Now You See Her

by Cecelia Tishy

  The end-of-luncheon signal is lipsticks twisted and applied, and yet I haven’t had the chance to ask about Sylvia Dempsey. Where is Caroline French? Alongside Nicole, saying she wants to join the models for a few moments to give each a “small token of our appreciation.” She has a tote with little ribboned boxes. They walk arm in arm down the hall.

  Plan B: find Sissie Hehrborg, who stands with a departing group and looks a bit unsteady on her feet. I approach to hear her say, “Perfectly fine to drive. Know my way blindfolded… oops, better not say that today. Tactless. Weren’t they darling?”

  The group is thinning. I hear auto ignitions outside. Sissie’s friends say good-bye, the last one a woman in a robin’s-egg-blue fluted skirt. “So uplifting,” she says to me. “A refreshing change from our horticulture.”

  Sissie and I are alone. “Trellises and arbors,” she says, “perennials and pruning tips. But not today.”

  I step closer as caterers clear the tables around us. “Sissie, thanks for your help. I was wondering… the luncheon has been so festive, but it must be difficult knowing that someone in your community died so recently, so horribly.”

  She hiccups and struggles to focus. “You’re Regina.”

  “I am.”

  “You knew our Sylvia?”

  “I feel as though I knew her.”

  Sissie points at my shoes. “She stood right where you’re standing.”

  “She was an Alliance member?”

  “It was last March…no, Valentine month, February. We had a speaker, friend of hers, talked about the environment. She introduced him. So you knew her too?”

  “Sylvia was killed near my home.”

  “Right where you’re standing. Now they hush it up.”

  “What?”

  “Big insurance policy her husband took out. Millions.”

  “I understand her husband is a skin doctor.”

  “Skin off anybody’s nose. Skin-deep. Dr. Bernard Dempsey.” Sissie’s gaze wanders as she sways, widens her stance, pinches the skin of my wrist. “Bernie’s got a skin factory. Fake skin, plastic.”

  “Synthetic skin?”

  “Skin’s fake, but the money trouble was real. Going broke, but the insurance on Sylvia got him out. Paid up, cup runneth over. Dumb Newton cops, dumb Boston cops. Nobody adds two and two, ’less it’s a cover-up.”

  “You think her husband—”

  “Swear on a stack of Bibles. Hey, time to go. Be careful if somebody’s got a big policy. Too dangerous, life and limb.” Sissie begins to move away, fumbles at the clasp of her handbag, looks back at me. “Right where you’re standing, last time I saw her alive.”

  “February.”

  “Her pink Chanel, fabulous, never out of style. ‘Ladies, I present the next lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth.’ Classic. Last words we heard her speak. Sylvia was classic. ‘Ladies, today I present my good friend, friend of the environment… Senator Jordan Wald.’ ”

  Chapter Seventeen

  What about cast iron? Or nonstick?”

  “Frank, please—”

  “Skillets, Reggie. Skillets are on my mind. It’s the Iron Chef idea. Is a twenty-two-inch more versatile?”

  “You refuse to talk about the Faiser case, is that what you’re telling me?” Devaney pops two Tums and loosens his necktie, rows of red roosters crowing at dawn.

  Anger rises in my chest. We’re in my front room facing one another on the sofa and rocker. It’s after seven. I’m exhausted from the StyleSmart extravaganza but bursting with these tips about the Dempseys. I’m the star informant, but as before, Devaney is dismissive.

  “Sylvia Dempsey was possibly killed for insurance money, Frank. That’s a lead. Can’t you put others to work on this and get back to Faiser? I think you’re blowing me off.”

  “I listened. I didn’t interrupt.”

  “You promised me the latest on the Faiser-Wald case. And

  you wished for more time to spend on Faiser. I got you new information on Sylvia Dempsey. Ten minutes ago you said—”

  “I said exchanging information is always a good possibility.”

  “You promised.”

  “Reggie, you heard what you want to hear.”

  A brick wall, this man. I ought to stop, but silence is somehow beyond me at this instant. “What about my thumb? I felt excruciating pain today at the Newton Home and Garden Alliance. It’s the same exact feeling as when I held the stopwatch from the weedy vacant lot on Eldridge.”

  “Maybe it’s like a phantom limb.”

  “Tell me, Frank, did you treat Jo this way?”

  He crunches two more Tums, and his Adam’s apple bobs. “Reggie, it’s been a long day. One thing Jo knew: the police and her sixth sense had different timetables. They zigged and zagged. She had patience.”

  Unlike her niece? “A multimillion-dollar insurance policy at the very moment when the husband’s new business is nearing bankruptcy—doesn’t that tell you something? Don’t I get credit for tips? Don’t I deserve to hear about Faiser? Don’t you want to work harder on his case?”

  He gives me a basset hound look and sighs. “How about this, Reggie? The Dempseys had huge policies on one another. They got them before a trip to Hong Kong because they feared a SARS-type outbreak. They joked with friends about it.”

  “But his artificial skin business—”

  “Advent Tissue Science. It got a big infusion from a venture capitalist three months before Mrs. Dempsey was killed.”

  The man has a knack for deflation. The air fills with tension and disappointment. He says, “Is there anything else?”

  I’m about to say I learned that Sylvia Dempsey introduced Senator Jordan Wald at the garden club and called him a good friend. But I save my breath. Frank Devaney’s likely reply is utterly predictable: that a garden club naturally invites a campaigning environmentalist to make a speech. As for political friendship, any primate classifiable as Homo sapiens will do. Given their social circles, Sylvia Dempsey’s acquaintance with the state senator would be no surprise, merely two or three degrees of separation.

  “Anything else, Reggie?”

  “Did Jo ever report psychic phantom limbs?”

  “Not to me. Never.” He leans my way. “I know you want to help. You are helping. But homicide doesn’t follow Newton’s law. Everybody wants security, day or night. A brutal crime out of nowhere scares everybody. The public wants an immediate arrest.”

  “Peter Wald’s murder and the arrest of Henry Faiser?”

  “I meant Mrs. Dempsey.”

  “Frank.” I lower my voice and try to speak slowly. “Frank, have you changed your mind about the Faiser case?” He blinks and looks sheepish. “Have you had a change of heart?”

  He rubs a palm across his face as if to wash it. “These days, Reggie, Homicide is focused hard on the Dempsey case.”

  “Including you.”

  “There’s only so many hours in a day.”

  “So Faiser rots in jail—”

  “Prison.”

  “Prison. He rots in Norfolk Prison while the Homicide Division caters to Boston’s wealthy whites, isn’t that it?”

  “You’re a white woman yourself, Reggie, and Barlow Square is close enough to the Charles. Look—” He leans forward, a hand on each knee. “Consider this: any given day, I’m working cases that the public forgets all about once they’re off TV and out of the papers. Out of nowhere we get a Dempsey. All hell breaks loose. Do I need it? No. Is it political? You tell me. But it comes with the territory. We have to deal with it.”

  He grips his knees as though they’re softballs. “You’re a civilian. When it comes to a crime, you can think full-time about Faiser. Dempsey isn’t on your plate. You want to believe the husband plotted her death. Sure you do—because in a weird way, it frees your mind. The husband did it, so the police should grab the evidence and make the arrest. The fact is, we have no evidence that Sylvia Dempsey knew her killer. Her purse was retrieved from the Charles. The w
allet was gone.”

  “Why was she walking by the river alone at night?”

  “That’s a big one. We don’t know.”

  “Was she wearing high heels?”

  “A pink suit. She shopped at Copley Place the afternoon of her death. According to credit card transactions, she returned purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue. A clerk remembers her being worried about rush-hour traffic on the turnpike.”

  “She drove out of the city?”

  He shakes his head no. “Her car remained in the Copley garage. Nobody saw her after five p.m. The Lexus key was found in her purse, and the ME says she died between midnight and two a.m. That’s all I know. I gotta get going. Iron Chef ’s on tonight.”

  “You think Henry Faiser watches Iron Chef ?”

  “I think we’re out of gas, you and me, the tank’s empty.” Devaney leaves, and I sit for a moment eating a limp salad, then take Biscuit out as darkness falls. It’s a sober moment. I’ve assumed that Devaney simply withheld information about Faiser. Doubtless he has. But right now it’s clear the young black man’s case is on hold. Simply put: Devaney’s workdays are committed elsewhere; for now, Sylvia’s death trumps Henry Faiser’s life.

  Where does that leave me? Stalled? In free fall? I pause while Biscuit sniffs a spindly maple and barks at a bird that sounds like a trip-hammer. Along the block, neighbors nod in passing, including Trudy Pfaeltz in her nurse’s uniform and carrying cartons of Milky Ways. She’ll stock her vending machines and head to night shift at the hospital. She has focus, purpose.

  Turning onto Tremont, I remember a book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The “life” force is city people watching the scene on the streets and from their windows. The “death” is isolation, nobody on the walkways, nobody to deter an attacker or summon help. Windswept plazas and dark alleys and a desolate path by the river—they’re death.

  A suburban matron knows this in her bones, which is why women like Sylvia Dempsey—or Regina Baynes—live in leafy Newton, or on the Main Line, or Winnetka or Westchester or Shaker Heights. Yes, Sylvia might take calculated risks, perhaps a fling with the club’s tennis pro or a snorted few lines of cocaine. But a stroll by the Charles River at midnight? It makes no sense. Sylvia would come into the city at night solely to dine and attend the theater or a concert, then perhaps have a nightcap before returning directly to her home turf, Newton.

  Now she’s obstructing a mission to find out what happened on Eldridge Street thirteen years ago. Dead, Sylvia sucks up Devaney’s time and energy. Am I therefore sidelined, a lady in waiting until her case is solved? Not at all. The shortest distance to Henry Faiser is not patience, but action. If I can help the Dempsey case, Devaney can get back to work on Faiser. If I help out, it’ll speed things up, get the Faiser case back on track.

  For instance: why did Sylvia introduce Jordan Wald at the Garden Alliance meeting? Devaney thinks it’s not important. Maybe not. But I ask, why Sylvia in particular? Surely, a number of the garden club members know Senator Wald through social or business connections. Any of them could introduce him. Why Sylvia? As a Garden Alliance officer or program chair, the task would fall to her. But Sissie Hehrborg said nothing on this. My instinct says check it out. Push.

  Sissie Hehrborg is waiting the following Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. at the back entrance of the Newton Home and Garden Alliance. She looks confused as I get out. “You’re not Nicole. I expected Nicole.”

  “I’m Regina. We met last week.” I flash my brightest smile. We’re both wearing camel slacks. “Nicole couldn’t come, so I’m subbing.” It’s a lie. I had to beg Nicole to let me pick up the donated clothes.

  “Of course, now I remember.” But her puffy eyes are blank, as if she does not.

  “We also talked about the sad loss of your good friend Sylvia.”

  “Terrible.” She looks away. “Mickey, give a hand with these boxes, please. The van is here.”

  “Oh, could I just sit for a moment?” I say. “I’ve never driven a big van before. It’s terrifying.” Which is true and which is why Nicole was reluctant to let me do this pickup. Two near misses on Storrow Drive nearly proved her right.

  Sissie motions me to a back door garden bench as Mickey hoists carton after carton into the van. “The donations have poured in all this week. Your fashion show was a big hit.” She fumbles in her purse for a cigarette, offers me one, and lights up, her hands slightly trembling as she inhales and blows out a thin blue column.

  I start my pitch. “Sissie, you said that Sylvia wore Chanel. Do you suppose Dr. Dempsey would consider making a donation from his late wife’s wardrobe?”

  Startled, she squints at me. “Ask Bernie for Sylvia’s clothes?”

  “I know it’s a sensitive topic, but StyleSmart holds an annual auction of classic ensembles and couture items that come our way—a Gaultier gown, Givenchy coat, Dior accessories. Some of these donations come from the deceased. Could we approach Dr. Dempsey?”

  Her mouth tightens, and she frowns. “I’m not sure.”

  “Maybe I will take that cigarette.” It’s a bonding strategy, though I never fared well as a smoker, never mastered the hand positions. Pretend you’re Susan Sarandon, Reggie. Take the Newport, accept the light, but do not inhale lest you choke. Puff in, puff out. “Thanks. Now and then a cigarette—”

  “Nothing like it.”

  A quiet moment passes. Mickey loads the last carton. I’m on borrowed time. “Sissie, did you tell me Sylvia served as program chair of the Garden Alliance?” She squints, puzzled. “Or was she an Alliance officer?”

  She exhales. “Neither one. Just a member in good standing.”

  “But she introduced Senator Wald.”

  “She got him for the program. It’s what we’re about, landing the big fish from time to time.”

  “Politicians?”

  “Sure. And sports celebrities, TV personalities. We run the gamut. Don’t think for a minute we’re just ladies on the sidelines.”

  “So Sylvia got Wald all by herself?”

  “She showed her clout. The members took notice. Sylvia’s stock shot up. A garden can be a battleground. Sylvia had her goals. Mickey, would you flatten the leftover cardboard? Thanks.” To me: “Now, what’s this about her clothes?”

  I focus my pitch. “Sometimes in grief a family disposes of a loved one’s possessions too hastily and then regrets doing so. Dr. Dempsey would serve a good cause and qualify for the appropriate deduction. Needless to say, a Chanel suit would enhance our auction.”

  Sissie flicks her ash. “Ah yes, Dr. Dempsey, the grieving widower.” Her sarcasm sounds an alarm.

  “We find that requests are best made early.”

  “Believe me, Bernie is the king of early.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “They take their comfort where they find it, don’t they? On the prowl already, the younger the better. You know Bernie?”

  “Let’s say I know the type.” I flick my ash and make a move. “I was married to one. Call it themes and variations.”

  “Sylvia’s barely in the grave. And the insurance policy… rumors are flying like B-52s.”

  “About Sylvia’s murder?”

  “And Bernie’s money pit.”

  “You mean his skin business? Advent Tissue Science?”

  “It’s his ATM.”

  We puff. Eager to pepper her with questions, I control myself and stay neutral. “I understand Advent got venture capital investment.”

  “For his lab and his plane, so he can ski the Tetons.” Sissie crushes her cigarette underfoot. “Bernie’s looking beyond pimply teens and skin cream. The clinic was just the start. He’s always had his eye on money and the social circuit. Some thought Sylvia was his stepping-stone. His charm paid off.”

  “Doesn’t it always?”

  She nods. “But his temper, that’s Bernie’s Achilles’ heel.”

  “I’ve heard rumors.”

  “All true. Provoke him and he’ll stare you dow
n with those fire-and-brimstone eyes. You’ve met him?”

  “Maybe once.”

  “Never rub him the wrong way. You don’t want to meet those eyes.” Sissie looks at me with a watery gaze. “Sylvia’s Chanel at auction… ghoulish, don’t you think?”

  “Didn’t Jackie Kennedy’s suit and pillbox hat go to the Smithsonian?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Actually, neither do I. “Could you call him for us?”

  She hesitates. “Where is this auction held?”

  “The Four Seasons.” Which is a lie. “Next year, possibly the Ritz.”

  This is how I gain entrance to Sylvia Dempsey’s dressing room.

  It’s the next Tuesday, a hellishly hot afternoon, when I climb the stairs behind the Dempsey housekeeper, the broad-faced, bushy-browed Mrs. Manosa, whose black polyester swishes as she leads me across the carpeted balcony of the Chestnut Hill Tudor. The house is furnished in heavy Queen Anne mahogany with virgin-white porcelain objets, mostly figurines of children. Sissie Hehrborg, bless her, played the middlewoman. I’m led to understand that as the StyleSmart representative, I can select wardrobe items under Mrs. Manosa’s watchful eye, with the stipulation that I provide proof that StyleSmart is a registered 501C3 not-for-profit agency. I must also provide wardrobe appraisal of each donated item. Dr. Bernard Dempsey, it seems, is not too devastated to think about tax deductions.

  The Dempseys, it’s clear, had separate bedrooms. Sylvia’s is decorated in toile wall covering and furnished with a sleigh bed and Empire dresser decked with the couple’s wedding photos. The eight-by-tens show a slender, ivory-complexioned Sylvia in her twenties, blond hair swept into a French twist, eyes gazing heavenward in the classic expression of faith and staged bliss. She’s in a gown of organza with seed pearls, a popular design of twenty years ago. Facing opposite is the tuxedoed, olive-complexioned Bernard, slight of build with a narrow face and receding hairline. Sloe-eyed, I’d say, but not hellish. At the time of his wedding, he looked about thirty-five.

  Oddly, there are no other photos in the room, no record of life’s progression. The polished picture frames, I notice, rest on surfaces that are coated with dust, as if the room has been neglected and the wedding photos placed here within the last day or two. The night tables and mirror, too, are dusty, and a cobweb loops from a lamp finial to the shade. What housekeeper would fail to notice and act? Unless perhaps superstition keeps Mrs. Manosa out of this room. Or orders from Dr. Dempsey.