Sins and Needles (18 page)

Because he was eager to get back into her good graces, he found a meeting starting in half an hour and so was gone when someone knocked. Lucille put her knitting down and opened the door to find a tall, stocky man with dark hair and a collar squeezed tight by a dark blue tie. He had a small leather folder in his hand that he flipped open to show a gold badge and photo ID. She felt her heart close in a grip as tight as his collar.

“Y-yes?” she faltered.

“My name is Sergeant Mitchell Rice, Orono Police. May I come in?”

“Is this about Bobby Lee?”

“Who is Bobby Lee?”

The look of relief on her face surprised him.

“I thought something had happened to my husband,” she explained. “We're not used to the roads up here, all curving around that big lake—and the curves hidden by big ol' trees.”

He smiled. “I have friends who come up here from Arizona, and they say it's like being suffocated in greenery up here.”

She smiled back. “Really? I like it. It feels right to me. My husband is more like your friends, I guess. Come in,” she added, stepping back.

As he did, he glanced around the small room, which featured walls and furniture in shades of tan with oxblood trim on the window frames. “Sad, isn't it?” she said. “But rents up here are scary.”

“It gets better the farther from the cities you get,” he said.

“Well, we needed to be here, so here's where we are.”

“Will your husband be back soon?”

“In an hour or so. He's…at a meeting in Wayzata.”

He looked curious about her hesitation, but she held her tongue. Then he said, “I want to talk to you about Edyth Hanraty, Jan Henderson, and Susan McConnell.”

She had gathered that when he said Orono—that was where Edyth had lived. “All right. Won't you sit down? Would you like something to drink? We have Coke in several flavors.”

“No, but thank you.”

“That chair over there isn't too awful.” She pointed to one upholstered in a pale tan fabric, then went to the loveseat—the room was too small for a regular couch. It was upholstered in a tan buzz-cut fabric, with random curving lines carved into the nap. It made the backs of her legs itch, so she tucked one leg under her.

“What do you want to ask me?” she inquired.

“Let me get some basic information first,” he said, and pulled out his notebook, in which he wrote down her full name, date of birth, Dallas address, occupation.

“Why are you asking me all this?”

“Standard procedure.”

She doubted that but didn't want to object. “You know Edyth Hanraty was murdered?” he asked.

“Yes, but what does that have to do with me?”

“I have information that you believe you are an heir to the Hanraty estate under the terms of her will.”

“Where did you hear that?” she asked sharply.

“So it's not true?”

“Well, I'm not sure whether or not I'm an heir. I don't know much about that part of things. I came up here—my husband and I came up here together—because I'm trying to find my birth parents. I'm adopted, you see. I saw Jan Henderson at a medical conference and, well, people thought we were twins or something, because we look so much alike, and I went home and started up my computer. The Internet is just wonderful for things like that. I didn't want to say anything until I was sure, but we had some vacation coming, and so we came here. And Jan and I met at a knitting class, and it's weird how many things we have in common, it's like, you know, ‘twins separated at birth,' except we aren't twins, of course. I didn't know anything about her aunt—her great-aunt, isn't it?—until she told me. And I was
so shocked
when Jan said she'd been murdered, I just don't understand how someone could do that! But now I don't know what to do. I mean, should I just withdraw from this whole thing and go home, or what?”

Sergeant Rice rubbed his nose hard to hide a smile.

“I'm telling you the
truth
!” she said.

“I believe you,” he said sincerely. Now he was smiling openly.

“Well, then what's got you so tickled?”

“Ma'am, I understand you are telling people you think you are Ms. Henderson's sister.”

“I do—and so what?”

“Well, you might want to call me as a witness if anyone doubts your claim.”

Lucille couldn't think what to make of that. “Why?”

“Because both you and Ms. Henderson tend to run off at the mouth when you're feeling stressed.”

“Jan does that, too?” Lucille smiled broadly, she couldn't help it. “You know, I just may ask you to be a witness,” she said.

He said, “Now, if I may continue: what is your husband's full legal name?”

“Robert Lee Jones.”

She answered the same set of questions about Bobby Lee that Rice had asked about her. He was fifty-three, his address and phone were the same as hers, he was employed full-time as a nurse.

“He's an RN?” Sergeant Rice asked.

“Yes,” she nodded. “A surgical nurse.”

He looked impressed and made a note. “Good for him! Does he like the work?”

“Yes. It's stressful, but he really likes the way the surgeons rely on him.”

“You said you're a lab tech. What kind of lab?”

“It's called Advent Medical Laboratories. We do all kinds of medical tests.”

“Would that include DNA?”

“Oh, yes. We get samples from all over the country.”

“Do you perform some of these DNA tests yourself?”

Lucille smiled. She knew where he was going now. “Yes, I do.”

“Did you take, without her permission, a hairbrush from Jan Henderson?”

Put that way, it didn't sound as much like a lark as she liked to think it was. “Yes,” she admitted.

“Did you subsequently perform or have performed a DNA test on some of the hair from that brush?”

“Yes. I had it performed by a friend at another lab.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I didn't want my employer to know about it.”

“Why not?”

Worse and worse. Lucille almost broke into tears, but she didn't, because this man didn't look like the type to be moved by them. So she took a deep breath and told the truth. “Because I couldn't afford to pay for the test. It's an expensive one. My friend owed me a favor; I've done a couple of tests for her.”

Kindly, he didn't flinch or frown. “What was the result of that test your friend performed?” he asked.

“First, there was nothing to show we couldn't be sisters. Second, there was a translocation of two genes that matched identically a translocation I have. That doesn't prove we're sisters—you can't do that with DNA. But one result of the particular translocation we share is a problem carrying babies to term. Both she and I had that problem—and so did her mother and grandmother. So this is not a new translocation—it's something handed down several generations. It's not perfect proof, but it's pretty indicative.”

“But a test of Mrs. McConnell could prove she's your mother.”

“Yes.”

“Have you asked her to submit to a test?”

“Not yet. Jan said she would talk to her.”

He made another note. “Did you ever meet Edyth Hanraty?”

“No.”

“Did you try?”

“No. By the time I found out about her, she was…dead.”

“Did you murder her?”

Even though she half-expected the question, it shocked her. “No!”

He made a lengthy note, then in an abrupt segue, he asked, “Do you knit?”

She said “yes” before she noticed he was looking at the ball of yarn on the cushion beside her. What, did he think Bobby Lee was a knitter? That sent a whole cascade of possibilities tumbling down the corridors of her mind.

“Have you ever knitted with very thin needles?”

Oh,
that
. She said, too quickly, “I tried it one time, but a few minutes of trying told me I don't have the eyes for it. That was four or five years ago, and I don't even know what I did with the needles.” The laugh she forced after that statement sounded even more phony, so to steady her nerves, she resorted to good manners. “Are you sure I can't get you a Coke or something?”

“No, thank you.” He again consulted his notebook. “How did you find out the name of this mysterious ‘twin' at the medical conference?”

“Her name tag. We all wore name tags.”

“I thought you were afraid to approach her.”

“I didn't have to come all that close. They gave us these huge tags in big square holders we wore around our necks on elastic cords. Big black lettering, name and hometown, an inch high.”

He nodded and made a note. “How did you find out you were adopted?”

“I didn't know until very recently, when my mother died. I'd lost my father ten years earlier, so when my mother died, we had to go through her papers and things, get the house ready to sell and all, and I found some documents that revealed the adoption. I was born in St. Paul—or rather, I was abandoned at a hospital in St. Paul by my birth mother. That was in 1959, when it was still a shameful thing to have a baby out of wedlock. Or maybe she died, and my father couldn't care for me, so he brought me to the hospital. Whoever did it didn't leave a name. So when I learned about this woman from Minnesota who looked a whole lot like me, well, naturally I was curious.”

“So curious you stole her hairbrush and had a DNA test performed on it.”

She nodded. “That's right. That's not weird when you think about it. You've heard the saying, ‘when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail'?”

He nodded.

“So I know DNA. Nowadays, when someone wants to know for sure if he's the daddy, the first thing they do is run a DNA test. So I find out I'm adopted, and I see someone who looks a lot like me, I want to walk up and run a swab around the inside of her mouth. I couldn't do that, so I took her hairbrush.”

“You were very determined to do the test.”

“Yes, it was like God had given me this great big hint, and I wasn't going to just ignore it.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Sure. Oh, and I think the fact that she's in the medical field like I am encouraged me to think she's related to me. That sort of thing runs in families, too.”

“Too?”

“Like being in law enforcement. We—my husband and I—know this guy, Lenny Marx. He's a cop in Houston, and his dad's a state trooper, and his brother's a deputy down at the jail. His granddad was a Texas Ranger, and his great-grandfather was sheriff of Kaufman County. This guy says that's really common.”

“He's right. It is.”

“Well, Jan's grandfather was a doctor, one of her sons is taking pre-med courses, and one of her nieces wants to be a nurse. No one in my adopted family was into medicine, but it's all I ever wanted to do, and my daughter is going to be a veterinarian.”

“And your husband is a nurse.”

“Like calling to like.” Lucille nodded. “Jan married a doctor.”

“So she did.” He checked something in his notebook. “Can you tell me where you were late afternoon and evening the Saturday before last? That would be June twenty-second.”

Lucille paused to think. “I think we went out to dinner at that Chinese restaurant on Water Street—the Big Wok or something like that. Then we came back here and watched television before we went to bed.”

He wrote that down and closed his notebook. “Well, I guess that's all for now. Thank you, and good afternoon.”

Lucille hurried around him to open the door. “I hope you don't suspect me.”

“Of what?” said her husband, caught in the act of reaching for the doorknob. He saw Sergeant Rice and took a step back. “Who are you?” he asked sharply.

“It's Detective Sergeant Mitchell Rice, Orono Police,” said Lucille, before Rice could say anything. She semaphored with her eyebrows at him.

“Oh?” he said, coming forward so Lucille had to step out of his way. “What do you want?” he asked belligerently, ignoring his wife's signals.

“I'm investigating a murder, and I was hoping your wife—or you, now you're here—might be able to help me.” Rice had his ID folder out and open now.

“Well, we can't. We don't know anything about a murder. We're just up here on vacation.”

“Your wife says you came up here to meet and talk with Jan Henderson and to persuade her mother to take a DNA test to see if she's your wife's mother, too.”