And She Was (28 page)

Brenna hurried to catch up. Before meeting her here, Morasco had stopped at the Realtor’s place to get the alarm combination. At the back door, Morasco fished the paper out of his pocket and started to key it in.

“1028, right?” said Brenna.

He turned to her. “The Realtor changed it after the breakin, but that was the old combination. How did you know that?”

“Iris’s birthday. October 28. Lydia Neff told me.”

“When?”

“Eleven years ago.”

He smiled. Pushing the door open, Brenna noticed the smell first—a mustiness. It brought her for a few seconds to October 19, 1985, day two of a five-day family trip to Florida, to walking through the haunted house at Disney World with her twin cousins Liz and Deb . . . She recounted the first three lines of the Pledge of Allegiance to pull her back, but that same scent was still here—not manufactured and sprayed into the air to give you chills as it had been back then, but real. The smell of ghosts. “Why did Lydia Neff leave?” Brenna asked Morasco. “Where did she go?”

“That would be the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

“Another incredibly dated reference,” she said. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Sometime I’ll do my Jack Paar impersonation for you.” Morasco turned a light on, and Brenna looked around the kitchen—that long wooden table, the dry sink stocked with plates, the refrigerator humming. If it weren’t for the smell, you’d think someone still lived here and they simply were out for the night.

“There were renters here for a while,” Morasco said, reading her thoughts. “Three sets of them, six months apiece. It’s only been totally vacant for four or five months, and I think the Realtor still has high expectations.”

Brenna nodded. “Do you know exactly where the wallet was found?” Brenna asked Morasco.

He nodded. “This way.”

Brenna followed him through the kitchen, then through a small room with hard floors and creamy white walls, empty, save for a bamboo yoga mat. On the wall facing the mat was a dark wooden plaque, painted with white letters:

CONQUER THE ANGRY MAN BY LOVE

CONQUER THE ILL-NATURED MAN BY GOODNESS

CONQUER THE MISER WITH GENEROSITY

CONQUER THE LIAR WITH TRUTH

Over the doorway, one more: “The greatest achievement is selflessness.”

Brenna said, “Lydia liked to meditate.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know whether that was a real interest, or just how she was coping with her grief, but back when I was working on the case, we had to work around the meditation and the yoga classes.” They entered the formal dining room, the walls painted a forest green, with white trim over the doorways. There was a fireplace against the wall and a dusty table lined with chairs, a pewter dish at the center filled with smooth, yellow stones that had been cut to look like pears. Brenna’s eyes went to a framed photo over the fireplace—a larger version of one of the family pictures Brenna had seen in Carol’s folder: a posed black-and-white of a longer-haired Lydia, smiling in a sundress, baby Iris in her lap. A young man stood behind her, hand on her shoulder. He had wavy brown hair that grazed his collarbone, a thick beard, but she recognized the eyes from the later pictures in Carol’s folder—the troubled eyes. Timothy O’Malley.

“I questioned Tim just once—he was living at a rehab up in Albany.” Morasco said. “He wasn’t a great source of information back then, but if he wasn’t . . . Well, if the situation were different, he’d be able to help us now.”

“Why?”

“He knew Lydia. Probably better than anyone. When Iris disappeared, he was in lock-down rehab. He wasn’t reacting well to the methadone. Couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred ten pounds and half of what he said made no sense at all, but Lydia was still visiting him regularly—telling him her problems.”

“Wait.
She
was telling
him
problems?”

Morasco nodded. “Her ‘strong shoulder.’ She told me that herself.”

Brenna looked up at the picture again—the pain in the young man’s eyes, the young woman, so pretty but so serious, and the baby, smiling, all of them touching each other, his hand on her shoulder, her hand covering his, both of them holding the baby’s chubby arms.
Support
. “They’re all gone,” Brenna said. “A whole family.”

“Yes,” he said. Then, “Life.”

She turned to Morasco. He was staring at the picture. “Life,” he said again, and again Brenna sensed it, that pain behind the skin, behind the eyes, held back by the thinnest of threads. She had an urge to touch the side of his face, but bit it back like a memory. “Where was the wallet found?”

“The living room,” he said. “Next room over,” and they both moved toward it in silence.

T
he living room looked instantly familiar—the couch with the cream and brick red Southwestern print, the soft chair beside it, dark green cloth, placed against a wall the same brick shade as in the couch. Brenna moved toward it. “. . . exactly where the wallet was found,” Morasco was saying, but his voice was fading even as he said it, Brenna careening back to September 10, 1998, three days after Iris Neff disappeared, to the taste of black coffee in her mouth and the feel of the hot mug in her hands, the cold, smooth hardwood floor beneath her bare legs as Brenna sat in the living room of her Fourteenth Street apartment wearing Jim’s long-sleeved “Ski Aspen” T-shirt, her back propped up against the couch, watching
Good Morning New York
at 10:15
A.M. . . .

“It’s every mother’s worst nightmare,” the newscaster’s voice intones. Lydia Neff appears on screen, staring at a framed picture. Brenna looks at the pale face, the raven hair—a woman both striking
and strikingly sad. The image fades into a snapshot of a smiling little girl. Pigtails. Purple overalls. The newscaster says, “Lydia Neff’s six-year-old daughter, Iris, wandered off from a playdate on Labor Day. She has not been seen or heard from since.”

Brenna takes a swallow of her coffee. The screen blinks, and now Lydia Neff is seated in a dark green chair, three framed pictures behind her. “I know she’s out there somewhere,” Lydia says. Her eyes glisten. Tears. Brenna can’t look at Lydia Neff for too long. Every time she does, she flashes back to her mother two weeks after Clea disappeared—the same pain in her eyes as Brenna told her, “Yes. I saw her leave. She told me not to tell you, Mom . . .”

Lydia says, “A mother knows these things. I can feel it.”

Brenna focuses on the framed pictures behind her head—all crayon drawings on white paper, hung in a vertical line. On top, a stick figure standing beside a puffy green tree; at the center, a round, smiling face with long eyelashes and black hair—“MOMMY” below it in a child’s scrawl; at the bottom, a pink Valentine with a rainbow hovering over it, surrounded by stars. Iris’s artwork. Framed.

“If your daughter is watching right now, Lydia, what would you like her to know?”

Lydia Neff looks directly at the camera. Her upper lip trembles. “Just that . . . that Mommy loves you and . . .” A tear trickles down her cheek. “Please be safe. Please come home . . .” Brenna stares at Lydia Neff’s eyes. She can’t look away from them. She clutches her coffee cup, slipping back into July 29, 1985, 9
A.M.
, finishing a bowl of oatmeal in her kitchen, bringing it to the sink and looking out the window as Ricky D the deejay says “Next up, Talking Heads!” and Brenna notices Mom in the garden, cross-legged on the grass, staring up at that sculpture she made after Dad left. Staring at the sculpture as if it could talk, as if it was talking to her, as if it was telling her why . . .

“ . . . Brenna?” Morasco was saying. “Are you all right?”

Brenna bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood. “I’m okay,” she said. She was still gazing at the chair.

“I don’t know if you heard me. But right where you’re standing,” he said. “That’s the exact spot where Carol Wentz’s wallet was found.”

Brenna didn’t answer. Not right away. On the wall behind the chair, the three pictures were still hanging. “She left Iris’s artwork behind.” As Brenna said it, though, she realized the order had been switched—the Valentine drawing was now at the center. Mommy was on the bottom. “Carol’s wallet was found under these pictures?”

“Yep.”

She walked up to the pictures, gently lifted the three of them off the wall, and placed them on the table next to the window. Compared to the other two, Mommy felt light. Brenna turned it over, and sure enough, the drawing pressed against the glass, unprotected. The back of the frame was missing. When she looked down, she saw it lying there at the base of a table—a thin square of black cardboard. Brenna picked it up. “Whatever Carol took from this house,” she said, “I’m pretty sure it was hidden in the back of that frame.”

Chapter 23

T
hey were just outside the door, Brenna keying the alarm back on, when the thought hit her. “That girl who’s been calling. If she actually is Iris . . . or if she’s someone who knows her, then maybe she was the one who asked Carol to get whatever it was that was hidden behind the frame. I mean . . . who else would know it was there?”

“Maybe,” said Morasco. “Or it could have been something that Tim O’Malley told her about.”

The alarm light flashed on. Brenna stepped away from the door. “You don’t believe Iris is back.”

He shrugged. “I’d
like
those calls to be coming from her,” he said. “But sadly, too good to be true usually is.”

“God, you’re a nihilist. Lighten up. Let’s hear some of that Jack Paar.”

Morasco smiled, but then a car was screeching into the Neffs’ driveway—the door slamming, footsteps crashing around the hedges and up the walk.

Brenna looked at Morasco. His hand went to his lapel. She thought of Carol, a woman nearly as meticulous as her husband, leaving this house so fast she left the pictures in the wrong order. Never to return, even for her wallet, even for her license. What had scared her off so fast?

Footsteps
.

They grew louder. Brenna’s heart pounded . . . and then she heard a voice. “Hello!” She recognized it. Immediately, Brenna’s shoulders relaxed. Annoyance blotted in her chest. “What’s she doing here?” she said.

Morasco frowned at Brenna. He started to call out, “Hello,” and then sure enough, there she was, tromping around the corner of the house, Coach bag clutched in both hands as if someone might pry it away at any moment. “Hello, Detective,” she said.

Morasco said, “Brenna Spector, I’d like you to meet—”

“Gayle Chandler,” said Brenna.

Gayle’s eyebrows shot up. “Do I know you?”

“We’ve met.”

Morasco said, “Gayle is the Realtor.” He glanced at her. “Brenna is a private investigator, working for Nelson Wentz.” He smiled a little. “She never forgets a face.”

But honestly, Gayle looked almost exactly the same as she’d looked eleven years ago, when Brenna had approached her in front of her house. The hips might have been a little wider, and there were a few more lines around the mouth, but otherwise, she was unchanged down to the frosted coif and the big gold knot earrings and the smug, placid smile. “I just wanted to make sure you were able to get in okay.”

Brenna said, “So you were the one to find Carol’s wallet in the house.”

Gayle’s smile dropped away. “Yes . . . Poor Carol.”

“You were her best friend.”

Gayle glanced at Morasco. “I wouldn’t say that. I did like her very much, though. We were in the same book club.”

“Nelson said you were.”

Her eyes went hard.

“Nelson Wentz said you were best friends,” Brenna repeated.

Gayle Chandler turned to Morasco. “Well then, I’ll just check the door and be on my way.”

Brenna said, “What did Carol call you about during the last week she was alive?”

“Huh?”

“There was a call from her to you on her cell phone records. One and a half minutes.”

“Oh, right,” she said. “She called to ask if I’d finished our book club book.
Safekeeping
.”

“Because you were
book club friends
.”

Gayle eyed her. “Yes.”

Morasco frowned at Brenna.

“Lydia Neff, on the other hand,” Brenna said. “You were
very
close to her.”

Gayle blinked. “I haven’t talked to Lyddie Neff in two years.”

“I said
were
. You
were
close to her.”

“Yes . . . So what?” She looked at Morasco. “Is this official police business?”

Brenna said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Why did you tell Carol that Lydia and Nelson were having an affair?”

Gayle’s face went slack. “What?”

“You were friends with Lydia Neff. Such close friends that you knew her daily schedule. After Iris disappeared, you knew that she went to the Waterside Condominiums every morning at nine to meditate.”

“And you know this about me because . . .”

“During the week of October 18, 1998, you stopped by Lydia’s house four times that I know of. At 11:30
A.M.
on the twenty-first, you brought a bag from Dunkin’ Donuts and two large coffees and stayed two hours. On the twenty-second, you brought her a casserole and stayed an hour and a half . . . You were close.”

Gayle gaped at Morasco. “What is wrong with her?”

He shrugged. “She has a good memory.”

“But one year earlier than that, you told Carol Wentz that Lydia was having an affair with her husband.”

“I don’t—”

“Let me tell you something, Gayle. If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that time doesn’t have an eraser on it.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that when you tell a lie, it’s still as much of a lie five, ten, twenty years later as it was on the day you told it.”

“I didn’t tell any lies.”

“You do the wrong thing, you hurt someone, you figure, ‘Well, time will pass. People will forget. It’ll be just like it never happened.’ Right?” Brenna gritted her teeth, her anger building. “It happened, Gayle. The whole world can forget, that still doesn’t change the fact. Twelve years ago, for whatever petty reasons, you told an awful, malicious lie.”