by Con Lehane
“The police might have found it,” Ambler said. “Wait. If he’s telling the truth, McNulty didn’t go back to Stamford after he saw us until after Sandra was dead. The night she was murdered he stayed at his father’s apartment. Or he says he did. Let’s believe him. It looks like I’m headed to Brooklyn. Wanna come?”
Adele raised her eyebrows, somehow an accusation. “I’m going to read Jayne Galloway’s journals. You were rushing me last time.… She wrote about her awful first husband. Maybe she wrote about Sandra’s awful husband, too.”
* * *
Kevin McNulty was a frailer man than the last time Ambler visited his apartment. That time, the senior McNulty had the stature and vitality of his younger self. Not a big man, he had broad shoulders, thick workingman’s hands, a bright penetrating gaze, and energy, spirit. His brush with death knocked some of that out of him. While his gaze was still bright, it had sunken into his face and held a depth of sadness that wasn’t there before. The shirt and sweater he wore hung loosely from his shoulders.
“I haven’t gotten up to see Brian yet,” he said after they’d shaken hands in the apartment doorway. “How’s he holding up?”
“He’s good. I just saw him. Things might be looking up.” They walked to the small living room and sat across from each other. “He wouldn’t want you to visit now. You need to rest. Visiting the jail is stressful for anyone.”
The senior McNulty had a home health care aide. “Compliments of the city,” he said. “Finally getting something out of sixty years of paying taxes.” He did physical therapy every other day and took a lot of pills. That was all he had to say about that.
Ambler told him about Sandra Dean’s journal and why he wanted it. “Brian led me to believe he might have left it here.”
“Oh?” Kevin’s expression was shrewd. He might have been a poker player. Or he might have been an old trade union leader negotiating with the boss. You weren’t going to get something for nothing. He asked Ambler what his thinking was about the murders and the journal.
Amber told him about the men in the journal. “I want to know what else she might have written about.” He didn’t want to bring up Simon Dean.
“Diaries are private,” Kevin McNulty said. “People who write them often don’t want anyone to read what’s in them. Often they ask that they be destroyed when they die. There’s a privacy question here, isn’t there? Perhaps she asked Brian to destroy them.”
Ambler didn’t understand what the older man was saying, or he didn’t understand why he said what he said.
Kevin McNulty spoke slowly, perhaps reluctantly. “My wife left her diaries behind when she died. She was too ill to tend to them herself at the end. She asked me to destroy them, to not read them and to destroy them.” His eyes were liquid when his gaze met Ambler’s. “I wanted very much not to do that. The diaries were her words, something of her still in my life. I agonized. In the end, I destroyed them without reading them. I still wish I could have read them. But they were her thoughts, her words. She had a right to keep them to herself even after her death.”
They sat in silence. Twice church bells rang in the distance. The other sound was an old-fashioned clock ticking. He’d given the frail old man a moral dilemma to wrestle with. For some—maybe for him before this old Communist reminded him—expediency would trump morality. What were the rights of the murdered? Should their privacy trump catching their killer? Do the living have a right to reveal the secrets of the dead—even to exonerate one’s son?
“I understand this is difficult,” Ambler said. “If Brian destroyed the journals because she asked him to, so be it. If they exist and there’s a moral wrong to be done, I’ll pay the price. I’ve asked myself if Sandra would reveal her secrets to protect a person who gave up a lot to protect her. Knowing what I’ve learned of her, I’d say yes.”
Kevin McNulty thought that over. He stood. “At the very top of the bookcase is a flat package. You’ll need to stand on a chair and feel for it.”
Ambler did and took down a thick manila envelope containing two hardcover notebooks.
“Brian said to hang onto it until he told me what to do. I should ask him.” His gaze met Ambler’s. “I’m old and tired and want my son out of prison.”
* * *
Ambler began reading the journals on the train back to Manhattan, thinking he’d skim through them until he found something that helped make sense of Sandra Dean’s murder. But he stopped skimming almost as soon as he started. The first journal entry was from soon after Sandra’s daughter Carolyn was born. In neat, precise handwriting, she noted what the baby wore on a given day and what she ate and if she burped and the first time she smiled. The words sparkled. She wrote that she couldn’t find the words to describe her happiness but she did find them.
And then another few pages in she began questioning the happiness she felt. Here, Simon appeared. He came across as his sister, Andrea, portrayed him, although Sandra didn’t seem aware that she described an ogre. “I get so tired,” Sandra wrote. “I’m cranky and anxious when Carolyn cries and I can’t comfort her. Simon looks at me like I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how to be a mother. His look says any other mother would know what to do. And he’s right. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help her. I didn’t have a mother.” The entries went on like that, about what was wrong with her, what Simon found wrong with her. She shouldn’t have had a baby if she didn’t know how to take care of one. What was she thinking?
The journal entries went back and forth, good days and bad days. The baby got a cold. She cried a lot. She was up all night, her nose stuffed up and caked with glop. Sandra was exhausted. She couldn’t stay awake. Simon was furious with her. After that, the journal entries about Carolyn became sporadic. The tone changed. The sense of wonder was gone. The writing was matter-of-fact, straightforward. Carolyn smiled. Carolyn had a cold. Carolyn sat up for the first time.
When Sandra wrote about herself, it was criticism. She should do this. She shouldn’t do that. She began smoking again. She drank too much. She had a blackout. She had an argument with a stranger at a party. Simon said she embarrassed him. She didn’t remember doing that. Simon embarrassed her. She remembered that.
Ambler kept reading after he got home on into the night. He felt voyeuristic doing it but couldn’t tear himself away. Sandra’s criticism of herself was so sad. She was never good enough for Simon. She didn’t, even in the privacy of her journal, criticize him; yet she seemed to record every criticism he made of her and believe them all.
And then near the end, there came one long entry where everything changed. “I hope someone delivers this diary to Simon after I’m dead, which I’m terrified will be soon. He’s so sure he’s in control, so sure I would not, could not, oppose him, betray him, he’d keel over dead from the shock, spontaneously combust. Ha!
“I’ve been damaged,” she wrote. “But I’m getting better. I have Carolyn. And Brian will help me. He knows me. He knows me better than anyone. He knows everything and he loves me.”
There was one entry after that Ambler didn’t understand; it ended too soon; it needed to tell him more. He went back and pored through the sections he’d skimmed hoping he’d missed something, searching for even a hint of when and why Sandra began trying to get her and her daughter out of her tormented marriage. When he didn’t find anything, he called Adele to help him figure it out. It was near midnight when he called, not realizing how late it was, not knowing he would wake her, until she answered in a panic. “Raymond, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Why are you calling? Did—”
“No. No. Everything’s all right. I didn’t look at the time. I’ve been reading Sandra’s journal.”
“You found it?” Her voice rose. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He had no idea why he didn’t tell her, why he didn’t call earlier. “I got engrossed in reading it and forgot about everything. I didn’t know what time it was. I forgot to eat dinner. I didn’t even call Johnny at his gr
andmother’s to say goodnight.”
A strange pause at the other end of the line told him something was up. “What?” he barked.
“Johnny’s here.” Her voice was small.
“No.” Ambler groaned, partly a groan, partly a wail.
“It’s okay. I called Lisa Young. She understands … sort of. She apologized to him over the phone for whatever it was she said about his father. That was why he left. She said he could stay here tonight.”
“And why didn’t you call me? He’s my grandson.…” He was sorry before the words left his mouth, before he heard the gasp at the other end of the line. He never pulled rank like that, never meant to, didn’t mean to now. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” he said.
Adele was as close to Johnny as any mother would be. In Ambler’s secret dream there was an idyllic world where he, Johnny, and Adele were together. But on too many days, life, and with it too many obstacles, came between them, between him and Adele. The threads that held them together—he and Johnny and Adele—were delicate, too easily snapped, which is what he’d done now, snapped them.
“It’s okay.” Adele’s tone was strained.
“It’s not okay. It’s not right or true. I’m sorry I said it.”
“Johnny thought you’d make him go back. You probably would have.” Her voice cracked. “I overstepped—”
“You didn’t.” He tried again. There was no undoing what he’d done. His attempt to put her in her place was pure meanness. No one loved Johnny more than Adele.
Speaking stiffly, she said she’d take Johnny to school in the morning and see Ambler at the library.
The next morning, when she stopped by the crime fiction room to tell him Johnny was off to school, she was more formal than ever, distant, like the hired help reporting, not how he wanted her to be with him. Despite that, during her lunch break she came back to read more of Jayne Galloway’s journals.
Ambler paced the small space of the reading room in front of the library table she sat at and told her about Sandra Dean’s diary. “She was in love with McNulty. She was pulling herself out of the doldrums.” He stopped pacing. “The reason I called last night, in her last entry—Wait. I have it here.” He took the diary off a bookshelf and read from it. “Now that I know about Simon, now with proof, no court in the world would give him custody. What a fool I’ve been not to see what he’s been doing.”
“What?” Adele whispered.
“I don’t know. I hoped this might make sense to you, that I missed something you’d picked up on.”
Adele closed her eyes and shook her head.
“I’m meeting Mike after work. Maybe with what he thinks he has on Simon, he’ll figure out what she means.” He lowered his voice. “Do you want to come? I’m meeting him at the Canopy Bar.”
“Why would I come?” Adele sounded angry, still hurt from what he’d said last night.
“I just thought you would.”
Ambler met Mike at the Canopy Bar, across from the main door of the Oyster Bar. The small bar was always busy at rush hour; the patrons stopped for a drink and left for their trains so there was constant turnover. As Mike’s pal Marcelo the bartender told the drinkers, “If you miss your train, you’re in someone else’s seat.”
They ordered martinis and oysters and Ambler told Mike about Sandra Dean’s journal. She planned to leave her husband and take their daughter. She was in love with McNulty. She’d found out something incriminating about Simon Dean. Ambler read Mike the last cryptic passage from her journal.
“What does that mean?” Mike asked. The oyster tray arrived and they each prepared an oyster.
“I hoped you might know. Why do you suspect Dean?”
Mike didn’t like someone telling him what he thought. “You don’t know as much as you think you do. You said he was a suspect. I didn’t.”
“You don’t want to tell me. I’m okay with that.”
Mike tended to his oyster.
“She wrote in her journal that she loved McNulty. She wrote that she was pulling herself out of her morass. Why as soon as McNulty left that evening, did she pick up another man? And how would Simon know where she was and what she was doing?”
“Whoa.” Mike pointed an oyster shell at Ambler. “Who said he knew where she was?”
Ambler reached into his book bag for the journal. At the same time, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, something familiar, and realized Adele was coming toward him.
Her face was frozen into a fearful expression. “I found something you need to see.” Her hands shook as she placed one of Jayne Galloway’s journals in front of Ambler.
“You took this from the library—”
“Never mind that.” One finger marked a page in the closed journal. She opened to that page. She hadn’t spoken to Mike or even looked at him, focused almost desperately on Ambler. She pointed to a paragraph with the finger that had marked the page.
Ambler read: “Sandra is deadly serious that Simon would harm Carolyn if the police come for him.” Adele pulled back the journal. “Jayne Galloway hired a private detective to investigate Simon Dean. He found something terrible.”
“A private detective?” It was Mike. “When?”
“Not long before Sandra was murdered. She told Sandra about the report and Sandra didn’t believe her … or she did believe her and wouldn’t let her tell anyone. I’m not sure what she meant.”
Mike listened impatiently. “Did she mention the detective’s name?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I need to know the name,” Mike said.
Ambler was puzzled. Mike looked like he was about to explode. “What?”
“Ted Doyle was a security consultant, a private detective.”
Ambler felt as shocked as Mike looked. “When I first visited Jayne Galloway, she told me she used a private detective to find Sandra. He found her. That report might be among Galloway’s papers at the library.”
“If you’d check on that,” Mike pushed himself back from the table and waved for the server. “I’m gonna lean on some closed-mouthed smart-asses on Long Island.”
“What about Carolyn?” Adele’s tone stopped both of them. “What about Simon Dean’s daughter? Did he kill her mother?”
Cosgrove gave Adele a measured look. “We’re about to find out.”
Adele grabbed Cosgrove’s arm. “You can’t! He’ll hurt that child. Sandra was sure of it, and I believe her.”
“We won’t let that happen.” Mike put his free hand on Adele’s shoulder. “We know how to do this. I won’t let her get hurt.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we’ll stay calm and do it right. Let’s get the story straight first. We don’t know what Simon Dean did or didn’t do.” Adele loosened her hold on Mike’s arm. “If we could find that private investigator’s report, it would help.”
Chapter 32
It didn’t take Ambler long to find the report from Continental Security Consultants once they got back to the crime fiction room. The letter with the report was signed Theodore Doyle, Licensed Investigator.
Mike wasn’t triumphant when Ambler showed him the name. His rugged face reflected a kind of grim satisfaction. “I’ve got to confirm what we think we know. You two sit tight.” His gaze darted from one to the other. “This is police business now.” He glared at Adele. “You care about that kid, you gotta trust me.”
Mike was right. Matching wits with a professional homicide detective like Mike over examining data and making inferences was one thing. When lives were at stake, what Mike brought to the battle outweighed anything he and Adele could do. There was one thing.
“We could ask Simon’s sister Andrea to gather up Carolyn and take her someplace safe.”
Mike shook his head. “His sister? I don’t think so, Ray. Blood runs thick. She could feel she had to protect her brother.”
“Sandra was her friend. If she knew he killed her—”
“We can’t tell
her that.” Mike spoke sharply. Tension was high for all of them. “We don’t know for sure ourselves. Like I said, let’s get the story straight and go from there. What we know is that Ted Doyle, on assignment from Jayne Galloway, found her daughter.
“We surmise Doyle was the private eye who discovered something incriminating about Simon Dean. We surmise Doyle was on that case when he came to the Commodore Hotel to meet Sandra Dean to tell her about the report on her husband. And we surmise Simon Dean followed him there or waited for him there and killed him. For one thing, we need the second report, the one that incriminates Simon Dean. If there is one, it’s on file at Continental Security. I’ll get it if I have to throw the bastards running the place in the slammer.
“We also need proof Simon Dean knew about the report and knew where his wife was on the night Ted Doyle was murdered.”
“And on the night his wife was murdered,” Ambler said.
“We need to move carefully.”
When Mike left to deal with the “smart-asses on Long Island,” Ambler and Adele went back to work. Ambler read through the initial report from Ted Doyle. Doyle found Sandra Dean apparently without much difficulty, as Adele had found her. Doyle noted in his report there were some question marks—blank spaces—in Simon Dean’s background. Because of this he couldn’t vouch for the authenticity of Mr. Dean’s background report and recommended a follow-up investigation if Mrs. Galloway wanted to know about Dean’s life before he met Sandra. Doyle was satisfied that his report on Sandra Dean, nee Galloway, was accurate.
When Ambler finished reading the report, he began searching through boxes of unorganized papers and documents taken from Jayne Galloway’s house. When he didn’t find the second report, he worried it might have been hidden somewhere in her house, and kicked himself for not looking more thoroughly when he had the chance. It was also possible Sandra Dean had hidden it somewhere or Simon Dean had gotten his hands on it, which meant they’d never find it. For now, he’d hope Mike came up with something. He went back to Sandra’s journals.