The Mother's Day Murder (23 page)

“Joseph, I don’t think you should feel that I need to know any more than you’ve already told me. You’re innocent of both charges. That’s really enough for me.”

“Let me be the judge of what you should know. Some facts may emerge that are going to look rather strange and may point—again—to the wrong person as the mother of Randy Collins.”

“You certainly have my attention.”

“While I have been excluded as a blood relative of Randy, my sister Hope has not. As sisters we should have the same genetic history. Siblings have the same set of parents while mothers and their children do not.”

“I understand that. When cancer patients require matching bone marrow, they go to siblings rather than parents or children.”

“Hope and I are not blood sisters.”

“I see.” For a bombshell, it was dropped rather delicately.

“I was adopted as a baby and brought up as a Bailey. I am a Bailey. I have never had the least interest in finding my birth mother and I doubt I ever will. When I was old enough to impress my family with the seriousness of my feelings, I said I did not want anyone outside the immediate family to know that I was adopted, that I felt totally part of the family, that I
was
part of the family. I have never told anyone until this minute that I was not born into the Bailey family. Not even Arnold,” she added. “Although I suppose he’ll deduce that now.”

I sat thinking about the implications of what she had just said. When Arnold had told me yesterday that Joseph was excluded as Randy’s mother but Hope was not, I had felt confused. With this new information, yesterday’s facts were no longer confusing. In terms of blood, the two women weren’t related. They had totally different genetic makeup. Nothing in their DNA would be similar.

“Then either of your sisters is still potentially a candidate for Randy’s mother,” I said.

“From a biological point of view, yes, they are potentially
candidates. From the point of view of people that I have known all my life, they aren’t.”

“But Hope hasn’t been excluded.”

“That’s right. And they may not be able to exclude her, even if they can’t say definitively that she is Randy’s mother. And the same would be true, I suppose, if Betty submitted to a test, which I don’t want her to do.”

She stopped and I knew I was meant to draw a conclusion. “There was another sibling,” I said finally. “I forgot.”

“Yes.” She pulled a sheet of paper toward her. There was writing on it, illegible in the upside-down position from which I saw it. “I sat with this phone number you gave me for a long time last night. Numbers are such funny things. At some point in your life your Social Security number becomes engraved in your brain. You could probably wake up after being unconscious for days and be able to repeat it. There are phone numbers I remember from my childhood and others that I forgot as soon as I heard them. How many years ago did we begin to learn zip codes? And why can’t I ever remember anyone’s but my own?” She smiled and looked at the sheet of paper in front of her.

“I was sure I knew this number but I just couldn’t attach it to a person. I went through a box of old papers of mine and couldn’t find an address book that went back twenty years. So I called my sister Betty.”

“It was hers?”

“No. But she recognized it after a minute. She said, ‘Katherine, that was Timmy’s number after he moved out of Mom’s house.’ ”

“Your brother,” I said. “The mother of Randy wasn’t in your family; the father was.”

“It appears that way. As I thought about it last night, it occurred to me that that may have been the real reason he moved out. He may have had a girlfriend that we didn’t know about—I can tell you we knew nothing of Timmy’s girlfriend—and when she became pregnant, he must have gotten the apartment for them to live in.” She thought for a moment. “Or perhaps she already had an apartment and he just moved in with her.”

“And when she decided to give up the baby, she got a phone in your name in that apartment.”

“I can’t tell you that this little story is true, Chris, but it certainly explains the facts we have.”

“It does. I’ve just been chasing down a mother and we come up with a father. I would guess your brother didn’t marry the mother of his child, or they wouldn’t have given her away.”

“I don’t know, but that sounds reasonable. I asked Betty for the last known address or phone number she had for him and this is what she gave me.” She handed me a half sheet of paper with Tim Bailey’s address in Canada on it. “I don’t know if he’s still there. It’s not a new address.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll try to run him down.”

“I wish you would. It certainly explains why we haven’t seen him in so many years. He had to know about this. Had to be the source of the information on me. He’s probably ashamed of what he did. I’d just like to see him again.”

I folded the paper and tucked it in my bag. “What I’m thinking is that neither your brother nor Randy’s birth mother could have had anything to do with her death. Randy was trying to figure out how to approach you.
I’m sure she had no idea that someone had stolen your identity.”

“You’re right. And that means we still don’t know who killed Randy.”

“Or why.”

There was a knock on the door and our lunch trays were delivered. I was glad of the break. What I had to ask Joseph next made me feel uncomfortable.

We talked about other things as we ate. Harold, the groundsman, was being obstreperous about something, which was par for Harold. Registration at the college was up for September’s class, a happy occurrence. Joseph had done some traveling in the past year to encourage young women to apply and it had paid off. And the nuns in the Villa had drawn a diagram of their proposed vegetable garden and couldn’t wait to plant their tomato and eggplant seedlings.

When we finished and Joseph had poured coffee and we had eaten our dessert, I decided the time had come. “Jack and I have been talking,” I said. “We were both quite sure that whoever Randy’s mother was, she wasn’t responsible for Randy’s death. Jack believes that Randy came into your office one night when everyone was asleep and spent a lot of time going through your files.” I glanced over to the large metal cabinets she kept along the wall behind where I was sitting.

“That’s possible. I sometimes work late in here but once I go to bed, I don’t come back till after breakfast.”

“And no one else comes in.”

“They have no reason to.”

“When Randy came to our house, she knew I was your friend. Do you think she could have found that out from a file you have with my name on it?”

“I would think she could reasonably deduce it.”

“We think she may have learned information on other people from your files and that the way she handled that information led to her death.”

“It sounds possible. She was a clever girl. She lived in one of our empty dorm rooms and no one knew it. She took a novice’s habit and used it for her own purposes. She stole Tina’s handbag so she could pose as a novice. I’m sure what you’re suggesting would not have been out of the question.”

“I’d like your permission to look through your files while I’m here.” My voice almost gave out as I made my request. It was so preposterous, I didn’t have to listen for the answer.

“You know I can’t do that, Chris. You know that I would never disclose personal information to anyone.”

“I had to ask.”

She smiled. “Just on the chance that you had caught me in a very weak moment.”

“Why do I think you have a good idea who killed Randy Collins?”

“Because you think the answer lies in my files. I would guess it isn’t there.”

“But it might provide an opening,” I said.

“Because of the nature of this murder, I know many of the facts that you usually come to tell me when you need help. So let’s turn things around. Tell me what I don’t know—or what you don’t know, the tantalizing little things that just don’t seem to fit.”

“How Randy got to my house,” I said. “She told me she took the train and then a taxi from the Oakwood station. No cab driver has a record or a memory of driving
her from the station to anywhere near my house. She was dressed like a novice. No driver would forget her.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think it’s possible she walked. It would be a long walk and she would have had to ask directions. But it’s more likely that someone drove her.”

“That sounds right. Especially if no one saw her. She would be hard to forget in the habit.”

“There was no car or taxi outside when I opened the door.”

“She might have waited till it left,” Joseph said. “Or she might have asked to be let off around the corner.”

“And the person who drove her may have come back on Sunday morning and killed her.”

“Why?”

“Because she knew something about him. Because she blackmailed him.”

“It certainly makes sense, especially if Randy’s birth mother knew nothing about any of this.”

“There’s another thing,” I said, stepping into more forbidden territory. “You weren’t at mass at St. Stephen’s that Sunday morning.”

“That’s true. I attended mass somewhere else.”

I didn’t expect her to tell me where or why, but I wanted her to know that this was one of those puzzling little problems, and that I believed there was a connection to Randy in Joseph’s absence from mass at the St. Stephen’s chapel. “I believe you know who the killer is,” I said.

“I don’t know either firsthand or secondhand. I wasn’t there and no one has told me he was the killer or that he knows who the killer was.”

Which didn’t answer the question I had alluded to. “I understand.”

“What do you understand?”

“That you would never break a confidence.”

“And that’s as true for anyone I know as it is for you, Chris.”

“I have to go,” I said. “I want to see if I can locate your brother.”

“Please give him my love,” Katherine Bailey said.

25

I called information for a number for Tim Bailey at the address Joseph had given me. I expected to be told that there was no one by that name at that address, but to my surprise, the operator gave me a number. I waited till late afternoon to dial it.

The voice that answered was that of an older woman. I asked for Timothy Bailey.

“They’re still gone,” she said.

I noticed the “they.” “When do you expect him back?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he has any plans to come back right now.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“I guess he’s still in Alaska.”

“Do you have a number for him there?”

“I must have it somewhere. Is this some kind of emergency?”

“It’s a family matter. It’s important that I speak to him.”

“Just a minute.” The phone was put down with a clatter. She stayed away for about a minute, then picked up again. “Here it is.” She read the number off to me.

“Is he working there?” I asked.

“Well, I certainly hope so.”

“May I ask who you are?”

“I’m his mother-in-law.”

“I see. Thank you. I’ll try to call him at this number.”

“Who are you?”

“This is Chris.”

“OK, Chris. Nice talking to you.”

As I hung up I thought that I had come further than I had expected. I was still a little surprised that Tim Bailey was even listed in the phone book, especially at an address that he obviously hadn’t lived at for some time and had no immediate plans to return to. Eddie was happy working on some toys, so I picked up the phone again and dialed the number in Alaska the woman had given me.

“Hello?” It was a woman’s voice and I heard a dog barking somewhere.

“Mrs. Bailey?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to talk to Tim, please.”

“Just a minute.”

I assumed, since it was after five on the east coast, that it was four hours earlier where I was calling. Still, even in the middle of the afternoon, he was home.

“Hello?” It was a deep voice with a friendly edge, I thought.

“Is this Tim Bailey?”

“Yeah.”

“My name is Chris Bennett. I’m a friend of your sister Katherine.”

“Katherine? What’s wrong? What’s happened?” His voice went from easy to worried.

“Katherine is fine. All your sisters are fine.”

“OK. I’m glad to hear it. How did you find me?”

“Your mother-in-law gave me your number.”

“Is that what she called herself?”

I didn’t respond to the question. “Mr. Bailey, I have a couple of questions I’d like to ask you about some things that happened a number of years ago.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“About twenty years ago, Katherine took a year off from the convent and went back to Ohio.”

“Yeah. When a cousin of ours was sick.”

“That’s right, B.G. I talked to his son recently. During that year, you moved out of your mother’s house.”

“Around that time. I don’t remember exactly. What’s this all about?”

“During that year a woman gave birth in Good Samaritan Hospital to a baby girl that she gave up for adoption.” I paused, but he said nothing. “She used the name Katherine Bailey. I think you may know who that woman was.”

“My sister is a nun. She’s never had any children.”

“I know that. What I’m saying is that another woman used her name to disguise the fact that she had a baby without being married.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. The telephone number the woman gave the adoption agency was the number of the phone in your apartment.”

“How did you dig this up?”

“Do you know who the woman is, Mr. Bailey?”

“Yeah, I know who she is.”

I took an immense breath. Sometimes I can hardly
believe how far I have traveled, metaphorically speaking, from the beginning almost to the end, in this case from a girl in a novice’s habit lying dead on the ground near a chopped-down tree to a man in Alaska who was her father. “And you know she used your sister’s name in the hospital and with the adoption agency?”

“I know. I’m sorry. We were young, she was pregnant, I couldn’t see myself married much less a father, and this seemed a way out for her. No one would ever know and she could go back to her life without her family being upset, all of that stuff.”