great deal in the past week. She’s bearing up well, but we don’t want her unduly disturbed, do we?”
“I won’t disturb her,” Cone promises. “Just a few questions. Won’t take long.”
But before he starts out, he stops at the office of Sidney Apicella, chief of Haldering’s CPAs. As usual, Sid is massaging his nose. The poor guy suffers from rosacea of the beezer. It’s big, magenta, and swollen, and he can’t leave it alone.
He looks up as Cone enters. “Whatever you want,” he says, “I can’t do it. I’m too busy.”
“Come on, Sid; this’ll only take one phone call.”
“The last time you told me that it took four days’ work.”
“One phone call, I swear. I’d do it myself, but you’ve got the contacts. There’s this guy named David Dempster. He’s the brother of that pooh-bah who got blasted on Wall Street last week. Anyway, this brother has a business, David Dempster Associates, on Cedar Street. All I want to know is what kind of a business it is, assets, liabilities, cash flow, and all that financial shit.”
Apicella groans. “And you think I can get that with one phone call? You’re demented!”
“Give it the old college try, Sid. I’ll make sure you get special mention in my final report.”
“Thanks for nothing,” the CPA says. “When are you going to buy yourself a new suit?”
“What’s wrong with this one? Sleaze is
Figuring an outfit as big as Dempster-Torrey isn’t going to quibble about expenses, he takes a taxi up to the Dempster residence on East 64th between Third and Lex. The place is practically a mansion and, scoping it from across the street, Cone figures it was probably originally two five-story brownstones. But now, with an expensive face-lift, it’s red brick with wide plate glass windows.
The old stoops have been removed, and entrance is via a street-level doorway protected with a wrought-iron gate. There’s a uniformed policeman leaning against the gate, eye-balling all the young ginch passing by.
Cone crosses over and gives the cop what he thinks is an innocent smile. It doesn’t work. The blue takes a long look at his black leather cap, cruddy corduroy suit, and yellow work shoes, and says, “Beat it, bum.”
“Hey,” Cone says, hurt, “watch your language. I’m Timothy Cone from Haldering and Company. I’ve got an appointment with Mrs. Dempster.”
“Yeah? Let’s see your ID.”
Cone digs out his Haldering amp; Co. card with his picture attached. Samantha Whatley claims that photo should be on a post office wall with the warning: This man wanted for molesting children.
The officer takes the card, steps inside, and calls on the intercom. Then he opens the gate, returns the ID to Cone, and unlocks the heavy oak door.
“Sorry about that,” he says.
“No sweat,” Cone says. “You guys on twenty-four hours?”
“Yeah,” the cop says. “About as exciting as watching paint dry.”
There’s a young, uniformed maid waiting for him in the foyer, and he follows her up a wide marble staircase to the second floor. Cone tries to keep his eyes on the stairs, with scant success. Down a carpeted hallway to the rear of the townhouse he gets a quick impression of high ceilings, light, airy rooms, plenty of bright graphics, polished wood, and green plants everywhere.
He is ushered into a greenhouse extending from the back of the building. Wide panes of glass are set in a verdigrised copper framework. The whole faces south and east, and sunlight floods in through glass walls and domed roof. A system of bamboo shades has been designed to mute the bright light, but air conditioning keeps the place comfortable.
The greenhouse is crowded with rough wooden tables, bags of potting soil, fertilizer, crushed shell, sand, and gardening tools. On the waist-high tables, in neat rows, is arranged an impressive assortment of bonsai, each dwarf tree in a splendidly proportioned pot of brown, cream, or dark blue glaze. Other pots are decorated, and a few are set on lacquered wood pedestals.
The woman who comes forward, brass watering can in her hands, is tall, reedy, and wearing a long, flowing dress that billows as she moves. The gown is voluminous, made of some thin, diaphanous stuff the color of vanilla ice cream. But no paler than the woman herself.
“Mrs. Teresa Dempster?” Cone asks.
She nods vaguely, looking around at her plants. “And you’re Mr. Timothy?”
“Cone,” he says. “Timothy Cone.”
“Of course,” she says.
“Thank you for seeing me. I hate to intrude in your time of trial.”
At last she looks at him directly. “‘Time of trial,’” she repeats. “What a nice, old-fashioned expression. Are you an old-fashioned man, Mr. Timothy?”
He gives up on the name. “I guess I am,” he says uncomfortably. “About some things. Beautiful plants you have here, Mrs. Dempster.”
“Trees,” she corrects him. “All my babies. But such old babies. This one, for instance, is said to be forty-five years old. It’s a Japanese red maple. Do you like it?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Real pretty.”
She puts down the watering can, picks up the little red maple and thrusts it at him. “Then take it,” she says. “It’s yours.”
He moves a startled step backward. “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” he protests. “It’s probably valuable.”
“No, no,” she says. “If you promise to love it, I want you to have it.”
Getting a glimmer of what he’s up against here, he says earnestly, “Look, Mrs. Dempster, I appreciate your offer. It’s very kind of you. But where I live, there’s no sunlight at all. And I’ve got a nasty cat who’d demolish that thing in two seconds flat. It really wouldn’t be fair to the tree for me to take it.”
She looks so hurt that he’s afraid she might start weeping.
“Tell you what,” he says. “Why don’t I accept the gift in the spirit in which it’s given. But you keep it for me and take care of it. But it’ll be my tree.”
She gives him a smile as simple and charming as a child’s. “I think that’s a wonderful idea!” she says. “I’ll tell everyone it’s Mr. Timothy’s tree, and you can visit it whenever you like. Do you want to name it?”
“Name it?”
“Of course. Most of my trees have names. This juniper is Ralph. That Norfolk pine is Matilda. Would you like your Japanese red maple to have a name?”
“How about Irving?” he suggests, willing to play her game-if game it is.
“How lovely,” she says with such evident enjoyment that he stares at her, wary and perplexed.
Everything about her is long: face, limbs, hands, feet. She looks like a tree herself, but not a bonsai. More like a full-grown willow, soft and drooping. There is an ineffable languor, she seems to float, her gestures are flutters. The big azure eyes are more innocent than any eyes have a right to be, and the unbound hair streaming down her back is flaxen and wispy.
Something ethereal there, something unworldly, and Cone has a vision of her galloping through the heather and caroling, “Heathcliff! Heathcliff!” He shakes his head to clear his mind of such nonsense and, to see if she is completely bonkers, asks:
“And what are the names of your boys?”
She looks up into the air as if striving to recall. “Edward,” she says. “He’s the oldest. And then there’s Robert, and then Duane.”
“They live here with you?”
“Usually they’re away at school. But this summer they’re all on a bicycle tour through Europe. They’re having tons of fun.”
“Did they come back for their father’s funeral?”
“No,” she says, “they didn’t. By the time we got in touch with them, it was too late. Besides, there was no point in their returning, was there?”
Cone has his own idea about that, but doesn’t voice it. “Your husband’s death must have been a tremendous shock to you, Mrs. Dempster.”
“Oh, Jack didn’t die,” she says, almost gaily. “He just passed over. Nobody and nothing ever dies, Mr. Timothy. Just assumes another form. But everything is immortal: you, me, these trees, the world about us.”
Oh, God, he thinks despairingly, she’s one of
