Daddy's Gone a Hunting

19

After leaving Douglas Connelly, Frank Ramsey and Nathan Klein decided to call it a day. They drove back to Fort Totten, called their supervisor, completed their reports, then each left for home. They had been on the job almost twenty-four hours.

Ramsey lived in Manhasset, a pretty suburban town on Long Island. He sighed with relief when he turned into his own driveway and pressed the garage opener. He was used to bad weather but the hours outside on a cold, damp, windy day had penetrated even his warm outerwear. He wanted to get into a hot shower, put on some comfortable clothes, and have a drink. And much as he missed his son Ted, who was a freshman at Purdue University, he wouldn’t mind just being with Celia tonight, he thought.

No matter how long you’re in the business, it still affected you when a dead man was taken to the medical examiner’s office and a young woman rushed away in an ambulance, he thought.

Frank Ramsey was a solidly built six-footer. At forty-eight, although he weighed nearly two hundred pounds, his body was strong and muscular thanks to meticulous workouts. Judging from the men in his family, he knew that genetically he would probably be white-haired by the age of fifty, but to his surprise and pleasure, his hair was pretty much still salt-and-pepper. His manner was naturally easygoing but that changed swiftly if he spotted any incompetence among his underlings. In the department he was universally well liked.

His wife, Celia, had heard the car pulling into the garage and had the door to the kitchen open for him. She had had a double mastectomy five years earlier and even though her doctor had now given her a clean bill of health, Frank was always fearful that one day when he opened the door, she might not be there. Now the sight of her, with her light brown hair caught in a ponytail, a sweater and slacks enhancing her slender body, a welcoming smile on her face, made a lump form in his throat.

If anything ever happened to her… He pushed away the thought as he kissed her.

“You’ve had some day,” she observed.

“You could call it that,” Frank confirmed as he inhaled the welcoming scent of pot roast coming from the Crock-Pot. It was the meal Celia often prepared when there was a major fire and she knew that there was no way of telling when her husband would get home. “Give me ten minutes,” he said. “And I’ll have a drink before I eat.”

“Sure.”

Fifteen minutes later he was sitting side by side with her on the couch facing the fireplace in the family room. He took a sip of the vodka martini he was holding and fished out the olive. The television was set to a news station. “They’ve been showing the fire all day,” Celia said, “and they’ve dug up the coverage of the boating accident that killed Kate Connelly’s mother and uncle years ago. Have you heard any more about how she’s doing?”

“She’s in a coma,” Frank said.

“It’s such a shame about Gus Schmidt. I met him a couple of times, you now.”

At her husband’s surprised expression, she explained: “It was when I was in chemotherapy at Sloan-Kettering. His wife, Lottie, was in treatment, too. I’m so sorry for her. It was obvious they were really close. She must be devastated. As I remember, they have a daughter, but she lives in Minnesota somewhere.”

She paused, then added, “I think I’ll try and find out what the funeral arrangements are. If there’s a service, I’d like to go to it.”

That’s just like Celia, Frank thought. If there’s a service, she will go to it. Most people think about doing something like that but never follow through. He took another sip of the martini, totally unaware that his wife’s coincidental acquaintance with Lottie Schmidt would unlock one aspect of the investigation surrounding the destruction of the Connelly Fine Antique Reproductions plant.