Before I Say Goodbye (eBook)

A Novel

MARY HIGGINS CLARK (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2000 | 1. Auflage
336 Seiten
Simon & Schuster (Verlag)
978-0-7432-0594-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Mary Higgins Clark, America's 'Queen of Suspense,' delves into the mystery of psychic powers and communication with the dead in her gripping new thriller, Before I Say Good-Bye.
When Adam Cauliff's new cabin cruiser, Cornelia II, blows up in New York harbor with him and several close business associates aboard, his wife, Nell MacDermott, is not only distraught at the loss but wracked with guilt because she and Adam had just had a serious quarrel and she had told him not to come home.
The quarrel was precipitated by Nell's decision to try to win the congressional seat long held by her grandfather Cornelius MacDermott. Orphaned at age ten, she had been raised by 'Mac,' as she called him, and was always at his side on Capitol Hill. Politics was in her blood, and Adam had known her ambitions when they married. Suddenly, however, he became opposed to her plan to run for Congress.
Nell, like her great-aunt Gert, possesses psychic gifts, which her grandfather scoffingly dismisses as 'flights of fantasy.' As a child she had been aware of the deaths of both her parents and grandmother at the exact moment they died. She knew because at that very moment she sensed their presence near her.
Even though Nell has the rare gift of extrasensory perception, she is much too levelheaded to accept most of the claims made by many so-called psychics and is skeptical about Aunt Gert's fascination with mediums. After Adam's death, however, Gert begs Nell to see a medium, Bonnie Wilson, who has contacted her, claiming she is in touch with Adam. Still regretting her last angry words to Adam, Nell agrees, hoping that she will be able to reach him through the medium and part from him in peace.
As the investigation into the boat's explosion proceeds, Nell is shocked by the official confirmation that it was not an accident but the result of foul play. Adam, an architect, had been involved in a major construction project on land he had recently purchased and which had since had a spectacular rise in value.
Was Adam the target of the explosion? Or was it Winifred Johnson, his self-effacing, fifty-two-year-old assistant, who knew too much about bribery in the construction business and who was openly in love with him? Or was it Sam Krause, a builder with a questionable reputation who was involved in the new project? Or Jimmy Ryan, the debt-ridden construction foreman whose wife, after his death, discovers money hidden in their home? Or was it Peter Lang, the wealthy man-about-town real-estate entrepreneur, whose minor traffic accident caused him to miss the fatal meeting on the boat?
As Nell searches for the truth about Adam's death, she carries out instructions from Adam transmitted through the medium. What she does not know is that she is being closely watched, and the nearer she comes to learning what actually happened on the boat that night, the nearer she is to becoming the next victim of a ruthless killer.

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A young woman probing into the mysterious circumstances of her husband's death receives a message from a medium claiming to be his channel in Mary Higgins Clark's #1 bestselling thriller, Before I Say Goodbye.When Nell MacDermott learns that her husband, architect Adam Cauliff, and three of his business associates have died in an explosion of his new cabin cruiser, she is not only devastated but wracked with guilt. The last time she saw Adam, they had a bitter quarrel over her plan to run for the congressional seat long held by her grandfather; she had told him not to come home. As the investigation into the boat's explosion proceeds, Nell learns that it was not an accident but a bomb. Despite her skepticism, Nell is swayed by her great-aunt Gert, a believer in psychic powers, to see a medium claiming to be Adam's channel. While trying to unravel the threads of Adam's past and his violent end, Nell consults the medium, who transmits messages to her with instructions from Adam. The story reaches a powerful climax in Nell's final encounter with the medium, in which she learns the truth about the explosiontruth she can't be allowed to live and tell.

Textauszug

Chapter Nine Fifty-two-year-old Winifred Johnson never entered the lobby of her employer's apartment building on Park Avenue without feeling intimidated. She had worked with Adam Cauliff for three years, first at Walters and Arsdale, and then she had left with him last fall, when he started his own company. He relied on her from the beginning. Even so, whenever she stopped by his apartment, she couldn't help feeling that one day the doorman would instruct her to use the delivery entrance around the corner. She knew that her attitude was the result of her parents' lifelong resentment over imagined slights. Ever since she could remember, Winifred's ears had been filled with their plaintive tales of people who had been rude to them: They use their little bit of authority on people like us who can't fight back. Expect it, Winifred. That's the kind of world it is. Her father had gone to his grave railing against all the indignities he had suffered at the hands of his employer of forty years, and her mother was now in a nursing home, where complaints of supposed slights and deliberate neglect continued unabated. Winifred thought about her mother as the doorman smilingly opened the door for her. A few years ago it had been possible for her to move her mother to a fancy, new nursing facility, but even that hadn't stopped the endless flow of complaints. Happiness -- even satisfaction -- did not seem to be possible for her. Winifred had recognized this same trait in herself and felt helpless. Until I smartened up, she told herself with a secret smile. A thin woman, almost frail in appearance, Winifred typically dressed in conservative business suits and limited her jewelry to button earrings and a strand of pearls. Quiet to the point that people often forgot she was even around, she absorbed everything, noticed everything and remembered everything. She had worked for Robert Walters and Len Arsdale from the time she graduated from secretarial school, but in all those years neither man had ever appreciated or even seemed to notice the fact that she had come to know everything there was to know about the construction business. Adam Cauliff, however, had picked up on it immediately. He appreciated her, he understood her true worth. He used to joke with her, saying, 'Winifred, a lot of people had better hope you never write your autobiography.' Robert Walters overheard him and became both upset and unpleasant. But then Walters had always bullied her unmercifully, he never had been nice to her. Let him pay for that, Winifred thought. And he will. Nell never appreciated him. Adam didn't need a wife with a career of her own and a famous grandfather who made so many demands on her that she didn't have enough time for her husband. Sometimes Adam would say, 'Winifred, Nell's busy with the old man again. I don't want to eat alone. Let's grab a bite.' He deserved better. Sometimes Adam would tell her about being a kid on a North Dakota farm and going to the library to get books with pictures of beautiful buildings. 'The taller the better, Winifred,' he'd joke. 'When someone built a three-story house in our town, folks drove twenty miles just to get a look at it.' Other times he would encourage her to talk, and she found herself gossiping with him about people in the construction industry. Then the next morning she would wonder if perhaps she had said too much, her loquaciousness enhanced by the wine Adam kept pouring. But she never really worried, she trusted Adam -- they trusted each other -- and Adam enjoyed her 'insider' stories about the building world, tales from her earlier days with Walters and Arsdale. 'You mean that sanctimonious old bird was on the take...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.5.2000
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Krimi / Thriller
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-7432-0594-4 / 0743205944
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-0594-8 / 9780743205948