Jane didn’t say a word during most of the ride. She was miffed at me, no doubt, because of one of my many sins. I felt like telling her to get over it, but kept my mouth shut and drove. I’d crossed a line. I could feel the black spot like a clump of dirt rattling around my soul, but I didn’t think she was the type to hold it against me for too long. Anyway, her silence was burning a hole in my brain.
“Exit here,” Jane said, the first two words she’d spoken.
We slowed. I looked around. “Sorry about the book.” I hoped she could hear sincerity oozing out of my words because I wasn’t about to grovel any more than that.
From the edge of my eyes I saw her smile, and I knew we were okay again. I had to hand it to Jane. She’d climbed the ladder in a male world and still had it tough, so I didn’t blame her for her moods and lashes.
Soon we came upon a fairly new development looking like Santa’s Village stuck in the middle of a farmer’s field. We slowed at the guard shack. I asked directions to the address Tig gave me. In about five minutes, we pulled into the driveway.
I knocked, but there was no answer and no neighbors mowing lawns or peeking out of windows. I took a deep breath, marveling at the way the air smelled, not like the canned gunk they served up in Brooklyn most days. The sky was all sorts of colors, rose and gold and deep cerulean. I took great gulps of air, holding in the oxygen, hoping it would cleanse the decay of the morning.
I knocked again. Nothing.
“Did you hear that?” Jane asked.
“A horse.”
“I didn’t mean the neighing.”
We stood still, and I heard sound coming from the back of the house, like the sweep of a brush or the scrape of light metal on brick. Jane reached for her Glock and slipped it from her holster into her pocket. She led the way, inching along the side toward the back.
The noise grew louder. We stopped, and I realized we were sitting ducks in the middle of a vast green lawn flanking a cluster of homes with a horse farm in the distance. I smelled gasoline and cut grass.
“Anyone there?” I yelled.
“Me.” A female voice wafted from behind the shrubbery circling a patio. “Wait a minute. I’ll be with you just as soon as—”
I heard a small crash, then some mild swears. They peppered the area like surprises. This was going to be interesting.
A woman appeared brushing off her jeans. She was slight and wore clogs and a tee and one of those aprons serious gardeners use with a row of pockets. Her hair was as red as mine, maybe a shade or two deeper. But it was straight, and she kept it trimmed short. She wore black-rimmed glasses, the square, designer kind.
“Come about the mower? It’s on the patio. I’ll show you. It’s a good one, but I don’t need it anymore, which is why I’m selling it for cheap. They do the lawns here. Good thing, too—did you see all the grass? Acres of it, enough for a herd of cows. You’d think I’d just moved here. But no, the John Deere’s been sitting in the garage for a while, so you may have to buy new tires. Needed it at my last place. I rolled it outside and cleaned it up so you could take a good look—”
“That’s not why we’re here.” I flashed her my ID while Jane holstered her Glock with the grace of a pit bull.
“I hope that’s not what I think it is,” the woman said. “You’re too young to be playing with guns.”
“Are you Susan Gruber?” I asked.
“That’s me. Sure you can’t use a mower? It’s a real bargain. Runs good. I’m moving to Florida in three months and selling stuff I should have sold years ago.”
There wasn’t a smooth way to tell her why we were visiting, so I took the plunge. “You’re the owner of a van involved in a kidnapping, and your phone number was found in the address book of a woman who was murdered this morning.”
“You have a strange way of introducing yourselves, pulling out guns and talking about kidnapping and murder. And I assure you, I don’t now, nor have I ever, owned a van.”
“The dead woman’s name was Phillipa Olinski. Do you know her?
She shook her head. “Nice sounding name, but, no, I never heard of her. Did she live around here? Murdered, you say? Poor woman.” She stopped and crossed her arms, staring down at the antique bricks on her patio. “She had my phone number in her address book?”
“The ink was faded. When we tried it, a canned voice said the phone was no longer in service.” I read the number to her.
Susan Gruber gave a start, jerking her eyes to the right. “Geez, that’s from another life.”
For a second, I thought she was going to faint. Her hand slammed into her chest, her face drained of color, and she hung onto the patio table for support.
“To be fair,” Jane said, “your name wasn’t in the address book.”
“No, Henry was the name beside the number,” I said.
The woman’s eyes widened. “You’d better come inside,” she said, recovering enough to lead the way to her kitchen.
When we were seated, she excused herself and walked down a short hallway into another room.
I heard a faint ringing sound. “Molly?” Susan Gruber said into what I hoped was a telephone. The conversation continued, but her voice was low, insistent. Although I pride myself on my snoopiness, I couldn’t hear what she was saying. In a few minutes she returned.
“Can I get you something? Fruit juice, water, tea, coffee? I got a new refrigerator a few months ago when I was sprucing up the house to sell it, and it gives great water if you’re into that sort of thing.”
“I’ll take a water with one ice cube,” I said.
“I’ll have the same,” Jane said, “but lots of ice, please.”
She came back to the table balancing three glasses. “My memory’s returning. About the phone number, that is.” She sounded out of breath and, after setting down the water glasses, held one hand to her chest, continuing to stare at the ice cubes as if they understood life far better than humans. She hovered near the table. “I was married at the time I had that phone, to Henry.”
“Henry Gruber?” I asked.
She nodded. “Another life.”
She steadied herself on the edge of the table. I thought she was going to faint.
“Where?”
“About five or six miles away from here, as it happens.” She gave me an address in Ewing Township. “Outside Trenton’s city center. Great neighborhood overlooking the Delaware River, a perfect place to raise children.” Her eyes began to tear up. “I have no idea why he would have given my number to another woman. I assure you, I didn’t give it to her. It was an old cell phone, from at least ten years ago, probably more. But anyway, who remembers old cell phone numbers?”
She must have read my mind because she finished with, “And it’s a long story—about the other life and the marriage. Do I have to tell it?”
“Maybe. We believe the woman’s murder is connected to the abduction of a teen in Brooklyn Heights, and right now we have no other leads, except for your phone number written next to your husband’s name.”
“And the van, don’t forget,” Jane said.
“I don’t know anything about a van, and I don’t know anyone in …” She stopped. “What’s the girl’s name?”
“Brandy Liam.”
“No bells.” She sat. “I’ve called a friend. I’d like her to listen to what we have to say.”
Susan Gruber was no fool when it came to business. Polite, cheery, somewhat scatterbrained, but it was an act. I began to wonder if she was hiding something, and then it fell into place. She was trying to hide something from herself, something she’d buried long ago—her prior life. I pictured her shoveling dirt onto her soul.
“This is a murder investigation,” I said, “but no way are you a suspect.”
“All the same, I want my friend here. I’ve no idea what this is about—why you say there’s a van owned by me, why an extinct phone number of mine would be in a dead woman’s possession, or why she was murdered. Sounds like the work of
an evil genie, if you ask me.”
To me, it sounded like Henry Gruber somehow bought the van with his wife’s credentials, at least titled it to her. And he didn’t want Phillipa to phone him, so he gave her a nonworking number when she’d asked for one.
The doorbell rang, and footsteps approached.
“Susan?” a voice called.
“In here, Molly.”
Molly? Both the name and the voice were familiar. On my last case, I met a Molly at a farmer’s stand in New Jersey. I gave her a song and dance, and she saw right through it, but what did I expect—she’d just passed the bar. I wondered if Susan Gruber’s Molly could be my roadside Molly, but I dismissed the thought and sipped my water, because long ago Mom taught me that coincidence was really contrivance in drag. I rooted through my contacts until I found it, Molly Blanchot, Esq. When I looked up, she was standing before me.
“You again?” Molly laughed and extended her hand. “How do you know Susan?”
“She’s trying to sell us a lawn mower,” I said.
“Right, and I’m Molly Pitcher.”
Molly and I filled them in on our brief history while Susan tried to compose herself. She wasn’t doing a good job of it.
Jane told Molly the real reason we were there.
“This is an informal chat, I take it?” Molly asked, sharpening her gaze.
Jane and I nodded.
“Good, because if I think it’s becoming an interrogation, things are going to get very formal. I’m here because I’m Susan’s friend, but she could become my client real fast.”
“We just need to understand why a dead woman whom Susan doesn’t know would have Susan’s old cell phone number in her address book.”
Susan Gruber thumped her chest. “Next to my husband’s name. Some husband he turned out to be.”
There was silence for a couple of seconds.
“Henry wasn’t a bad man. Looking back, I don’t know what we saw in each other, why we were attracted.”
Molly reached for Susan’s hand. “You know what they say about opposites.”
Susan Gruber sipped her water. “Where are my manners? Molly, would you like—”
“I’m fine. Tell them as much or as little as you like.”
“Henry’s an engineer. I’m an artist. He was good looking. I was young. We had a son, Stuart, a wonderful boy. He was our world. He was our glue.”
Susan drifted away for a while, and we were silent. “You don’t know how hard I’ve tried to forget. It was years ago, not even a blip on the earth’s historical line. But on August 4, 1998, my world crashed. Stuart was being treated for what the doctor called a suspicious heart murmur and was in the hospital while they ran some tests. He was going to come home the very next day. We shouldn’t have left him. I don’t know why we did—why I did. I’ll never forgive myself. I’d stayed with Stuart every night and hadn’t slept—who sleeps in a hospital—so I was exhausted. Henry said he was going to stay.” She paused. Her face took on a withered look, like it had aged ten years in ten minutes. “Something made him change his mind. A nurse came in, I guess, and said they’d take good care of him, and not to worry, he’d be up and dressed when we got there in the morning. And then Henry said he had a deadline, so we left. We left Stuart alone.”
Molly reached for a box of tissues and handed it to her friend.
Susan dried her eyes and continued. “We kissed him good night. The next thing I knew, the hospital was calling.” She paused. “He was dead when we arrived.”
No one spoke for ten or twelve heartbeats. At least that’s what I thought they were. The silence crept around, covering everything.
“I can’t stop seeing my boy. I keep wondering why, how. For many years, I couldn’t sleep or eat. I …”
She stopped again, and I heard her gasping for breath. “I used to wander from room to room. Some days I never got dressed, never turned on the lights. I don’t know what Henry did. I didn’t care what he did. Then one day I took a shower and put on some clothes and drove myself to the studio. I had to buy new brushes. I’d neglected to clean the old ones. I forgot myself in my art.”
Molly put her arms around Susan, who shook her head and blew her nose. She was on another planet, and there was nothing we could do or say to bring her back.
“Sometimes it seems like yesterday. Well, as you can imagine … our marriage unraveled, what there was left of it. It fell apart one thread at a time, minute by minute. But Henry, how to explain what happened to Henry? At first, he didn’t sleep or eat. The man lost thirty pounds.”
She stared out the window into her own hell. I heard a horse neigh again and looked at Jane, who looked at the table. Molly passed around the plate of chocolate chips, but no one felt like eating.
Susan Gruber continued. “He ranged around the house. I thought he was going mad. We went through counseling, but our marriage had been a moth-eaten mess long before Stuart’s death. After he died, we were in tatters. Henry seldom spoke about Stuart or his stay in the hospital, but when he did, he blamed himself, the hospital, the world. Like me, he had his work.”
“What was the name of his company?” I asked.
“Gruber & Associates. He’s a bridge consultant, at least he was. Out of town a lot.”
Again there was a long pause. I watched Jane texting, probably to her team to have them look up the company. If we were lucky, it was a corporation and the principals would be listed or there’d be a website with a name and address. I squirmed in my chair.
“I should have gotten a second opinion,” Susan said. She was sitting at the table with us, but her voice seemed like it was in an echo chamber. “Why did I choose that heart specialist? I should have stayed with him. What kind of a mother was I? And Henry was like a madman, but all at once, he’d apologize, then rage into the phone because of something at work. I think he lost most of his clients.”
“Do you know who they were?”
She held her head. “I never had anything to do with Henry’s business. I never understood it or wanted to understand it. I had my studio.”
“She does beautiful work,” Molly said. “Oils, works large. I went to an exhibit and was bowled over by one of them. Such purity of line and breadth of color. That’s how we met.”
Susan Gruber smiled. “My compulsion. It’s what keeps me sane, I guess. Well, sometimes, at least.” She drank the rest of her water. “Can I get anyone a refill? Molly, some water?”
Jane shook her head, and one by one we declined. It was as if we had taken a trip into this woman’s hell.
“One day he threw a typewriter at me. It missed me, but broke into a thousand pieces. I packed my things and lived in my studio for a while. When I started to sell my paintings, I rented an apartment close to my studio. But something always happens. I become restless and move. Since my child’s death, days have become months. They’ve turned into years. The earth is pulling me down, literally. But the thing that’s the worst? I can’t remember my boy’s face, the shape of his face, his eyebrows.”
“When was the divorce?” I asked.
“No divorce. I couldn’t afford the agony. I don’t want anything from Henry.”
“And you haven’t seen your husband since the day you left?” Jane asked.
She shook her head. “We haven’t seen each other or communicated since that day.” She thought a moment. “Let me take that back. Except for a glimpse of him during the trial, but we didn’t speak.”
“I thought you were divorced,” Molly said. “You know I’d be happy to—”
Susan Gruber shook her head forcefully. “No. I left, and there’s been no divorce. I don’t want to drudge it up. No.”
“But you mentioned a trial.”
Another long silence.
“Henry sued the hospital. His lawyer or someone working for his lawyer called me and asked me to testify. When I appeared in court, that was the last time I saw Henry.”
“What year was this?”
She shrug
ged. “I’d have to look it up.” She looked at Molly, who nodded.
Obviously the woman wasn’t addicted to phones the way the rest of us were. She left the room, and I heard a computer bong and chug into life. Five minutes later she was back.
“The trial was in June 2001, I remember because I wore the same dress I wore to my opening the fall before, although why I bother with dresses is beyond me. I guess when you’re in a certain generation, you’re wedged in solid. I didn’t want to testify. I didn’t want to see that part of my life again, but I owed it to Stuart. He was a speck in that hospital bed. Why I allowed him to stay alone, I don’t know.”
“The name of the hospital?” Jane asked.
“Hamilton Hospital.” Susan Gruber put a hand to her throat, and her eyes took on a defeated look.
Thanks to me, all the memories she was trying to bury rose up and were crushing the life out of her once again. “I suppose you wouldn’t have your husband’s address or anything like that? Even the last four digits of his social would help.”
She shook her head.
“Or a card or photo? Or if you remembered the name of the lawyer who asked you to testify, that would help,” Jane said.
“No. And if I did, believe me, I’d hand it over. There may be some old stuff of his in storage, but I really doubt it. I’ve made a systematic effort to get rid of Henry. This will be the fifth move for me since … and I think I’ve gotten rid of most everything. I don’t know why I move. I can’t explain it, other than to say it makes me feel like I can get away from everything. It’s a cleansing, like I can shed my skin and be brand new, even though I know it doesn’t work. In the end, the ghosts return, the sleepless nights, but at least I have a brief time of peace.”
“Tell me more about Gruber & Associates.”
Susan Gruber shrugged. “His own company, like I said. I don’t know if it was a corporation or what it was. He kept the books. I didn’t get involved. When I knew him, Henry was an engineer, the kind that builds bridges. He consulted around the world. Did a lot of traveling.”
Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2) Page 23