by Ann Cook
When she gave her name to the doorman and explained that she was expected, he ushered her into a lobby of black and white marble, made a call, and then showed her to a bank of elevators. The aura of wealth intimidated Brandy. She had given little thought about dressing to meet Mr. Grosmiller, but now she brushed off her pleated navy skirt and straightened her white collar and the narrow sleeves of the matching jacket.
After she exited the elevator, she stopped to gaze critically into a full length mirror beside the doors, ran a comb through her coppery hair, and dabbed on a touch of lipstick. Maybe, she told herself, this visit means financial aid for Cara. She also reminded herself that people with large amounts of money were usually expert at keeping it.
The door was opened by a woman in her sixties with a blue uniform, a white, lacy apron, and a permanent wave like steel wool. “I’m the housekeeper, Louise Gruber,” she said. “Mr. Bullen’s secretary called. He’ll be here soon.” Brandy stepped into a foyer with a black marble floor. Under a row of tall windows, a vista of ivory greeted her—ivory Berber carpets, ivory brocade on the couches and chairs, ivory satin paint on the walls, and ivory embossed fleur-de-lis on the drapes. After the housekeeper showed her into the living area, Brandy perched on a Hepplewhite chair beside a glass coffee table and a grand piano, clutched her shabby cloth bag, and tried to look at ease.
Her glance strayed to the polished bar set against one wall, decanters of amber-colored wine reflected in its soaring mirror. Maybe the faithful Louise would offer her a sherry, bolster her nerve. Maybe Brandy was going to miss lunch altogether.
After fifteen minutes, when her anxiety had peaked, Louise re-appeared, not with the hoped for sherry, but with a message. “Mr. Bullen’s here. He’ll see you in his study.” More opulence, Brandy feared, and followed her down the hall into another room, smaller and oak-paneled.
The attorney rose from behind a desk and motioned Brandy to a leather couch. “Miss O’Bannon, I believe.”
Frank Bullen was a man of medium height, and judging by his neat, well-trimmed white hair and the slight sag beneath his chin, Brandy estimated him to be in his sixties. But in his smartly tailored suit he looked solid, even athletic for his age. As she sank into the soft cushion, she was aware that he had seated himself several inches higher. He confronted her, arms crossed. From a high window behind the desk, sunlight fell on an angular face with sharp planes and watchful blue eyes.
“Now then. I’m interested in the story you have to tell me.” His gaze gave nothing away.
Brandy set her bag down beside her and folded her hands together. “I’m a newspaper reporter, Mr. Bullen. I explained that. I’m also the friend of a young woman who’s trying to identify her missing mother and find her father.” He nodded without speaking.
“I discovered that a woman came to Cedar Key, Florida, with her two-year old daughter at the same time your wife and daughter left New York.” She waited and he remained silent. “The dates in 1972 seem more than a coincidence. The day the woman was seen near Cedar Key, she mailed a post card from that location to her aunt, her mother’s sister. We have the date. It was right before Hurricane Agnes.” For a moment Bullen closed his eyes and sighed. “I know this must bring back painful memories,” she added.
When Brandy did not go on, he spoke, his voice quiet. “My wife never contacted me. Not once. It’s sad to think she might’ve written her aunt instead. That fact was never communicated to me. At least I would have known she and little Belinda were all right.” His fingers closed around the only object on his desk, a brass paperweight, the muscles in his jaw tight. Clearly the subject was still emotional.
Brandy spread her hands in her lap. “That’s the tragic part. She wasn’t all right.” She lowered her voice. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Your wife may have been murdered shortly afterward.”
He paused, released the paperweight, and sat up straighter, his lips drawn in. “That’s a terrible thing to suggest.” He turned away. “Is there proof?”
Brandy reminded herself she was talking to a lawyer. “Someone, we don’t yet know who, drove her from the bus stop to Cedar Key, right before the hurricane struck. The next thing we know, the child was found wandering in the storm, alone. No one ever claimed her. Months later a young woman’s skeleton turned up in Cedar Key. It had been cleverly concealed. We should be able to establish the dead woman’s identity, now that we know who she probably was.”
Bullen stood and looked out the window at the East River, where a tugboat pulling a garbage barge was crawling under the Queensboro Bridge. For a few seconds he remained silent, stroking the back of his neck, perhaps calming himself. At last he said, “I certainly hope it wasn’t Allison. And what happened to Belinda, if the child was Belinda?”
“If I’m right, your daughter’s been reared by a local artist, a woman who’s devoted to her. The girl was placed as a foster child. She could not be adopted because no one knew who her parents were. Her name’s now Cara. She calls herself Cara Waters.” Brandy felt in her bag. “Would you like to see a snapshot?”
He looked up again, as if studying something on the ceiling. Then facing her, he held up his palm, a stop signal. “It’s all of great interest to me, if it’s true. If this young woman is really Belinda, I want to see her, of course. I’ll be very sorry about Allison.. .if the story checks out.” He sat down again and crossed his knees. “Do you have the card that Allison is supposed to have sent?”
Brandy shook her head. “We haven’t found it yet. We have testimony verifying it.” She did not take out the photograph. Perhaps he did not want to get his hopes up and then find Cara was not his daughter. Attorneys were schooled in skepticism. “Allison’s dental records would be helpful.”
“I discarded such information years ago. You can understand that.” He met her eyes. “You have local authorities working on your theory, then?”
“Not yet. I only discovered your connection today. The Sheriff’s Office has other concerns right now.” Exasperated, she thought of Detective Strong and his search for a drug ring. “Mr. Bullen, you probably don’t know that an investigator was recently hired to find your wife. Three days ago he was shot near Cedar Key. I hoped he had called you. Allison’s aunt was his client. He said someone else was interested in finding Allison.”
The attorney shook his head again. “Cedar Key? An old town on the Gulf, isn’t it? A sad business about the aunt. I believe I saw her obituary in the paper. I was sorry to see it. I didn’t know them well, but they were nice people.” Then, perhaps because of past hurt, his tone hardened. “Allison had lots of friends, some very close.” He looked away and passed his hand across his lips. “One of them may want to find her. But you realize, this unidentified woman may not be Allison at all, and your young friend may not be her daughter.”
His blue eyes clouded, the bitterness in his voice eased. “Miss O’Bannon, I once married a very lovely girl who seemed to need me, but it turned out, she didn’t. Not really, not for long. I wouldn’t hold her against her will and I wouldn’t take her daughter from her. She had already suffered too many losses. End of story, except that now I am finally married to the right woman.” That sentiment seemed to end the conversation.
“Does your son still live with you?” Brandy asked, standing.
“No.” Bullen spoke in a decided voice. “He doesn’t.”
Voices sounded from the foyer. Brandy recognized the soothing tone of the housekeeper and heard another, more melodious. Then spike heels clicked down the hall. A slim beauty, perhaps a carefully tended forty, appeared in the doorway, carrying a large, elegant shopping bag.
“Just checking in,” she trilled. Her gaze lit on Brandy and the shapely eyebrows arched. She wore her chestnut hair shoulder length, a black sheath over a long, supple body, and three exquisite ropes of pearls. Bullen rose. Even erect, he was not quite her height.
“A visitor from Florida, my dear. Family business. Miss O’Bannon, my wife.” He bore down on the last word. “Miss O’Bannon tells a tragic story. It may involve me.”
The woman stepped forward, smiling. “Welcome to New York,” she said to Brandy, then turned to her husband. “What’s this about, Frank? Tell me about it.”
“Not now.” His curt reply resounded in the marble hall. “Later tonight.” It’s still too hurtful a memory, Brandy thought.
His wife accepted the rebuke. Instead of asking any more questions, she held up, quite tenderly, the large sack with an Oriental logo. Lifting out a cloisonné vase, she slowly rotated it to reveal the green enamel base, emblazoned with a fire-breathing dragon. She turned to Bullen. “Quite a find at the Japanese antique gallery. For the side table in the foyer.”
Bullen gave the vase a bored glance. On her slender left hand she wore a diamond and platinum wedding band, above it an unusually large, square cut diamond with a distinctive ladder of smaller diamonds on each side, and on one wrist a bracelet that matched her pearls. Brandy thought he might have tired of his wife’s expensive tastes.
“We’ll talk about the vase another time,” Bullen said. When he continued standing, Brandy rose, too.
“Had lunch?” he wife asked.
“I’m late now. I’ll have fruit and yogurt at the office. You’ll be home this afternoon by five?”
“I’m playing tennis at the club.” Mrs. Bullen led the way back down the hall toward the front door.
He paused, his hand on the knob. “No later than five-thirty, then. Don’t disappoint me.” He turned again to Brandy. “I’m afraid with such short notice, we both have lunch plans.”
The expression in his eyes was still unreadable. “We must stay in touch. You understand, a man in my position can be subjected to false appeals. It wouldn’t be the first time someone has claimed to be Belinda. But if you’ve truly located her, well.. .I’ll have a lot of plans to make. It would be a pleasant shock after all these years, having a daughter again. Do let me know how your investigation turns out.”
Brandy looked into the impenetrable blue eyes. He doesn’t believe Cara is his daughter, she thought, but she is. Maybe he’ll believe the sheriff.
“You’d better tell me how to reach you,” he said.
Brandy delved into her bag for her card with the Tribune bureau address. “I leave New York early tomorrow, but if you think of anything that might help, you can always reach me at this Florida number.”
As the door closed, Mrs. Bullen gave Brandy a look that mingled curiosity with concern. “You must be starved. It’s almost two. I’m meeting a friend for lunch, but I’ll ring for Louise.” She pushed a buzzer. “Our housekeeper will be glad to give you some lunch. There’s no decent restaurant nearby.”
Brandy blessed her for thinking of food. “That’s very kind,” she said. “I’d like that.” Frank Bullen had been polite but, lawyer-like, he had learned far more from her than she had from him. Her only hope now was Louise. A servant, left alone all day without much to do, might prove talkative, and Louise Gruber acted as if she had worked for Frank Bullen a very long time.
A door opened down a carpeted stair off the hallway. As Mrs. Bullen excused herself and disappeared into the bedroom wing, Louise’s frizzled permanent came into view up the steps. In a few minutes Louise had seated Brandy at a breakfast table on street level, facing a kitchen that was a decorator’s triumph—soft, peach-colored tile on floors and walls, an island of hardwood with a marble top and wine racks on the side, hardwood cabinets and table.
But something had been missing from Frank Bullen’s costly living room and study, something she’d expected to see. She couldn’t think what it was.
As Louise placed a plate of fresh fruit and finger sandwiches before her, Brandy looked up. “Come join me, Mrs. Gruber. It’s lonely eating by myself. Tell me about life in New York City.”
The housekeeper rinsed her hands at the sink and faced Brandy with a look of surprise. “Always heard you Southerners were friendly folks.” She slumped into a straight chair on the other side of the table. “I had my bite already, but I could set a minute before I start things for dinner. Main thing you need to know about the city, is be careful. Don’t trust nobody. Don’t carry a bag like that one. First thing a mugger will snatch.” She sat back and nodded with vigor.
“Do you live with the Bullens?”
“Oh, no. I have digs in Queens. Nice little apartment. My old man and me been there fifteen years. I serve an early dinner here, then zip across the Queensboro Bridge.”
“You’ve worked for Mr. Bullen a long time?”
Mrs. Gruber smiled. “Twenty-five years this summer.” She fumbled in her apron pocket. “Cigarette?” Brandy shook her head. “I have one now and again. Truth to tell, so does Mrs. Bullen. Hides it from him, of course.” She trotted to the nearest cabinet and lifted down a cheap glass ashtray.
“You must’ve known the last Mrs. Bullen. She’s the one I came to see him about. The one that just up and left town.”
Louise pursed her lips with disapproval. “Flighty little thing. Not real stable, truth to tell. We all thought so.” She dragged on the cigarette. “Only Mr. Bullen didn’t see it at first.”
“She’d suffered an awful tragedy, I hear.”
“Lost both parents. A car smash. Well, we all felt sorry for the poor thing. But after a while, a person has to grow up.” She wagged her head sagely and tapped her cigarette on the ashtray.
“What sort of things did she do? I mean, what made her seem immature?”
“Well, now. She wasn’t used to running a home like Mr. Bullen’s, of course. Didn’t know the first thing about it. Wasn’t this place then, but plenty nice. Truth to tell, I had to take over and I was pretty green still myself, but then I’d already learned a lot. Mr. Bullen’s first wife wasn’t no better. I started working for him then, and that woman, she wasn’t never at home. I did it all.” She puffed on the cigarette again, her eyes turned upward. “I got no complaints. I’ll retire this summer. I’ll get my social security and a nice retirement from Mr. Bullen, too.”
Brandy tugged her back to the topic. “And the second wife, Allison?”
“Well, at first he was just crazy about her. Because of her tragedy and all, he tried to make a kinda shelter around her, protect her from the world, you know. But after a while even Mr. Bullen noticed she was strange. She either stayed in her room all day, or she’d sneak out and be gone ‘til all hours. I remember once he went to someone’s house where they were having a noisy party and brought her home. Drunk, he said. Finally, he said, ‘Louise, you got to help me with Allison. I can’t be watching her all the time. I’ve got to be at the office.’ So I kept an eye on her, you know.
“She had some awful people over in them days. Men with long hair and earrings, that sort.” Louise took a last drag and snuffed out the cigarette. “Well, Mr. Bullen and me, we cleared them out. I got an idea of who she was phoning and where she planned to go. It worked. After a while she kinda quit seeing them.”
“What about their little daughter?”
Louise carried the ashtray to the sink and dumped the butt down the disposal. “That baby was cute. I had to take care of her some of the time, though, to tell the truth, Allison was pretty good with the baby.
She’d take her when she went out, but she didn’t go out much that last year. She didn’t pay much attention to her step-son, but then he was usually away in boarding school.”
“Were you here when she ran away?”
Louise washed the ashtray and returned it to its hiding place. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it running away. She left, but it wasn’t no surprise, not really. I heard her talking to someone, a relative I think. Sounded like they was making trip plans. She called the bus station and the bank. She had a little money of her ow
n.”
“Then Mr. Bullen knew she was planning to leave?”
“’Course he knew. He’d asked me to keep him posted. You don’t put nothing over on Mr. Bullen. He’s too sharp. But he just decided not to interfere. ‘Louise,’ he said, ‘let her go. I can’t take the child from her mother after she’s lost so much already. I won’t keep Allison here if she’s unhappy.”
“Why didn’t he give her a divorce and ask for visitation rights?”
“He thought she’d listen to reason after a while, for the child’s sake. I don’t think she even asked for a divorce. Just lit out one day. Allison never gave him a chance to get close to the little girl. Kept the child with her all the time. There was no reasoning with Allison when she got a notion in her head, so he just let her go. Made some business trips about that time to take his mind off her, but she broke his heart, poor man.”
“And he finally divorced her?”
“Never heard a word from her. I said, ‘Ask the police to look for her,’ but he said, ‘Louise, a grown woman leaving home is not a crime. Not the police department’s business. They don’t bring foolish wives back to their husbands.’ So that was that.” She turned a shrewd gaze at Brandy. “You know something about Allison and the little girl? That why you’re here?”
“Maybe. She may have come to a town I know in Florida. Looks like he would’ve tried to find his daughter.”
Louise drew herself up, looked over her shoulder, and leaned toward Brandy. “Truth to tell, I don’t think he was sure she was his daughter. Not with all the funny business the year before. There was one young fella, someone she used to disappear with a lot.” She let her voice trail off suggestively. “Legally, of course, Belinda was his daughter.”