by Triss Stein
“What am I doing? What the freaking hell are you doing in my house?” I was panting. “You keep away from me. I have neighbors, I have a phone, I can scream.”
He stepped back, his hands up defensively.
“No, no. No! You have it all wrong. I am not…bad guy. I am not here to hurt you. Crazy lady, believe…”
He ran his hands through his hair, put one out again, conciliating. “Because…because…I can help you.”
“You stay far away from me. Go sit—over there—and talk fast. I have 911 on speed dial. Phone is in my other hand, in my pocket. No tricks.”
He sat on the sofa, looking surprisingly meek. He said, “Please, could I have glass of water?”
“Hell, no! Do you think this is a social visit? You broke into my house. You better tell me why. Right now.”
He swore softly in Russian—at least, it sounded like swearing—and finally said in English, “Is big mess, but please believe, I am not doing harm.” I glared at him. He took a deep breath and said, “Dima. My brother. Who I loved, no matter what Natasha thinks.”
“Yes?”
“I know what happened to him.”
“Say that again. I don’t believe what I think I heard.”
“Is true.” He looked at the floor, shoulders hunched, hands gripping his knees. He looked up at me, finally, pain in his eyes and face. “Is true. I know about that night. I was not there. If only I had been. But I know about what happened.”
“Are you talking about the cemetery?”
He did not answer, but slowly, he nodded his head.
“How is that even possible?”
“I helped someone. I helped them to do something. I knew what to do because Dima worked there. And it all went wrong. Wrong guys. Did not follow my plan.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here?” My voice rose with each word. “Here, snooping around in my house? What do you want here? And why aren’t you taking it right to the police so they can do their job? This is….”
“As to what I am doing here, that I cannot tell you. Is confidential, but you must believe it, it is part of my new plan. To trap someone. I need to know what they will do next. I was only looking for information here.” He squared his shoulders, “And police? We don’t discuss things with them.”
“We who? We, bullies and thugs? We, gang members?” He didn’t look so frightening, and speaking my mind seemed to make sense at that moment. Not so much, when I thought about it later.
“You have it all wrong, because you listen too much to my sister-in-law!” he said with resentment. “She does not know truth from—from gossip. I am not some punk in a gang. I am—I am a businessman.”
“Businessmen behave lawfully. Like citizens. And they go to police with crimes.”
“Not Russians. At least, not smart ones. You Americans are such children. You believe what they say in kindergarten ‘nice policeman is your friend,’ yadda, yadda, No. No policeman is a friend. No, forever nyet.”
I knew not all Russians believed that—there are Russian-American cops!—but of course it provided a convenient excuse.
“You know that word? Nyet? Dima was my only brother. I will handle this. Me. The guilty ones will get what they deserve.” He folded his arms across his chest and his eyes became harder with each word. “You must not, must not call police. Please. It would mess up all my plans.”
He stood up and said, simply, “I go now. You keep quiet about this. You will. You must. Because, you know? I could come back.” He almost smiled, and then I was definitely scared. “And then I would be less polite.”
And then he walked right out my front door. Just as if he was a regular person. A visitor. A friend.
And then my knees gave out as the adrenaline receded and the reality of what just happened hit me. Someone had broken into my home, I had talked to him, he kind of, sort of, half told me something important. Or at least, implied it. And then he just walked out. Poof.
I had a flash of being profoundly glad that Chris had run off to her grandfather. If I was going to attract this kind of craziness, I did not want her to be anywhere near. And I knew that my dad was a tough old guy. True, no longer the scrapper he claims to have been in his youth, but still, tough. Anyone who messed with Chris on his watch would regret it for a long time.
So I only had to worry about my own safety, not hers; the security of my house; my job-related mystery and with it, my job security. Oh, yes, and the murders of two people I knew. That’s all. And however much I wanted to creep up under a quilt and sleep for a week—preferably snuggled up with a stuffed bunny—I had a job to do. Volodya had let himself in somehow and I had damn well better find out how.
I worked my way from the top floor down.
I checked the old skylight, original to the house, high above the stairwell. It locked from the inside. The lock was probably as useful as a safety pin, but I could see that it had not been disturbed. The dust of decades was in place.
There was a ladder to the roof, a scary wooden thing that went up a narrow chute and ended in a trapdoor to the roof. The trapdoor locked from the inside of the house. No one could open it from the roof without breaking down the door.
The windows at the back of the house open on to the enclosed space of adjoining gardens. There was no possible way for him to get to the back windows without being seen by a neighbor. Right?
The back door to my deck was still locked from the inside. It was a heavy padlock, not simple to remove or tamper with. I thought.
The windows at the front. Yeah, right, he had come down from the roof on a rope, on a public street in broad daylight. The lower windows had steel security gates. No way he got through those without power tools. I thought. I hoped.
Well, damn! Had he just walked in my own front door?
I got a hammer and banged with all my stress energy on the rusted old dead bolt on the front door. It has not been used in decades, but it would, by God, work now. Finally it budged and satisfyingly inched its way closed. Ha. He would not be able to break in again while I was inside.
Before I was done panting from the effort, the phone rang. It was from Illinois. Who the hell could that be? If it was a fund-raising call, I did not have the patience right now. Or the money. Just before it was too late I remembered that I did know someone in Illinois.
“Ms. Donato! I am so pleased to be talking to you! First, let me thank you for sending me on a hunt. It made quite a change from my usual requests. I had to dig right into the storage area. I mean that literally as we don’t have the paper digitized that far back. In fact, I can hardly remember the last time I was asked for something that old. Really, it was such an exciting challenge.”
Her excitement was encouraging but I had to stop the flow of words.
“Does this mean you found something?”
“I most certainly did. It isn’t much but it should be very useful, if I correctly understand what you are trying to do. Now, what is the best way to send it to you? I could fax it, or we could send by express service, but you would have to pay for that. It’s not a big package.”
“Would it be possible to just scan and send to my e-mail?”
“I honestly don’t have the time to do that today. Our equipment is so antiquated it would take forever. Tell you what? Why don’t I just describe what I have, and then you can decide for yourself?”
“Yes, that would be great.” Let’s just get going, I thought, but did not say. The speed of business is not the same outside of New York, I reminded myself. She’s doing me a favor, I reminded myself.
“Well, what makes it slow to scan is that there are many separate items. It’s a series from the paper called “Our Hometown Gal in the Big City.” They were letters Maude Cooper wrote about her experiences. It was quite unusual, you know, for a young lady to move from a small town like this to New York, and local
folks were all agog to read about her adventures. At least, those are the responses they printed. If anyone disapproved, the Daily was kind enough not to print those comments. And there are twenty columns over a year or so, plus local responses. Then they stop, just like that, and the paper never said why.”
“Nothing like a farewell or announcement that she was moving on? Nothing at all?”
“Not a blessed word that I could find, and I did look. Strange, isn’t t?”
“I’ll say. That’s kind of the mystery I am trying to solve.”
“Well, there was not another word from her, or news about her either, except that her mother died a few years later, and then, soon after, there was an announcement of a house sale with all contents, and that her sister was relocating to Chicago. And that’s it.”
I thought fast. The letters probably were similar to what I already had. Maybe they were exactly what I had.
“Probably you could mail it all to me. Maybe fax the obituary and the other item? I’ll give you the number at my job.” Faxed to work meant I would not see it until tomorrow. “You have been so helpful, I hate to take more of your time, but I am anxious. Could I ask you to just tell me what is in those two items?”
“My dear, of course! I understand perfectly and they are very short anyway. Now just hold on. Yes, here they are. Now, her mother’s name was Edith Cooper, maiden name Hart. Here goes…”
The usual details were there. Date of death. Viewing hours. Location of the funeral. Some description of the family in the town’s history. Then the gentle voice said, “Mrs. Cooper is survived by her daughters, Miss Katherine Cooper of River Bend, and Mrs. Gerard Konick IV, nee Maude Cooper, of Brooklyn, New York.”
When I could breath again, I asked her to read it one more time. Maude was married to a Konick? The Konicks of Konick Park? And Konick Avenue?
And more importantly, the Gerardus Konick III who built the neglected mausoleum with the Tiffany window? There was a connection between Maude and that family? Is this—could it possibly be—where her window designs come in?
“Ms. Donato? Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m sorry, I am just—just trying to process this. “
“So that was helpful?”
“I can hardly explain. It is—it is a big surprise.” I took another deep breath. “In fact, I can hardly talk.”
She laughed. “How exciting. Tell you what. I will make time to scan everything and get it to you today! And in return, when you put all the pieces together, will you share it with me? I do love a good puzzle.”
“Yes, yes I will. Of course. Thank you. Thank you!”
We thanked each other back and forth a few times, and then at last I was free to move on. I had access from home to some of the history sources I used at work. Now that I knew what to look for, I had it in minutes. There it was on the screen: a 1910 census record for Mr. Gerard Konick, IV, age 35, and spouse Maude, 30. They had two daughters. They lived on Gramercy Park. So he had modernized his name to Gerard. And in the 1920 census they lived at Bright Skye’s address.
That seemed pretty clear, but I immediately sent off a request to the city clerk’s office for a copy of their marriage license. Then I checked every source I could think of for a newspaper wedding story, but there was not a trace of one.
That was odd. The Konicks were society folks, the kind of people whose weddings were covered in detail, including the gowns and the refreshments. Debutante parties and private balls, too. I had many examples right in front of me on the screen, from old newspapers, but not the one I wanted. That told me something, right there, I thought. No big wedding at a Gothic revival, pipe-organed, impress-with-splendidness society church like St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue.
I continued to scan for any mention of Konicks around the time of Maude’s letters, any clue at all. I looked until my eyes felt like sandpaper, and found only one item that mattered:
“An engagement has been announced between Lucy Beekman of New York and Southampton, and Gerardus Konick IV, of New York and Saratoga. Nuptials are planned for August at the bride’s parents’ estate in Southampton. The announcement was made at an elegant reception held at the Beekman home on Madison Avenue. The bride-to-be was glowing in jonquil satin.”
The item was dated a year before Maude’s last letter home.
Well, Maude, I said to myself. No wonder you were so secretive. You were having a romance with an engaged man who was also the son of a Tiffany client. Did you meet him while working on that chapel for his father? Was there a scandal around the broken engagement? Or did you just run off together? How did his family react? Not well, I was sure. Maude Cooper, however charming, could never have competed with a Beekman.
I pictured a wedding at a city office, Maude in a walking suit, perhaps with a fashionably narrow skirt and certainly an elaborate, swooping hat. Did it have feathers? Gerard would have been in business attire from Brooks Brothers. Did he carry a fashionably dashing cane? Did she at least have a lovely bouquet? Did he give her a wedding ring? Perhaps it came from Tiffany.
I went right back to my copies of Maude’s letters and here it was, her first reference to the son. And a chilling description of the parents.
If the design she was creating was for the Konick mausoleum—and that seemed the most likely way for her to meet Gerardus, as she certainly did not travel in his social circles—then I knew just where there might be a few more clues.
I would have to go back to Green-Wood, look at paper records, and look again—hard—at the Konick chapel. But not now. It was too late and I was too tired by this endless and endlessly strange day.
Ha. Take that, Dr. Flint and your buddy, the museum director. I am still the Research Goddess. Chris used to call me that sometimes. Today I was earning it.
And then my e-mail did ping. It was Darcy who wrote “At airport. Heading home at last. I am bringing you dinner tomorrow and a great bottle of Washington State wine. And stories about my kids when they were horrid—HORRID!—teens. Everything will work out. Seriously. Say it out loud. Rinse and repeat as often as necessary. Hugs.”
The voice of sanity. I smiled for a second, and stretched out on the sofa with a cozy afghan. I would watch the news, all those disasters that had absolutely nothing to do with me. I suspected I would never make it upstairs to my bed tonight.
Chapter Nineteen
I woke up on autopilot, brain still half-asleep. My body ached everywhere from sleeping on the sofa.
“Chris? Are you up? Breakfast in ten.” In my fog, I shouted it upstairs before I remembered she was not there.
Somehow I was also thinking about my desk. What? Why? Yesterday was coming back to me. Volodya.
My desk. I forced my eyes open enough to go upstairs. Last night I was so preoccupied by locks to keep him out I never thought to ask myself why he had broken in. I couldn’t be just for the fun of scaring me. He was not the usual burglar and I was pretty sure, even in my fog, that he could not be interested in my ten-year-old television or my outdated computer. But I remembered only now that when I confronted him the noise of the printer at work was coming from upstairs.
My docs about Maude were up on the screen, easy to find and open. And some of them were opened. They weren’t protected. Why should I use a password? Nobody was interested in stealing my work, no bank accounts were involved, I had no important secrets. The information meant nothing to anyone outside of a small group of academics and art historians.
Did I have that all wrong?
There were papers scattered on the floor. My crappy ancient printer had jammed up, it seemed, as he was trying to print documents.
So that’s what he wanted? Information almost a hundred years old? The more I looked, the less sense it made. I was sure Volodya did not share my obsession with learning Maude’s secrets. Why would he even know about her? More than ever, everything I knew seemed like a c
ollection of pieces from a few different jigsaw puzzles. I was trying to use bits of the Grand Canyon to complete a picture of the Grand Canal.
I would go back to Green-Wood today. The heck with my dissertation. This was more important. I had an e-mail from my advisor, scheduling a meeting. I responded to say that I would be there if I was recovered from the nasty stomach virus I had. I would never tell Chris any of this, but I didn’t even feel guilty about the lie. It would cover my recent lack of productive work.
Back to Green-Wood Cemetery. I could find it with my eyes closed by now. I trudged right up the hill to the sad Konick mausoleum. I was so excited I forgot it might be closed and locked, and it was, but there were cemetery workmen nearby and when I presented my museum ID, they were persuaded there was no reason not to let me in. The NYPD warnings were gone.
This time I was not studying the magnificent window, the spooky atmosphere, or the crumbling architecture. I half-remembered something and there it was, a plaque to the memory of Mr. and Mrs. Gerardus Konick III. It was deeply carved into a marble panel and painted in gold: her maiden name, their parents’ names, and a mention of the Gerardus Konick who first traveled from the old Amsterdam to the new one, in the year of our Lord 1663. Gerardus III listed out all his children and grandchildren. There were five children, and an odd, smeary patch at the beginning of the list, where presumably the oldest, the father’s namesake, the son and heir should have been.
He had been painted out. I was sure of it. I wondered if there was a family Bible somewhere, with his name also slashed through by an angry parental pen. Well, that seemed an extreme reaction. Was it anger over his marriage? I stared at it for a while, willing it to give up its secrets, but of course that was silly.
Then I stared at the large window, which was not so silly. I had copies of some of Maude’s sketches with me. Yes, there were forest animals and tulips, and here I saw similar themes, glowing in stained glass. No coincidence. I felt like I could almost see her, right here, studying the walls just as I was, and envisioning beauty blossoming there. Making sketches. Watching Mr. Tiffany work, while, perhaps, someone else, fascinated and charmed, was watching her?