The Valentine's Day Murder (13 page)

“Then they weren’t with him when he died?”

“They’d gone home for the night. After they brought him in, he seemed to be improving. The doctor said there was nothing to worry about. Then they got the call.”

“Do you know if they actually saw their son’s body after he died?”

They looked at each other. “I don’t think it was ever mentioned,” she said. “It’s not the sort of thing you ask.”

“Are you trying to say Val didn’t die?” Ivan asked.

“I’m just trying to understand what happened. A thirty-five-year-old man apparently died in a lake accident near Buffalo on Valentine’s Day. His wife knew him as Valentine Krassky. In his safe deposit box was the birth certificate for your nephew. Val obtained it when he applied for a passport a couple of years ago. From what we’ve been able to find out, Val’s early life is a little cloudy. He told his wife his parents were from East Germany and had to return there. According to her, he had no contact with them. No letters came from Germany, no phone calls were made there in the last year. I checked the phone bills myself.”

“There has to be a simple answer for this,” Ivan said. He was clearly perturbed. He got up, tugged at his beard,
walked around the living room. “A child died and is reincarnated in another place? I don’t buy it.”

“I don’t buy that either,” I assured him. “I’m looking for a reasonable explanation.”

“Ivan,” his wife said, “wasn’t there some funny business in the hospital when Val died?”

Ivan stopped and thought for a moment. “There was. It’s so long ago, I’d almost forgotten. Greg threatened to sue.”

“They made a settlement,” she said. “It never got to court.”

“What did they want to sue about?” I asked.

“Some kind of malpractice or malfeasance. They left a child who was improving, and they buried a child who died a few hours later. My sister-in-law probably blames herself to this day that she didn’t stay overnight in Val’s room.”

“But they actually settled? The hospital paid your brother and his wife to keep it out of court?”

“Absolutely,” Ivan said. “You know,” he turned to his wife, “I haven’t thought about that for a long time. Sure they got paid.”

“And they moved,” his wife said. “Irene said she couldn’t bear to live in that house with Val’s room as if he might come back at any time. I have no idea how much they got, but I’m sure they used some of it to buy the new house.”

“Maybe my next stop should be the hospital,” I said.

“I doubt they’ll tell you anything,” Ivan said. “They’ve probably got those records sealed up so tight they can’t find them themselves.”

“Maybe someone there will remember.” I stood. “Could you give me the name of the hospital?” I passed
him my notebook and a pen. “Was the little boy buried in a cemetery around here?”

“Gate of Heaven,” Mrs. Krassky said. “It’s not far.”

I added that in my notebook when Ivan handed it back to me. He had scribbled some driving instructions to the hospital, and I thanked him.

“I hope you’ll let us know what happens. This is very intriguing. You’ve got me wondering about that whole sad episode all over again. If someone in that hospital grabbed that little boy, called Greg, and said he’d died and they needed to take his organs to give to some deserving kid, who would know, if they never saw Val dead?”

“Nothing fits yet, Mrs. Krassky. When—if—I put it together, I’ll let you know.” I wrote down my name, address, and phone number and gave it to them. “Thank you for your help.”

They walked me to the door, and I went down the block to where Jack was standing unthreateningly outside the car, taking in the fresh air and sunshine.

I briefed him on my conversation with the Krasskys as we drove to the hospital.

“Their business office may not be open today,” Jack said. “It’s Saturday, in case you’ve forgotten. You folks who work every day of the week sometimes forget that weekend schedules are different.”

“I know. But just on the chance that someone’s there, let’s try. I can always come back on Monday.”

“Anyway, it’s a nice day for a drive.”

The front desk directed me to a small office where one woman sat at a desk covered with papers. I did my best but it was a fruitless mission. She said she didn’t have
access to old records on the weekend, that a thirty-year-old case was pre-computer, and the paper files would be locked up in the basement, inaccessible until Monday. When she was all finished telling me why she couldn’t possibly help me, she added that probably no one else would help me either, on Monday or any other day, since medical records were private and I was not considered an interested party. Then she smiled and said she had a lot of work to do and would I excuse her.

I found Jack wandering around the ground floor. “Hopeless,” I said more cheerfully than I felt.

“She can’t get them on the weekend in the first place, and you’re not entitled to medical records in the second place. Or vice versa.”

“Were you eavesdropping?”

“Just telling it like it is, sweetheart. Getting information from a hospital without a shield or a court order does not qualify as easy duty.”

“What I need is someone who worked there thirty years ago,” I said, thinking out loud, as we walked to the parking lot.

“You are a digger, honey. If I’d hooked up with you ten years ago, I’d be a captain by now.”

“You’re too young to be a captain.”

“Some guys make it young.”

“Besides, I like you better as a law student.”

“You don’t have much choice. So what’ll it be—dinner in Connecticut or dinner in New York State?”

“Hmm. The unknown verses the known. Tough decision. We’re not in a hurry. Let’s take a leisurely drive back and see what throws itself in our path.”

“If you say so.”

We drove out of the parking lot and turned toward home.

We found a restaurant in Connecticut around six o’clock that had just opened for dinner and had a free table, and we had a truly good meal. When we left a couple of hours later, people were driving up in Mercedes and Jaguars, the women wearing glitter in their hair and on their hands, for dinner at a more fashionable hour. For my part, I was happy to have eaten early, even happier to get home at a reasonable hour. I called Green-willow, the home for retarded adults where my cousin Gene lives, and said I would pick him up the next morning in time for ten o’clock mass. I didn’t invite him to Sunday dinner because the cupboard was bare. I had shopping to do, and Jack had the studying he had put off to accompany me to Connecticut.

At home there was a message from the builder that if the weather was good, he would like to get started on our addition on Monday morning. A few days before Carlotta had called with the news that the two bodies had surfaced, the foundation had been dug three feet deep in our backyard and the concrete slab on which the addition would sit had been poured. Now we were ready for the framing.

While we were both very anxious to get it done, it
meant we would have to vacate our present bedroom, onto which the addition would be attached, and that meant moving furniture. The bed could be disassembled and reassembled fairly easily, but the dresser and chest were heavy pieces. Our friend and neighbor Hal Gross had offered to help when the time came, and it looked as if this was it. I suffered a recurring attack of “do-I-really-want-to-do-this-it is,” but the concrete slab was there and the next step was upon me. I called the Grosses.

Sunday after mass I ducked out of the house at Jack’s request and went down the block to the Grosses’, as Hal came in the other direction to help Jack. Mel was alone, her mother having swooped up the grandchildren and disappeared with them.

“So how are you feeling?” Mel asked as we sat in the family room.

“Had my first morning sickness’s the last three days.”

“Is it bad?”

“Just enough that I know something’s cooking.”

“Something’s definitely cooking.” She smiled her great smile. “Do you think you’ll keep teaching after you give birth?”

“I’d like to. It’s only one morning a week, and I can do all the rest of the work at home. I need to do something with my mind.”

“I know. That’s the hardest part of being a mother, especially when they’re so little. I’ve been thinking about going back to teaching next fall. There may be an opening in the little school.” “Little school” was the common name of the local K-through-four that all our children would eventually attend. “It’s just finding someone I trust that’s the problem.”

“I know,” I said, understanding firsthand for the first
time in my life. “Well, I’m not going to think about it for a while. There’s a pregnant teacher who’s giving birth after the semester starts. She said she’ll finish the fall semester for me. I’ll have the final ready for her.”

“Good planning,” Mel said. “Everything’s under control and you’ll be covered. Jack said you were out of town. What’s new?”

“My favorite question.” I leaned forward and told her the whole story.

“You think that poor little child never died?” Mel said when I had finished telling her about yesterday in Connecticut.

“I don’t know. Nothing holds water at this point. If Val really remembered where he was born and who his parents were, I have to believe he would have gone back to them.”

“At least when he got older.”

“Or called them. Six-year-olds know their phone numbers.”

“Among other things.”

“Carlotta knows what high school her husband went to. We’ll have to try to find out where he lived during those years. If the school can dig up the records, I can talk to neighbors. But I have this eerie feeling that no one will remember him. He seems to have been invisible or transparent.”

“Until Carlotta met him.”

“Or a few years before that, when he went into business with Jake Halpern.”

“Didn’t you say he had two friends who died with him on the lake?”

“They’re weird, too, Mel. The parents of one are dead,
and the other’s father is dead and his mother lives in England and he had nothing to do with her.”

“This is a crazy story.”

“I know.”

“You’ll figure it out,” she said breezily. “You always do.”

Just because I “always do” doesn’t mean I will this time, I thought as I meandered back down the street to our house after Hal’s return home. There seemed to be so many barricades in my way on this one. I had never dealt with a hospital before and had never considered that medical information was private, and rightly so. That meant that trying again tomorrow would be as futile as yesterday’s attempt. Well, I had the care and feeding of the Brooks family to think of, and maybe emptying my head of the mysterious life and death of Valentine Krassky would help in the long run.

What I eventually came to think of as the turning point in the case came that evening in the form of a phone call from Ivan Krassky’s wife.

“Chris?” she said when I answered. “This is Evelyn Krassky, Ivan’s wife. Did the hospital tell you anything yesterday?”

“Nothing at all. The woman in the business office said the records weren’t accessible on Saturday, and they were private besides. The message I got was that it was useless for me to come back.”

“That’s what we thought would happen. We’ve been talking about nothing but that whole dreadful affair since you left.”

“I’m sorry to have stirred it all up again.”

“But I think we may be able to help you.”

“That would be great,” I said.

“We can’t go to my in-laws.”

“I understand that.”

“It’s too painful for them to talk about it, and I wouldn’t want them to think that we were interested in the money or thought that little Val might be alive. But we have a friend who’s a retired surgeon who practiced in that hospital. Ivan called him a little while ago. He said he’ll talk to you.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“He’ll be playing golf tomorrow morning, but if you can be here at eleven, I’ll drive you over to his house.”

“Thank you, Evelyn. I’ll be there.”

I hung up, totally forgetting that builders would appear tomorrow morning to start their work, that they might have questions to ask me, that I might regret not being around. I was all caught up in the great chase.

I’m not quite sure how I got out the door on Monday morning. The builders were as good as their word, arriving before eight while I was out for my daily walk, which Dr. Campbell highly approved of. I had bought some crackers like Carlotta’s to stabilize my queasy morning stomach, and having nibbled at one I left the house with a second one. Down the block Mel joined me.

“I’m terrified all over again,” I said as we got in step. “It’s really happening.”

“You talking about the baby or the addition?”

“The addition. It’s more imminent and may take a bigger toll on me. My life won’t be my own anymore. My bedroom is disappearing, my kitchen won’t be the same, and my life is going to be full of strangers.”

“And boy, are you going to be happy when it’s all done.”

“I know.”

“Have they given you a date?”

“Yes, but everyone says not to believe it. I’m hoping it’s all done by Labor Day.”

“That seems like adequate time. Is that their truck?”

I looked up the block and sure enough, there was a maroon truck heading for my house. “That’s it,” I said. “I should go back.”

“Calm down. You’ve got a competent husband back there who knows how to cope. Finish your walk. It’ll help you deal with your day.”

I took a quick look back and saw the truck pull into our driveway. Then I did what my friend had suggested. I finished my walk.

I arrived at Evelyn Krassky’s house a little before eleven, and she greeted me like an old friend. I had kept a box of crackers on the seat next to me as I drove, and from time to time I would eat half of one. By the time I got there, I was thirsty and the morning discomfort had passed completely.

“The man we’re going to meet is Dr. Lyle Windham. He’s a real dear and I know you’ll love him. Lyle retired several years ago; he’s well into his seventies now. He told us he remembers the case of our nephew very well.”

“Then he’s just the person I want to talk to.”