Daddy's Gone a Hunting Read Free Page A

A.M. ,and settled on the couch. She did not think that she would be able to fall asleep but she did. The only problem was that her sleep was uneasy and filled with dreams, most of which she could not remember, but they left her feeling troubled. The one fragment she could remember was the same one she’d had from time to time: A terrified child in a flowered nightgown was running down a long hall, away from hands that were reaching to grab her.
    I didn’t need that nightmare now, she thought, as she turned off the alarm and sat up. Ten minutes later, bundled in her black down jacket, a scarf over her head, she was in the parking lot of her building and getting into her fuel-efficient Mini Cooper sedan.
    Even at this early hour there was still traffic in Manhattan, but it was moving swiftly. Kate went east through Central Park at Sixty-fifth Street and a few minutes later was driving up the ramp to the Queensboro Bridge. It only took ten minutes more to get to her destination. It was four fifteen, and she knew Gus would be coming any minute. She parked her car behind the Dumpster at the back of the museum and waited.
    The wind was still strong and the car quickly became cold. She was about to turn the engine on again when dim headlights came around the corner and Gus’s pickup truck came to a stop near her.
    In two simultaneous motions they got out of their cars and hurried to the service door of the museum. Kate had a flashlight and the key in her hands. She turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door. With a sigh of relief, she said, “Gus, it’s so great of you to come at this hour.” Once inside she used the beam of her flashlight to see the security keyboard. “Can you believe that even the internal security system is broken?” Gus was wearing a woolen cap pulled down over his ears. A few strands of thinning hair had escaped the cap and were plastered on his forehead. “I knew it had to be important for you to want to meet at this hour,” he said. “What’s up, Kate?”
    “I only pray God I’m wrong, Gus, but I have to show you somethingin the Fontainebleau suite. I need your expertise.” She reached into her pocket, brought out another flashlight, and handed one to him. “Keep it pointed to the ground.”
    Silently they made their way to the back staircase. As Kate ran her hand over the smooth wood of the banister, she thought of the stories she had heard about her grandfather, who had come to the United States as a penniless but educated immigrant and eventually made a fortune in the stock market. At age fifty, he had sold his investment firm and fulfilled his lifetime dream of creating fine reproductions of antique furniture. He had bought this property in Long Island City and built a complex that consisted of a factory, a showroom, and a private museum to show the antiques he had collected over the years and now would copy.
    At fifty-five he had decided that he wanted an heir and married my grandmother, who was twenty years younger than he. And then my father and his brother were born.
    Dad had taken over the run of the business only a year before the accident, Kate thought. After that Russ Link ran it until he retired five years ago.
    Connelly Fine Antique Reproductions had flourished for sixty years, but as Kate tried repeatedly to point out to her father, the current market for expensive reproductions was shrinking. She had not had the courage to also point out to him that his heavy drinking, neglect of the business, and increasingly erratic hours at the office were other factors in why it was time to sell. Let’s face it, she thought. After my grandfather died, Russ ran everything.
    At the bottom of the stairs Kate began to say, “Gus, it’s the writing desk I want to show you—” But then suddenly she stopped, grabbed his arm, and said, “My God, Gus, this place is reeking with gas.” Reaching for his hand, she turned and headed back to the door. They had gone only a few steps when