Careful to open the envelope so slowly that she could reseal it, Hannah began to read:
Dearest Hannah,
If you are reading this it is probably because I am dead. Except for some charities, I have left everything I have to you, including, of course, my ten percent interest in the company.
I hope this will be read by your eyes only but I must warn you that I don’t trust Dad. He is a spender and out for himself always. If anything happens to me, be sure to have my fellow CPA, Richard Rose, keep an eye on the company books. I don’t want you to be cheated.
I cannot understand why Doug will not face reality, unless by forcing the company into bankruptcy he hopes to have a financial gain for himself at the expense of the employees. The antiques in the museum are separately owned, eighty percent by him and ten percent each by you and me, and would not be an asset of the company.
I know you have always been glad to let me handle our business interests but now you must take over.
Hope you don’t read this for fifty years or so.
Love you my little sister,
Kate
Her eyes brimming with tears, Hannah put the letter back in the envelope and resealed it. Then she hesitated. Face it, she told herself fiercely. What if Kate doesn’t fully recover? Who will be her guardian? I wouldn’t put it past Dad to come over here and take a look at her personal records. I don’t think he has a key, but the desk clerk might let him in.
She took the envelope out. I can’t wait to put this back if Kate gets well, Hannah thought, but until then it’s safer with me. She had the combination to Kate’s small safe. It was on a wall in the closet. She opened it and took out Kate’s jewelry from their boxes. In her will their mother had left all of her jewelry to her daughters, to be given to them at age twenty-one. Kate had rings and necklaces and bracelets that were quite valuable. Anyone knowing that the apartment was empty indefinitely might find a way to get in. Hannah knew these small safes were easy prey for a professional thief.
She did not allow herself to complete the thought that her father might try to make a claim on the jewelry, given his out-of-control spending habits. Hannah put the letter and the jewelry inside her large shoulder bag. She then went to check on the second bedroom, which Kate used as a den.
The room contained a pullout couch, a comfortable chair, end tables, and a sixty-inch television. Hannah knew that after a long day at her office, Kate loved to sink into her favorite chair, relax, and have a late supper as she watched TV. I hope so much that she gets home soon, Hannah thought, her eyes stinging with tears.
Her last check was the kitchen. She looked for the phone number for Kate’s every-other-week cleaning woman, Marina, to ask her to take all of the perishables out of the refrigerator. She found it on the refrigerator and called her. Since she said she would not be in until Thursday, Hannah glanced into the refrigerator to make sure nothing was already spoiling. Her final concern was the leafy plant Kate had on the windowsill. In the four days since Kate was last at home it had begun to wilt without water.
That’s another thing I know nothing about, Hannah thought. Kate has a green thumb. I look at a plant and it dies. It was at that moment that Kate’s phone in the kitchen rang. Hannah picked it up. It was the desk clerk. “Ms. Connelly,” he said, “a Mr. Justin Kramer is here. He sold his condo to your sister. He was inquiring about how to reach you and I told him that you were here. It seems he gave a plant to your sister as a housewarming gift, and he wanted to offer to take care of it until she gets back home.”
Until she gets back home! Words Hannah desperately needed to hear from someone else’s lips.
“Please send Mr. Kramer right up,” she said.
34
When Justin Kramer came upstairs to Kate’s apartment, Hannah had immediately liked what she was seeing. He looked to be in his early thirties. Trim, about five feet ten, with hazel eyes, a firm jaw, and a head of curly dark brown hair, he reminded her of a boy she’d had a crush on when she was sixteen.
His concern for Kate was genuine. He explained, “I got in over my head when I bought this condo. Then when I lost my job in the Wall Street fallout two years ago, I knew it would be wise to sell it. My father drilled into us that you trim your sails when there’s a financial pinch and you don’t dip into savings. The investment firm I’m with now is even better than the one I was with before. But I’ll never forget how concerned your sister was about me. That was why when I read about the accident, I thought of the plant I had given her and that if she still had it, it would need care. I know that with everything that has happened, it’s a very small gesture, but I wanted to do something.”
“That’s just like Kate to be concerned about the other guy,” Hannah said simply. “She’s that kind of person.”
“I understand that she’s badly injured, but, for whatever it’s worth, I have a strong feeling that she’ll make it through. I obviously have seen the hints in the media that Kate might be implicated in the explosion. As little as I know her, I absolutely cannot believe that Kate could ever be involved with something like this.”
“Thank you for that,” Hannah said, “and thank you for believing that she’ll make it through all this. Right now, being in her home and wondering if she’ll ever see it again, I needed to hear that.”
They left the apartment together, Justin carrying the plant. When they were outside the building, standing on the sidewalk, and before she could say good-bye, Justin said, “Hannah, it’s one thirty. If you haven’t had lunch yet, would you like to grab a bite with me?”
Hesitating for only a couple of seconds, Hannah said, “I’d like that.”
“Italian food okay?”
“My favorite.”
They walked three blocks to a small restaurant called Tony’s Kitchen. It was obvious that Justin was well-known there. He seemed to sense that she did not want to talk about Kate or the explosion and so, instead, he told her about himself. “I was raised in Princeton,” he said. “Both my parents teach at Princeton.”
“Then you’ve got to be very smart,” Hannah smiled.
“I don’t know about that. I went to Princeton, but for my master’s I was ready for a new setting so I went to business school in Chicago.”
They both had a salad. Hannah had an appetizer-size penne with vodka sauce. Justin decided on lasagna and ordered a half bottle of Simi chardonnay. Hannah realized it was the first time since the dinner she had with Jessie, celebrating her new designer label, that she could taste food. Justin asked her about her job, another safe subject. When they left the restaurant, he asked if he could call a cab for her.
“No. I’ll walk across the park to the hospital and check on Kate. I don’t think she knows that I’m there, but I just need to be with her.”
“Of course, but first please give me your cell phone number. I’d like to keep in touch and find out how Kate is doing.” He smiled, then added, “And report on the progress of her plant.”
When Hannah reached the hospital and went up to the intensive care unit, her father was sitting at Kate’s bedside. He looked up when he heard her footsteps. “She’s the same,” he said. “No change at all. She hasn’t said anything else.” He looked around, careful to see that neither a doctor nor nurse was within earshot. “Hannah, I’ve been thinking. The other day when Kate said to me that she was sorry about the explosion, I took it to mean she had set it.”
Hannah looked at him in astonishment. “You implied that Kate said she had set it.”
“I realize that. I wasn’t thinking straight. I meant that she said she was sorry about it, not sorry that she actually caused it.”
“I have never believed that Kate set that explosion,” Hannah whispered vehemently, “and you could have saved me a lot of heartache if you hadn’t implied the other day that she virtually admitted it. And anyhow the doctor said that anything she mumbled was probably meaningless.”
“I know. It’s just that what has happened in these last few day
s has brought back everything of the time I lost your mother and . . .” Douglas Connelly buried his face in his hands as tears began to form in his eyes.
Composing himself, he slowly got to his feet. “Sandra is in the waiting room,” he explained. “I know you didn’t want her to come in here.”
“I don’t.”
Hannah stayed for an hour and then went home. She later watched the evening news while she ate a peanut butter sandwich, all that she wanted for dinner. She started to watch the next episode of a television series that she enjoyed but fell asleep on the couch. Waking up at midnight, she stripped off her clothes, put on pajamas, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and fell into bed.
The alarm woke her at seven on Monday morning. At eight she visited Kate for a half hour, then she spent a long day at work trying to concentrate on new designs for sportswear. It’s one thing for your name to be put on a fashion line. It’s another thing to keep it on, she reminded herself.
After work she visited Kate again, holding her hand, smoothing her forehead, speaking to her in the hope that somehow she would understand. She was about to leave when Dr. Patel came in. The deep concern in his voice was obvious when he said, “I’m afraid she’s developed a fever.”
35
On Monday morning, Frank Ramsey and Nathan Klein were back at the scene of the explosion. They found insurance investigators meticulously sifting through the rubble. Frank knew both of them. Over the years they had been at other fires where arson was suspected. The difference in this case, Frank thought, is that if the fire can be attributed to Gus Schmidt acting alone, they’ll have to pay on the insurance claim. Even if Kate Connelly was involved, a good lawyer could lay the blame squarely on Schmidt. Unless, of course, she recovers and admits she put him up to it. Which is highly unlikely, Frank thought.
At the funeral home Friday, he and Klein had jumped up to assist when they witnessed Lottie Schmidt faint. They had carried her to the couch in the office. She had recovered quickly, but both they and her daughter had insisted that she rest on the couch in a back room for at least twenty minutes. An assistant at the funeral home had made a cup of tea for her.
Lottie’s absence had given Frank and Nathan a chance to speak with others at the wake who had worked with Gus. Speaking as one, they told the fire marshals that Gus had been fired after Jack Worth became manager, and that Gus hated both him and Douglas Connelly.
“Gus was a perfectionist,” was the way one of them put it. “It would take a team of experts to tell the difference between the original pieces and the copies of the furniture he made. For them to tell him his work wasn’t up to par was a terrible insult.”
“Did he ever talk about blowing up the complex?” Ramsey had asked.
One of the men had nodded. “In a manner of speaking. I’m on a bowling team with Gus. I mean I was on a bowling team with him. He always asked how things were going at the complex. When I told him we were getting a lot of returns, he said something like, ‘I’m not surprised. Do me a favor and set a match to the whole place for me.’ ”
All of this meant that the fire could end up being blamed solely on Gus, which the worried insurance investigators admitted to Frank Ramsey on Monday morning. While they were speaking, drivers began to move the big furniture vans from under the shelter to be placed in storage. Except for the damage from smoke and flying debris, they seemed to be in pretty good shape.
“Connelly will never try to rebuild this place,” Jim Casey, the older of the insurance investigators, said. “If he gets the insurance money, he can live like a king. On top of that, the property alone is worth a fortune. Why would he bother to rebuild?”
Four undamaged vans, all bearing the name CONNELLY FINE ANTIQUE REPRODUCTIONS, slowly exited past them up the driveway to the main road. Frank Ramsey saw that there was still one left in the far back area where the vans had been kept. That area had an overhead roof and open sides. He walked over to inspect the remaining van and observed the battered doors, the cracked windshield, the rusting exterior, the flat tires. It was obvious to him that this damage had preceded the explosion and that this useless van had been left there for a long time. Why didn’t they just get rid of this thing? he wondered. Jack Worth impressed me as the kind who would be a good manager. On the other hand, he had not insisted on the need for security cameras, so maybe he was all show. But Worth had told them that it was Douglas Connelly who wouldn’t let the money be spent. Either way, it wouldn’t have cost much to have this thing towed to a junkyard.
Frank walked around to the back of the van and then, not anticipating that it would open, turned the handle of the rear door. To his astonishment, he saw unmistakable signs that the van had been occupied. Empty wine bottles were scattered on the floor. Newspapers were haphazardly strewn throughout the deep interior. He picked up the newspaper nearest to the door and looked at the date on it.
It was Wednesday, the day before the explosion.
This meant that whatever vagrant was using this place to sleep might have been here that night. Frank Ramsey did not venture farther but closed the door of the van.
It was abundantly clear to him that the whole complex had become a complicated crime scene.
36
Mark Sloane had made an appointment with Nick Greco for one o’clock on Monday afternoon. He had explained to Greco that he had just relocated to start a new job and did not want to take much more than a usual lunch hour to meet with him. The alternative would be to meet after 5 P.M.
“I get in very early but then I catch a five-twenty train home,” Greco told him. “May I suggest you come at lunchtime and we can order in from the deli?”
A man in his early sixties, Nick Greco was of average height with the disciplined body of a lifetime runner. His once-dark hair was mostly gray. Rimless glasses accentuated dark brown eyes that looked out on the world with a calm but piercing appraisal. A hopeless insomniac, Greco frequently rose at three or four in the morning and walked across to the room that his wife called his nocturnal den. There he would read a book or a magazine or turn on the television to catch the latest news.
Just after 5 A.M. last Thursday, he had been watching an early news program and had seen the first pictures of the fire that was ravaging the Connelly Fine Antique Reproductions complex in Long Island City. As always, Nick’s mind had gone into search-and-retrieve. His near-photographic memory had been immediately flooded with details of the tragedy, almost three decades ago, when Douglas Connelly, his wife, Susan, his brother, Connor, and four friends had been involved in a boating accident. Only Douglas had survived.
Tragedy seems to follow some people, Greco had thought. First, the guy loses his wife, his brother, and his friends. Now his daughter is in a coma and his business is destroyed. Then the media began to insinuate that Kate Connelly and a former employee, Gus Schmidt, might have conspired to set the explosion. Greco’s reaction was that he couldn’t think of anything worse than to lose your daughter, unless it was to discover that your daughter had not only destroyed your life’s work, but in the process had also contributed to someone else’s death.
But that was not on his mind when the receptionist announced the arrival of Mark Sloane, brother of the long-missing Tracey Sloane. “Send him in,” Greco said as he got up and walked to the door. A moment later he was shaking hands with Mark and inviting him to sit at the conference table in his roomy office.
They agreed on ham-and-cheese sandwiches on rye. Greco asked the receptionist to phone the order in. “I have a good coffee machine,” he explained to Mark. “So as long as we’re both having it black, we might as well have it as hot as possible rather than wait for a delivery.”
He liked the look of Mark Sloane with his firm handshake and direct eye contact even though the younger man was very tall. But he could also see that Sloane was somewhat tense. Who wouldn’t be? Nick Greco thought sympathetically. It’s got to be so tough to relive his sister’s disappearance. That was why he chatted about Mark’s new j
ob for a few minutes before he opened the file that he had reviewed earlier in the day.
“As you know, I was one of the detectives assigned to the case when Tracey disappeared,” Greco began. “At first, by law, she was considered a missing person, but then when she didn’t show up for work, missed two important auditions, and did not contact any of her friends, it was concluded that foul play was almost certainly involved.”
He read aloud from his file: “Tracey Sloane, age twenty-two, left Tommy’s Bistro in Greenwich Village, where she was employed as a waitress, at eleven P.M. She refused the suggestion of having a nightcap with several fellow employees, saying that she was going directly home. She wanted to get plenty of sleep before an audition scheduled for the next morning. Apparently she never got back to her apartment on Twenty-third Street. When she didn’t show up for work the next two days, Tom King, the owner of the restaurant, fearing she had had an accident, went to her apartment. Accompanied by the building superintendent, he went inside. Everything was in order but Tracey was not there. Neither her family nor her friends ever saw or heard from her again.”
Greco looked across the table at Mark. He saw the pain in his eyes, the same kind of pain he had seen so many times over the years in other people who were trying to trace a missing loved one. “Your sister dated, but from all the feedback we received, her career came first and she was not ready for a serious relationship. After acting classes, she would have a hamburger and a glass of wine with some of her fellow students, but that was usually it. We drew a wide circle, questioning her neighbors and friends, people in her acting classes, and coworkers, but without any success. She had simply disappeared.”
The sandwiches arrived. Greco poured the coffee for both of them. When he noticed that Mark was barely touching his food, he said, “Mark, please eat. I guarantee the sandwich is good, and you have a big frame to fill. I know you came here hoping for answers but I don’t have any. Your sister’s case is always in the back of my mind. When I retired I took a copy of her file with me. I never thought this was a random abduction and murder. Unless the weather was very bad, Tracey always walked home. She told coworkers she wanted the exercise. I don’t think she was dragged off the street. I think she met someone she knew who may have been waiting for her to leave the restaurant.”