The Thanksgiving Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  A Fawcett Gold Medal Book

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright © 1995 by Lee Harris

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-90427

  ISBN 9780449149232

  eBook ISBN 9781101968383

  v4.1

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  By Lee Harris

  There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Bless the day….Thanksgiving Day…is the one day that is purely American.

  —O. Henry (1862–1910)

  The Trimmed Lamp

  Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

  1

  I drove my cousin Gene back to the residence for retarded adults after mass that very cold Sunday morning. On many Sundays he joins us for dinner or the afternoon or I join him at Greenwillow while Jack studies, but on that Sunday Jack and I were invited to our friend and neighbor Melanie Gross’s house just down and across the street from us for a Sunday brunch. When I got home from Greenwillow, I changed my clothes. I am still old-fashioned enough to dress for church, but Mel had said to come casual and I put on a pair of wool pants and a white cotton blouse, taking along a sweater I probably wouldn’t need in Mel’s always warm house.

  Jack, my husband of half a year, a detective sergeant in the NYPD by day and a law student by night, quickly took his “good” clothes off and got comfortable. At five to eleven, we locked the house and walked down the block.

  “Who’s coming?” he asked as we neared the Grosses’ driveway.

  “Mel said a mélange—friends, neighbors, even some relatives.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  I laughed. “It’s Sunday and Mel likes to invite people and cook for them.”

  “Oh, that kind of occasion.”

  “There’s a New Jersey car. I think that’s the relatives.”

  “Looks like snow.”

  “Well, we don’t have a long ride home.”

  “Let’s have a fire tonight. That firewood looks really great, good and hard and well seasoned.”

  I slipped my arm around his waist, feeling the pleasure of marriage as once, in another way, I experienced the pleasure of living in a convent among wonderful women who are still my friends and will be forever.

  The door opened as we reached it and Melanie wrapped her arms around me as though we hadn’t seen each other in years.

  “Welcome! Good to see you. Jack, I hope you’re hungry.”

  “When am I not hungry? Hi, Mel.”

  Inside, several people, none of whom I knew, had already arrived and Mel took us around, introducing as we went. Her dining room table was set extravagantly and her family room was set up with the most beautiful buffet I had seen executed by a nonprofessional. (Jack’s sister is a caterer, so I’ve seen some professional ones.) Not for the first time, I stood shaking my head in awe.

  “How do you do it, Mel?”

  “You know me. I like to keep busy.”

  “It looks fantastic,” Jack said.

  “Well, I learned a thing or two from your sister at your wedding. I hope she doesn’t mind my picking her brain. She was very generous with her secrets, Jack.”

  His sister is a very generous person. Before we were married, she often gave Jack samples and leftovers, and though we’re farther from her now, she always manages to have some tantalizing food wrapped up for us in foil at the end of a visit.

  “Why don’t we sit down,” Mel said.

  “Why don’t we have some food first,” Hal, her husband, suggested to laughter.

  “Good idea. Come on, kids, you first and then upstairs with you.”

  The two Gross children, both very young, had ear-to-ear smiles. With help from their parents and baby-sitter, they loaded enough food on their plates for twice their number at twice their size and then ran off. It was open season for adults.

  Jack sat next to Hal, a lawyer who was strongly encouraging of Jack’s pursuit of a degree, and I sat on the other side of the table between Mel’s college roommate and maid of honor and her husband.

  “Mel told me you’re an ex-nun,” Rachel said. “Do you mind talking about it?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You look too young to have been a nun for long.”

  “I spent fifteen years in the convent. I went in at fifteen. There were family problems—I’d been orphaned—and St. Stephen’s was kind enough to take me, although that’s a lot younger than they accept novices.”

  “Incredible. You spent fifteen years in a convent?”

  “Except for one when I got my master’s. They were wonderful years.”

  “I guess what I’m curious about is what you did, how you spent your time.”

  “Most of it in a very ordinary way. After I finished my education, I taught at the college connected with the convent.”

  “Just as if you were a lay teacher?”

  “Exactly. Of course, I turned my salary, such as it was, over to the convent and they gave me back what I needed to live on. There are nuns in some convents who hold regular jobs outside the convent, working for the telephone company or some other company and earning a regular salary. They come home to the convent at night, and on payday the convent gives them their carfare for the week, enough money for lunches, and anything else they might need.”

  “So the convent comes out ahead.”

  I smiled at her. “So does the nun. She has all the advantages of being part of a religious community. She participates in morning and evening prayers, she’s able to join activities that take place on Saturdays, go to retreats. There are many wonderful benefits to being part of a convent.”

  “You really loved it, didn’t you?” she said, sounding partly surprised and partly admiring.

  “Very much.”

  “And then you left.”

  Tactfully, she didn’t ask why. “I felt I had given all I could to St. Stephen’s, that I had more to give and this was where I could do it.”

  “You sound amazing.”

  I laughed again. “I’m probably the least amazing person you’ve ever met. I teach a course in poetry at a college not too far from here and I do some work for a lawyer in New York who’s become a friend of mine. Right now I’m trying to build a good, strong marriage. I’m friends with the convent, I visit there; in fact, we spent Christmas with them.”

  “Your husband, too?”

  “Both of us, yes.
But I stayed on for a few extra days.”

  “Oh, Mel told me about that. There was a murder, wasn’t there?”

  “Unfortunately. It was very sad.”

  “You should talk to Mel’s uncle.”

  “Oh?”

  “There’s something very weird in his life.”

  “I’m not much of an expert on weird things,” I said, hoping to avoid being drawn into a family problem. “Do you live around here?”

  She switched easily to talking about her home and her family, and after a moment, her husband joined in on my other side. They had suggestions on landscaping that I took note of. One of the things Jack and I wanted to do was increase the greenery on our property. Eventually it was time for dessert and coffee, for moving to chairs and sofas in the family and living rooms, for talking to other people and enjoying their conversation.

  The afternoon passed so quickly, I was surprised to find it was after three and the first guests were getting their coats. I looked around to see whether Jack was ready to leave. Weekends are mainly for studying now that he goes to law school at night, but he seemed happily engaged talking to Rachel and her husband.

  “Mrs. Brooks?”

  I turned to see a tall, good-looking man about fifty standing next to me with a drink in his hand. His dark hair was newly graying, his eyes soft and gray-green, warm and easy. He was wearing a sporty shirt that struck me as expensive, the kind of appraisal I don’t often make. “I’m Chris,” I said. “Christine Bennett Brooks. I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “I’m Sandy Gordon, part of Melanie’s diverse, unmanageable family.”

  “Are you the diverse part or the unmanageable?” I asked, amused at the characterization.

  “Probably both. Can we talk?”

  “Sure.”

  He led the way to the dining room, where the table, still covered with most of the dishes of the feast, was empty of people. Sandy Gordon pulled out a chair for me at what had been the head of the table, and he sat along the side so we faced each other.

  “Mel’s told me a lot about you.”

  “We’ve been neighbors for a year and a half and friends for most of that time.”

  “I was talking to your husband earlier. He sounds smarter than most of the cops I’ve met.”

  It’s one of the things that makes me bristle. “Jack isn’t the only smart person in the police department. They have a tough job, and sometimes the best they can do is follow the rules and procedures and not act as smart as they really are.”

  He raised his hands as though to ward off a blow. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean anything insulting. I like your husband. I admire anyone who goes back to school when he has a full-time job and the usual responsibilities of life. I need your help, Chris. You may not think it to look at me, but I am a desperate man with a problem that no one has been able to solve, and believe me, I have tried to solve it.”

  People’s lives are full of unsolvable problems. You don’t need to be religious to know that. Trouble hits all people equally, from what I’ve seen. And I feel for someone who has suffered misfortune. “Of course I’ll help you if I can,” I said.

  At that moment my idea of what his problem might be was so far from the reality I was about to hear that we were almost in separate worlds. I imagined something to do with the church, with a convent, with a person having religious difficulty. So when he started to explain, when the impact of his profound calamity struck me, I hardly knew what to say.

  “I was married two years ago. It wasn’t my first marriage, but it was everything I ever dreamed of. She was younger than I, a dozen years or so, it doesn’t matter, very beautiful, a little crazy, a little wild, very loving, very happy to be with me. We did a lot of things together. She would come into the city in the evening and we’d have dinner together, go to the theater, listen to music. I don’t travel much in my business, but when I did, she came with me. In the winter we skied, in the summer we hiked in the mountains. We were happy and well suited to one another.

  “I had told her before we married that I didn’t want any children. I have two from my first marriage and I was already well into my forties when I met Natalie. I didn’t want to start over at fifty with a baby who would graduate college after I was retired. But I changed. She was so young and energetic and full of life, I told her I wouldn’t mind. I said if she wanted a child, it was fine with me. It was her decision. Whatever happened, I would be happy.”

  I started feeling uncomfortable, almost a little sick. I could hear tragedy in every word he spoke. Whatever was coming, I didn’t want to hear it and I knew I had to.

  “You OK?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Like something to drink?”

  “No. Go on.”

  “I’ll be right back. Don’t go away.” He left the table and went to the kitchen, returning in a minute with a tall glass of orange juice.

  I drank it thirstily. “Go on, please.”

  “A year ago last November we made plans to go to the Caribbean for Christmas. I told Natalie to go out and buy herself some cruise clothes. She came home with the most gorgeous stuff I’ve ever seen, bathing suits and sandals and colorful dresses to wear for dinner and dancing. And she was so excited, like a little kid. She modeled them for me and she looked great in everything. I can’t describe to you how happy she was.

  “We were invited here for Thanksgiving dinner. You probably know what a great cook Mel is, and for one reason or another, she hadn’t met Natalie yet. So when she invited us, we accepted. Dinner wasn’t till afternoon, of course, and we decided to go to the Macy’s parade first. We got up early, drove into the city, parked up near Columbia, and took a cab down to the Seventies, near where the parade starts. We stood on the west side of Central Park West, the side where the apartment houses are, and watched the bands and jugglers and floats and balloons come down the street.”

  Now, as he spoke, the strangest thing happened to me. As if from the deepest part of my memory, I saw the parade. I was with my father, and we, too, stood on the street in front of a large apartment house, surrounded by throngs, adults and children, vendors selling food and balloons. How had I forgotten? How could I have let such a wonderful memory slip away into obscurity?

  “We didn’t eat anything,” Sandy Gordon went on, oblivious of my own personal involvement in the day, “because we were eating later. But I remember seeing a balloon man come down the street with a whole bouquet of colored balloons, and as he passed us, I saw Natalie look after him. Then she said, ‘I’m going to get one.’ I told her I’d get one for her, but she was already on her way. The balloon man had turned the corner toward Columbus Avenue, and I just barely saw her turn the corner, too, and go after him.” He stopped and took a breath. “I never saw her again.”

  I didn’t know what to say. As he had spoken I had seen the image of the beautiful young woman, and I could feel her vitality in his words. I sensed she had the kind of good looks that needed no makeup, the kind of personality that sparkled in an empty room. He had conveyed her essence to me so completely that I believed I could pick her out in a crowd.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “It’s so hard to believe. What a terrible blow it must have been, what a horror.”

  “Horror is the word. I suppose it took me several minutes to realize she should have come back. One of the parade balloons was going by, Babar, I think, and I was looking up at it and then I looked around and she wasn’t there and I got a little anxious. I pushed my way through the crowd to the comer and went around to Seventy-fourth Street. It was empty. There were no people, there was no balloon man, there was no Natalie. I looked around, I looked up and there was one lone balloon rising into the sky. I was scared to death. I called her, I ran toward Columbus Avenue, looking in doorways, crossed the street and came back, told myself to calm down, that I’d just missed her, maybe she’d crossed Seventy-fourth to buy her balloon and as she was coming back to me, I was looking for her. I went back to where I was pret
ty sure we’d been standing, but I didn’t find her. The long and short of it is, I never saw her again.”

  I could feel his fear. I could understand the terror of losing someone, a beautiful woman on a street in New York. “You reported it to the police,” I said.

  “I waited for the parade to end, telling myself I was overreacting, that when the streets cleared, she would turn up. It was a long time before Santa Claus rolled down Central Park West with the street cleaners right in his wake. As soon as he passes, the crowd disperses. Some of them go to one of the nearby subway stations on CPW, some of them go over to Broadway and pick up a subway or bus or cab over there. I stood in the street till it was empty, Chris, till the last kid and the last parent disappeared. Then I found a cop and told him my story.”

  That, of course, was why he didn’t think much of cops. Where adults are concerned, a missing person isn’t treated the way homicide is. Homicide is concrete, visible, amenable to scientific investigation. A missing person is the absence of all of the above. The police have only the word of an allegedly interested party that someone allegedly disappeared at an alleged time and place. In some cases the police must surely ask themselves whether the missing person ever existed. And adults are different from children; they are responsible to themselves and they have no obligation, certainly no legal one, to remain in a place or with a person if they don’t feel like it. The police may look out for the person, but even if they find him, they have no legal right to bring him back. It is a loss like no other.

  “And nothing ever turned up,” I said.

  “Nothing. In fact, the little I learned only made things worse. Although Natalie was in her thirties, her life seemed to begin a few years before I met her. Before that, there’s nothing, no family, no history, no job. I’m not sure anymore who the girl I married was, where she came from, even whether she was married before she met me.” He opened his hands. “I’ve come up empty, emptier than before. I’m torn up over this, the loss, the wondering what happened to her. Sometimes I dream of that balloon man walking by us. I see him coming and I see him going and I know he’s the messenger of the greatest loss in my life. And I wonder, why didn’t I know when I saw him coming down the street that he carried that terrible message?”