Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [3]
Then again, Roseann had never considered herself a prize catch either. Since being labeled a prodigy when she was eight—she later wondered whether her piano teacher said that to encourage her mother to keep writing the weekly checks—she increasingly immersed herself in her music, although not always in the direction of classical performance, to the chagrin of her teacher. She began listening to jazz in her teens, her father’s record collection the prime source, and gradually applied her classical training to that distinctly American art form, the two not wholly incompatible.
In a sense, music increasingly became an introspective substitute for the more social pursuits enjoyed by her friends. Roseann once told her therapist, “I sometimes think I accompany life on the piano rather than living it.”
Which was true. She was able to smoothly fend off the advances of men—there were many, several even desirable—by offering her career as an excuse: “Sorry, I have a lesson.” “Sorry, I’m due at a rehearsal.” “Sorry, I’m in the middle of writing an opera and can’t break my momentum.”
Until Joe came along, who, she reasoned early in the relationship, had as many problems as she did, which made them soul mates who often understood each other’s foibles and fractures, and who knew when to back off, ease up, put their heads under the covers until the storm passed.
Like tonight.
She slept soundly.
Chapter 2
Two Days Later
New York
Harry Syms turned off Highway 684, stopped for a red light, then turned left onto the access road leading to Westchester County airport, approximately fifty miles north of New York City. Seated next to him was his wife, Hope, and their two children, Janet, age six, and Jill, age eight, who were safely buckled in the back of their new green Plymouth Voyager minivan.
“I wish I could come with you,” Harry said.
“It’s better this way,” Hope said. “With your Kamerer negotiations heating up and all, I understand. Besides…”
Syms was a corporate attorney whose company was in the midst of buying a competing firm.
“There’s always some negotiation or meeting,” Harry said heavily. “Maybe when it’s wrapped up I can grab a few days and join you.”
“No,” Hope said. “Use the time to work and to… well, to think some more about—”
“We’re here,” Harry said, cutting her off. He stopped in front of the new terminal, a reflection of the rapid expansion of the regional airport, which chagrined those homeowners over whose houses the noisy, turboprop commuter planes flew. And now jets regularly operated from there. What was next, the Concorde?
He pulled luggage from the minivan as Hope unbuckled the girls. “You two young ladies look beautiful,” he said, beaming. They shared their mother’s blond genes and freckled cheeks. They wore matching frilly blue-and-white dresses, dresses designed especially for a trip to Grandma’s.
Harry noticed that Jill wore a thin gold necklace with a tiny four-leaf clover at its end. He asked his wife, “You’re not wearing the flying necklace?”
“No,” she said, smiling. “Jill wanted to wear it.”
The “flying necklace” had belonged to Hope’s mother, who’d been a travel photographer of some note before retiring. She viewed the necklace as her good luck charm whenever she flew, which was often, and passed it on to her daughter.
“Don’t lose that,” Harry said to Jill. “It’s mother’s.”
“I won’t,” Jill said.
“I’ll take it back from her as soon as we arrive,” Hope whispered to Harry.
“We’ll bring you a present,” said Jill, hugging her father.
“Great! Make it a big one. Hey, what about you?” he said to Janet. “Don’t I get a kiss and a hug?”
She allowed him to kiss her cheek.
“They’re so excited,” Hope said.
“They should be. Make sure everybody drinks plenty of water when you’re traipsing around DC. You know what it’s like there in the summer.”
“We’d better get inside,” Hope said.
Syms enjoyed flying out of the smaller, regional airport, a half hour’s drive from their home in Bedford Hills, or seeing people off from it. There was less of the traffic madness associated with taking a flight