The Good Stranger (A Kate Bradley Mystery)

by Dete Meserve

  But the longer I stared at the envelope, the more I wanted to know what was inside. How long might it take to get the police to investigate a note that, from the outside anyway, didn’t appear remotely menacing?

  Using a plastic bag to keep the oil on my hands away from the envelope, I opened the back flap, careful to make as little contact with the paper as possible. I unfolded the note inside and scanned to the bottom, looking for a signature.

  Julia.

  My blood pressure settled a notch as I read:

  Dear Kate,

  I know how hard this must be for you. But I want you to know that I love your dad and I will do anything to make him happy. You and I don’t know each other well and perhaps because of that, this all feels so sudden. It did for me too.

  Please let’s grab some time to get to know each other better. I will devote my life to making him happy.

  Yours, Julia

  The walls of Julia’s newly remodeled Upper West Side kitchen were filled with cubist, modernist, and other -ist art, and her dining room completed the look with bronze sculptures, luscious red and white peonies, and porcelain dinnerware in shades of matte gray and gold. Sporting a shiny blowout and a powder-blue cashmere sweater, Julia made it all look effortless, yet I had no doubt she had worked hard to achieve all the exquisiteness.

  She put me to work making guacamole. I think she figured that since I was from California, I must know a thing or two about avocados. But while I infused my recipe with the secret for all great guacamole—fresh corn kernels—it paled in comparison with the feast she was preparing.

  As we dug into baked salmon, pasta with arugula, and honey-balsamic-glazed brussels sprouts, all recipes of her own creation, I sensed her nervousness. Her voice was unsteady as she told a story about how the cast of the Met’s Aida thought ghosts were guilty of making a towering column on the set topple over in the middle of a performance.

  Once we had exhausted the chitchat, I dug into the truth. “I’ve been looking into your ex-husband. The money laundering.”

  Her eyes widened with shock. “Your father said you had concerns, but . . .”

  “I looked for connections back to you,” I said, then heard how combative that must have sounded. I realized then that I wasn’t all that different from Jordan, who had also taken an impulsive and aggressive approach to protecting someone he loved. “But I didn’t find any.”

  She sighed. “I know how it looks. And I don’t blame you for looking into all that. I’d do it, too, if I were in your shoes. But I promise you, Kate, I wasn’t involved in any of it.”

  I’d had a lot of experience interviewing liars, so I knew the obvious tells. Sweating. Lack of eye contact. Fidgeting. But the measured way she spoke made me believe her.

  I softened my tone. “How did you and my dad meet?”

  She relaxed into her answer. “I was in DC and heading into a concert in Washington Cathedral. Outside the front doors, I noticed a woman who was going on quite loudly, ranting actually, about some political issue to a very handsome and patient man.”

  “My father?”

  “Yes. The woman was angry and grabbed his arm, shouting something like, ‘You have to do something!’ I could tell he didn’t know her and was having a hard time finding a way to politely leave.”

  “That happens a lot to my father.”

  “Everyone else was ignoring the woman. Or at least pretending to. Then I did something I’d never done. I pretended to know him. I ran up to him, put my arm through his, and said, ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’ Then I kissed him on the cheek. Which surprised me. And him too. And I turned to the woman and said, ‘Would you excuse us?’”

  I laughed. “I’ll bet my dad was speechless.”

  She poured some wine into my glass. “He was. But then he played along. The look on the woman’s face was priceless. We got a good laugh out of it, then ended up talking during intermission and into the night.” A small smile spread across her face. “And we became inseparable after that.”

  “And now you’re getting married next month . . .”

  She looked at me in surprise. I think she hoped we would ease into this question instead of diving right in. “I know this seems sudden to you. It does to me too. I used to think that falling in love was a process. You like someone, and maybe you even go through a checklist to see if he might be the right one for you. Then maybe it turns into something more, and maybe it doesn’t. But what I learned was . . . sometimes love floats in . . .”

  As she told a few stories about my father, she left no doubt that her love for him was genuine. She had an easy laugh, the kind that drew me into it, and I smiled, even though I hadn’t expected to.

  By the time we’d settled into coffee and dessert, I’d begun to warm up to her. Begun to trust her. Then she brought up a fundraiser she had attended with my dad in Southampton. “They held it on a horse-farm estate owned by a former ambassador to Spain. Your dad’s speech was very inspiring.”

  The mention of the fundraiser sent a sharp warning through my nervous system, surprising me. Maybe it was a sign that I had been right all along to be skeptical about her.

  Or maybe it was because I could see that my father was moving on without me. For as long as I could remember, I’d always been the one my dad had asked to go to these events. The first time I attended, I was seven and wore a pink-and-white polka-dot dress with kitten heels, feeling very grown up with my hand clasped in my father’s. The heels got higher as I got older, but even though I sometimes grew weary of the routine, I was always proud to be there with my dad and liked hearing him speak about issues that mattered to him, soothed by the measured cadence of his voice, especially in tumultuous times. And when the rhetoric inevitably got a little heated, my dad would often change the subject by turning the attention to me, talking about some accomplishment of mine he was proud of. As a teen, I’d been embarrassed that my father was talking about me, but once I entered my twenties, I began to see these moments for what they were: my dad was letting everyone know that no matter what the political crisis du jour was, I was always the center of his universe.

  Was that going to change?

  Julia seemed to be reading my mind. Or maybe she saw my eyes shining with moisture.

  She smoothed a wrinkle in the tablecloth. “You’re everything to him, Kate. I’m only going to attend a few of these events with him. I know he hopes you’re going to keep going with him when you can.”

  “I think he probably told you that I can’t stand political fundraisers,” I said, eyes clouded with tears. “But I’ve always loved going with my dad.”

  She looked down at her hands. “I know it feels like everything is about to change. But I’m not here to take your dad away. I want things to be the way they always have been between you two.”

  I’d been wrong about her. About their wedding. On my way home from her apartment, I called my dad. “I’m sorry about the way I’ve been acting.”

  “I said some harsh things too,” he answered. “Forgiven and forgotten?”

  “Forgiven and forgotten.”

  And although I don’t remember the words either of us said after that, I could actually feel the current of forgiveness, strong and deep, circulating between us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  At six foot two, Alexia’s kidney donor, Derek Nielson, towered over her. From twenty feet away in one of the ANC studios, I waited as she listened, listened, listened to something he was telling her. Then her face burst into a smile, and she threw her arms around him in a giant hug.

  After a discussion with me in which I’d persuaded—and, yes, pleaded with—him to reconsider his decision, Derek had agreed to meet Alexia, and I told them both that ANC would fly them to Manhattan so we could capture their reunion on camera.

  After their embrace, the two of them broke down in tears. I let them have a moment, then walked over to talk with them on camera, stepping into the emotional veil that cloaked them.

&nbs
p; “You’ve made my whole life new,” Alexia said.

  He wiped his eyes. “This feeling I have inside. It doesn’t get much better than this.”

  “Tell me how all this came about,” I asked.

  “A friend of mine needed a kidney transplant. I went in to see if I was a match, but I wasn’t. Still, I couldn’t shake the idea that it was something I was supposed to do. Could do. So I decided to donate to a stranger.”

  “You didn’t know it would be going to Alexia?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t know her name or her hobbies. I had no idea who her favorite sports team was or what music she liked or who she voted for in the last election. I didn’t know anything except that we were a match.”

  “What made you do this then? Why did you choose to have an important part of yourself cut out to give it to someone you’ve never met?”

  “I’ve got good health, a job, a little bit of savings. I thought this was a way to share my good fortune with someone else.”

  I turned to Alexia. “I know you’ve wanted to meet Derek for a long time. How does it feel?”

  “There aren’t words, really,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’m still trying to process that I’m only alive because of a stranger’s gift.”

  Derek put his arm around her shoulder. “If this isn’t the greatest moment of my life, it’s in the top three.” Alexia looked up at him. “Okay, it is the greatest.”

  All three of us became teary then, ending the interview. Their moving story ended up airing throughout the day on ANC, with one specific caveat. Although Derek and I knew Alexia’s identity as one of the Secret Four, we were not allowed to tell anyone or mention it on air.

  After the reunion interview, I asked Alexia for some time to talk about what happened in Dallas, off the record, but she turned me down. “We talked about this, Kate. I’ve made a promise, and I’m going to keep it.”

  I drew a deep breath, reining in my frustration. I made sure my expression looked calm, but inside my mind was racing to come up with an approach that would change her mind. But I was coming up empty. “I respect the promise you made. It’s just that—”

  My phone chimed, and Logan Wilson’s name flashed up.

  I showed her the phone. “Want to listen in?”

  I tensed, hoping she’d say yes. The more time I could spend with her, gaining her trust, the more chances I’d have to convince her to tell me her story.

  “Okay,” she said, seemingly as surprised as I was that Logan was calling me.

  “Kate Bradley,” I answered.

  “I know it was you,” Logan said. “The body shop guy wouldn’t say who paid off the deductible, but it had to be you.”

  I tried to sound confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re the only one I told about my money troubles with the car.”

  “Alexia is here with me,” I said. “We’re doing a story about her kidney donor.”

  His voice rose a notch. “You finally found him, Lexi?”

  Alexia blushed. Were there sparks flying between these two? “ANC did. Just spent a couple of hours with him. Remember how I told you what I hoped it’d be like? It was all that. And more.”

  They were both quiet for a moment, which gave me an idea for keeping the conversation going. “Logan, what would you say if I brought you to Manhattan? You and Alexia could get some time together, and the two of you could tell me the parts of your story you’re comfortable telling.”

  He was silent for a long moment. Then: “You wouldn’t ask us about Marie? Or about the leap?”

  I drew a deep breath. “We’d only talk about whatever you want to share.”

  “I’d like to see you again, Lexi,” he said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what we all did.”

  Alexia did the persuading for me. “You should come, Logan. We have a lot of catching up to do.”

  I was finishing up with Alexia when Scott found me. He was hiding something behind his back and said four words I never had expected to hear: “Joe Raley is here.”

  “How? Why?”

  “No idea. Showed up and asked the receptionist to see you and me. When she told him he needed an appointment for that, he left. Then he came back and asked her to deliver this to us.”

  He brought a bouquet of purple coneflowers from behind his back and presented them to me.

  “He sure knows how to get our attention.”

  He grinned. “He’s waiting for us downstairs.”

  We raced together to the lobby, giddy with excitement.

  Dressed in a slate-gray suit and garnet-red tie, dimpled in just the right spot, Joe looked like he’d been a Wall Street analyst for years.

  “They told me,” he said, eyes glistening. “They told me what you did.”

  “I don’t—” Scott tried.

  His tone was serious. “They said you guys got me the interview. Guess they can’t keep that stuff a secret from job applicants.”

  Scott and I were both speechless, looking at each other helplessly, hoping the other would know what to say.

  Joe broke into a smile. “I got the job. I’m going to be in the trainee program starting next week.” His voice wobbled a bit. “Thank you for making this happen.”

  “You’re welcome,” Scott said.

  “I just want to say that Alexia is here,” I said quietly. “And Logan is on his way. They’ve agreed to talk with us about whatever parts of this story they’re comfortable with. You want to join them?”

  It took him a moment to process what I was saying. Then his expression brightened.

  “Damn, I miss those guys,” he said. “You won’t tell anyone it’s us behind it all? We’re just going to talk?”

  I nodded.

  He rubbed his jaw. “I’m in.”

  “It was the riskiest thing I’d ever done,” Alexia was saying the next afternoon in one of the ANC conference rooms. “I got this brand-new kidney four months earlier, and my doctor said to stay away from stress and the possibility of infection. So, getting in a car driven by a woman I didn’t know with a bunch of people I didn’t know, either, in the middle of a storm? That was . . . crazy.”

  “I was just lucky she invited me in the car,” Joe said. Sitting next to the petite Alexia, he looked even larger and more muscled. “There were lots of beautiful, outgoing people vying for a space in her car, and there was me, exhausted and pretty much unable to hold a conversation. One guy offered Marie this expensive bottle of wine—he was in the business or something—but she picked me instead.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know why she chose me either.” Logan clutched the arm of his chair, clearly nervous. “I’d given the rental-car guy a fake driver’s license because I’d lost mine in a DUI five months before. The photo didn’t look remotely like me. He had brought his supervisor over when Marie walked up. I know she saw I was trying to run a scam, but she still invited me into her car.”

  My eyes took in the three of them, and the moment still felt unreal. I’d given up hope of ever getting this interview, but here they were. “Weren’t any of you worried about getting into a car with strangers?”

  “That’s what our moms always warn us about, right?” Alexia said, smoothing the sleeve of her blue-striped dress. “I texted my mom, and she said that I should not get in that car. But I didn’t want to miss everything my friend and I had planned in Manhattan: shopping, tea at the Plaza. I guess I was desperate.”

  “I thought Marie was scamming me,” Logan said, unzipping his black hoodie. “I mean, a nicely dressed older woman walks up and asks if you want to join her in her car on a daylong trip to Manhattan? I figured some bad-ass dude would be waiting for me in the parking lot and beat me up or something. But yeah, I got in.”

  Joe sighed. “I was fine until we all got in the car, and then I thought: We don’t know this lady, and we’re letting her drive us in this storm? I grabbed onto the oh-shit handle, put on my headphones to drown out my nerves, and figured this was
the stupidest decision of my life. I’d made it back safely from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, but I was gonna die in a storm in the middle of nowhere.”

  “But you all still got in a car with strangers in the middle of a storm anyway,” I said.

  “I needed the ride,” Logan said. “Then, once we got away from the airport, it was pitch black and raining so hard that Marie couldn’t hear what the navigation app was saying to do. She asked me to help out. I was so freaked out I just kind of stared at it. Like I couldn’t wrap my head around what I—what we all were doing.”

  “It just got worse as we went on,” Joe added. “The wipers couldn’t keep up with the downpour, and we could barely see the taillights of the cars in front of us. Marie—she seemed really anxious and had a death grip on the steering wheel. I offered to take over the driving, but she insisted. She wanted to do this. And she asked me to tell her my story.”

  “Your story?”

  He drew a deep breath. “I told her about my sister.” His voice broke. “How proud she was when I completed basic training. How she looked up to me. She was only nine when she died from cancer while I was in Afghanistan. We talked about all of it. Everyone else had fallen asleep or was on their phones, but Marie, she listened for hours. It’s wild. I was talking to a complete stranger, but it was like I knew her.”

  “I was drifting in and out of sleep, but I remember you guys talking,” Alexia offered. “It did sound like people who’d known each other for a long time. Then she asked about me, and I told her about my kidney. The whole time we were talking, I remember thinking that something about her was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but then I realized she actually cared about what I was saying to her. You could feel it. Then she asked about your story, Logan.”

  Logan frowned. “I didn’t want to talk. I kept wondering what she thought about my fake driver’s license and how I’d been trying to scam the rental-car company. But eventually I told her about my DUI, trying to explain it away. Then the next thing I knew, I was telling her everything: about losing my job, getting behind on my payments and having debt collectors chasing me all the time, getting kicked out of my apartment. And instead of giving me a lecture or telling me what I needed to do to straighten out, she listened.”