The Seduction of Water

by Carol Goodman

  I shook my head no.

  “Sort of impulsive, your friend Aidan Barry. Flighty, you might say.”

  I remembered the look in Aidan’s eyes when he asked me if he should leave. The sense I’d had of him poised for flight. Maybe he thought the paintings were his chance for a new life. At least that’s what Detective March thought.

  “This is what I figure happened,” he told Harry and me. “Aidan Barry probably didn’t have any definite plans when he stole Mr. Kron’s gun but guys like him like to have a gun in reserve, just in case. When you so conveniently presented him with a key he naturally used it to check out his boss’s room and when he came across the gun he took it for a rainy day—excuse the cliché, Ms. Greenfeder, English never was my best subject, unlike our Mr. Barry. I remember you English teachers hate clichés, but in this case I can’t think of a better way of putting it, can you?”

  I shook my head no. Great, I thought, on top of being a poor witness and having an irresponsible hiring policy, I had apparently offended Detective March by being an English teacher. No doubt I was paying for some martinet grammar-queen he’d had in the eighth grade.

  “So he waits around to see what’ll turn up at this nice hotel of yours.” Detective March waved his hand toward the view of the rose garden as if to illustrate what a “nice” hotel it really was, only the garden was not looking its best. True to Joseph’s last orders, the limited water supply had been allocated only to the perennials. The annual borders were dying and the grass was beginning to brown. The whole garden seemed to have gone into mourning for the dead gardener.

  “You know I probably shouldn’t admit this, being an officer of the law, but I used to sneak in here during the summers and swim at your lake. A lot of the local kids did it. I thought this place looked like Paradise. But I bet it didn’t look as good to Mr. Barry as those paintings did. How much did you say they’re worth, Mr. Kron?”

  “Well, of course it always depends on the market. American landscapes have enjoyed a resurgence of interest lately . . .”

  “A ballpark figure, Mr. Kron.”

  “Several million at least, I’d say four and a half million altogether at auction, but of course, on the black market it’s hard to say.”

  “Well, a couple of million anyway. And your Mr. Barry is not unconnected.” When he said your Mr. Barry he looked directly at me. “That story about gun smuggling wasn’t a total fabrication—he does have some ties to the IRA, which as you may or may not know has been linked to art theft rings before.”

  “Ah yes,” Harry interrupted, “I believe there’s a theory that the Isabella Stewart Gardner robbery was engineered by the IRA . . .”

  “So when he sees all these expensive paintings,” Detective March went on, ignoring Harry, “—and we know from a Mr. Ramsey of the Cornell Gallery that Aidan Barry discussed with him the monetary value of one of the paintings—he decides that maybe hotel work’s not quite the line for him after all. Maybe retiring to the Cayman Islands is more up his alley. I think about it myself some days, especially when another winter’s bearing down—it gets awfully cold up here, as I’m sure you remember from your childhood, Ms. Greenfeder.”

  The detective paused so I could nod and when he still didn’t say anything I wondered if I was supposed to reminisce with him about record-setting snows and blizzards of our youth. Or maybe I was supposed to break down and confess that the thought of spending another winter up here at this lonely hotel drove me to engineer an art heist with Aidan and I was only waiting to make my getaway to the Caribbean. I didn’t say anything and, finally, Detective March continued with his imagined scenario.

  “And look how easy it is.” Now he gestured in the direction of the closet, which had been closed and locked. “A couple of million dollars’ worth of art in a closet, guarded by an old crippled gardener. Let’s give Mr. Barry some credit. He probably didn’t figure that the old gardener would give him any trouble. He probably figured he’d be asleep. All he’d have to do is let himself into the suite—” Detective March got up and went to the front door of the suite, miming Aidan coming into the room. “—which he’d been doing all week, open the closet—” The detective took a key out of his pocket and opened the closet door, which swung into the wing of Harry’s chair. “—which he also had a key for, and pack up the paintings and slip out of town. Probably had a friend with a car waiting down the road a bit. Unfortunately, Mr. Krupah wasn’t asleep. Your niece told us that, Mr. Kron. She’d visited Mr. Krupah to ask him a question a few minutes before she passed Aidan Barry in the hall. I didn’t quite get what the question was about. Something to do with a stolen dress?”

  I sighed and prepared myself to explain the dress incident to Detective Marsh, but he held up a hand to stop me. “No matter. Miss Nix bent my ear about that dress for half an hour yesterday. I believe she would like me to shelve this murder investigation to find out who stole her mother’s dress fifty years ago. All I care about is that five minutes before Aidan Barry let himself into this suite, Joseph Krupah was in the living room talking to Miss Nix about her mother’s dress. Miss Nix said that he told her he was going to bed, but it would have taken him a few minutes to get down the hall between the living room and his bedroom, so when Mr. Barry let himself in Mr. Krupah was still in the hallway. Ms. Greenfeder, you be Mr. Krupah.”

  Detective March signaled for me to follow him across the living room and into the hallway that led to the suite’s bedroom. He partially closed the door and left me there. I heard him ask Harry to “be Mr. Barry.” I heard a door close and then Detective March whispering something to Harry that I couldn’t catch. Then I heard a click and something creaked.

  “Did you hear the door open, Ms. Greenfeder?” I told him I had. “Now come in.”

  I entered the living area and saw Harry standing at the closet door, his back to me. For a moment I didn’t see the detective, but then I saw him standing between the closet door and the wing-backed chair, craning his head around to see the scene he’d set up. “As you can see, the minute Mr. Krupah entered the living room he’d see what Mr. Barry was up to. He knew that the paintings were locked in for the night, that Mr. Barry had no business coming back for them. I bet he always had his suspicions about Mr. Barry and it rubbed him the wrong way to see this punk stealing the paintings. I guess he was a pretty loyal employee, this Joseph.” Detective March paused for Harry and me to concur. Harry, his back still turned to me, murmured something, but I couldn’t open my mouth. Loyal employee. Is that how I’d sum up what Joseph had meant to the hotel and my family for the last fifty years?

  “I think Joseph Krupah tried to avert the robbery. Not a very smart thing to do, but you’ve got to admire the old guy. He hits Mr. Barry over the head with his crutch—” Detective March came out from behind the door and raised his arm over Harry’s unsuspecting head, bringing it down within an inch of his bald crown. “He must have given him a pretty good crack given the amount of blood on the carpet.” We all looked down—Harry turning from the open closet—to look at the dark spot on the carpet.

  “Thinking that Mr. Barry was unconscious, Mr. Krupah headed for the door to go for help.” Detective March crossed the room and opened the door to the hallway. I could see the boarded-up window on the landing and a guest walking toward the elevators. “Only Mr. Barry regained consciousness when Joseph was still in the doorway and, thinking to stop the witness to his crime, he took out his gun and fired. Remarkably, the impact of the bullet didn’t knock him down immediately. He was still on his feet, still trying to get away—” Detective March lunged into the hall, with Harry and me following at his heels, startling the Eden sisters who had been ascending the stairs. Detective March bowed to them and went on with his story, on the landing, with the Eden sisters hovering—no doubt eavesdropping—in the hallway. “—but unfortunately, he ran straight for the landing and lost his balance there. That’s when he fell through the window. Aidan Barry gathered up his paintings, went down the back staircase
—by that time the commotion on the terrace had brought all the guests and staff out of the kitchen and dining room—and left by the west side of the hotel where he probably had an accomplice waiting for him. We figure they headed to Canada on the back roads. We alerted the Canadian border patrol before morning but unfortunately our friends to the north aren’t always as vigilant as we could hope.”

  I pictured Aidan driving north, the sun coming up over the Adirondack Mountains. It reminded me of another sunrise.

  “How’d he carry them?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Detective March was already walking away from the window, his performance completed.

  “The paintings. There were six of them, including a huge skyscape of dawn that Aidan could barely carry by itself. How did he get all six of those paintings down the stairs by himself?”

  “That’s a good question, Ms. Greenfeder. Maybe he had help—it would be worth noting whether any of your staff or management has any sudden influx in wealth over the next year. We’ll keep an eye on that. In the meantime, perhaps we should do another search of the hotel and grounds in case Mr. Barry stashed any of the paintings in the hopes of returning for them. I’m afraid it will cause some disruption to your guests . . .”

  “I’m closing the hotel this weekend,” Harry said, “so feel free to look to your heart’s content. In fact, the staff and I will help you.”

  “Closing the hotel?” I repeated. It was the first I’d heard of it. I looked down the hall to see if the Eden sisters were still listening in but to my relief they had vanished. I knew they were planning to stay through the fall.

  “I’m sorry, Iris, I’d meant to tell you, but Detective March has kept me so busy these last few days. Don’t look so stricken; I don’t mean to close it for good. I’d planned to get an early start on renovations and this unfortunate tragedy has simply accelerated my plans. We had only a handful of bookings for September—no groups, nobody very important—and there’s sure to be a pall over the hotel because of the tragedy. We’ll use the time to refurbish—we’ll strip the woodwork, redo the floors, paint, and tear up all the old drapes and carpets. When we reopen next May you won’t recognize the place. And although I know you won’t believe me now, even this sadness over Joseph will have passed. After all, he wasn’t a young man. Of course I know how distraught you are now. Why don’t you take some time off? Go back to the city. I don’t need you for the renovations—although of course you’ll be kept on salary through the winter . . .”

  I know I should appreciate Harry’s generosity, but it’s one of the things that nags at me all the way down the Hudson, the idea of being on the hotel’s payroll while I’m leaving it to be gutted by the renovators. I’m not sure whom I think I’m letting down—Joseph, who’s beyond my help, Aunt Sophie, who’s already gone to Florida to join the Mandelbaums, or the hotel itself. It looked, in my last glimpse of it from the train station, so insubstantial and improbable, a white temple perched on a cliff above the Hudson, that I already feel as if it’s a place I made up and that when I try to find my way back it will have been swallowed up by the forest, folded back into the mountains.

  Certainly, when I climb the ramp up into Grand Central and run into the crush of northbound commuters, the stale smell of the city summer rising off them, it’s hard to believe such a place of grace and coolness exists. Crossing the main hall I remember that when my mother embarked on her first journey north she said that the hotel seemed as distant to her as the constellations in the teal-vaulted ceiling. Did she feel, when she came back that last time, as I do now: as if returned from a trip to the moon?

  By the time I’ve made it to the taxi queue outside I’m drenched in sweat and gasping in the fetid air. I try to shift the suitcase to my left hand, but my hand’s still bandaged from the glass cuts I got on the terrace kneeling beside Joseph. I can feel too that the bandages on my knees have come loose, and that my jeans are rubbing against the scabs. When I finally sink gratefully into the torn upholstery of an un-air-conditioned cab I can see a moist dark crescent below each knee where the blood has spread. I roll down the window and watch the city passing by. The sepulchral white marble of the main library, the plane trees in Bryant Park, their leaves limp and rusty, the fruit and vegetable stands in Hell’s Kitchen, the Red Branch Pub on Ninth where I stood with Aidan that night we walked back from the station together. When I realize I’m scanning the faces of the pedestrians for him I close the window, despite the heat, lean back in my seat, and concentrate on the meter for the rest of the trip.

  After I pay the cab, I stand for a minute on the corner, looking across West Street to the river, gathering my strength for the five flights of stairs up to my apartment. Or, I admit, gathering myself to face the emptiness that waits for me in the little tower room I’ve loved so much all these years. I’ve never come home with such a sense of disappointment before. With each flight of stairs I find myself more and more reluctant to face that empty room. I’ve always returned to it as to a cloister, a place of quiet where I could finally turn away from the distractions of the world and write. This was the world I’d made for myself, an empty tower room with a view of the river, a place where what happened to my mother would never happen to me. I’d never have to flee the distractions of husband and child because I’d never have those things. What had Phoebe said? Haven’t you lived your whole life based on what you thought you knew about your mother’s story? No marriage. No children . . . You’ve avoided everything you thought killed her.

  When I open the door, though, I’m greeted by light and air. The suffocating cell I’ve been dreading is instead open to the sky and river. I’m so relieved by how welcoming it looks that it takes me a minute to realize why it’s not so lonely. It’s because I’m not alone. Stretched out below the open windows on my couch, his forearm flung over his eyes to block out the late-afternoon light, is Aidan, fast asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I could back out, go downstairs, and call the police. I have plenty of time to think about it, standing there in the doorway, watching Aidan sleep. Long enough for the sun to lower toward the New Jersey skyline across the river. I have plenty of reasons too, which I list to myself as the light on Aidan’s face and arm changes from gold to red. The red calls to mind the blood on the terrace after they moved Joseph’s body and the splotch of blood on the carpet in Joseph’s suite. I notice a bandage on Aidan’s forehead, black sutures creeping under the edges of the white gauze. So this isn’t the first place he came to; he’s had other help. What, then, is he doing here?

  That’s what finally makes me decide to close the door and sit down at my desk. If, as Detective March insisted, Aidan is so well connected, he’d have no reason to be here. Although I’m already schooling myself against believing everything he says—remember the DNA tests, I think, remember you saw him go into Joseph’s room—I still want to hear his story.

  He sleeps so long, though, that I grow impatient—and hungry. I meant to go to the Korean grocer on the corner once I dropped my bags off, but I’m afraid that if I leave he’ll be gone when I get back. When I check the refrigerator I find eggs and milk with current expiration dates and a box of McCann’s Irish Oatmeal double sealed in plastic bags on the counter. I find this last detail hopelessly endearing—he’s a man on the run, but still he’s careful not to attract bugs. I notice too that the few dishes he’s used have been washed and left to dry on the drying rack, the dishcloth folded neatly on the counter.

  It’s the smell of cooking food that finally wakes him. I’m facing the stove, my back to the couch, when I hear him speak.

  “I suppose it’s a positive sign you’ve not called the police,” he says, “or is that a last meal you’re cooking me?”

  I bring over the plates of eggs and toast and two mugs of tea—strong with milk and sugar the way he takes it. I usually have mine plain, but I remember from Barbara Pym’s novels that sweet tea’s supposed to be the thing for shock and I’m expectin
g to hear at least a few surprises when Aidan starts talking. At least, I’m hoping that what he says will surprise me. The alternative is that I already know the whole story from Detective March.

  He makes room for me on the couch, but I pull my desk chair over instead. He rakes his hair back from his forehead and I can see how far the sutures go back along his scalp.

  “Joseph gave you quite a knock,” I say, sipping my tea and pretending when I wince that it’s from the heat of the liquid.

  “Is that how the police figure it?” he asks. “That Joseph did this?” He points to his forehead and then shakes his head. “Joseph didn’t hit me.”

  “Then who did?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that it was the same person who shot Joseph.”

  I take another sip of tea. “I saw you from the terrace,” I tell him. “I saw you go into Joseph’s room and then five minutes later we heard a gunshot and Jack said he saw Joseph run out the door and then fall through the window.”

  Aidan nods. I notice he hasn’t touched his food. He’s lost weight in the week since I’ve seen him, and grown pale again. He’s gotten that same hollow look he had when he was in prison. “Jack said,” he repeats. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Jack would have no reason to lie about what he saw. I’d already told him it was over between him and me.” It’s only half a lie. It’s what I’d been about to tell Jack when the gun was fired and it is what I told him the next day.

  “No, he wasn’t lying,” Aidan says. “I imagine that’s what it looked like from where you two were sitting and I doubt I’ll be able to convince you otherwise. Do you want me to tell you my story, or are you content with the police’s version?”

  “I’ll try to keep an open mind,” I say.

  Aidan leans forward on the couch and I think for a moment that he’s reaching for my hand, but he’s only reaching for his cup of tea. He folds his hands around the mug, as if to keep his hands warm, or maybe just to keep his hands busy, because he holds the cup while he tells me his story without ever taking a sip from it.