Then she smiled at Rune. A bleak lifting of her mouth. Trying to make light. The smile faded. "He ran away from home. Isn't that silly?"
"Your father ran away from home? Like, that's radical."
Emily asked, "Are your parents still alive?"
"My mother is. She's in Ohio. My father died a few years ago."
"Did you get along with them when you were at home?"
"Pretty good, I guess. My mom is a sweetheart. My dad ... I was sort of his favorite. But don't tell my sister I said that. He was really, really cool."
Emily looked at her with a cocked head. "You're lucky. My father and I fought a lot. We always have. Even when I was young. I'd have a boyfriend and Dad wouldn't like him. He wasn't from the right kind of family, he didn't make enough money, he was Jewish, he was Catholic ... I fought back some but he was my father and fathers have authority. But then I grew up and after my mother died a few years ago, something odd happened. The roles switched. He became the child. He'd retired, didn't have much money. I'd married a businessman and I was rich. He needed a place to stay and he moved in with us.
"But I didn't do it right. Suddenly I had the power, I could dictate. Just the opposite of the way it was when I lived at home. I handled it badly. Last summer we were arguing and I said some terrible things. I didn't mean them, I really didn't. They weren't even true. I thought Dad'd just fight back or ignore them. Well, he didn't. What he did was he took some things and disappeared." Her voice quaked.
Emily fell silent. She held her cigarette in an unsteady hand. "I've been trying to find him ever since. He stayed at the Y for a while, he stayed at a hotel in Queens. He had an apartment in the West Village. I don't know when he moved here. I've been calling people he knows--some of his old co-workers, his doctors--trying to find him. Finally a receptionist at his doctor's office broke down and gave me this address."
Emily smoothed her skirt. It was a long skirt, expensive silk. Slinky was the only way to describe it, Rune decided. "Now I've missed him again," Emily told her.
"Didn't you just call and apologize?"
"I tried a few months ago. But he hung up on me."
"Why don't you just give it time? Maybe he'll calm down. He's not that old, is he? In his sixties."
A look at the carpet again. "The thing is, he's sick. He doesn't have much longer. That's why the doctor's receptionist agreed to tell me where he was. He has cancer. Terminal."
Rune thought of her father. And now she recognized Symington's gray face, the sweaty skin.
She thought too: He'd better not die before she herself had a chance to find him and ask him about Mr. Kelly and the stolen money. Feeling guilty. But thinking it anyway.
"So what is it you're not telling me?" The adult Emily had returned. "Time to show me yours."
"I'm not sure he's just a witness," Rune said.
"What do you mean?"
"Okay, if you really want to know. I think your father might be the murderer."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"Impossible."
Rune said, "I think Mr. Kelly found some money and your father found out about it. I think your father stole the money and killed him."
Emily was shaking her head. "Never. Dad'd never hurt anybody."
Once again Rune thought of Symington's face--how terrified he'd seemed. "Well, maybe he had a partner who killed him."
Emily started to shake her head. But then she paused.
"What?" Rune asked. "Tell me."
"Dad wouldn't kill anybody. I know that."
"But ...? I see something in your face. Keep talking." A good adult line to say. Right out of a Cary Grant movie, she believed. The sort Audrey Hepburn had said a million times.
"But," the woman said slowly, "the last time I talked to him I asked if he needed money and he said--he was really angry--but he said that he was about to get more money than I could imagine and he'd never take another damn penny from me or Hank ever again."