A Conflict of Interest

by Adam Mitzner

  “No. That’s okay.”

  “All right then. Let me give you your mother’s personal effects. We found her handbag on the beach.”

  He walks over to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room, locked by one of those blue combination locks that I used in gym class in the seventh grade. After a few turns of the dial, he’s holding my mother’s handbag and a small, brown box, no larger than a shoe box.

  He hands me the bag. It was a birthday gift from me a year or two ago. It’s one of those fancy designer things that everyone in New York had to have at the time, emblazoned on the front with the designer’s logo.

  Inside are the expected items: a brush, makeup and lipstick, her wallet, which still had seventy-three dollars in it, and a book, the most recent paperback by an author who churned out detective stories that always made the bestseller list. The bookmark indicates that my mother was about two-thirds through it. Otherwise, aside from some sand inside, neither the bag nor its contents seem any worse for wear.

  “Was anything removed?” I ask, not because I suspect anything has been, but because I think I should ask something.

  “No. Is something missing?”

  “I don’t think so, but I don’t really know what my mother kept in her handbag.”

  “That’s all there was. By the way, we found her car in the beach parking lot and it’s been impounded. Whatever was inside was inventoried and should be in the box.”

  When I catch his eyes, he looks away.

  “Forgive me for saying this,” he says, still avoiding eye contact, “and I hate to raise this even as a possibility, but we need to consider whether your mother took her own life. I assume you didn’t receive a suicide note or anything else that would lead you to that conclusion?”

  The words are as jarring as when I first heard that my mother was dead. Suicide never even entered my mind. My mother was always a glass-half-empty type, but I never thought she was distraught in that way. Even after my father’s death, I didn’t think she was any more upset than was situationally appropriate. Did I miss the signs?

  “We didn’t find a suicide note in your mother’s house,” he says.

  “You’ve been to her home?”

  “It’s standard operating procedure in a case like this.” He must be able to tell that I’m upset about the intrusion. “Remember, Mr. Miller, we found a purse and a body, but we weren’t even sure they were connected for several hours. We entered your mother’s home to ensure there was no evidence of foul play.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  “No need to apologize, sir. But I still need to ask. Did your mother say anything that might lead you to think she was suicidal?”

  “No.” And then, realizing that I’m not a witness who should answer as narrowly as possible, but someone seeking the police’s help, I add, “My father died unexpectedly in September. But I thought she was handling it all right. She was sad, but not more than anyone else would be under the circumstances.”

  “Just this past September? Three months ago?”

  I nod. “Closer to four months,” I say, fully knowing that the extra thirty days is insignificant to the issue at hand.

  His expression, a kind of pity, makes me question my own emotions, which is foolish, I know, because I’m the one who’s suffered the loss of both my parents in quick succession, not Deputy Gattia. And then I realize something that, up until then, I had truly not connected. It was shortly after my father’s death that I started working with Abby, and much of my time since then has been spent in her company. Just like a broken heart is easily healed when you find a new lover, it seems that the same is true of the sense of loss that accompanies the death of a parent.

  I pull the rental car up to the Venezia Castle security booth. “I’m Alex Miller,” I tell the woman wearing one of those rent-a-cop uniforms. “My mother is Barbara Miller at 7501 Turino,” realizing too late that I’m using the present tense.

  “ID, please,” the woman says, and I hand her my driver’s license.

  She reaches over to the phone, the usual protocol. “No one’s going to be home,” I tell her. “My mother died.”

  “Oh, Barbara Miller.” She says this without any condolence in her voice and puts down the receiver. “Yeah, they told me that someone had died and I’m supposed to let you through.”

  “Thank you,” I say, as she raises the gate. I want to be angry with her over her insensitivity, but I immediately realize that she must get this a lot, considering Venezia Castle’s median age.

  Like the uniformity of the communities along the highway, within Venezia Castle every house is precisely the same. Not only do they share the same design—small, single-level box homes with the two-car garage taking up more than 50 percent of the exterior—but under the Venezia Castle bylaws, all houses must be painted white with black doors, and repainted every five years. The result is that there isn’t even any difference in the signs of aging among the structures.

  The Scary Lady is the first thing that greets me when I enter my mother’s house. She’s hanging on the wall immediately adjacent to the front door, still bordered by the same ugly metal frame and blue matting.

  Even though Deputy Gattia told me that the police had already searched for a suicide note, I’ve come here to look myself. I begin in the bedroom, rummaging through my mother’s possessions the way a burglar might look for hidden jewelry, running my hand through my mother’s underwear drawer, looking behind books, and then proceeding through the other concealed spaces in the room.

  When I open my father’s night table drawer, I see a manila envelope marked Personal and wonder if this could be it. Inside, however, are only old photographs.

  A few pictures in, after some shots of my grandparents, is one of my father at the beach. The feathered hair on the girls in the background screams that it was taken in the mid-1970s. My father would have been, at most, in his early thirties. The man with his arm around his shoulder is Michael Ohlig, who displays the same look of utter confidence that he wears today.

  I continue for another fifteen minutes, but to no avail. I’m not sure how, exactly, to react. A note would have given some meaning to her death, but it would have been one to which I’d rather not ascribe.

  I return to the living room, taking a seat across from the Scary Lady. “How did she die?” I say aloud.

  The Scary Lady does not answer.

  28

  Most of the same people attend my mother’s funeral as did my father’s, and many of them appear to be wearing the same clothing, as am I. The service, too, has an eerie familiarity to it, the listing of Elizabeth, Charlotte, and my names as loved ones left behind, the recitation of the story about how my parents met.

  Before the service I met briefly with the rabbi. At first he didn’t remember presiding over my father’s funeral, but when I reminded him his eyes widened and I could tell he’d found the theme of his eulogy—that my mother died of a broken heart.

  After I place the shovel of earth on the casket, others follow suit, and a processional arranges itself to offer condolences to me. I’m thanking yet another of the residents of Venezia Castle for coming when I see Michael Ohlig out of the corner of my eye. The square-shouldered way he approaches the shovel, the methodical sweep of his arms as he performs his service to my mother, as smooth as a professional golfer’s swing, provides yet another experience of déjà vu.

  When it’s Ohlig’s turn to shake my hand, he instead throws his arms around me, pulling me tight. My father was not a very demonstrative man and, to my surprise, I find Ohlig’s embrace comforting.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says into my ear.

  As I emerge from Ohlig’s arms, I notice Pamela beside him. “We both are,” she says, and then looks at the ground.

  “If there is anything—anything—that either of us can do, Alex, please don’t hesitate to ask,” Ohlig says.

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  They are about to take their leave, a
nd I should let them go, especially considering that the line behind them has now grown to be about six people deep, but I pull Ohlig closer.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course, Alex. Anything.”

  “The police said my mother might have committed suicide, and I just can’t get the thought of it out of my mind.”

  “That’s ridiculous. She didn’t commit suicide.” He says this with authority. Placing his hand on my shoulder, he adds, “She had too much to live for to do that. Your father’s death was hard on her, no doubt about that. They’d been together for a lot of years. But she loved you and she loved your little girl.”

  “Did she say anything to make you think she might be depressed? Was there a change in her mood recently?”

  He takes a deep breath, and then looks to his wife, as if she’s more suited to answer. “I’m sorry, but, well, you know what I’ve been doing with my time the last week or so, cooped up in your conference room. The last time I spoke to your mother was about two weeks ago; you know, it may even have been longer than that, I’m sorry to say.” He smiles at me. “After all you’ve taught me about answering the question directly, here I’m giving you a non-answer. Let me try again. I didn’t notice anything different about her. I thought that, given the circumstances, she was doing well.”

  “Thank you so much for coming, Michael. And you too, Pamela. It means a lot to me.”

  “No need to thank me,” he says. “That’s what family does for each other.”

  “It’s like we were just here,” says one of my mother’s neighbors whose name I can’t recall, after we’ve returned to my mother’s home where bagels and appetizers are once again arranged. I’ve heard the same sentiment at least twenty times today. He seems well-meaning, but then he asks about my plans for my mother’s home, and I realize the conversation has run its course.

  “Excuse me. I need to talk to my wife about something.”

  Elizabeth is holding Charlotte, no longer an easy feat since Charlotte crossed the thirty-pound threshold. Our daughter has my strong chin and the beginnings of the dimples Abby mentioned that night at the Four Seasons, and Elizabeth’s mysterious emerald eyes and red hair. When Elizabeth was pregnant and we joked about which of our features we wanted our daughter to inherit, it went exactly like that.

  “How are you doing?” I ask Elizabeth.

  “Probably better than you.”

  She puts Charlotte down, but my daughter’s feet don’t touch the ground for more than a second before she’s leaping into my arms. I’m happy to have her there and kiss the top of her head.

  Elizabeth and my mother never got on very well. They each put a good face on it, neither ever disparaging the other, at least not to me, but they were different types of women. Even people who knew my mother only superficially described her as a force of nature. They meant it as a compliment, but the phrase always conjured an image in my mind of a hurricane, with my mother pulling everything into her orbit. By contrast, Elizabeth is much more a repellant force. That first sense I had when seeing her at that party in Cambridge has turned out to be right. She has few friends, and doesn’t seem driven to be surrounded by others.

  “My father was easier to eulogize.” I laugh.

  “It’s not a competition.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Okay, for your mother maybe it was.”

  “How are you holding up, Charlotte bear?”

  “Good,” she says.

  “You sure?”

  “It’s sad that Grandma’s dead. I wish she were alive. And Papa too.”

  “Me too, sweetie. Me too.”

  “Do you think they’re together now in Heaven?”

  “I do,” I tell her, although in truth, I do not. I’ve never been a big believer in any form of afterlife. “What do you think of that picture?” I say to Charlotte, pointing to the Scary Lady.

  “The lady with the colors on her face?”

  “Yes. I’m going to take that back to New York with us and put it up in our apartment. Papa bought it for Grandma before I was even born.”

  “It must be really old,” Charlotte says, without any sarcasm.

  “Papa thought it looked like Grandma. Do you think it does?”

  “No.” Charlotte scrunches up her face the way she sometimes does when she’s thinking about something really hard. “It looks kind of like a witch, I think. Or maybe a clown, because of the colors on her face.”

  “When I was a little boy it frightened me. I called her the Scary Lady.”

  “Why do you want to hang it in the house if it’s scary, Daddy?”

  Elizabeth laughs, but I can see in her eyes that she agrees with Charlotte.

  29

  We leave West Palm on Monday at three-thirty, but it isn’t until we’ve arrived back at JFK that I tell Elizabeth I need to head to the office. There was no point in our fighting for the entire flight, I figured.

  “Alex, please just give us one more night,” Elizabeth begs.

  “Abby only got a two-week extension from the court. We’ve got to start the trial on Monday.”

  “So because Abby sucks at her job, she gets you for the night and your family suffers?”

  “Abby isn’t getting me. And she doesn’t suck at her job. I’m just going to work.”

  I go straight to the war room, without even stopping at my office first. Abby’s there, reviewing our witness binders, looking almost exactly the same as she did five days ago when I last saw her.

  I feel myself exhale. Finally, I can relax.

  “I was hoping I’d see you today,” she says. Her eyes are bright and her smile is ear-to-ear.

  “I missed you,” I say, even though I know I shouldn’t be so … honest.

  “I wish I could have come to the funeral.”

  Abby looks down at the table. At first I think it’s to express further condolence, and then I realize she’s looking at my hand. I wonder if she’s going to put her hand on top of mine. I wait, but she doesn’t move.

  “Look at this,” I say, and pull an envelope out of my briefcase. “I found it in my mother’s house. It was in my father’s night table. It’s him and Ohlig, when they were about my age, maybe a little younger.”

  Abby studies the photograph. “I see you’re not a victim of male pattern baldness,” she says.

  “My father was a cue ball well before thirty,” I reply, running my hand through my own full head of hair. “As I’ve told you, my mother always said I’m all her.”

  Abby looks at me sympathetically. Her eyes are telling me it’s okay if I want to talk about my mother. I accept the invitation.

  “I’m trying to figure out how she died. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  “She wouldn’t go in the ocean by herself. It just wasn’t like her. And on Thanksgiving morning? The police said they looked for a suicide note, but didn’t find one. Apparently that’s standard operating procedure in drowning cases.” I shake my head. “I never should have left her alone for the holiday.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself,” she says. “You couldn’t go to Florida for Thanksgiving. You had a professional obligation to keep your client out of jail, a man who was your family’s oldest friend. And you did the only thing you could—you asked your mother to come to New York for the holiday. It was her decision not to come. You didn’t keep her away.”

  I feel my eyes becoming moist, and I look away from Abby. She moves from the far side of the table until she’s sitting next to me, and then gently places her hand on my shoulder.

  “Alex, your mother did not commit suicide. There wasn’t a suicide note. Doesn’t that settle it?”

  “Not necessarily. Apparently lots of people commit suicide without leaving notes.” I give her a shrug. “I googled it.”

  Neither of us says anything for a moment. Finally I remark: “She died all alone. That’s the part I hate most. I keep imagining her in the water, alone a
nd scared.”

  Abby places her hand on mine without saying anything. When I caress her hand she caresses mine back, as if to say that I’m not alone and so I shouldn’t be scared.

  We sit like that in silence, well past the time when one of us should have withdrawn, or said something. I’m focused solely on my thumb, which is massaging the top of her hand, the space between her thumb and index finger. The moment hangs in the air, as if it’s not really of this time or place.

  As if I’m awakened from a dream, I notice that the conference room door is open. Not completely, but enough that someone would enter without knocking. Abby seemingly can read my mind because she realizes that I’m suddenly concerned that someone will find us here, holding hands, and takes her hand off mine, but while doing so smiles at me to confirm that she wishes she didn’t have to.

  “I should go home,” I say. “I was only allowed to come in because I promised Elizabeth I wouldn’t stay long.”

  “You didn’t have to come in at all, Alex. You should be home with your family.”

  “I really did miss you,” I say, and at that moment believed with all my heart that if the door was closed just a little more, I would have kissed her.

  I am still thinking about the softness of Abby’s touch when I enter our apartment, and so I am immediately ashamed of myself when I see what can only be described as pure joy. Charlotte is sitting on Elizabeth’s lap, receiving a manicure. As if they are puppets on the same string, both of their heads move up in unison, and their faces adopt the same broad smile when they see I’m home.

  “Daddy!” Charlotte screams. “Mommy is painting my nails. Guess what color?”

  There is perhaps nothing in the entire world I can be as sure of as the color Charlotte has chosen to paint her fingernails, yet I consider it my paternal responsibility to allow her to surprise me. “Blue?” I say.

  “No!” She says this with a squeal, the delight of having knowledge I lack. “Guess again.”

  “It must be red.”