The Mother's Day Murder (19 page)

“They brought him to me, yes. I held him. He was real cute, had a lot of dark hair. He was probably the best looking of all my children.”

“Who brought you the papers to sign?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess it was the lawyer or someone who worked for the lawyer.”

“A woman?”

“It could’ve been a woman.”

“You remember her name?”

“No.”

“Mrs. DelBello?”

She thought about it. “I don’t remember that name.”

“Would you give me your lawyer’s name?”

She looked at me, then away. “No, I won’t give you his name. I don’t want to answer any more questions. And I don’t want you talking to people about this. I want my privacy. Jerry Houlihan should’ve known better. It wasn’t anybody’s business what happened to me.”

“I know and you’re right. Thank you very much. I appreciate your help.”

I got in the car and drove away as fast as I could. I was aware that Barbara Phillips was watching from the front window, the curtain pulled back as I started the motor. I felt a little ill. I was inquiring into things I had no right to know and I was hurting the people I was talking to, just by asking my questions. Maybe Barbara Phillips had really given birth to a girl and had decided to lie to me just to screw up my facts. I wouldn’t blame her. I knew she would now think about this, whether she wanted to or not, this unhappy chapter of her past that she had believed was set aside.

I had hurt Hope McHugh, too, and I felt terrible about it. When Joseph heard about my inquisition of her sister, she would be justifiably angry, even if she understood my motives.

At a traffic light I tried to think of what else there was to accomplish before I went home. I couldn’t think of anything so on the green I found my way to the airport, returned the car, and got myself on the next plane to New York.

So what had I accomplished in these two days? I asked myself as I flew east. I had two possible suspects for the mother of Randy Collins: Hope McHugh who
swore she had never been pregnant, and Barbara Phillips who swore she had given birth to a boy. As I sat watching the heavens go by, I reviewed my conversation with Barbara Phillips. So much of what she had said might be untrue. I had stupidly tipped my hand by asking about the baby as though I knew it was a girl and she might have just decided to foul me up, to confuse me in order to get rid of me. It hadn’t occurred to me until now, but what if she thought I was an agent for the child? Maybe I was trying to set up a meeting between them, a meeting that the child wanted and that she wanted no part in. I could see now I had handled it very badly. But that meant she might well be Randy’s natural mother. The dates worked out and that was the most important thing, not to mention the fact that she had actually given birth. But I could think of no way to prove she was the mother unless a court ordered a blood test.

Thinking further, I had to wonder if there was any way she could have been involved in Randy’s death, and I could see none. She was a wife and the mother of teenagers. To imagine her in Oakwood last Sunday morning with a gun was beyond the limits of my imagination.

But if she was the mother, Joseph wasn’t, and that was what I was out to prove. Eventually, it all put me to sleep.

20

Jack and I arrived home at about the same time. Eddie’s absolute glee at seeing me raised my spirits to the roof. I think my greatest reservation about leaving a small child is that you can’t fully explain that you will return, that he shouldn’t worry, that Mommy will absolutely come back. I spent a lot of time with him that evening, happy that the weekend was upon us and I would be around for the next two days. When he was finally exhausted, I took him upstairs and put him to bed.

“You’re getting too big for a crib, Eddie,” I said. “Would you like a bed to sleep in?”

“Wanna bed.”

“Let’s go shopping for a bed soon. Maybe we can get it for your next birthday.”

He was too tired to respond. I kissed him and put a light blanket on him. He was asleep before I left the room.

“Lots going on,” Jack said. He had gone out and bought a pizza with everything possible on it, since neither one of us was up to cooking dinner. It smelled wonderful and we sat down to eat it, Jack sprinkling hot pepper flakes on his, as though the pepperoni wasn’t quite spicy enough for him.

“You first, then. Almost everything I have is a maybe.”

“The bad news is Joe Fox is getting antsy. It’s almost a week since Randy Collins was murdered and he’s got less than you have. He’s pushing hard for Sister Joseph to take a DNA test—give blood for it—and Arnold will have none of it.”

“I’m with Arnold. If Joseph says she’s not Randy’s natural mother, she isn’t.”

“Most of the world doesn’t share your assurance, dear wife.”

I leaned over and gave him a kiss.

“Yech,” he said. “Olive oil and mozzarella all over my face.”

“Keep talking.”

“And there’s the question of where Sister Joseph was last Sunday morning. I told you, Father Kramer says she wasn’t at mass.”

“Then she was somewhere else at mass.”

“I’m sure any sane judge in New York State will accept your opinion as fact.”

“Jack, I don’t think people should have to expose their private lives because a cop can’t find a killer.”

“Spoken like a true libertarian, but not very realistic. I have a feeling if she doesn’t acquiesce in the next couple of days, Fox is going to get a court order for a blood sample.”

“Arnold will explode,” I said.

“Maybe, but I think the court will grant it.”

I chewed up the last of my pizza slice and took a long drink of Coke, into which I had squeezed a wedge of lemon. “You said that was the bad news. What’s the good news?”

“The good news is that you’re home.”

My heart sank. “That’s it?”

“Hey, I’m walking on air. So’s Eddie. You’re home. What could be better?”

“What am I going to do?” I said. “All I have is faint possibilities that someone else may have given birth to Randy. No admissions. Both women deny it emphatically.”

“Start from the beginning.”

I did. I went over the whole twenty-four-hours-plus that I spent in Ohio: including the visit to Mrs. DelBello; then to Abraham Fine at the insurance office; to Joseph’s sisters, Betty McCall and Hope McHugh; and then to Little B.

“Sounds interesting, her relationship with her cousin.”

“I have a close relationship with a first cousin, too.”

“Not exactly the same thing.”

“It was obviously a close family,” I said. “The sisters are close and the cousin was close. When B.G. went to the hospital, Joseph’s mother took in his young son.”

“So you’ve ruled out Betty McCall.”

“She was married and had two children the year that Joseph was home.”

“Very unlikely she gave birth and no one noticed it.”

“Very.”

“But the other sister is a possible.”

“Definitely, which doesn’t mean she’s the one. Her roommate swears she wasn’t pregnant.”

“And who else?”

I told him about my second visit to Fine and Houlihan just this morning and the three leads Jerry Houlihan had given me. The last thing on my list was my visit to Barbara Phillips.

“Let me get this straight,” Jack said. “This is a woman
who worked in the insurance office at the same time as Sister Joseph.”

“Right.”

“And while she was working there—this other woman—she got pregnant and left to have the baby.”

“Right.”

“Looks good to me.”

“She says she had a boy.”

“That’s a detail. I’ll bet she also told you she didn’t use the adoption agency that Randy came from.”

“She said she had a lawyer.”

“You get the name?”

“She wouldn’t give it to me.”

“It’s a nice circumstantial case. She mention the hospital she gave birth in?”

“She did before I started digging. It’s the same hospital.”

“Lotta action in that hospital,” Jack said. “Chris, you looked at these women. Any of them look like they could be related to Randy?”

“If you mean was one of them an older version of Randy, the answer is no. They all have medium to light coloring. Barbara Phillips had a washed-out look to her. Her hair seemed faded and there were strands of gray. Hope McHugh is probably the lightest of the bunch. Randy was fair. All of them are on the slim side. Barbara Phillips could have looked inside Joseph’s handbag when Joseph was in someone’s office and gotten a look at her driver’s license, birthdate, that kind of thing. And Hope was living at home most of the year that Joseph was there. So the same goes for her.” I took a deep breath. “It’s hard when you sit across from someone to imagine her being so duplicitous.”

“That’s why we try to keep our distance, figuratively, at least. The problem is, it’s so circumstantial, I don’t see a judge requiring either of those women to submit to a blood test, especially if Sister Joseph doesn’t submit to one.”

“So there we are. And pushing it one step further, I don’t see either of those women in Ohio flying to New York, buying a gun, coming to Oakwood, and shooting Randy. It’s almost silly when you think about it.”

“Then maybe there’s no connection between who Randy’s mother is and who killed her.”

“That’s what I think.”

“Unless Sister Joseph is the mother.”

“She isn’t,” I said firmly.

There was a little pizza left to freeze for another day and I wrapped it in foil while Jack did the dishes. “Questions still unanswered,” I said. “Did Randy steal our ax? Did she chop down the Greiners’ tree? If she did, why on earth did she? And if she did, is it possible that someone in the Greiners’ house saw her do it and came out mad and shot her?”

“It’s possible,” Jack said easily. “But where did the killer get the gun?”

“I guess he could have stolen it from Mr. Kovak.”

“That makes sense.”

“Go prove it,” I said. “Mr. Kovak says the gun was stolen but there’s no record that he reported it. His wife used to leave the back door open while she was out and lots of people knew it, including the Greiners. One of the Greiner kids could have gone in and taken it. But I’m just ranting and raving. I don’t want to find out that a killer lives on our street, still I desperately want to find the killer for Joseph’s sake.”

“What you’ve got to do now is let Sister Joseph know what you’ve got and let her take it from there. I’d bet she won’t be too keen on picking her sister as Randy’s mother, but she has to be told what you know.”

“There are two more people I’d like to talk to. I don’t look forward to this, but maybe something will come out of it.”

“Who’s that?”

“Randy’s parents.”

“Not a bad idea.”

“Maybe they know something about her that will turn me in a new direction.”

“I’ll call Joe Fox and get their address. Better still, why don’t we call Arnold? I’d rather deal with him about this than Joe Fox.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more.”

I called Joseph first. Like the other nuns, she usually goes to bed fairly early, although her work often keeps her up later. She sounded unruffled, exactly like herself, which made me feel good. She told me about her meeting with Arnold this morning, the things they had discussed, none of which had anything to do with Randy Collins.

“I couldn’t ask for a better advocate,” she said. “He remembers everything I’ve said, asks all the right questions, knows the law, and is very comforting.”

“That’s all true, but we’ve got to find out who killed Randy or you’re going to have a difficult time.”

“I know that. And I’ve heard from my sister Hope.”

“She wasn’t very happy,” I said.

“I told her you had to ask her all those questions and
not to worry about it. I appreciate your not mentioning the reasons for your asking.”

“I wouldn’t do that. It’s up to you to tell people what you want them to know. Do you recall that Hope lived in an apartment for part of the year that you were back home?”

“She mentioned that you asked about that. Are you thinking she gave birth to Randy during the time she lived there?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“It didn’t happen, Chris. My poor Hope. She wanted so much to have a baby of her own and they gave her a hysterectomy. You can’t imagine how sad that made her, made all of us. If she had had a child, she would never have given it away.”

“There’s another candidate,” I said. “A woman who worked at Fine and Houlihan when you were there.”

“You think one of those people could have used my name?”

“Why not? Who would ever know? She looks in your bag and finds your Social Security number, your driver’s license number, your birthday.”

“That’s a very interesting idea. There was a pregnant woman at that office.”

“Barbara Sawyer,” I said.

“Barbara, yes. And she wasn’t married. I’m sure she knew I was a nun. They all knew.”

“The problem is, I don’t see any way of getting her to give a blood specimen to check it out.”

“Yes, that would be quite awkward. Is she married?”

“Yes, and has two children.”

“Did she admit she’d had a child that year?”

“She said it was a boy, but I asked the question badly. She gave birth at Good Samaritan.”

“I think we should put this in Arnold’s capable hands.”

“I’m going to call him, Joseph. I need some information from him. Do you want me to tell him everything I learned?”

“Please do.”

“You sound very good,” I said.

“I have no reason not to feel good. I’m innocent of everything and I have an excellent lawyer. Not to mention my personal private investigator.”

“I’ll keep you posted,” I said.

“So, you’ve been traveling.” Arnold sounded elated.

“I couldn’t see any way to do it from home and the first person I wanted to talk to said it would be easier for her if I came to her house.”

“Hey, it’s always easier if someone gets on a plane and flies to where you are. Very generous of you.”

“I’ve learned a lot, Arnold.”

“What a surprise. Let me in on it.”

I went through it all again, listening to his approving comments and answering his occasional questions.