“Yes and no,” Paul replied. “She was listed as Jane Jones. The baby was simply listed as Male Jones.”
“I understand that Bruce was anxious to get a look at his birth certificate.”
“It was something he’d gotten curious about,” Paul acknowledged. “But one of the terms of our adoption agreement was that we stash it in our safety deposit box and never, ever let him see it.”
“Any idea why?”
“Well, sure. Nevis is a tiny island. If he found out that he’d been born there, chances were good he’d be able to track down the identity of his birth mother.”
“Were you and Laurie told anything about her identity?”
“Not a thing. We were not allowed to ask about her. Or to contact Peter Seymour about anything. Ever. That’s what the fifty thousand was for. That and ‘transitional expenses.’ Setting up a nursery in our apartment and so forth.”
“But you must have come up with a theory about who she was.”
“Of course we did. That’s human nature. We figured she was a single young woman who came from a wealthy family. A family that didn’t want to go through official adoption channels because they wanted her pregnancy kept quiet. It was kept quiet. And we never heard the name Peter Seymour again—until you showed up the other night. Frankly, we were both quite shaken.”
“Mr. Weiner, why would Peter Seymour want to hire me twenty-one years later to locate Bruce?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
“Does the name Kathleen Kidd mean anything to you?”
“She committed suicide yesterday. I saw it on the news. What of it?”
“Have you ever had any personal contact with her?”
“No, the Kidds are way out of my league. My clientele is strictly middle-class.” He ducked his head, plump hands folded in his lap. “Bruce was our boy, okay? We raised him since he was a baby. We have good memories, Ben. And we want to hold on to those memories.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“If you find out something, I want you to keep it to yourself. Please don’t upset my wife. She’s not a strong person.”
The Asian girl in the bathroom turned off the shower. Then she opened the bathroom door. She was still naked, but now she was wet and naked. She raised one bare foot onto the edge of the tub and slowly, carefully began to wipe each one of her toes dry with a towel, gazing over her shoulder at Paul through her false eyelashes. He stared at her, transfixed. I had to give her credit. For a stoned-out teenager she was a total pro.
But I did not like being a witness to this little seduction ritual of theirs. “I’ll be going now,” I announced.
He looked up at me guiltily. “You won’t tell my wife about this?”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
I couldn’t get out of that hotel room fast enough.
* * *
“I DON’T BELIEVE THIS!”
“Why, Sonya? I told you I’d call.” I was talking to her on my cell as I strode from the Windsor to the subway station. I needed to talk to her. Needed to forget about Paul Weiner and that girl up in 613.
“I know you did, but guys never actually follow through. It’s just an empty, meaningless promise they make as they go fleeing out the door into the night, never to be heard from again.”
“I’m not like that, Sonya.”
“You’re so sweet. And you’re just what I needed today.”
“Why, what happened?”
“Oh, it’s totally stupid. You don’t want to hear about it.”
“Believe me, I do.”
“There’s a little stomach bug going around my school.”
“And you picked it up?”
“No, little Shoko Birnbaum did. And she threw up all over my brand-new white cashmere sweater. I was just putting it in the sink to soak.”
“So does that mean you’re not wearing a top right now?”
She let out a gasp. “Are you trying to start something on the phone?”
“What if I am?”
“I knew it. You’re a naughty boy. Guess what, Benji? I like naughty boys.”
“Good. When can I see you again?”
“Cookie, you are so not doing this right. You’re supposed to keep me wondering and worrying and sobbing. Men always play hard to get.”
“I don’t know how to play. I just know that I want see you again.”
“Wow, I must be dreaming.…”
“You’re not dreaming, Sonya.”
“How about dinner tomorrow? But we’ll have to make it an early night because I can’t handle a roomful of five-year-olds on two hours of sleep. Plus I could barely sit down this morning. My friend Tovah asked me if I’d been hit by a bus.”
“Dinner tomorrow sounds perfect. But I’m in the middle of a crazy case right now and not totally in control of my schedule. So if I have to cancel please don’t take it the wrong way, okay?”
“Sure thing. Oh, hey, Benji? You were right.”
“About?…”
“I’m not wearing a top. Just this flimsy little silk camisole that you can see right through. And I’m washing my sweater in freezing cold water.…”
“I’m hanging up now,” I growled, pocketing my phone hurriedly.
I have a ton of male pride. I didn’t want her to hear me whimper.
* * *
A SHINY BLACK CADILLAC LIMO was parked out front. A uniformed chauffeur sat behind the wheel reading the Daily News. When I made it upstairs to our office, I discovered we had company.
Bobby the K was seated on the sofa in Mom’s office. Gus was curled up in his lap, purring away shamelessly.
“Ah, here’s Ben now,” Mom exclaimed with a dazzling smile. “I believe you already know Mr. Kidd, don’t you?”
“Why, yes.” I sat in one of the chairs that faced her desk. “Good to see you again, sir.”
“And you, Ben,” he said quietly, his bright blue eyes fastened on Mom’s worn Afghan rug. “I hope you folks don’t mind me just showing up this way.”
“Not at all,” Mom assured him.
“Of course not.” Lovely Rita came sashaying in with a container of coffee from Scotty’s. “Here you are, Mr. Kidd. Black, two sugars.”
“Thank you. Sorry to put you to so much trouble, Rita.”
“It was no trouble at all.” Rita set it down on the end table next to him, beaming with girlish delight that the great man had remembered her name. Or I should say swooning. I half expected her to plant a kiss on his huge melon of a head. To my surprise I felt a pang of resentment. No, jealousy. It was definitely jealousy.
He sipped his coffee, gazing across the desk at Mom. “Forgive me for staring, Mrs. Golden, but I keep thinking that we know each other from a long time ago.”
“Happens all of the time.” She and Rita exchanged a knowing look. “My maiden name is Kaminsky if that’s any help.”
“Did you used to teach?”
Mom let out a bubbly laugh. “Well, I certainly schooled a lot of people.”
“I’m really good with faces and I’m positive I know yours. I came in contact with a lot of rock groups when I was first starting out. Did you used to perform with a grunge band?”
“I used to perform,” Mom allowed. “But not in any grunge band.”
“You had a solo act?”
“I did. If it will help jog your memory my professional name was Abraxas.”
“Abraxas…” Suddenly, it hit him. “My God, you gave me a lap dance once.”
Mom arched an eyebrow at him. “Are you sure it wasn’t more like twenty lap dances?”
Bobby colored slightly. “So you remember me.”
“Of course I remember you, Mr. Kidd. You offered me a thousand dollars to go for a ride around the block with you in your limo.”
“And you turned me down cold. I could look but I couldn’t touch. You were very … professional.”
“I still am,” Mom assured him. “Rita danced, too, you know.”
He ey
eballed Rita up and down. “I don’t remember you. And God knows I would. You went by?…”
“Natural Born,” she replied primly.
“Which meant?…”
“Let’s not go there, Mr. Kidd.”
“You’re right,” he said with a quick nod. “It was a long time ago. I haven’t been in one of those clubs in a million years.”
“We all move on,” Mom commented sagely.
Rita excused herself and went back out to her desk, closing Mom’s door.
Mom folded her hands before her on the desk. “How may we help you today, Mr. Kidd?”
He sat there stroking Gus for a moment before he turned to me and said, “By answering a direct question. Was my sister pushed off of her terrace?”
“Why? Do you have some reason to believe that she was?”
“I don’t know, Ben. I wish I did.”
“That’s what you said this morning when you gave Lieutenant Diamond and me that vague, cryptic warning about watching our backs. You must have something more to tell us or you wouldn’t be here. By the way, does anyone in your family know that you are?”
“No one knows I’m here.”
“Then let’s get to it, okay? We’re busy people, Mr. Kidd. Our time is valuable.”
Mom gaped at me in astonishment. She isn’t used to being around me when I’ve just gotten laid.
“Ben, I honestly … I don’t know what the devil is going on,” Bobby began, choosing his words carefully. “What I do know is that my mother didn’t exactly give you an accurate picture of why Katherine was sent away to the Barrow School. In fact, that story she fed you was a fairy tale.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because she can’t deal with the reality of what actually happened. It makes her too uncomfortable. My mother … needs her illusions. She’s lost without them. That’s why I didn’t speak up this morning. Can you understand?”
“Sure I can,” I said. “What’s the real story?”
Bobby’s eyes returned to the carpet. “Kathleen wasn’t sent away to the Barrow School by Dr. Levin because she was becoming disruptive in class. She was sent there because she was abusing drugs and alcohol and sleeping with any and every boy who’d have her.” He paused to take a sip of his coffee. “I didn’t know a thing about it until I came home from Cambridge for Thanksgiving. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—high school boys coming in and out of her bedroom all day long while our mother was off playing bridge. Kathleen would take on three, four, five of them in a single afternoon. They were practically lined up out in the hallway. I-I was shocked. Especially because she’d been such a nice, sweet girl when I went away to school at the end of the summer.”
“Why don’t you tell us more about that summer, Mr. Kidd,” Mom suggested.
“Happy to,” Bobby said obligingly. “We spent it on Nantucket. Kathleen loved it there. She loved the water. And I have very happy memories of that summer. The Graysons had a place right up the beach from ours and that was the summer when I fell in love with Meg. She was sixteen. I was eighteen. We swam together every day. Sailed together, played tennis. She always had to beat me at everything. She was so competitive,” he remembered fondly. “So was her dad, Senator Grayson. He and my old man, the Ambassador, used to play high-stakes cribbage on our veranda every afternoon. They’d drink gin and tonics and curse up a storm. No one plays cribbage anymore. Have you noticed that?” On our silence he added, “When I left for Cambridge just before Labor Day, Kathleen was a healthy, blossoming twelve-year-old girl. She was well behaved, studious, normal. Somehow, in a few short months, she’d gotten totally out of control.”
“Did you try talking to her?” Mom asked him.
“You bet I did. She laughed at me. Hell, she even accused me of hassling her because I secretly wanted her, too. And couldn’t have her. It was just plain sick, the stuff that came out of Kathleen’s mouth. She was twisted inside. She was angry and mean. That’s why they sent her away to Barrow. But it hurts my mother too much to talk about it.”
“What happened when Kathleen got to Barrow?” I asked.
“Nothing changed. She was in constant trouble. And not because of any mythical bad boy whose big brother at New Paltz was supplying him with dope. It was Kathleen who was getting drugs sent to her—from her doper friends in the city. And she was screwing every boy in the school. The sad reality is, my parents had no way of knowing who the father of her baby was. It could have been anyone. It wasn’t the school’s fault. The authorities at Barrow did everything humanly possible, short of insisting that my folks lock her away in an institution. And my parents felt no animosity toward them. Hell, my father gave the Barrow School two million bucks after Kathleen left, for a new performing arts building. Would he have done that if he’d thought they were responsible for what happened to her?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Mom murmured.
“The story that your mother told us about taking Kathleen down to Nevis to have her baby—was that fiction, too?”
“No, that part was true. Dr. Sykes and his nurse did fly down and Kathleen did give birth there, like Mother said.”
“In January of 1990?”
“That’s what I was told.” He frowned at me. “Why, do you have reason to believe otherwise?”
“Nope. Just wondered.”
“After that, Kathleen was sent away to Geneva, like my mother said. But when it came to men, Kathleen was a trouble magnet her whole life. That eurotrash bum who married her for her money—he wasn’t the only one who used her. A lot of men did. One of them took filthy photos of her having sex with two of his closest friends and threatened to sell them to the British tabloids if my father didn’t pay up. Which my father did. Another one stole her credit cards and cleaned out her bank accounts. On and on it went. My father always had to ride to the rescue. About five years ago, she started seeing a new therapist in Paris, who finally seemed to get somewhere with her. Or maybe it was just the new generation of meds she was on. But she seemed to be doing better. Started to paint again. Stayed out of trouble.”
“You know this how?” I asked him.
He blinked at me. “Excuse me?”
“Did you visit her over there?”
“No,” he answered shortly. “We weren’t close, as I told you this morning.”
“So how do you know this? Through your mother?”
Bobby let out a humorless laugh. “Hardly. Kathleen and my mother could barely stand to be in the same room together. We got periodic updates about her from Peter Seymour. Peter’s the one who she stayed in touch with. She had to. He held the purse strings.”
“So he’s maintained a relationship with Kathleen over the years?”
Bobby’s face tightened. “Of a sort.”
“What sort?”
“Where are you going with this, Ben?”
“Just trying to figure things out.”
“You won’t. Not where Kathleen’s concerned. She was impossible to figure out. When she decided to move back to New York we were … encouraged, I guess. But, as my mother said, Kathleen kept to herself. She wasn’t comfortable around other people. Not even us. Especially us.”
“What do you know about Bruce Weiner?”
“Not a thing. I’d never heard of him until you guys mentioned him this morning. I gather, from what you were saying, that Kathleen had become obsessed with trying to establish a relationship with him.”
“Do you have any idea how she was able to locate him?”
“No idea whatsoever.”
“Who was privy to the identity of the couple that adopted her baby?”
“Besides Peter Seymour, you mean? No one.”
“Your mother didn’t know?”
“My mother didn’t want to know. No one in the family did. I sure didn’t. Nor did Meg,” he added hesitantly. “Or at least I don’t think she did.”
“Okay, I’m a bit confused now,” I confessed. “Is there a reason why your wife might have k
nown who Bruce was?”
Bobby cleared his throat. “Well, yeah. She’s a Grayson.”
“Which means?…”
“Look, can we talk real world here?”
“By all means,” Mom said to him encouragingly.
“Meg’s running my campaign and she is strictly old school. A Grayson, through and through. Don’t get me wrong—she’s loving and kind and a wonderful mother. But she’s also one of the most ruthless people I’ve ever met, with the possible exception of her dear, departed father, the Senator. The Graysons take no prisoners. And that name still carries a lot of clout with certain people around this state. Like union bosses who know how to get out the vote and will bust heads if they have to. Meg has devoted herself—body, mind and soul—to making sure that I’m sworn in as New York’s next governor. For all I know, having some goon fling Kathleen off of that balcony could simply fall under the category of ‘preventive damage control.’”
I looked at him in disbelief. “Are you suggesting that Meg may be involved in your sister’s death?”
“I’m saying I don’t know. I’m saying that when it comes to politics nothing is off limits as far as she’s concerned.”
I looked at him some more. “Why are you telling us this?”
“Because I want to know who killed my sister.”
“So you don’t think she committed suicide.”
He puffed out his cheeks before he said, “No, I don’t.”
“Real world, Mr. Kidd,” Mom said. “What’s going on here?”
“I wish I knew, Mrs. Golden. I really do.” He glanced at his watch, then nudged Gus out of his lap and stood up. “I have to be going. They’ll wonder where I am. I hope this was helpful.” And with that, Bobby the K grabbed his topcoat and hustled on out of there.
“There he goes, ladies and gentlemen,” I said quietly. “Our next governor.”
Mom shook her head at me. “How weird was that?”
“Plenty weird. He called his mother a liar, his sister a slut and he cozied right up to accusing his wife of murder.”
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