Morning Noon & Night (11 page)

“Isn’t there some other way you can…?”

“I’m afraid not. The woman is very convincing.”

“But the family is not convinced.”

“No.”

“Do you think she’s a fraud, Simon?”

“Frankly, I don’t know. But my opinion doesn’t matter. In fact, none of our opinions matters. A court will demand proof, and the DNA test will provide that.”

The coroner shook his head. “I knew old Harry Stanford. He would have hated this. I really shouldn’t let…”

“But you will.”

The coroner sighed. “I suppose so. Would you do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Keep this quiet. Let’s not have a media circus.”

“You have my word. Top secret. I’ll have just the family there.”

“When do you want to do this?”

“We would like to do it on Monday.”

The coroner sighed again. “All right. I’ll call the funeral home. You owe me one, Simon.”

“I won’t forget this.”

At nine o’clock Monday morning, the entrance to the section of Mount Auburn Cemetery where Harry Stanford’s body was buried was temporarily closed off “for maintenance repairs.” No one was allowed into the grounds. Woody, Peggy, Tyler, Kendall, Marc, Julia, Simon Fitzgerald, Steve Sloane, and Dr. Collins, a representative from the coroner’s office, stood at the site of Harry Stanford’s grave, watching four employees of the cemetery raise his coffin. Perry Winger waited off to the side.

When the coffin reached ground level, the foreman turned to the group. “What do you want us to do now?”

“Open it, please,” Fitzgerald said. He turned to Perry Winger. “How long will this take?”

“No more than a minute. I’ll just get a quick skin sample.”

“All right,” Fitzgerald said. He nodded to the foreman. “Go ahead.”

The foreman and his assistants began to unseal the coffin.

“I don’t want to see this,” Kendall said. “Do we have to?”

“Yes!” Woody told her. “We really do.”

They all watched, fascinated, as the lid of the coffin was slowly removed and pushed to one side. They stood there, staring down.

“Oh, my God!” Kendall exclaimed.

The coffin was empty.

B
ack at Rose Hill, Tyler had just gotten off the phone. “Fitzgerald says there won’t be any media leaks. The cemetery certainly doesn’t want that kind of bad publicity. The coroner has ordered Dr. Collins to keep his mouth shut, and Perry Winger can be trusted not to talk.”

Woody wasn’t paying any attention. “I don’t know how the bitch did it!” he said. “But she isn’t going to get away with it!” He glared at the others. “I suppose you don’t think she arranged it?”

Tyler said slowly, “I’m afraid I have to agree with you, Woody. No one else possibly could have had a reason for doing this. The woman is clever and resourceful, and she’s obviously not working alone. I’m not sure exactly what we’re up against.”

“What are we going to do now?” Kendall asked.

Tyler shrugged. “Frankly, I don’t know. I wish I did. I’m sure she plans to go to court to contest the will.”

“Does she have a chance of winning?” Peggy asked timidly.

“I’m afraid she does. She’s very persuasive. She had some of us convinced.”

“There must be
something
we can do,” Marc exclaimed. “What about bringing the police in on this?”

“Fitzgerald says they’re already looking into the disappearance of the body, and they’ve come to a dead end. No pun intended,” Tyler said. “What’s more, the police want this kept quiet, or they’ll have every weirdo in town turning up a body.”

“We can ask them to investigate this phony!”

Tyler shook his head. “This is not a police matter. It’s a private—” He stopped for a moment, then said thoughtfully, “You know…”

“What?”

“We
could
hire a private investigator to try to expose her.”

“That’s not a bad idea. Do you know one?”

“No, not locally. But we could ask Fitzgerald to find someone. Or…” He hesitated. “I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard about a private detective the district attorney in Chicago uses a great deal. He has an excellent reputation.”

Marc spoke up. “Why don’t we find out if we can hire him?”

Tyler looked around. “That’s up to the rest of you.”

“What can we lose?” Kendall asked.

“He could be expensive,” Tyler warned.

Woody snorted. “Expensive? We’re talking about millions of dollars.”

Tyler nodded. “Of course. You’re right.”

“What’s his name?”

Tyler frowned. “I can’t remember. Simpson…Simmons…No, that’s not it. It sounds something like that. I can call the district attorney’s office in Chicago.”

The group watched as Tyler picked up the telephone on the console and dialed a number. Two minutes later, he was speaking to an assistant district attorney. “This is Judge Tyler Stanford. I understand that your office retains a private detective from time to time who does excellent work for you. His name is something like Simmons or—”

The voice on the other end said, “Oh, you must mean Frank
Timmons.”

“Timmons! Yes, that’s it.” Tyler looked at the others and smiled. “I wonder if you could give me his telephone number so I can contact him directly?”

After he wrote down the telephone number, Tyler replaced the receiver.

He turned to the group, and said, “Well, then, if we all agree, I’ll try to reach him.”

Everyone nodded.

The following afternoon, Clark came into the drawing room, where the group was waiting. “Mr. Timmons is here.”

He was a man in his forties, with a pale complexion and the solid build of a boxer. He had a broken nose and bright, inquisitive eyes. He looked from Tyler to Marc to Woody, questioningly. “Judge Stanford?”

Tyler nodded. “I’m Judge Stanford.”

“Frank Timmons,” he said.

“Please have a seat, Mr. Timmons.”

“Thank you.” He sat down. “You’re the one who telephoned, right?”

“Yes.”

“To be honest, I don’t know what I can do for you. I don’t have any official connections here.”

“This is purely unofficial,” Tyler assured him. “We merely want to trace the background of a young woman.”

“You told me on the phone she claims to be your half sister, and there’s no way of running a DNA test.”

“That’s right,” Woody said.

He looked at the group. “And you don’t believe she’s your half sister?”

There was a moment’s hesitation.

“We don’t,” Tyler told him. “On the other hand, it’s just possible that she is telling the truth. What we want to hire you to do is provide irrefutable evidence that she is either genuine or a fraud.”

“Fair enough. It will cost you a thousand dollars a day and expenses.”

Tyler said, “A
thousand
…?”

“We’ll pay it.” Woody cut in.

“I’ll need all the information you have on this woman.”

Kendall said, “There doesn’t seem to be very much.”

Tyler spoke up. “She has no proof of any kind. She came in with a lot of stories that she says her mother told her about our childhood, and—”

He held up a hand. “Hold it. Who was her mother?”

“Her
purported
mother was a governess we had as children named Rosemary Nelson.”

“What happened to her?”

They looked at one another uncomfortably.

Woody spoke up. “She had an affair with our father and got pregnant. She ran away and had a baby girl.” He shrugged. “She disappeared.”

“I see. And this woman claims to be her child?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s not a lot to go on.” He sat there, thinking. Finally, he looked up. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”

“That’s all we ask,” Tyler said.

The first move he made was to go to the Boston Public Library and read all the microfiche about the twenty-six-year-old scandal involving Harry Stanford, the governess, and Mrs. Stanford’s suicide. There was enough material for a novel.

His next step was to visit Simon Fitzgerald.

“My name is Frank Timmons. I’m—”

“I know who you are, Mr. Timmons. Judge Stanford asked me to cooperate with you. What can I do for you?”

“I want to trace Harry Stanford’s illegitimate daughter. She’d be about twenty-six, right?”

“Yes. She was born August 9, 1969, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her mother named her Julia.” He shrugged. “They disappeared. I’m afraid that’s all the information we have.”

“It’s a beginning,” he said. “It’s a beginning.”

Mrs. Dougherty, the superintendent at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Milwaukee, was a gray-haired woman in her sixties.

“Yes, of course, I remember,” she said. “How could I ever forget it? There was a terrible scandal. There were stories in all the newspapers. The reporters here found out who she was, and they wouldn’t leave the poor girl alone.”

“Where did she go when she and the baby left here?”

“I don’t know. She left no forwarding address.”

“Did she pay her bill in full before she left, Mrs. Dougherty?”

“As a matter of fact…she didn’t.”

“How do you happen to remember that?”

“Because it was so sad. I remember she sat in that very chair you’re sitting in, and she told me that she could pay only part of her bill, but she promised to send me the money for the rest of it. Well, that was against hospital rules, of course, but I felt so sorry for her, she was so ill when she left here, and I said yes.”

“And did she send you the rest of the money?”

“She certainly did. About two months later. Now I recall. She had gotten a job at some secretarial service.”

“You wouldn’t happen to remember where that was, would you?”

“No. Goodness, that was about twenty-five years ago, Mr. Timmons.”

“Mrs. Dougherty, do you keep all your patients’ records on file?”

“Of course.” She looked up at him. “Do you want me to go through the records?”

He smiled pleasantly. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Will it help Rosemary?”

“It could mean a great deal to her.”

“If you’ll excuse me.” Mrs. Dougherty left the office.

She returned fifteen minutes later, holding a paper in her hand. “Here it is. Rosemary Nelson. The return address is The Elite Typing Service. Omaha, Nebraska.”

The Elite Typing Service was run by a Mr. Otto Broderick, a man in his sixties.

“We hire so many temporary employees.” He protested. “How do you expect me to remember someone who worked here that long ago?”

“This was a rather special case. She was a single woman in her late twenties, in poor health. She had just had a baby and—”

“Rosemary!”

“That’s right. Why do you remember her?”

“Well, I like to associate things, Mr. Timmons. Do you know what mnemonics is?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s what I use. I associate words. There was a movie out called
Rosemary’s Baby
. So when Rosemary came in and told me she had a baby, I put the two things together and…”

“How long was Rosemary Nelson with you?”

“Oh, about a year, I guess. Then the press found out who she was, somehow, and they wouldn’t leave her alone. She
left town in the middle of the night to get away from them.”

“Mr. Broderick, do you have any idea where Rosemary Nelson went when she left here?”

“Florida, I think. She wanted a warmer climate. I recommended her to an agency I knew there.”

“May I have the name of that agency?”

“Certainly. It’s the Gale Agency. I can remember it because I associate it with the big storms they have down in Florida every year.”

Ten days after his meeting with the Stanford family, he returned to Boston. He had telephoned ahead, and the family was waiting for him. They were seated in a semicircle, facing him as he entered the drawing room at Rose Hill.

“You said you had some news for us, Mr. Timmons,” Tyler said.

“That’s right.” He opened a briefcase and pulled out some papers. “This has been a most interesting case,” he said. “When I began—”

“Cut to the chase,” Woody said impatiently. “Is she a fraud or not?”

He looked up. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Stanford, I would like to present this in my own way.”

Tyler gave Woody a warning look. “That’s fair enough. Please go ahead.”

They watched him consult his notes. “The Stanford governess, Rosemary Nelson, had a female child sired by Harry Stanford. She and the child went to Omaha, Nebraska,
where she went to work for The Elite Typing Service. Her employer told me that she had difficulty with the weather.”

“Next, I traced her and her daughter to Florida, where she worked for the Gale Agency. They moved around a great deal. I followed the trail to San Francisco, where they were living up to ten years ago. That was the end of the trail. After that, they disappeared.” He looked up.

“That’s
it
, Timmons?” Woody demanded. “You lost the trail ten years ago?”

“No, that is
not
it.” He reached into his briefcase and took out another paper. “The daughter, Julia, applied for a driver’s license when she was seventeen.”

“What good is that?” Marc asked.

“In the state of California, drivers are required to have their fingerprints taken.” He held up a card. “These are the real Julia Stanford’s fingerprints.”

Tyler said, excitedly, “I see! If they match—”

Woody interrupted. “Then she would really be our sister.”

He nodded. “That’s right. I brought a portable fingerprint kit with me, in case you want to check her out now. Is she here?”

Tyler said, “She’s at a local hotel. I’ve been talking to her every morning, trying to persuade her to stay here until we get this resolved.”

“We’ve got her!” Woody said. “Let’s get over there!”

Half an hour later, the group was entering a hotel room at the Tremont House. As they walked in, she was packing a suitcase.

“Where are you going?” Kendall asked.

She turned to face them. “Home. It was a mistake for me to come here in the first place.”

Tyler said, “You can’t blame us for…?”

She turned on him, furious. “Ever since I arrived, I’ve been met with nothing but suspicion. You think I came here to take some money away from you. Well, I didn’t. I came because I wanted to find my family. I…Never mind.” She returned to her packing.

Tyler said, “This is Frank Timmons. He’s a private detective.”

She looked up. “Now what? Am I being arrested?”

“No, ma’am. Julia Stanford obtained a driver’s license in San Francisco when she was seventeen years old.”

She stopped. “That’s right, I did. Is that against the law?”

“No, ma’am. The point is—”

“The point is”—Tyler interrupted—“that Julia Stanford’s fingerprints are on that license.”

She looked at them. “I don’t understand. What…?”

Woody spoke up. “We want to check them against your fingerprints.”

Her lips tightened. “No! I won’t allow it!”

“Are you saying that you won’t let us take your fingerprints?”

“That’s right.”

“Why not?” Marc asked.

Her body was rigid. “Because all of you make me feel like
I’m some kind of criminal. Well, I’ve had enough! I want you to leave me alone.”

Kendall said gently, “This is your chance to prove who you really are. We’ve been as upset by all this as you have. We would like to settle it.”

She stood there, looking into their faces, one by one. Finally, she said wearily, “All right. Let’s get this over with.”

“Good.”

“Mr. Timmons…,” Tyler said.

“Right.” He took out a small fingerprint kit and set it up on the table. He opened the ink pad. “Now, if you’ll just step over here, please.”

The others watched as she walked over to the table. He picked up her hand and, one by one, pressed her fingertips onto the pad. Next, he pressed them onto a piece of white paper. “There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He placed the license bureau’s card next to the fresh fingerprints.

The group walked over to the table and looked down at the two sets of prints.

They were identical.

Woody was the first to speak. “They’re…the…same.”

Kendall was looking at her with a mixture of feelings. “You really are our sister, aren’t you?”

She was smiling through her tears. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Everybody was suddenly talking at once.