Bad, Bad Seymour Brown

Also by Susan IsaacsCompromising PositionsClose RelationsAlmost ParadiseShining ThroughMagic HourAfter All These YearsLily WhiteRed, White and BlueBrave Dames and WimpettesLong Time No SeeAny Place I Hang My HatPast PerfectAs Husbands GoGoldberg VariationsA Hint of StrangenessTakes One to Know One Atlantic Monthly PressNew York Copyright © 2023 by Susan IsaacsJacket design and collage by Jenny Carrow, using art from iStockPhoto and Shutterstock.All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected] simultaneously in CanadaPrinted in the United States of AmericaThis book was set in 12-pt. Arno by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH.First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: May 2023Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title. ISBN 978-0-8021-5906-9eISBN 978-0-8021-5907-6Atlantic Monthly Pressan imprint of Grove Atlantic154 West 14th StreetNew York, NY 10011Distributed by Publishers Group Westgroveatlantic.com To my daughter, Elizabeth Picciuto,my mentor and maven,with gratitude and love CHAPTER ONEIn the universe of 1990s Brooklyn bad guys, Seymour Brown, CPA, had risen way above most of the goons and gangsters. Not to the pinnacle, but close. He probably would have moved up even further, but he and his wife, Kim, were killed when their house was burned to the ground. Unquestionably arson, unquestionably murder—but the crime remained unsolved. For my dad, who was assigned to the investigation back when he was a second-grade NYPD detective, it was the coldest of his cold cases.When Seymour and Kim Brown—along with their surviving daughter, April—came roaring back into my dad’s life and mine, my parents were living with us. During Covid, they had moved in and never left: a mutually agreeable decision. That night, we were having an early dinner in the backyard, around six thirty, that lovely half-hour hiatus between flies and mosquitoes. My parents were gathered with my husband, Josh Geller, our sixteen-year-old daughter, Eliza, and me at one end of an enormous picnic table.Oh, the table: it had been purchased by Dawn, Eliza’s first mother and Josh’s first wife. Perhaps she anticipated delightful Tuscan-style lunches al fresco, with twenty friends, all the women wearing gauzy white blouses and laughing as they raised overfilled glasses of Brunello. But before she could complete her set of Italian ceramic plates and bowls by finding a truly wondrous soup tureen, she died suddenly from an undiagnosed cardiovascular quirk during Pilates class. Eliza was only five when it happened. Devastating. I adopted Eliza five years later, soon after I’d married Josh.Our meal, though, wasn’t Tuscan as much as pan-Mediterranean-via-Long Island: shish kebab that Josh had grilled with scientific precision, as well as Turkish roasted veggies and an orzo salad I’d made. A family meal, not an idyllic, wine-drenched salut to la dolce vita. My mom was busy sneaking bits of shish kebab to our dog, Lulu; my dad was brushing his ear with the back of his hand in a failed attempt to discourage a bee from assessing his aftershave. I spilled about a quarter of my wine making a grand gesture as I opined on Criminal Minds post–Mandy Patinkin; Eliza gazed longingly at her phone, which we had insisted she place facedown during the meal even as it vibrated with near-constant notifications; and there was no way to stop Josh from explicating on his new, foolproof method of slow-roasting the kebabs.Having my parents live at our house was more comforting than I would have thought. Blessedly, Josh’s parents had been fine during the pandemic in their own oversize place; (also blessedly) they had inherited enough money to stay put. They were attended by a housekeeper named Roswitha; though reluctant to disturb any dust, she was a whiz at turning out strudel. My in-laws were totally content with their daily routine, which began with fresh-squeezed orange juice and ended with half a bottle of Rémy Martin cognac.My mom and dad, however, were neither rolling in money nor catered to by a live-in strudelmeister. Their place in Forest Hills—the same apartment in which I’d grown up—was nice enough by city standards. Two bedrooms, so my dad, fifteen years into his retirement, could lean back on the giant recliner in his den (my ex-bedroom), watch his ginormous TV, and critique cop shows. He missed work so much that the cops on Netflix and Amazon Prime became his buddies. My mom said the only time he wasn’t listless was when he was worrying about his favorite characters: Would hefty Andri Ólafsson have a heart attack trudging through the snow after killers in Siglufjörður and Reykjavík? Would Bosch deliberately walk into a bullet?Pre-pandemic, my mom had spent many of her days auditioning, seeing her theater friends, going to shows, now and then acting in a commercial or uttering two weepy lines on Law and Order. Earlier in her career she’d played Mrs. Alving in Ghosts off-off-Broadway and Tinsley Bancroft for half a season on Days of Our Lives. But as the virus spread, she told me in her entre nous voice that if it weren’t for her iPad (alternating between reading e-books and watching free Shakespeare on YouTube), she would have gone “utterly mad.”When the lockdowns began, Josh, Eliza, and I had held a family conference around pizza at the kitchen table about whether we should invite them to join us in our house. The discussion didn’t take long. By the time Eliza nabbed the last bit of mozzarella from the bottom