Unforgiving Shadows Read online

  Her words echoed throughout the pool. The glass, hard tile floor, and the fan on the space heater amplified and distorted speech at the same time.

  “The company did business with foreign governments. Were there any suspicious contacts related to foreign business?”

  “Now that you mention it, I recall difficulties with a Central American country—Guatemala, I think. They wanted to purchase equipment that required a government waiver on technology transfer. The Iran-Contra scandal forced the government to be more thorough, which meant a lot more questions. Oh, and more paperwork. Nothing prevented the sale. Your brother handled most of the international business. You should talk with him.”

  “I will, Gertie,” Brad said, “but I wanted to go straight to the horse’s mouth. You knew everything that went on in the office.” She blushed. “I don’t want to alarm Andy with only wild theories.”

  She lifted her head up straight. “Andrew’s not the kind to get alarmed. You know that. He knows how to take care of things.”

  Brad understood and nodded. “How about the business itself? Was there anything precarious about its financial position, cash flow, loans due, or creditors calling?”

  She used her good arm to pull the shawl away from her shoulders. “Brad, can you help me into the pool? Em’s been too busy this morning. We can continue our conversation as I swim.”

  “Sure, just tell me what I need to do.”

  At Gertie’s instruction, Brad stood in front of her and grasped her arms. She lifted her feet from their mechanical rests and placed them on the floor, then Brad pulled her to an upright position, supporting her weight. At her signal he lowered her to a seated position on the tile edge at the shallow end of the pool, where her legs dangled in the water. With his help, Gertie donned a pair of plastic arm floats. She signaled Brad that he could let her go, and using her good arm and leg propelled herself into water three-feet deep. A few seconds later she floated in a stable position near the side of the pool.

  Kneeling at the edge, Brad dipped his fingers into the water, which seemed cool compared to the heavy moist air in the enclosed space. Stripping to his boxers and joining her seemed, momentarily, like a sensible idea, but instead he tugged the lounge chair closer to the edge of the pool and sat down.

  “We had excellent credit, and no cash flow problems,” Gertie continued. “The biggest problem was coming up with $500,000 in cash to meet the ransom demand. They wanted it in non-sequential hundred dollar bills. You can’t just walk into the bank and say, ‘I’ll take half-a-million in hundreds, oh, and make that non-sequential.’ If we hadn’t had a top credit rating I never could have managed to pull the money together. We’d been accumulating a limited amount of cash in CD’s to purchase Diane’s father’s business, so the assets were there to back up loans for the funds. But I had to call in every chit I could think of just to get the money together for the kidnappers.”

  “Diane? You mean Andy’s first wife?” Brad asked. He hadn’t recalled any business deals involving Andy’s wife, but it was a long time ago.

  Gertie nodded. “Emerson got his bank to order more hundred dollar bills from the Federal Reserve. He told them he had investment customers who would be cashing in securities and wanted their returns in hundred dollar bills. Some of the people we borrowed the money from managed to get hundred dollar bills at their own banks. We were lucky to get the bills, any bills, and had no time to think about their sequence.”

  The answers to Brad’s questions kept traveling to dead ends. “What about labor union troubles?”

  Gertie shook her head. “None that I can recall. We had the usual hassles from our weekly meetings with the union stewards, but nothing serious enough to kidnap anyone over.”

  “You didn’t mention the note.” Em Lindstrom’s voice came from the door near the garage.

  Gertie splashed about in the pool as if she’d been caught off balance. Brad couldn’t tell how long he’d been standing there or how much he’d heard.

  “What note?” Brad asked.

  “She got a note several days before the kidnapping.” Em shouted at his wife, “Tell him!”

  Gertie’s complexion turned from an oatmeal shade to the whitish-gray color of grits, and her eyes glistened with tears.

  “I didn’t think it was important,” she said, unconvincingly.

  Brad got up from the lounge chair and stood staring down at Gertrude Lindstrom. He furrowed his brow and felt saddened that she had held back potentially valuable information.

  “Tell me about the note,” Brad barked. “Let me decide if it’s important.”

  “There was a note on Joe’s—your dad’s—desk one morning. It happened at least a week, maybe ten days, before your mother and sister were kidnapped. The words were pasted from letters cut out of a newspaper on a plain sheet of paper. It said, You can’t get away with it.”

  “Dad never mentioned any note.”

  “He never mentioned it to anybody. I saw the note the morning it turned up on his desk. I always arrived at the office before him. I went in his office to lay a report on his desk and there it was. You know how he used to keep his desk filled with piles of paper?” Brad nodded. “Well, he always tried to clear his leather desk pad by the end of the day. The note was the only thing there. I couldn’t help but see it.” Brad pictured the desk, the one his dad and Gertie had shared when they first started their business, and now at the furniture refinisher’s as he hoped to salvage it from fire damage.

  Brad imagined the desk blotter with the kind of note Gertie described and her version of events. “If you left a report for him, he would have known you had seen the note.”

  Gertie moved toward the side of the pool, bracing herself against the lip with her good arm. “That’s why I decided not to leave my report. When he came in that day, he never said a word.”

  “Brad!” A distant voice shouted his name.

  Sharon rushed in from the garage past Em Lindstrom and almost tripped over the space heater at the edge of the pool. She wore a pained expression as she approached Brad.

  “It’s your dad,” she began. “The nursing home called. They need you right away.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Brad heard a tap on his bedroom door. “The limousine’s here,” his brother Andy announced.

  “I’ll be right down,” Brad called out.

  Brad looked in the full-length mirror, adjusting the Windsor knot on his maroon tie. Maroon was his dad’s favorite color—for ties and sweaters at least—and Brad wore a matching handkerchief in the pocket of his charcoal suit with subtle pinstripes. On top of the dresser stood a photograph from his parents’ wedding in a gilded frame. He glanced between the picture and his own image in the mirror, and he could see why so many people commented, during the two days of viewing at the funeral home, that he looked like his dad.

  Today he had to say farewell, promising to deliver a eulogy at his dad’s service. He didn’t know if he could. Brad felt he could keep his emotions in check; realizing that, in small ways, he’d already been saying goodbye for the last ten years. But his strongest memories of his dad were from childhood. Like most sons and fathers, their relationship strained during his late teen and college years. In the decade before the kidnapping he’d been an absent son, playing while others in the family worked, living off his father’s generosity and a trust fund his grandmother had left him. A self-indulgent journey, he realized now, in which he’d lost more than he’d found. Unfortunately, the only way he had become reacquainted with his father was in a caldron of sorrow.

  Brad pulled 3” X 5” cards, on which he’d scribbled a few notes, out of his coat pocket.

  He heard a hard rap on the door. “You can be late for your own funeral, but not for Dad’s.”

  “I’m coming, Andy.”

  A few minutes later, Brad descended to the foyer, where he found his Aunt Harriet sitting on the same Empire-style settee where ten days earlier she had waited for a taxi. She looked forlorn in
her dark gray suit with black velvet lapels and a lacy veil over her gray hair. “Where’s Andy?” Brad asked.

  “They’re waiting for us in the car.” She sighed. “You know how your brother is—always afraid he’s going to miss something.”

  Around them, caterers busily arranged cocktail tables and folding chairs for the reception that would follow services. Brad offered his arm and escorted his aunt to the limo. They climbed into the plush seat, the one facing backward, and sat next to Byron, Brad’s teenage nephew from Andy’s first marriage. Opposite them sat Andrew, his wife Barbara, and their two children, Chad and Erica. Andy adjusted his tight vest and greeted his brother with an icy stare, which didn’t bother Brad since, on this particular morning, he treasured the silence.

  The limousine took them to the funeral home for a brief private service, and then they followed the hearse to St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church for the public ceremony. Once there the hearse drove to the front of the cathedral, while the limousine deposited family members at the north transept entrance. The Dean, in full ceremonial vestments, greeted them. Walking across the stone floor, past the intricately carved baptismal font, Brad stared up at the rustic ceiling beams. It all seemed so familiar and comforting, even though he hadn’t visited St. Matthew’s in years. He recognized the Frame Memorial over the north door. His dad had commissioned the stained-glass window to honor his father, a first-generation Scotch immigrant who settled in Philadelphia in 1925. Dominated by blue glass, it offered an impressionistic depiction of Daniel in the lion’s den, and below it a passage from Daniel 6:16 carved in stone: May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you! Gazing at the window, Brad thought he knew how Daniel felt.

  Approaching his seat, Brad noticed Paula Thompson sitting on the aisle, a few rows back in the rapidly filling church. He acknowledged the reporter’s nod with one of his own, and as he sank into the velvet-cushioned pew Brad prayed that his decision to contact her and reveal what he knew about the eighteen words in Wilkie’s Bible wouldn’t backfire. He promised her updates when he knew more, and would have to make good on that pledge when this day was behind him.

  Brad and Aunt Harriet sat directly behind Andy and his family. Brad noticed for the first time that his brother, only five years older, had plenty of scalp shining through at his crown.

  He felt a comforting hand on his shoulder and turned around to see Sharon smiling at him from a tear-stained face, clutching a damp handkerchief. Mark Bertolet sat next to her, looking uncomfortable in a black suit that might have dated from his high school graduation.

  Mourners sat in silence, skimming the printed funeral program, awaiting the start of the service. The organist, joined by a flute soloist, performed a melancholy prelude by Ravel.

  Shortly before 10 o’clock ushers admitted a couple through the south door of the sanctuary. Sharon tapped Brad’s arm, but he had already noticed. The woman was statuesque, stunningly beautiful with blue eyes and blonde hair, and wore a bright peach-colored dress that made her all the more noticeable in the sea of dark-clothed mourners.

  The musical prelude reached the end of a movement just as Harriet blurted out, “What is that bitch doing here?”

  Brad heard a few gasps behind him, followed by shocked silence. Then murmurs swept Harriet’s remark back through the rows of prestigious onlookers. Prim and proper social bees shared the buzz. At a less solemn occasion, Brad wouldn’t have been able to contain his laughter.

  Sharon leaned forward and quietly asked, “Who’s that woman?”

  Brad grabbed a pencil from the visitor’s cardholder on the pew in front of him and scribbled a note on a card, passing it back to Sharon. It read: Diane Panella-Frame, Andy’s first wife. Next to him, Harriet mumbled about the propriety of the outfit Diane wore.

  Diane’s escort—Ronald Allessi, Esq.—caused Brad more consternation than the color of her outfit. He wondered about their connection, and whether she had precipitated Allessi’s interest in representing Wilkie.

  Sharon whispered to Brad, “Did you see who—”

  Brad nodded.

  The prelude ended, replaced by the quiet rustling of parishioners consulting their programs. The cast iron bell in the church’s steeple tolled ten. At the rear of the church the narthex doors creaked open and a lone bagpiper, in full dress tartan, led the procession playing Amazing Grace. Twelve men and three women served as honorary pallbearers, including the Governor, a former United States Senator, the Philadelphia Eagles’ coach, the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and three Fortune 500 CEOs. As they rolled the solid bronze casket past his pew, Brad lowered his head into his hands, his shoulders trembling.

  The coffin, topped with a spray of dozens of white roses, sat in front of the pews. A minister offered a prayer, and a soloist sang The Lord’s Prayer. Andrew went to the lectern, struggling for composure as he read a passage of scripture from Corinthians.

  The two brothers passed at the base of the chancel steps, offering each other a slight bow that belied that morning’s tension between them. Brad approached the lectern and stared for a moment at the packed pews, then took a deep breath.

  “On behalf of my family, thank you all for coming. Dad’s been out of circulation for about ten years now, and this show of affection for him is a bit overwhelming. But I think it speaks, in ways more eloquent than I will be able, of the impact of his life on this community. For the last several days I’ve been in reflection, trying to summon to my mind the good times and ease out the painful memories of tragedy and illness that—unfortunately—marred the last decade or so of Dad’s life. When people asked him what made him successful, my dad, with a twinkle in his eye, used to say, ‘I studied to be an electrical engineer, and I married well.’”

  Appreciative laughter rippled through the congregation.

  “My strongest memories of him are as a different kind of engineer. When I was a kid, my parents gave my brother and me an electric train set. I always liked to load lots of cars behind the engine, with the result that the train barely moved—the speed I’d hoped for was impossible. My dad used to join us, wearing a railroad engineer’s cap, and saw my predicament. Uncoupling all but a few cars, he explained that as I got older, he’d get more powerful transformers so the locomotive could pull more weight. From him I learned that the equipment on a train is known as the consist. The consist for a passenger train, for example, might be four coaches, a diner, a couple of sleepers, an observation coach, a baggage car, and, of course, the engine. It occurred to me that Dad was like a very powerful locomotive…” A lump formed in Brad’s throat. “Dad managed to keeping adding lots of cars to the consist of his life—family, friends, a successful business, civic projects, government commissions, leadership in numerous professional associations, his church, and dozens of worthy charitable causes. For him, success brought higher expectations, and that’s the proudest legacy I can take from his life.”

  Brad sank into his pew when the eulogy was over, feeling drained. He went through the motions during the rest of the church service, and at the short graveside committal. But he’d already said goodbye to his dad the best way he knew how.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The limousine returned Brad and his family to the Bryn Mawr mansion after their trip to the cemetery. He retreated to his bedroom to freshen up for the noontime reception they’d announced, but Brad didn’t feel like mingling with people. Finding the real killer—the person responsible for turning his world upside down—was what he preferred to do. Besides, with Philadelphia’s social elite attending, he’d likely have to endure a gauntlet of requests for political contributions, honorary chairmanships of fundraising dinners, and investment opportunities.

  Brad left his bedroom and stood at the top of the stairs. The odor of steamed salmon mingled with the aroma of steamship round of beef, wafted up to him as he leaned on the railing observing the chaotic scene in the foyer below.

  Unlike Brad, Andy seemed energized by all the activity, backslapping
with a couple of his buddies, bellowing, “Did you hear my aunt when Diane came in?” How differently, Brad thought, people react at a time of grief.

  They roared with laughter. The black and white marble floor echoed the sound, while the room’s crystal chandelier tinkled from the movement of people and the opening and closing of the front door as more guests arrived.

  One of Andrew’s friends snidely asked, “Who was that stud she was with?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Andrew replied. “Getting rid of her was the best thing I ever did.”

  Brad knew what stud she was with, and wanted to know why. Diane and her escort weren’t invited to the reception, but Brad could wait to contact her for answers.

  Sharon’s boyfriend, Mark, ambled through the foyer wearing his black suit, and Andy mistook him for a waiter—thrusting a half-filled glass of wine in Mark’s hand and barking, “Get me a Dewars and water on the rocks.” Poor Mark, Brad thought, figuring it was time he made his appearance, if only to make up for his brother’s boorish behavior.

  As he descended the stairs, Brad spotted Em Lindstrom engaged in an animated conversation with the Eagles’ coach. Em kept bouncing his finger off the coach’s chest. Through the archway to the drawing room Brad saw Aunt Harriet ensconced with the wives of Philadelphia’s old money barons.

  He watched as Mark returned to the foyer, smartly balancing Andy’s Scotch on a silver platter with a white napkin draped over his arm. Brad smiled at Mark’s sense of humor, realizing how well Mark’s laissez faire attitude balanced Sharon’s intensity. For her sake, he hoped their relationship would endure when she’d be working an erratic schedule on less desirable shifts as a rookie cop.

  When Brad reached the bottom step, he noticed that his nephew Byron had Sharon cornered, and unless he misread the signs, Byron was hitting on her. Apparently his nineteen-year-old nephew fancied older women!