“Where were your daddy and your grandmother when you heard them yelling?”
“Upstairs somewhere.”
“And you want to know what’s the matter, right? What do you do?”
She was shaking her head frantically, back and forth.
Dr. Hicks said, “It’s okay, Lucy. We’re right here to protect you. Nothing can hurt you. Do you believe me?”
Finally she nodded and expelled a shaky little girl’s breath. “I walk up the stairs and hide. I look down the hall and see my daddy going up the attic stairs.”
Savich said, “Do you see your grandmother?”
“No. She’s already up there.”
“Is your daddy carrying anything?”
“I don’t know. He’s crying. I think he’s crying about Mama again.”
“Do you go up the stairs to the attic?”
“No. I listen to them making noises, moving around in the attic, but I’m afraid to go up there, afraid they’ll see me.”
“Do you know what they’re doing in the attic?”
“I don’t see them, but they’re arguing, and Daddy’s crying again and yelling, and I’m afraid to move.”
“Could you make out what they’re saying to each other?”
“Grandmother keeps screaming about how she’s sorry, how he ruined everything.”
Lucy fell utterly silent, and her head fell to the side. Savich thought she’d come out of it and fallen asleep, but Dr. Hicks stayed his hand when he would have patted her shoulder. He shook his head to continue.
Savich said again, “Is your daddy saying anything to your grandmother you can understand?”
“My daddy’s voice is shaking. He’s yelling, and Grandmother’s crying.”
“What does your grandmother say?”
“‘I didn’t mean to, Joshua’—Grandmother always calls Daddy Joshua even though Uncle Alan and Aunt Jennifer call him Josh.”
“Do you hear your grandmother say what she didn’t mean to do?”
“She just kept crying and saying over and over, ‘He ruined everything, Joshua. My ring! He threw it out, said no one would ever find it. I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t.’”
“What happened next?”
“They went to Grandmother’s room, so I didn’t have a chance to sneak out. Then they came back and they were both carrying lots of clothes and shoes and stuff. They went back and forth, and when they were in the attic I ran down to the kitchen.”
“Did they ever know you were there, Lucy?”
“No. I went up later and saw my dad, and he was standing by his bedroom door, and he was crying. He saw me and called to me, and I ran to him, and he hugged me.”
“You never said anything to your dad? To your grandmother?”
“No. I knew they’d be mad. I didn’t want to get swatted.”
“Lucy, tell me about your grandmother.”
She looked confused. Savich realized she was only a kid and the question was far too complicated. “Do you love your grandmother?”
She nodded, another quick, jerky movement. “She makes me peanut-butter cookies; they’re my favorite. She lets me sit beside her while she’s reading. She’s always reading. But she always sits in the living room. I hate the living room; it’s like a dead room, and you can’t breathe.”
“Do you love your grandfather, Lucy?”
Her face lit up. “Grandfather likes me to sit on his leg, and he bounces up and down and says he’s my horse. He always smells like beef jerky. I really liked jerky until—”
“Until?”
“Until he went away to the store and never came back. He worked real hard, and so did Daddy. He made lots of money, my daddy said that. One day before he went away, he came home from work and he was mad. I remember he shouted at Grandma and he said bad words. Daddy took me away. He bought me an ice cream and told me to forget it and never say those words.”
“Do you know where he worked, Lucy?”
She looked thoughtful, but she shook her head.
Savich moved away to stand beside Coop while they listened to Dr. Hicks bring Lucy back. “You did very well, Lucy. Now I’m going to snap my fingers, right in front of your nose, and you’re going to wake up. You’re going to feel relaxed and settled, and you’re going to remember everything we spoke about, all right?”
“Yes, Dr. Hicks.”
Dr. Hicks snapped his fingers. From one instant to the next, Lucy was back, and she looked calm. She said, “I’ve got answers now.”
“Yes,” Savich said, “most of them. No doubt about what happened anymore.”
Coop watched her face change. She looked ineffably sad. Slowly, tears began to stream down her face. “Can you imagine,” she whispered, choking, “my dad saw his mother kill his father, and then he protected her, helped her shove Grandfather into a stupid trunk with a white towel over him? It’s too horrible, what he lived through, and he never told a single person, kept it all deep inside him, until he couldn’t any longer. I wonder if that’s why he never married again, because he could never tell anyone what happened. It was so vivid in his mind, still. In the last moments of his life he was reliving that horrible event.”
Lucy put her face in her hands and cried, not for herself but for her father.
Coop laid his hand on her shoulder until she quieted. He said matter-of-factly, “Maybe that’s why you stayed with your grandmother; your father was taking care of both of you.”
Lucy raised her face to his. “Do you know, now that I remember back, my dad never left me alone with my grandmother. I remember now that when she read with me sitting next to her, Dad was always nearby.”
Savich said, “At last you know. Now you have to let it go.”
Dr. Hicks patted her arm. “You will be all right, Lucy Carlyle. You’re a survivor, and you see things and people clearly. Yes, you will be fine.”
Lucy gave him a twisted smile. “Me, see people clearly? I don’t think so, sir. I really don’t think so.”
Dr. Hicks lightly squeezed her hand. “You will come to see I am right. Now, why don’t you let Agent Savich and Agent McKnight buy you a pizza in the boardroom, let your mind settle a bit?”
“It’s been a long time since I was in the academy.” But as she spoke, the words died in her throat. “How can things be all right?”
“I forbid you to worry about it right now, Lucy. It’s too much to take in. That’s what these two gentlemen are for. Let them stew and fret. Not you, all right?”
Lucy nodded finally, but Coop knew she couldn’t help but stew about it.
Lucy turned to Savich. “Dillon, do you think they’ve completed the autopsy?”
“Let’s see.” When Savich slipped his cell back into his pocket a few seconds later, he said, “Dr. Judd will call you himself when they’re finished, Lucy.”
“She—she really stabbed him. It’s still so difficult to imagine. And they were fighting over a ring? How could a ring be so important?”
“We may never know that, Lucy,” Savich said. “You know that.”
She nodded.
Coop raised her to her feet. “Let’s go have that pizza.”
CHAPTER 28
Wall Street, New York City
Enrico’s Bar
Monday night
“‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart’s right there.’”
“I really like that song.” Genevieve Connelly toasted Thomas, the young man she’d just met. He grinned at her; then, hearing some applause, he turned on his bar stool and bowed from the waist.
Genny took another sip of her mojito. “I don’t even know where Tipperary is.” She sounded too sharp, simply too sober, and took another drink. She wanted to get drunk, had to get drunk, even though it was Monday night, and a work night. She saw herself hugging the toilet bowl, but it didn’t matter. She was too angry, too depressed, to worry about it. She took another drink and smiled at Thomas when he told the bartender, Big Ed, to serve her up another mojito. Be
fore long, she knew Thomas was from Montreal, worked sixty hours a week as a waiter at the Fifth Wheel in the East 80s, and wrote poetry at night, a twenty-first-century e. e. cummings in the making, he told her, and he seemed perfectly serious.
She found herself telling him she’d very nearly been engaged, but that wasn’t going to happen now, because Lenny was a jerk with an addiction she hadn’t even known about. Yeah, a jerk who was in Atlantic City gambling right now.
Genny wanted to work up a mad, but the mojitos were making her mellow instead. “I trucked over to Morrie’s after work to meet Lenny for dinner, only he never showed. I finally called his mother, and do you know what she said?” And Genny, an accomplished mimic, recited in a soft, sad voice, with a hint of a whine, ‘Since he stole four hundred dollars out of my purse, dear, I’ll bet he’s in Atlantic City again. I guess he hasn’t told you about his little problem?’
“His little problem? I mean, which one? He was a thief and a gambler, right? Well, I couldn’t take it in, and so I hung up. I don’t think she ever liked me much, and now it doesn’t matter, does it? She calls it a little problem?”
“My brother gambles,” Thomas said. “Our parents finally kicked him out.”
“He never told me,” Genny said, and stared into the mirror behind the bar, watching herself drink the rest of her third mojito. “Time to powder my nose, Thomas,” she said, and headed off to the women’s room.
Five minutes later, when she slid back onto her stool, her lipstick new and shiny, her hair freshly combed, Thomas said, “Okay, Genny, you know I’m a poet who’s wasting his youth flinging high-priced spaghetti to yuppies on the Upper East Side. What do you do?”
She was staring at herself again in the mirror, but this time she saw only a distorted outline of her face. She raised her fingers to touch her cheek, to make sure it was really there. “What I do is financial analysis,” she said. “I review companies’ sales trends and projections, stuff so boring I bet I could out-scuttle a gerbil on a treadmill.” She looked around. “I don’t see anybody I know tonight, though Enrico’s is a favorite booze trough for the financial crowd I’m in.” He handed her another drink, and she took a gulp, hiccupped, and giggled. “Would you look at me—all pissy-faced, and I don’t give a crap. The jerk—he wanted to gamble so much he totally forgot me.”
Thomas eyed her, then broke into song again. “Do you know this one? ‘From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli—’”
Everyone joined in with him this time; even Big Ed sang along with them while he sparkled up a glass.
“I met Mr. Montezuma once, but I did lose ten pounds doing it.” She didn’t realize Thomas was more or less holding her up on her bar stool. He laughed. “You know, sweetie, it’s late, and I’m thinking it’s time for you to meet your date with destiny.”
“What destiny?”
“Popping down a half dozen aspirin kind of destiny, but don’t worry, I’ll see you get home and leave you alone to enjoy your hangover all by yourself.”
“With my luck, it’s going to be bad.” She realized she was slurring her words a bit. She sloshed around the mojito left in the glass, thought about a stranger walking her home—he seemed like a real sweetheart, but still, she’d met him only tonight. Genny pulled together arguments as clearly as she could, both pros and cons, and finally nodded. “Yeah, I guess I’d better hang it up.” She gave him a sloppy hug. “Thanks for making me feel better, Thomas.”
He patted her shoulder. “Anytime, babe.”
There was applause for Thomas on their way out the door. He grinned, gave a little wave, and steered her outside. Once on the sidewalk, a cold wind whipped against her face and made her eyes tear up. That’s all she needed was to cry, only these tears were just from the biting wind, thank heaven. She looked around for a taxi, slurred a couple of curses because there was nary a soul to be seen; everything was dead and empty and cold. Well, that was Wall Street at night, after all the hotshots left for the Upper East Side, or Connecticut, or the Hudson Valley, after the chicks flew the work coop. And Lenny was in Atlantic City, kissing dice and rolling them.
The jerk.
She stuck her hand through Thomas’s arm and squeezed. He was a skinny dude, didn’t have much muscle. “I’ve got a condo on Pine Street, only three blocks over.”
A woman came dashing out of Enrico’s, her long blond hair blowing wildly around her head, waving her hands at them. “Wait up!”
The blonde grabbed Genny’s arm and tried to jerk her away from Thomas. “Are you all right?”
“Me? All right? Of course I’m all right; I’m with Thomas. What do you want?”
“You won’t be all right very soon now. I saw this creep slip something in your drink when you went to the restroom. I’ll bet it’s that rape drug, Rohypnol.”
“What’s Rohypnol?”
“You know, roofies, that date-rape drug. You’ve heard of roofies, haven’t you?” The woman didn’t take her eyes off Thomas.
“He gave me a roofie?”
“Yep, slipped it right into your mojito. I’ll bet you’re feeling pretty woozy about now, right?”
More betrayal. She couldn’t take it. Genny erupted, whirled on Thomas, shoved him hard in the chest with the heels of her palms. He wheeled his arms to keep his balance. “You jerk!”
“Wait a minute!”
She slammed her foot in his stomach, and he fell onto his side and rolled off the curb to land on his back, trying to suck in air.
Genny stared down at her supposed friend and wanted to cry. She’d believed him—so cute, a really nice guy, and his singing voice was incredible. He’d listened, actually listened. “I’m sorry you did that, Thomas.”
“I didn’t!” he yelled at the blonde. “Who are you? Why are you doing this?”
“I’m Monica, you lowlife, and I saw you do it! You’re Genny, right? When I saw you come outside with him, I couldn’t stand by, knowing he was going to do something bad to you.”
Thomas was holding his stomach. “Genny, I swear I didn’t put anything in your drink. I didn’t. Why would I?”
Monica dove her hand into a huge black purse and pulled out her cell phone. “You lying pig. I’m going to get the cops here to take your sorry butt to jail.”
Genny grabbed Monica’s hand but missed because she was so drunk. Or was it the roofie? “No, don’t call the cops, I only want to get out of here.”
She looked at Thomas, on his knees now. “You did drug me,” she said to him. “I feel really dizzy and sick, so you must have.” She felt a bolt of rage and tried to kick him as he was getting to his feet, but she missed.
“Forget about him, Genny. Let’s get out of here. If you’re not better by the time we get to your place, I’ll call the cops. Believe me, everyone got a good look at him, and he’ll go to jail for it.” She whirled around to Thomas, now leaning against a light post. “Don’t you try to follow us, you got me, you creep?”
“Let’s just go,” Genny said as bile rose up into her throat. Oh, no, please, she didn’t want to get sick.
There wasn’t a taxi in sight. “Well, we’re not far from your place, right, Genny?”
Genny couldn’t answer, she was too busy simply keeping herself upright, putting one foot in front of the other.
It took a long time to get to her building on Pine Street, since every single step was a trial and error, but finally, with Monica supporting her, she managed to get her key into the outside lock.
It was past midnight. No one was around at that hour, certainly not the doorman, Sidney, who liked to snooze the night away in the storage room behind the counter.
Monica helped her onto the elevator. Genny studied the board, finally punched the button for the fourth floor. When the elevator doors opened, Genny was wheezing, barely able to walk. “I’m not going to make it.”
“Sure you will. Hang in there, Genny, you’re doing fine. Don’t worry, I’m here.”
Monica took the key out of Genny’s
hand when they reached her door at the end of the corridor, opened the door, and eased her inside.
“Yes, Genny, you made it. I’m proud of you. Now let’s get you inside, and everything will be all right, I promise.”
CHAPTER 29
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Tuesday morning
When her cell blasted out the horse-race trumpet call, Lucy’s hand jerked, sloshing her coffee over the side of her Betty Boop mug.
“Hello, Lucy Carlyle here.”
“Agent Carlyle, this is Dr. Amos Judd. I completed the autopsy on your grandfather’s remains. Agent Savich asked me to call you directly.”
She swallowed. “Yes, Dr. Judd, thank you. What can you tell me?” Remains—that’s what her grandfather was now.
“I found scoring on two of the back ribs, consistent with a large smooth blade, such as a butcher knife, that penetrated the chest. There was also sharp scoring of a thoracic vertebra, indicating the thrust was deep, the blade headed straight for the heart. He died quickly, Agent Carlyle.”
Lucy thanked Dr. Judd, punched off her cell, and poured more coffee into her mug. She didn’t drink, just cupped the mug in her hands to warm them.
Her cell rang again.
It was their longtime family lawyer, Mr. Bernard Claymore.
His old voice sounded surprisingly strong and firm. He asked how she was doing, then immediately said, “I called, Lucy, to tell you I need to see you immediately. Your grandfather left me an envelope twenty-two years ago, told me to give it to you only after your own father died. This, unfortunately, happened much too soon. Come by and I will give it to you.”
She stared at her cell phone. An envelope from her grandfather? Her heart began to pound. Answers, she thought, perhaps at last she would have answers.
An hour later, she walked out of Mr. Claymore’s elegant suite of offices in the Claymore Building on M Street, an envelope clutched in her hand. Mr. Claymore told her he had no idea what was in the envelope; he’d simply kept it in his safe for the past twenty-two years. He assured her he had, indeed, followed her grandfather’s instructions to the letter.
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