A Killing Gift

Fifty-nine

April had a headache that wouldn't let up. Long after her shoulder and other bruises had healed, important Department people were still dragging her through every move she'd made in the weeks since Albert Frayme had first tried to take her down in Washington Square. She felt terrible. The terrible feeling was constantly reinforced by everyone.

The questions IA investigators asked over and over sounded to her as if they actually believed it was her fault for not immediately linking Al Frayme with karate after his name came up as a caller on both Bernardino's and Devereaux's phones. No, she had not been holding out on them. No, she could not have acted sooner to identify Frayme as Bernardino's killer and save Birdie Bassett. It was an insulting idea. Still, she felt bad. The killer had been an expert at locating disappearing graduates. He had known exactly who she was and where she lived (or used to live) as soon as her name appeared in the press following Bernardino's murder-long before he decided he had to kill her and her parents in their home. She hated to think about missing that.

She told herself that it was not her fault that Frayme had known ways to escape from his office, and had done so many times when people assumed he was there. Before the unfortunate incident in her home, she had told Mike everything she knew about Al Frayme. It had not been on her watch when he took a subway to Queens to meet Leaky after she and Woody had fingered him as an accessory in the case. Nor was it her fault that they set out to convince her parents into thinking they were Con Edison workers so they could get into the house to rig an accident. But she felt that it was her fault. They all could have died. All the Woos.

IA's job, of course, was to deconstruct any and all failings occurring in the system. Why had the case ended in a spectacular mess in an officer's private home? How could they prevent such a disaster from happening again? It wasn't a hard one: Keep cop victims away from their own cases. That was their conclusion. Even though she had solved the case, she hung her head.

Like Harry Weinstein and his story about the quarter mil from Bernardino's lottery money, April had her story about what had happened in the Woo house. She stuck to it. The knives got into the perpetrators' bodies… she had no idea how. The dead couldn't speak, and Ja Fa Woo could speak, but only in Chinese. She didn't want him under any kind of scrutiny, so she took the Department hit for a thousand mistakes. It was her filial duty.

So many faults gave her a bad headache, but there were a few compensations. Mike couldn't apologize enough, couldn't do enough to atone for sending her almost to her death with only the useless Woody Baum to protect her. He'd do anything to win back her love and trust, and April had quite a list of tasks toward that end. Paint the interior of her parents' house, buy new furniture for the living room. Renovate the awful avocado bathroom. Promise never, ever to thwart her again in any way. Ha. That was the big one, and he was taking it pretty well. After all, it was his fault that Frayme had gotten away. They should never have released him in the first place. There were lots of should-haves and should-not-haves in the case, but who was counting?

In the middle of her interview ordeal, when April was holding back one of several hundred little details about the case that she didn't want known, she had a surprising insight that was so obvious she couldn't imagine why no one had thought of it before. On her first day of freedom she called Kathy Bernardino.

"Thank God you're still there," she said when Kathy answered. "I was afraid you'd left already."

"Soon. But April! I'm so glad you called. I hear you're getting it bad," Kathy replied.

"There's never any mercy for the innocent, but I'm okay," April told her. "When are you leaving? I want to talk with you before you go."

"That can be arranged. Bill and I want to thank you properly for what you've done for us."

"Your father was good to me. I owed you," April said. But she had more to do.

Bill was wearing a crumpled gray work suit and was in his usual hurry to get back to court when they met in Chinatown for lunch. April had the day off, and Mike had been promoted to captain but not yet reassigned. Kathy was returning to Seattle in less than a week. She'd had her hair done and looked good in a lucky red suit, April's second-favorite color after blue.

April ordered the lunch in Chinese. Dumplings, Ants Climbing Tree, Peking Duck, Noodles for Long Life, Golden Coin with Broccoli. Too much, but so what?

Everybody was in a good mood. Bill slapped Mike on the back a few times, and the two talked about how his messy Tiger Liniment had almost put him on trial for murder.

April poured the Chinese tea for health and began.

"Mike and I were talking. Loose ends were bothering us," she said, "so we have a few details to clear up."

"Oh, yeah?" Bill laughed uneasily. "With you guys it's never over, is it?"

Mike shook his head. "This is just between us."

"Okay, what?" Kathy looked a little nervous, too.

"What's your mother's date of birth?" April asked.

"Four, four, forty-four. She was younger than Dad. Weird, right?"

April knew that because she'd checked it out. "Anything strike you about that number?" She glanced at Mike and smiled.

"Of course, Bill and I talked about it a lot. It's the amount of missing cash. And, you know, those numbers came up on her winning lottery ticket. She used them every time." Kathy shook her head.

"Kathy, I'm sure you looked into your dad's files and found the receipts that showed he had your mom cremated."

She locked eyes with her brother. "I did look after you brought it up," she admitted. "Mom would never have wanted that. Why did he do it?"

April took a deep breath, then let the air out slowly. She glanced at Mike again, and he nodded for her to take the lead. Figuring it out hadn't been hard once she'd had time to give the mystery some thought. For Kathy and Bill, she took it one step at a time.

"You know, the Chinese burn fake money at funerals to help their loved ones in the afterlife."

"Interesting." Bill glanced at his watch.

"And the Egyptians filled the tombs of their pharaohs with everything they'd need in the afterlife, including their wives and servants. In many cultures people send loved ones off with the things they valued most."

"Oh, shit!" Bill said, getting it. "You're not suggesting Dad buried money with Mom!"

"Oh, my God. I don't believe it." Kathy put her hand to her forehead. She did believe it. All of a sudden it made sense.

"What got me thinking, Kathy, was when you insisted you saw your mother buried in a coffin. Why would she be buried in a coffin if she'd been cremated? The cemetery accepts cremated remains, so he didn't need to fool them with a coffin. The only people he needed to fool were you two."

"Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!" Kathy was so agitated that she broke a chopstick. "I understand. Dad wanted Mom to take it with her. I guess he thought four million was her share." She shook her head. "Unbelievable."

"What troubled us," Mike said, "was that no one believed you didn't know where it was. Anyway, one of you did. Harry did." The dumplings arrived and he tucked in, delighted by the reaction they were getting.

Kathy and Bill looked at the food blankly.

"Dad didn't tell me because I wouldn't have let him," Bill said.

"But this is just the kind of thing Harry would enjoy doing. What a hoax, and two cops could pull it off easily. They put the cash in the coffin. Dad gave Harry his piece and knew that as long as he was alive the money was safe in the grave. Jesus, I'll bet Harry was just waiting for Dad to leave for Florida to go and get it," Kathy said.

"Eat," April ordered.

Kathy laughed nervously. "How can I eat when we don't know he hasn't already taken it?"

"I gave him a little warning," Mike told her. "When I told him we knew everything, he confirmed. Eat; we have all the time in the world."

Kathy's face turned the color of her jacket with the excitement of revelation. "Look, with Bill as my witness, I'm going to make you two a promise. If that money turns up where you say it is, I'm going to give you Dad's house for a dollar and see you married there." She sounded so positive about it that April had to laugh.

"What if I don't want to marry him?" she said, rolling up a Peking Duck pancake and handing it over to him.

"You will," Kathy said.

Bill lifted a shoulder, then started to eat. "It's only fair," he said. "The whole thing could have gone a lot worse."

Bernardino's lovely house in Westchester, for April and Mike and maybe a couple of kids? The two of them were enjoying the food and the occasion. The promise made them look at each other and just laugh. A reward for doing their job? That would be the day. But it sure felt good.