right next to him was a woman with blonde, shoulder-length hair—Dr. J?

  Millie walked past them and then stopped as if she was admiring the view. She looked back at them. The woman was dressed in a baby blue sweater, designer jeans, and black boots. That’s not what Dr. J had been wearing this morning.

  Millie pulled out her camera and aimed at the Statue of Liberty, then turned as if she was aiming at the Manhattan skyline, and clicked off a bunch of shots. Neal and the woman were embracing and kissing. Not just a peck—they were making out on the bench. Get a room, Millie shouted to them in her head.

  Millie needed to get a better view of the woman. She walked back to the other side of the lovers’ bench. They didn’t see her. They didn’t have eyes for anyone but each other. Boy, lust made people really stupid.

  She positioned herself and peered through the camera lens. The woman sure looked like the woman who’d sat in her office this morning—but on closer examination, the shape of her face and the lips and eyes were slightly different. This woman was younger than Dr. J. Neal certainly went for a type. Millie got about a dozen more pictures. She’d nailed the bastard.

  Millie figured she would just walk the bridge the rest of the way to Brooklyn. Her mind wandered back to her sister Sophia. She pulled out her cell phone and called her.

  “Hey, it’s me,” Millie said. “What’s up?”

  “Where are you calling from? It sounds like you’re in the middle of the Belt Parkway,” Sophia said.

  “Yeah, well I’m on the job. I’m on the Brooklyn Bridge. Tell me, what’s so important?”

  There was silence on the phone for a couple of beats. Millie pulled her phone from her ear to check if she’d lost the call.

  “I need to see you,” Sophia finally said. “I want you to come for dinner tonight.”

  “Tonight? Why tonight? I’m kind of busy.”

  “Look, Millie, you haven’t been over for dinner for months. You ca
n make the time,” Sophia said, in her usual superior tone. Then she came back with, “Please, I want to see you,” in a much softer voice. Almost a pleading voice, like on the message she’d left.

  “Okay, okay,” Millie said. “I can be there around six-thirty.”

  “Thank you. See you then,” Sophia said and disconnected.

  Thank you? Is that what Sophia had said? Millie was a little stunned. That didn’t sound like Sophia.

  Millie called Dr. J and left a message with her service. Before she descended the stairs on the Brooklyn side of the bridge, she got a call back. Dr. J wanted to know everything on the phone. Millie insisted on an in-person meeting back at her office around three. This would give Millie enough time to print all the pictures and select those that best told the story.

  Millie continued on to her office on Court Street. It was almost one o’clock and she was hungry for some lunch. Pizza— that’s what she felt like. She’d earned it with that walk over the bridge. She stopped at Fizcatti’s on Henry Street—still the best pizza in Brooklyn.

  While she sat in the small pizza shop and ate her slice with a Diet Coke, her mind drifted to Sophia. What was the urgency? She and Sophia had shared that little room for fifteen years, but because of that stupid, big, black line that Sophia had drawn down the center, they were never close. And then there was Nick.

  Sure, it was Millie who had introduced them. But Nick was supposed to be hers. He had been a homicide detective in the station house where she worked. He would come by and tease her and ask her for favors. They all did. More than anything, she’d wanted to be a detective. But in those days, a girl, especially one under five feet, couldn’t get into the Police Academy. So, she settled. She started as an administrative assistant and eventually became a desk researcher. She was good, and all the detectives relied on her. She loved being part of the team, even though she knew they all thought of her as a little, sometimes annoying, sister.

  Then one day, Nick, hearing her complain, offered to drive Millie home to assist with the move to her new apartment. After work, she got into his jalopy. She wasn’t even sure the car would make it from the station house in Midtown out to Bay Ridge. Yes, they were just friends. But wasn’t it obvious that she had a crush on him?

  They arrived home at dinnertime, and her mother insisted that she and Nick stay and eat. Nick didn’t need too much persuading. Millie’s mom was Jewish and her father was Italian. Her mother had mastered combining the best of both worlds in her cooking. She was serving one of her signature dishes that night—matzo ball minestrone soup. Sophia was there and immediately started flirting with Nick. And that idiot just fell into her trap. Sure, Sophia was pretty and tall and slender. She took after her father in her height and Mediterranean skin tones—her perfect olive skin and wavy, dark hair—not like mini-Millie with her kinky Jewish Afro and her pale, freckled skin from her mother’s side.

  After dinner, Millie went upstairs to gather her things together. She brought down a couple of boxes and then ran back up to get the rest. She looked out the bedroom window to see Nick and Sophia, each holding a box, walking to Nick’s car across the street. They walked perfectly together, side by side with matching strides. That was the moment she knew that she’d lost Nick to Sophia.

  Now Millie sighed. She found herself doing that a lot lately. She folded over her greasy paper plate and tossed it into the trash can on the way out of the pizza parlor.

  By two-thirty, she had the pictures of Neal and his honey printed and spread out on her desk. She picked out five. From her experience, that was all it took. The first two never quite registered; by the third, she had their attention; and by the fifth, the client knew this wasn’t just a bad dream. She put them in a neat stack and looked up at the clock: two-fifty. The buzzer sounded. She knew the doctor would be early.

  “I was surprised to get your call so soon,” Dr. J said.

  “I got lucky,” Millie replied, and then realizing how callous that sounded, she quickly added how timing was everything in this business.

  Millie always found it best to stick to the facts. She pulled out her notebook and read off the exact time she’d spotted Neal leaving his office, and detailed how she had followed him onto the bridge.

  “Your instincts were right,” Millie said. She knew that this was one instance where Dr. J would have been delighted to be wrong.

  The doctor sat very still and upright. Millie recognized that deer-in-the-headlights look—afraid to breathe, terrified to move—realizing that life as you now know it is about to crumble.

  Millie handed over the stack of photographs. Dr. J stared intently at the first picture which showed Neal’s face and the back of the woman’s head. Then she flipped to the next one and the next, her face growing paler with each photo.

  “It can’t be. She wouldn’t do that to me,” Dr. J said.

  Millie thought she heard wrong—she hadn’t said “he” but “she.”

  “My own sister,” Dr. J cried. Now Millie understood.

  “No. No way. Maybe they were just getting together to plan my birthday party—it’s coming up next week.” This was the denial part. Millie was used to this part. She let her go on for a while.

  “My younger sister and I have never been close. When we were young, we used to fight all the time—big fights, like with our fists. She was always jealous of me. But since our parents passed on, we’re all we have of family.”

  “This can’t be,” she kept repeating, the tension in her voice turning to anger. “You know, I’d made up my mind on my way here that no matter what you found, I would forgive Neal—that I would make it all okay.” Her voice trailed off, then she jumped up, rolling up the photos like a diploma, and stuffing them into her shoulder bag. She started toward the door, then looked back over her shoulder and said, “Thank you.” And she was gone.

  Millie sat back in her big office chair. Why hadn’t she seen that coming? She, of all people, should have known it was the sister. She looked up at the clock—a couple of hours before she had to leave. She turned her focus to some paperwork she needed to finish.

  An hour and a half later, just as she was about to take off for her sister’s, Millie’s cell phone rang. She looked at the screen—it was Dr. J calling. What now? Millie thought. Was the doctor in such denial that she needed more proof?

  “What can I do for you?”

  A deep male voice answered, “Hey Millie T—it’s me, Danny Klein. How you doin’?”

  Millie was confused. It took her a minute to respond.

  “What are you doing calling from Dr. J’s line?” she asked, with a sinking feeling in her stomach. She plopped down hard in her chair.

  “We’ve had a little incident here. We found your card with a couple of nice pictures on the doctor’s desk. So, she was a client of yours?” the detective asked.

  “Shit,” Millie said.

  “I guess that answers that. When did you last see her?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that. What the heck happened?”

  “Hey, Millie, this is your boychick here. You can tell me anything.”

  Millie had to smile. That’s what she’d called Danny Klein when he first came up as a detective. He’d been a baby—so young, so stupid. She’d called him boychick and taken him under her wing. But that was twenty years ago.

  “You tell me first,” Millie said.

  “Well, the doctor had a fight with her sister. According to the receptionist sitting outside her office, there was a lot of shouting, then a loud thud and a crash, followed by the doctor crying for help. The receptionist ran in to find the doctor bending over her sister, trying to save her. But it was too late.”

  “Holy shit,” Millie said. “She killed her? With what?”

  “Her heart.”

  “Her what?”

  “Her heart—the doctor had one of those model hearts on her desk. She threw it hard enough to hit her sister between the eyes and force the chair to fall backwards. Her sister smack
ed the back of her head against the edge of the glass coffee table. It’s a mess: the heart shattered, the table shattered, the lady’s head—well you know. So, Millie, now it’s your turn.”

  Millie’s mouth went dry. “Why don’t you just ask Dr. J?” she said.

  “Well, the doctor is a mess herself. She isn’t saying anything.”

  “Listen, boychick,” Millie said, “I can’t talk now. I’m already late. Let me call you back.” And she disconnected. She needed time to think. Fifteen years in the business, and this had never happened. These situations mostly ended in divorce, or in lots of tears and gifts to the aggrieved party, and maybe some good make-up sex. She was losing her touch. She had pegged this one, for sure, as just another friggin’ forgiver. Maybe it was the sister’s betrayal more than the husband’s that had pushed her over the edge. Sister, Millie thought, shit—she was going to be late.

  It was almost six-forty by the time Millie got off the R train and walked the three blocks to Sophia’s, around the corner from the house where she’d grown up. Millie climbed the tall stairway, holding onto the metal rail that badly needed a paint job. The last time she was here was in April for her father’s funeral. Now it was October. She was surprised to see that the summer porch furniture hadn’t been put away. Sophia was usually so on top of that stuff.

  As she approached the door, it swung open, taking Millie by surprise. She stepped into the foyer to see Sophia standing behind the door. Millie gasped. Sophia’s beautiful face, her Mediterranean, olive-colored skin was pale with a grayish tint. Her once lush dark hair was thin and dull. Sophia, who’d always resembled her handsome father, still looked like him, but in the last weeks of his life, when prostate cancer had devastated his lean frame.