Sudden Mischief

chapter twenty-six

I TALKED WITH Nancy Ginsberg at ten in the morning in the living room of her semi-colonial home which attached via the garage to another semi-colonial home with which it shared a one-acre lot in a development called Bailey's Field in Bedford.

The room was bright. The colors were quiet and coordinated. The pieces of furniture went together calmly. There was a piano in one corner of the room and a large color photograph of the children, two boys and a girl, sat on top of it. There was a fireplace on the back wall, faced in gray blue slate. It was clean and new and looked as if no flame had ever soiled it.

Nancy was appropriate to the living room. She had on a pink cashmere sweater, a single strand of pearls, a gray wool skirt, and low heels. Her hair was dark and medium long. Her makeup was understated, except around the eyes where there was a lot of bluish shadow. Her figure was good. Her nail polish matched her lipstick. She wore a very large diamond ring and a wedding band encrusted with diamonds. She served coffee in small cups on a red lacquered Japanese tray. The cups were decorated with Japanese landscape art.

"Most of my cups have advertising slogans on them," I said.

She smiled.

"You must be single," she said.

She was sitting very straight on the forward edge of the sofa with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap. The coffee was on a low table in front of her. I liked her knees.

"Sort of," I said. "I'm with Susan, ah, Hirsch. But I buy my own cups."

"Susan Hirsch? Brad's first wife?"

"Uh huh."

"Is that how you know Brad."

"I suppose it is," I said. "He was facing a lawsuit and Susan asked me to help him out."

"You're not an attorney?"

I had told her on the phone that I was a detective.

"No," I said.

"What sort of trouble is Brad in now?" she said.

"Well, the ah, precipitating occasion was a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment."

Nancy Ginsberg smiled and shook her head.

"Why am I not surprised," she said.

"He have a history of sexual harassment?" I said.

"No, not really. He's just so unaware. He probably doesn't know what sexual harassment is."

"Have you seen him recently?" I said.

"No."

"Do you and he get along?"

"Oh we get along. He's my big brother and I have always had a kid-sister crush on him. But…"

"But?"

"Well, we've had to sort of cut him off," she said. "Joel likes him. Everybody likes him…"

"Joel is your husband?"

"Yes."

"And everybody likes Brad, but…?"

"But nobody can afford him. He always needs money. We gave him money, thinking maybe if we bailed him out once…" She shook her head. "Finally we had to say no."

"How did Brad take it?"

"It was awful. Brad pleaded with Joel…" She paused, thinking about the scene. "But we've got three kids to educate," she said. "We had to say no more."

"When was this?"

"Oh last year sometime, maybe longer, maybe a year and a half."

"And you've not seen him since?"

"No."

"Do you know why he needed the money?"

"Well, alimony, I know; and child support."

"Doesn't his business do well?"

"He always says it is. But then when he wants to borrow money he will say the money is in some bank in a foreign country and he can't get it out, or all his cash is tied up temporarily in some huge event he's doing and he'll pay us back as soon as the event happens."

"He ever pay you back?"

"No."

"You know where he might be now?"

"No, why, is he missing?"

"Yes."

"Well, my God, how long?"

"Several days, now," I said. "His office is closed. He's not in his apartment."

I decided not to mention that he was a suspect in a murder investigation. Apparently, she had missed the second-section story in the Globe, or the twenty-second Action News brief on Channel 3.They worried mostly about crabgrass out here.

"Do you think he's all right?" she said.

"He may have just gone off for a few days R and R," I said. "You have any idea where he might go if he wanted to get away for a while?"

"Not really," she said. "I don't know too much about Brad's personal life."

"No summer home, or ski condo or anything like that?"

"Not that I know of. Brad was always on the verge of bankruptcy," Nancy said. "I don't think he could afford anything like that."

"Know anyone named Buffy?" I said.

"Buffy Haley," she said. "Was Brad's second wife. He had two children with her."

"Know where she is now?"

"Not really. When they divorced she got the house in Winchester, but I don't know if she stayed."

"Carla Quagliozzi?"

Nancy smiled a little. "Third wife."

"Know about her?"

"No. She wasn't around long. I think she was pregnant when they married. I don't know where she is."

"Ever hear of an organization called Civil Streets?"

"No."

"Know anyone named Jeanette Ronan?"

"No."

I tried the rest of the names in the harassment suit.

"No."

"Did you ever go to any of the events Brad put on?"

"No. Joel hates stuff like that. He gets home at night he wants a drink, dinner, and a ball game."

"Who wouldn't?" I said. "So you didn't attend Galapalooza, last January."

"No. I never even heard of it. Galapalooza?"

"Galapalooza," I said. "If you were Brad and you needed for whatever reason to get away, where would you go?"

She gave it some thought. I drank my coffee and admired her knees some more. The coffee wasn't very good. The knees were.

"I have no way to know where," she said. "But it would involve a woman. Brad liked… well, now that I start to say it, I'm not so sure… I was going to say he liked women. He certainly needed women. He had great luck attracting them. Have you met him?"

"Yes."

"Then you see how handsome and charming he is."

"More so even than myself," I said.

"Perhaps you're too modest," she said. "But he had a terrible time hanging on to them. Carla was, as far as I know, his last marriage, but there are certainly a lot of girlfriends. I'd look for him with a woman."

"How'd he feel about Susan?" I said.

"He always said she was the one he should have stayed with. Is the question just curiosity?"

"Probably," I said. "I'm involved because he came to her with a tale of woe. But when I spoke to him, he denied any trouble."

"You're a man," Nancy said.

"Yes, I am."

"He couldn't admit to another man that he was in trouble, or that he was anything but an All Ivy League success."

"You're saying he could get Susan to ask me to help but he couldn't admit to me that he needed help?"

"Yes."

"Wow."

"You know he changed his name?" she said.

"Yes."

"A lot of it is my father's fault," she said. "He thought that being a success in America was to join the Yankees, to be everything Brad pretends to be."

"You didn't change your name," I said.

"Well, actually, of course, I did."

"Yeah. To Ginsberg. A fine old Yankee name."

"I see your point," she said. "No, Joel and I are Jewish. We have no desire to be thought otherwise."

"So how'd you escape your father's dream," I said.

"Well, I was a girl," she said, "… and I got some help."

"A sound decision in both cases."

"I didn't decide to be a girl, Mr. Spenser."

"Well, I'm glad it worked out that way," I said. "You'd have been wasted as a boy."

She colored slightly and smiled.

"Well," she said. "Well; I guess, thank you."

I smiled, my low-wattage smile. I had promised Susan exclusivity, and I didn't want Nancy to fling herself into my arms.

"Anything else you can tell me about your brother?" I said.

"He's not a bad man," she said. "He's just… my father screwed his head up."

"You had the same father," I said, "and you did something about it."

"I know," she said.