The Good Stranger (A Kate Bradley Mystery)

by Dete Meserve

  The warm look in his eyes sent my pulse racing. “Are you sure it was twenty-two times? You were counting?”

  “It might have been twenty-four. I did take my eyes off you occasionally.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The email was insistent: Come to our store on West 28th Street. I’ve seen the person who is buying all the purple and white flowers. Lulu.

  I wrote back: What did he/she look like? Can you send a photo?

  Just come. Holiday Flower and Plant. 5:30 am tomorrow. Before we open.

  I sighed. I couldn’t imagine any good reason she wouldn’t tell me the information by email. And from my experience on countless other stories, a sketchy email like this probably wouldn’t lead to anything. But I was curious enough that I agreed to meet her. Besides, the Flower District was a few blocks from my apartment.

  At five thirty the next morning, I arrived at West Twenty-Eighth Street and scanned the one-block area of Chelsea for the store. Instead of bus fumes and sewer smells, the air was thick with the scents of wisteria, hyacinth, and roses. Outside the store, workers were stacking the gum-splotched sidewalks with cartons filled with fresh carnations and perfect long-stem roses in every color.

  I found Lulu standing beneath a faded green awning with the words HOLIDAY FLOWER AND PLANT, ESTABLISHED 1938. She was barely five feet tall with lush dark hair and a smooth, lineless face. “Every morning it’s crazy here with trucks and customers coming in and out,” she said with a soft, melodic accent that sounded like she came from the Philippines. “Hundreds of people everywhere, it’s always elbow to elbow, so I wouldn’t normally have noticed anybody in particular, you know. But yesterday, one guy stood out. He was in an army uniform.”

  “Fatigues?”

  She nodded. “He was loading up dozens of cartons of purple coneflowers and baby’s breath. And rolls of our purple ribbon. People don’t usually buy so many purple flowers like that.”

  “Do you have a photo? A name?”

  “He paid in cash, so we didn’t get a name or address. No photo either.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “In his twenties. I think. African American. Tall. Muscular.”

  I hid my frustration. “That could be lots of people.”

  “That’s why I asked you to come. There is a way to find him.” She lowered her voice and looked around to make sure no one could hear her. “I wrote down the license plate number of his van. My husband’s a cop. I asked him to run the license plate.”

  “And he did?”

  She nodded. “I’ll tell you what he found out, but I need you to promise you won’t tell anyone how you got the information. My husband would lose his job.”

  “Why is he willing to risk his job telling me this information?”

  She shook her head. “All the flowers and things they’re doing are nice, but they are very strange.”

  “Strange. How do you mean?”

  “My husband’s seen it all working for the NYPD: break-ins, shootings, beatings, gang violence. So we can understand why someone might steal or do bad things. Maybe they’re hungry or have no money to live on. Or have a drug or alcohol problem. But why would someone pay for meals or the rents for people they don’t know? What’s in it for them?”

  She was right. We’d grown so accustomed to hearing about crimes and thinking about the motives behind them that, when faced with someone doing the opposite of crimes, we were immediately suspicious of their motives.

  She scrolled through her phone. “Here’s the email from my husband. The van is registered to Kevin Raley. 145 West Twelfth Street. When you figure out why he’s doing this, would you let me know? Hope it’s not something illegal.”

  “I will, thank you.”

  “Oh, and one more thing. He wasn’t alone. A girl was helping him.”

  Kevin Raley’s address was a well-maintained six-story apartment building on a tree-lined street in Greenwich Village. I passed through an entryway door decorated with elaborate wrought ironwork and found his last name scrawled in black ink near the top of the old-fashioned doorbell panel.

  I cleared my throat and pressed the button. A male voice squawked through the speaker. “Can I help you?”

  “This is Kate Bradley. From ANC. I’m looking for Kevin Raley.”

  “What for?”

  “I’d like to talk with him about a story we’re doing.”

  A few seconds later, the door buzzed. I grabbed the handle and stepped inside a mosaic-tiled entryway. A door down the hall swung open, and a man wearing a baseball jersey stepped into the hallway.

  “I’m Kevin Raley. How can I help?”

  Although part of the description matched—he was tall and African American—he was a paunchy man, at least fifty, with hair graying at his temples. I had a hard time imagining him wearing army fatigues.

  I walked toward him. “I’m doing a story about all the things happening around the city: flowers, gift cards . . .”

  His eyes brightened. “I’ve been hearing about that.”

  “Someone said they saw you and your van in Chelsea yesterday buying a truckload of purple flowers.”

  “You think I’m somehow involved in all that?” he said, obviously surprised.

  “Someone at the flower mart said they saw you.”

  “They saw me?”

  “They said you were wearing army fatigues.”

  He laughed. “Do I look like I wear fatigues?”

  “So you’re obviously not in the army.”

  “No. My son Joe is, though.” He narrowed his eyes. “Wait, how did you find me? My vans don’t have signage on them. Is there some kind of trouble?”

  My stomach clenched, but I smiled anyway. “The opposite of trouble,” I said, trying to dodge his question. “Could your van have been at the flower mart in Chelsea yesterday morning?”

  He nodded, crossing his arms. “One of them could. Nearby anyway. I own a bunch of vans that are out every morning delivering to hotels and office buildings. Are you talking about the one on Twenty-Eighth? We deliver to the Hilton and DoubleTree nearby. But they wouldn’t have been at the flower mart.”

  “Your son. The one in the army. Could he have been on Twenty-Eighth yesterday morning? Maybe driving your van?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Maybe I could talk with him?”

  “He’s not here. He’s with family in the Bronx.”

  “Could I call him?”

  He sighed, not the way people did when they were tired, but a shuddery sigh like he was on his last thread of energy. “He’s only in town because his sister—my daughter—just passed away,” he said, sadness in his eyes. “He’s in for the funeral.”

  I looked at him in shock and felt my head go light. I wasn’t afraid to ask questions. Ever. But all my questions suddenly seemed unimportant. “I’m so sorry . . .”

  His voice became heavy, dense. “You couldn’t have known. My son’s been through the worst of it. Took him two days to get here from Afghanistan. First to Istanbul, then bad weather had him rerouted through Dallas, and finally here. No way he’s the guy you’re looking for.”

  I reached out to shake his hand. “Thank you for talking with me. I’m so sorry about what your family is going through. Looks like we got our wires crossed.”

  “We need one lead to pan out. One. That’s all,” Scott was saying, as if it would be easy. It was nearly eight o’clock after a long day spent reporting on the after-effects of the government shutdown, and he’d swung by my desk on his way out. Wearing a sleek charcoal-gray suit and white shirt, collar open, he looked like he was heading out for an important event.

  He sat at the empty desk next to mine as I filled him in on the dead end with Kevin Raley.

  “We did make some progress,” I said. “One of the interns looked into the purple ribbon. He could only find one place that sells the style of ribbon that’s been on all the gift cards and flowers. Holiday Flower and Plant in Chelsea.”

&n
bsp; He eased back in his seat, shaking his head. “We’re supposed to believe that the guy—Logan, was it?—went all the way to Chelsea and got that same exact ribbon so he could put it on a few gift cards?”

  “He lied to us. He’s part of the secret group. I’m sure of it.”

  “And now that he’s left town, we’ve got to find a way to track him down.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Mark rushing through the newsroom, a heavy leather briefcase in one hand, his cell phone pressed to his ear. He headed toward us.

  “Why are you two still here?” he asked.

  “Getting ready to leave,” I said.

  “Waiting for someone,” Scott answered.

  “Then I’ll cut to the chase. Is there . . . something going on between you two?” he said, pointing to Scott and then at me. “Someone told me they saw you at the fountain in front of the Met last night, and it looked—”

  “We were—”

  He pointed to Scott. “You, I’m not responsible for. But the network won’t like any gossip on your end either.” Then he pointed at me. “But you, I am. My job is to keep things sane around here. I can’t have you two adding to the . . . drama.”

  My cheeks flushed. “Nothing is going—”

  “So, you’re not—”

  “C’mon, Mark, do you have any idea how hard it would be to go out with Senator Bradley’s daughter?” Scott said, in an attempt to inject some levity into the discussion. “You have to undergo a full background check, endure an interview with Homeland Security, and complete the entire national security questionnaire.”

  “It’s only a hundred thirty pages,” I said, laughing.

  Our humor wasn’t working on him. “Andrew wants to see all of us in his office tomorrow morning. Nine.”

  “Why? We’re only working on a story,” I said.

  “Keep it that way,” Mark said, then marched away, starting another call.

  Scott leaned in and lowered his voice. “I should’ve warned you about the rumor mill. Gossip spreads faster than the actual news around here.”

  “Any idea what Andrew wants to talk to us about?”

  His head dipped lower, closer to mine. “Mark was probably just trying to scare us from ever going to the opera together again.”

  “It’s working,” I whispered.

  “There you are,” a woman’s voice said.

  I turned to see a woman with luminous blonde hair in a formfitting white dress. She walked toward us with the graceful posture of a ballerina and the delicate facial structure to match.

  “I went to your office, but they said you were in here,” she said.

  Scott rose, his face flushed. “Paige, this is Kate.”

  She smiled. “Nice to meet you.” She glanced at the watch on her slender wrist. “We should get going. You know how Lauren and Blake get when we’re late.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Listen to me, damn it!” Raymond was shouting in the hallway. On his phone. At eleven o’clock at night. His booming bass voice was so loud and agitated that even with my door and windows shut, I could hear its hammering cadence as I headed to bed. Words like lies and failure punctured the air.

  Even worse was the smoke. He had been out there so long that it smelled like he’d powered his way through an entire box of very cheap cigars.

  I considered shouting at him to be quiet but then decided not to. Raymond was easily double my size, and the threatening words he was using made it clear he was white-hot angry. I thought about calling the police, but I knew in big cities like LA and Manhattan, it’d be hours until they arrived.

  When his phone argument continued for another ten minutes, I decided to poke my head into the hallway. My plan was not to say anything. Only to look at him and hope he realized how loud he was being.

  It didn’t work.

  He yelled another obscenity-laden tirade into the phone, then turned to me, his face dark with anger. “Can I help you?”

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  He stepped toward me. “Mind your own business, will you?”

  “It’s past eleven.”

  He stopped talking and looked to be on the crispy edge of anger, as if he were going to come over and punch me.

  “I gotta call you back,” he said, then swiftly hung up and jammed the phone into his back pocket.

  He strode toward me in silence.

  My first instinct was to run inside my apartment and lock the door. But nearly every day on my breaking-news beat in LA, I’d encountered someone in such a spitting rage over something that had happened that I often wondered how they functioned in life. If I was lucky, it was only words they spewed. But a guy once slashed my tires over what he thought was an unflattering story, and a mom of three keyed my car because she was angry about my live coverage of a street protest. Along the way, I’d developed a system for dealing with anger: Show no fear. Lower your voice. Listen. Find your story.

  I stood there, my heart hammering so hard I felt it pulsing in my throat. And then the moment suddenly had a heightened feel to it, as if I were in a nightmare, unable to move, my feet bolted to the floor.

  My words came out breathy. “What’s going on?”

  As he stepped closer, I noticed a hint of moisture in the corners of his red-rimmed eyes. Tears.

  “Someone stole from me. They’ve told lies.” His face was red, swollen. “And now instead of building, I’m shutting everything down. Layoffs. Teardowns.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  There was no mistaking the heartbreak in his eyes. “Just when you think you got it right, y’know? You treat your crew the best you know how. You try to be the best boss. Hell, I know I yell too much. But then they talk behind your back. Lie. Steal from you.”

  “Maybe you can get back some of what they stole.”

  His voice was raw with emotion. “Impossible.”

  I’d misjudged him. I had decided that his abrasive talk and his tough-guy looks represented all he was—a shark. But beneath his shark persona, might there be a goldfish inside?

  Anyone seeing him shouting all these days on the front steps would have found him frustrating. Fear inducing. Could it be that he—like so many people—was reeling in pain, disappointment, and loss and hiding that behind a tough exterior?

  “Trust no one,” he said. “If you do, you’re just gonna get screwed.”

  “I’ve got to hope that’s not true.”

  “It’s easy to have hope when you’re young. When you haven’t had too many things taken from you.”

  “You got a raw deal from someone. But most people? Most people are not like that.”

  He glanced at me with mournful eyes. “I wish I could believe that’s true.”

  I’m not sure where the words came from, but they slipped out as though I’d planned them. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

  His voice was icy. “What can you do, anyway? You gonna go help me shut down the construction site? Tell my crew they don’t have jobs anymore?”

  “If that would help you? Okay.”

  He cracked a smile. “You know what? I actually think you would do it.”

  My voice was steadier than I felt. “Sometimes things just . . . suck. Things happen that make us feel like this is going to be the way it is forever. And we get stuck in this bubble, feeling like we’re the only one going through this crap. But we’re not alone. Tell me what I can do to help.”

  His shoulders sagged as if the tension in his body were a balloon that had just burst. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

  “Don’t know,” he managed to say. “The best thing you could do is . . . exactly what you’re doing. If some jerk had been hollering in the hallway like I’ve been, I would’ve thrown something at them instead.”

  I smiled. “That was Plan B.”

  “It’s late,” he said, quietly. “But thank you, Kate.”

  We both turned and started back to our apartments. When I got to my door, I
stopped.

  “Raymond?”

  He swung around to look at me. “Yeah.”

  “I hope things get better. I’m pulling for you.”

  “The numbers are astounding,” Andrew was saying in his office the next morning. Dressed in a slate-blue shirt with a white collar and cuffs along with tortoiseshell glasses, he looked decidedly scholarly. “It’s impossible to tie specific stories to ratings on the channel, but the views on social media and YouTube are through the roof. Millions. And the numbers grow with each story you’ve filed.”

  Andrew’s office was stunning: breathtaking views of the New York City skyline, a spacious seating area with buttery-soft leather couches, and a credenza lined with fresh pastries and a high-end coffee maker.

  While Scott and I sat on a couch across from Andrew, Mark stood, his arms crossed, looking annoyed. “Sounds like a numbers error.”

  “Yeah, the team thought so too,” Andrew said. “Which is why it took so long for us to get the data. But the stories about the good stuff happening are outpacing every single story on the channel now.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Even all the government-shutdown stories?”

  I sensed that Mark already knew the answer to that question and didn’t like it. In fact, from the way he was biting his lower lip, it seemed like he didn’t like anything about this meeting at all.

  Andrew glanced through some numbers on his tablet. “People are hungry for hope. That’s why I want to try something unusual. I want to put you both on this story.”

  “Both of us?” Scott asked.

  “I saw the piece you did together at Bryant Park with the people who had their rent paid. You two have great chemistry on air. Putting you on this together will distinguish our coverage. And we need that. Because we got competition. Lots of it.”

  “CTN and Fox are both working on large-scale coverage of this story,” Mark said. “CBS too.”

  “And we know that how . . . ?” I asked.

  “We’re that good,” Mark said.

  “Scott, I’ve cleared it with Michael,” Andrew continued. “I know you’re up to your ears in prep on the Wonders series. But it’s up to you to decide if this is something you want to do.”