The Christening Day Murder Read online

  “Hello,” I called. “Anyone there?”

  In answer, I heard a metallic clatter, as though someone were gathering up tools, and then the footsteps of someone running.

  “Who’s there?” I called. But the footsteps were already hurriedly mounting the stairs at the far end of the hall. I kept walking. I passed another doorway, probably the furnace room. I raised my flashlight and saw the stone stairs along the far wall. Lowering the beam, I spotted something on the floor near the interior wall that supported the stairs. It looked like one of the rectangular stones that formed the walls down here. I wondered if it had become loose from thirty years underwater.

  But it didn’t appear that way. There were chunks of mortar on the ground around the stone, as though someone had just dug it out. When I had nearly reached it, my light caught something gold on the floor. I picked it up and pocketed it. Then I sat on my heels and pointed the flashlight into the opening under the stairs.

  I drew in my breath and said, “Oh, no,” and at the same moment I crossed myself.

  Inside the exposed opening, dirty and fleshless, was all that remained of a body that had been underwater for three decades.

  By Lee Harris

  Published by Fawcett Books:

  THE GOOD FRIDAY MURDER

  THE YOM KIPPUR MURDER

  THE CHRISTENING DAY MURDER

  THE ST. PATRICK’S DAY MURDER

  THE CHRISTMAS NIGHT MURDER

  THE THANKSGIVING DAY MURDER

  THE PASSOVER MURDER

  THE VALENTINE’S DAY MURDER

  THE NEW YEAR’S EVE MURDER

  THE LABOR DAY MURDER

  THE FATHER’S DAY MURDER

  THE MOTHER’S DAY MURDER

  THE APRIL FOOLS’ DAY MURDER

  THE HAPPY BIRTHDAY MURDER

  A Fawcett Book

  Published by The Random House Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1993 by Lee Harris

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-90204

  eISBN: 978-0-307-77530-6

  v3.1

  For Paige

  With affection and thanks

  The author wishes to thank

  Ana M. Soler and James L. V. Wegman

  for their invaluable help.

  We are what suns and winds and waters make us

  Regeneration

  WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

  1775–1864

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  1

  It began with a phone call out of the blue, a voice I hadn’t heard for many months. The phone rang as I was clearing up my dinner dishes. I grabbed a towel, rubbing my fingers on it as I went.

  “Kix?” a somewhat breathless voice said in my ear.

  I smiled at the name. People who call me Kix knew me when I was a kid or else were fellow nuns at St. Stephen’s. Everyone else calls me Chris. The breathlessness had given her away. “Maddie? Is that you?”

  “It is and I’ve done it. I’m a mother!” She sounded as though she’d just won an Olympic gold. “It’s wonderful,” my friend said. “He’s big and beautiful and healthy and his name is Richard—we’re calling him Richie. This is better than when we switched the midterms in Miss Ames’s English class and she nearly suspended me.”

  “Oh, Maddie, congratulations. That’s wonderful.” I was laughing now, seeing the skinny, giggly girl she used to be, with lots of hair and lots of trouble up her sleeve.

  “Look, I know I haven’t called for months, but I’ve really dedicated myself to getting through this pregnancy.”

  As she spoke, I recalled her problems of years past, the difficulty conceiving, then later miscarrying. There had been a letter that had frightened me because of its downbeat tone and almost garbled handwriting.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “I’ve been remiss myself.”

  “I see you got away,” my very upbeat friend said. “You’re out now, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I left the order last June.”

  “They told me. I knew it was in the works, but I didn’t know it had happened. Are you living with your aunt?”

  “She died, Maddie. I’m living in the house she left me.”

  “Oh. Gee, I’m sorry. It must have been tough for you. Kix,” she said, and her voice picked up again, “I’m calling to invite you to the christening.”

  “I’d love to come,” I said, delighted at the invitation. “Let me get a pencil.”

  “We’re not having it in the local church, Kix. We’re doing it in upstate New York, about a hundred fifty miles or so from you. If you don’t have a car, we can—”

  “I have one and I’d love to make the trip. What’s the name of the town?”

  “Studsburg. I’ll send you directions. It’s a little spooky. Do you mind spooky things?”

  “Not if you’re there to hold my hand.” Listening to the excited voice had raised my own blood pressure a notch and given me a giddy edge. “Does your mother live there now?”

  “Nobody lives there. Nobody’s lived there for thirty years. Studsburg doesn’t really exist anymore.” I must have been quiet for too long, because she said, “Are you still with me?”

  “I’m here, but I think I lost you.”

  “I’m thirty, right?”

  “Right.”

  “We’re both thirty. I was born in Studsburg, and I was the last baby christened in St. Mary Immaculate Church there. The day after my christening, Studsburg was emptied and the Army Corps of Engineers flooded it for a reservoir.”

  “You mean the whole town is underwater?” I was starting to wonder if Maddie had all her marbles.

  “It was for thirty years, but then the drought came.”

  “I know. l’ve been saving dishwater to water my plants.”

  “Well, it’s much worse in upstate New York. It’s so bad, the town came back.”

  I felt a chill. “You mean the whole reservoir dried up?”

  “Just as if someone had pulled the plug in a bathtub. You can walk in it without getting your feet wet.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said. “But what could be left after so long a time underwater?”

  “I haven’t seen it yet myself,” Maddie said, “but from what I hear from my cousins and Grandmother Stifter, there are a lot of foundations o
f houses, parts of some streets, a couple of bridges, and one perfectly beautiful St. Mary Immaculate Church.”

  The chill deepened. “That’s remarkable.”

  “Minus its windows, of course. Mom said they were taken out before the flooding because they were very valuable. And of course, the pews were removed. My mother still has one in her living room. But the whole stone exterior is pretty much intact. We heard the steeple was the first thing that showed when the water level went down. Now there isn’t any more than a few puddles, and tourists pour in every weekend to take pictures.”

  “Absolutely amazing,” I said for at least the second time. “And you were the last baby to be baptized there.”

  “And Richie will be the next. My mother truly believes it’s a miracle.”

  “Maddie, you couldn’t keep me away from that christening.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. And Kix …” She paused. “You sound really terrific. Loose, you know?”

  I smiled. “I’m doing fine.”

  “I know you thought a lot about leaving the convent, but did you go because … I mean, is there someone in your life?”

  “I didn’t leave for a man,” I said, not answering the second part of her question. “It was what I told you, a matter of conscience. I thought about it for a couple of years.”

  “What are you doing with yourself?”

  “A little teaching, a little volunteer work, a little gardening. I’m really enjoying myself.”

  “We’ll have to talk. I’ll mail you the directions to Studsburg and I’ll put you up with one of my cousins who lives nearby.”

  “Don’t do that, Maddie. I’d prefer a motel room. I’ll make it a vacation weekend. I’m really looking forward to it.”

  “Great. Good talking to you.”

  I felt wonderfully elated after hanging up. I could remember skinny little Maddie Stifler as though we were still in Miss Ames’s English class. Maddie had been fun and trouble in equal parts, and I guess something in me envied her casual, disruptive behavior and easy style of friendship. What had drawn us to each other, I had no idea. I knew her during the unhappiest years of my life, through my mother’s illness and death, and then the year I lived with my aunt and uncle and their retarded son, Gene, my cousin, who now lived in a group home not far from Oakwood. There were times when Maddie’s behavior went beyond shocking me, but at the worst of times, she could always make me giggle. I had never met anyone who had threatened so often and so sincerely to run away from home, to get away from that woman who was her mother. All I had wanted was for my own mother to survive her illness, to live another day, to be with me when I needed her.

  But Maddie had grown up as we all had, and in doing so she had calmed down, married Frank Clark, suffered her own sadness and disruption, and reconciled happily with her mother. And in two weeks we would celebrate the happiest of the seven sacraments, the baptism of her son.

  When I had finished the dishes, I went upstairs to the room I still thought of as my aunt’s sewing room. Aunt Margaret had been a notorious pack rat, and although I had lived in the house I inherited from her for many months, I had been reluctant to throw out all the fruits of her labor. In a box marked MAPS, I found at least twenty, some of them dating back to early in her marriage.

  She and Uncle Will had obviously saved every map from every trip they ever took. Because traveling with Gene was difficult, most of their trips had been by car, and there were road maps dating back to the fifties. Most of them were the kind you used to get free from gas stations, and sure enough, there was one for New York State from more than thirty years ago.

  I looked up Studsburg in the alphabetical listing of cities and towns, and traced over and up to the square where the letter along the side and the number along the bottom met. The little dot was south and west of Ithaca and north and west of Binghamton, Elmira, and Corning. It was on a little gray line that was listed as “other roads” on the legend. I suspected it hadn’t improved much in thirty years, especially with the demise of Studsburg.

  Not far to the south was the Pennsylvania border, and a few towns with familiar names roughly encircled Studsburg. Painted Post, Olean, and Hornell were some of them. Watkins Glen wasn’t all that far away to the northeast; I might make a stopover on my way home.

  What I was really thinking about was the possibility of having company. I was pretty sure Maddie wouldn’t mind, and the thought of spending a weekend, even a single night, in a hotel with Jack was raising more than my blood pressure.

  Jack Brooks is a sergeant with the New York City Police Department. We met when I was a few weeks out of St. Stephen’s and looking into a forty-year-old murder I had gotten hooked into investigating. The last thing I wanted at that point in my life was a relationship with a man. I had just made the most important decision of my life, leaving the convent where I had spent half of that life, and I wanted time to become part of my new community before thinking about emotional attachments. Happily, I turned out not to be very good at planning, and our friendship blossomed into a love affair. Having lived without sex for thirty years, I am still somewhat amazed that I can be reduced to desperation if we don’t see each other for more than a few days. But we had never spent a night anywhere but in my house or his apartment, and I had fantasies about making love in a hotel.

  I put the map back in the box and went downstairs to read the paper and watch something on TV. It was one of Jack’s nights at law school, so I couldn’t call till after ten, when he would get home so tired that it was often hard for him to make conversation.

  I waited till the top news had been reported and then dialed his number. He answered on the second ring—he lives in a tiny apartment.

  “It’s me,” I said. “You sound beat.”

  “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “Got an invitation I want to share with you. A weekend in the middle of New York State and a christening on Sunday morning.”

  “The weekend sounds great. When is it?”

  “Two weeks from Sunday.”

  I heard a page turn in the little book he keeps in his pocket. Then I heard the hiss of an obscenity. “I’ve got a big test the week after, Chris. I already put in for a day off so I can study. I don’t see how I can do it.” He sounded down, and I felt the sting of my own disappointment.

  “Don’t worry it,” I said. “There’ll be lots of other times.”

  “Will you mind going without me?”

  “Sure I’ll mind. But I’ll go anyway, and miss you.”

  “You got anything on for tomorrow night?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No town meetings or faculty get-togethers or plea bargains with your pro bono friend?”

  I laughed. “My calendar is clear.”

  “Why don’t you come on in and we’ll have dinner and stay warm together?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “It feels like weeks since I saw you.”

  It was four days. “Me, too.”

  “I’ll be home by six-thirty.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Among the things I do in my life are teaching, which I’ve done for years, and some work for a lawyer named Arnold Gold, who has become a friend of mine. Arnold is the quintessential champion of the underdog and one of the best lawyers around. He got me started on some volunteer work some time ago and then began to worry about how I was supporting myself. I told him I had little to worry about. The house I live in is paid for. My aunt left me some money, which yields interest, and when I left St. Stephen’s, the remainder of my dowry was returned to me, minus expenses like my car. Added to my inheritance, it seemed pretty substantial to me, although I guess to most people it might not. But Arnold was worried about my future. Did I have medical insurance? How about social security? What if I was hit with a catastrophic illness? When I had no satisfactory answers for his questions, he hired me to do some part-time work, get in on his profit-sharing plan, pay my social security, and get myself insured.
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br />   Mostly I take things home with me and type them up, but I’ve also done some proofreading and editing, and on occasion even running to the post office or delivering something that should have been done yesterday. On the day after the call from Maddie, I had a stack of work that I intended to return to Arnold’s office. Usually I take the train in from my little town of Oakwood on the north shore of the Long Island Sound, but since I was going to see Jack, I drove in, parked near his apartment in Brooklyn Heights, and took the subway back to Manhattan. Arnold was in court, but there was work for me, and I spent a few hours at the computer before taking the subway back to Brooklyn.

  Jack’s apartment is two rooms, with a tiny kitchen on one wall of the living room. It has everything in miniature that the ideal kitchen would have, including a microwave oven and a dishwasher. The place is always spotlessly clean, although I’m sure he cooks there and I know he lives there. When I left St. Stephen’s, I relaxed a little in a lot of ways. If papers pile up or clothes go unironed, I don’t worry much about it.

  I took a quick shower and washed off the grime of New York. Then I put on jeans and a sweatshirt. If we were going out for dinner, I could change. But it felt good to relax in something casual, and while I waited, I made a cup of tea and read a book I’d brought along. I heard the key in the lock before I’d finished the cup.

  Jack is part of the Detective Division, and he usually wears a tweedy jacket to work. One thing he never looks is formal. His hair is curly and does its own thing. His pockets are stuffed with the usual things that men carry, plus his detective’s notebook and some folded sheets of paper on which he doodles, thinks, and takes notes. And over on his left side, he wears a gun.