Beach Wedding(51)

I soon realized why. Outside the huge window the newly refurbished copper dome of a church was backgrounded by a green sea of Central Park trees. The white towers of Fifth Avenue in the distance beyond them looked like something out of a movie.

“This is a beautiful apartment. These ceilings. Is it a duplex?” I said as we sat across from each other on two facing couches.

“All of the apartments are duplexes,” Julian said with a nod. “The place was built at the beginning of the previous century as an artists’ residence with high windows to catch the light. My mother bought it after the divorce. It was her favorite place in the world. When she died, she left it to me. Now it’s my favorite place in the world.”

Julian looked at me closely.

“So Father Holm tells me you found Uncle Xavier’s notes,” he said.

“Uncle Xavier? Xavier Kelsey? You knew him?” I said.

“Oh, of course,” Julian said with a smile. “Xavier was very good friends with my father. That’s why he started the book. He actually asked my permission before he started. But you must know all this already, don’t you?”

I shook my head.

Julian looked confused.

“But you’re picking up where Xavier left off, right? That’s what Father Rob said. Xavier interviewed me for his book for two days. He sat right where you’re sitting.”

I stared at him. I thought Xavier had still been in the gathering information stage. This was the first I had heard that he had actually interviewed anyone.

“He interviewed you?”

“Yes, for hours. He had a tape recorder. He had to actually change the tape. Don’t you have his files? I thought Father Rob mentioned that.”

“I thought I had all of them,” I said. “But there aren’t any tapes. Did he discuss the book with you?”

“Yes. He said that he was sick, but he knew that he had to do it when he heard about the other deaths.”



69

I stared at Julian for a long moment. Now I was becoming completely confused.

“Deaths?” I said. “What other deaths?”

“You don’t know about Philip’s death? My friend Philip Oster?”

I blinked at him silently. I had thoroughly sifted through Kelsey’s files, and there was no mention of a Mr. Oster.

“That name is not familiar to me,” I said.

“Philip was my friend from school. He had come up from the city that night for the party and stayed over. You don’t know about Philip?”

“No.”

“Oh, my, you don’t know, then. I’m not sure what to say. I thought you knew. I thought that’s why you were doing this.”

I stared at him. I felt weird all of a sudden.

I had thought I had a handle on all of this, but there was something, something big, that I didn’t know, and as I sat there, for some strange reason it suddenly scared me.

“Please, if you could explain, Julian. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He looked out the window then back at me with an expression of unease mixed with something like pity. I felt my heart begin to beat more rapidly in my chest.

What the hell was going on?

“My friend Philip was at the house that night on July Fourth for the party. No one knew I’d invited him because the both of us had gotten into trouble with some drug thing, and I wasn’t supposed to be hanging around him. We partied and he crashed back in my room that night, but he left early, somewhere between four and five. He was gone before the cops arrived.”

I took a deep breath. I thought I had known about everyone who had been at the house that night. But now I knew I’d thought wrong.

“After my dad was murdered, I tried to get into contact with Philip, but he kept avoiding me. Then that September, he went away to school in England, where his father lived.”

“Do you think Philip had something to do with your father’s death?”

“No, no. Nothing like that,” Julian said. “Philip wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was a total hippie kid, peacenik. But I think he saw something when he left. Something or maybe someone. I think he saw the person who killed my father. In fact, I’m pretty much convinced.”

I took a breath. This was huge.

“Why?” I said.

“The following summer, in 2000, Philip returned to the States. In August, he attended a Paul Simon concert in Massachusetts. When it was over, he said goodbye to his friends and went to get his car. That’s when he jumped to his death off the roof of the parking garage.”

“What?” I said.

“They said he was distraught over a recent breakup. But he had fallen wrong, Mr. Rourke. If somebody leaps to their death, they would land facedown, right? Well, he was turned the other way, faceup. The way you would land if you were pushed. It looked extremely suspicious.”

I took a deep breath, trying to process what I was hearing.

There was another murder?

“But wait. You said there was more than one death?”

He gave me the strange wide-eyed look of pity again.

“In 2013, Philip’s mom was moving and going through some old keepsakes and found a notebook that had belonged to Philip at the time of his death. In the back of it, he had written a phone number.”

Julian Sutton bit his lip and looked away, out the window.