Daddy's Gone a Hunting

4

On her last visit to the family’s complex, Kate had been shocked to learn that the security cameras were still not working. “Kate, your father turned thumbs down on a new system,” Jack Worth, the plant manager, said. “The problem is that everything around here needs to be upgraded. And the fact is we haven’t got the kind of craftsmen that were working here twenty years ago. The ones that are around are prohibitively expensive because the market is shrinking, and our new employees just aren’t the same. We’re starting to get returns on the furniture regularly. I can’t fathom why your father is so stubborn about selling this place to a developer. The land is worth at least twenty million dollars.”

Then he’d added, ruefully, “Of course, if he does that, it would put me out of a job. With so many businesses closing, there isn’t too much demand for a plant manager.”

Jack was fifty-six, with the burly body of the wrestler he had been in his early twenties. His full head of strawberry-blond hair was streaked with gray. Kate knew he was a strict overall manager of the factory, showroom, and the three-story private museum in which every room was furnished with incredibly valuable antiques. He had started working for the company more than thirty years ago as an assistant bookkeeper and took over the management five years ago.

Kate had changed into a running suit, set the alarm for 3:30 A.M., and settled on the couch. She did not think that she would be able to fall asleep but she did. The only problem was that her sleep was uneasy and filled with dreams, most of which she could not remember, but they left her feeling troubled. The one fragment she could remember was the same one she’d had from time to time: A terrified child in a flowered nightgown was running down a long hall, away from hands that were reaching to grab her.

I didn’t need that nightmare now, she thought, as she turned off the alarm and sat up. Ten minutes later, bundled in her black down jacket, a scarf over her head, she was in the parking lot of her building and getting into her fuel-efficient Mini Cooper sedan.

Even at this early hour there was still traffic in Manhattan, but it was moving swiftly. Kate went east through Central Park at Sixty-fifth Street and a few minutes later was driving up the ramp to the Queensboro Bridge. It only took ten minutes more to get to her destination. It was four fifteen, and she knew Gus would be coming any minute. She parked her car behind the Dumpster at the back of the museum and waited.

The wind was still strong and the car quickly became cold. She was about to turn the engine on again when dim headlights came around the corner and Gus’s pickup truck came to a stop near her.

In two simultaneous motions they got out of their cars and hurried to the service door of the museum. Kate had a flashlight and the key in her hands. She turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door. With a sigh of relief, she said, “Gus, it’s so great of you to come at this hour.” Once inside she used the beam of her flashlight to see the security keyboard. “Can you believe that even the internal security system is broken?” Gus was wearing a woolen cap pulled down over his ears. A few strands of thinning hair had escaped the cap and were plastered on his forehead. “I knew it had to be important for you to want to meet at this hour,” he said. “What’s up, Kate?”

“I only pray God I’m wrong, Gus, but I have to show you something in the Fontainebleau suite. I need your expertise.” She reached into her pocket, brought out another flashlight, and handed one to him. “Keep it pointed to the ground.”

Silently they made their way to the back staircase. As Kate ran her hand over the smooth wood of the banister, she thought of the stories she had heard about her grandfather, who had come to the United States as a penniless but educated immigrant and eventually made a fortune in the stock market. At age fifty, he had sold his investment firm and fulfilled his lifetime dream of creating fine reproductions of antique furniture. He had bought this property in Long Island City and built a complex that consisted of a factory, a showroom, and a private museum to show the antiques he had collected over the years and now would copy.

At fifty-five he had decided that he wanted an heir and married my grandmother, who was twenty years younger than he. And then my father and his brother were born.

Dad had taken over the run of the business only a year before the accident, Kate thought. After that Russ Link ran it until he retired five years ago.

Connelly Fine Antique Reproductions had flourished for sixty years, but as Kate tried repeatedly to point out to her father, the current market for expensive reproductions was shrinking. She had not had the courage to also point out to him that his heavy drinking, neglect of the business, and increasingly erratic hours at the office were other factors in why it was time to sell. Let’s face it, she thought. After my grandfather died, Russ ran everything.

At the bottom of the stairs Kate began to say, “Gus, it’s the writing desk I want to show you-” But then suddenly she stopped, grabbed his arm, and said, “My God, Gus, this place is reeking with gas.” Reaching for his hand, she turned and headed back to the door. They had gone only a few steps when an explosion sent the staircase crashing down upon them.

Afterward Kate vaguely remembered trying to brush away the blood that was pouring down her forehead and trying to pull Gus’s inert body with her as she crawled to the door. The flames were licking the walls, and the smoke was blinding and choking her. Then the door had blown open and the gusty winds rushed into the hallway. A sheer savage instinct for survival made Kate grab Gus by the wrists and drag him out a few feet into the parking lot. Then she blacked out.

When the firemen arrived, they found Kate unconscious, bleeding profusely from a wound in her head, her clothing singed.

Gus was lying a few feet away, motionless. The weight of the fallen staircase left him with crushing injuries. He was dead.