The Happy Birthday Murder Read online

  “OK with me. So what’s next?”

  “There are still houses I haven’t been to. And I’ve only walked through a small part of the area Darby may have covered in Connecticut.”

  “I don’t want you getting lost.”

  “I have a compass, remember? That should keep me from going in circles.”

  “Wish I could keep from going in circles. Maybe I’ll take a compass to work with me tomorrow.”

  15

  I decided, much as I didn’t want to do it, to make what I hoped would be a last trip to Connecticut to interview people at houses I had not yet visited and those where no one had been home earlier in the week. I called Celia before I left and told her how useful the photos had been. She was surprised and told me to keep them as long as I wanted.

  I drove the now familiar roads, observing that the leaves were practically gone. It was a gray day with a bleak sky, too soon for snow and a little too warm. I was glad. I didn’t need icy roads on a long drive.

  I spent what was left of the morning going from house to house on Betty’s map. It was very much the usual. Everyone who had lived there twelve years ago remembered what had happened. No one knew anything beyond the obvious. There were sheds and barns and caretakers’ cottages, many of them in place for decades, but no way of knowing whether Darby had stopped in one voluntarily or had been held in one against his will. I had a sense of despair, a feeling that I would never crack the shell around whoever might be lying to me. How could I? These all seemed to be nice, ordinary people who lived, worked, cared for their children, took part in search parties, and moved south when the winter weather got to be too much for them. Even the Pasternaks, whom their neighbors seemed to want to avoid, had turned out to be within the norm, or at least as far as I could see they were. What was I going to learn that would give me the insight I wanted?

  Usually at this stage of an investigation I would meet with Sister Joseph, my dearest friend and General Superior at St. Stephen’s. I put my facts on the table, ask for and receive her take on the mystery that has me befuddled, and then, following the way she has pointed, go on my way to wind it up. But what did I have that I could tell her? That I had interviewed most of the residents of twenty-some houses, all of whom claimed to know nothing that would help me? What could she possibly suggest on the basis of such flimsy facts?

  I went to lunch and opened my notebook on the table, reading my scribblings as I ate. It was clear to me that Larry Filmore had a secret he was keeping from the world and probably, but not definitely, from his wife as well. It all seemed so well thought out. His line and her line. Her answering machine, but none for him. Her line is unlisted, so she never gets a call from the person who is blackmailing her husband. Or whatever he was doing to her husband.

  As my eye moved down the pages in my book, the name Charlie Calhoun popped out at me. Charlie was the night watchman at the Filmore plant. It struck me that I didn’t know where he lived. He had been so positive about Larry Filmore, I had mentally deleted him from my list of suspects, not that I had such a list. But should I have dismissed him so quickly? Living where we do on the Long Island Sound, we are not far from Connecticut. Where Betty lives is quite a drive, but it was possible that Charlie lived somewhere up there. The plant was in New York State, but I recalled driving toward Connecticut to reach it. It was worth a try. Maybe Larry Filmore had done something at work that Charlie knew about and no one else did.

  When I finished eating, I drove to the house Betty and her son had been visiting when Darby disappeared. I rang the doorbell, but no one answered, so I started walking. I got into the woods and pulled my compass out of my coat pocket to get my bearings. I continued north, as Betty had taken us a week ago. I remembered how fearful Laura and I had become on the way back when it looked as though Betty had lost her way. I felt fairly confident now with my little aid in my hand and I pushed through, looking for the clearing we had reached. On the map, it was due north of the house I had just left.

  The walk seemed to take longer than a week ago, but I had neglected to check my watch when I began, so I had no way of being certain. Finally, I came out under the murky sky. I looked all around to see whether any houses or backyards were visible from here, but I could find none. I pressed on.

  After about five minutes, I came to the pond. It was larger than I had imagined and easy to stumble into. The water looked dark, not very appetizing. I saw something white lying on the foliage on the far side and I walked around to see what it was. It was a wool scarf with fringe. Someone had left it or lost it here. It was still clean, so I assumed it hadn’t been lying there for very long.

  I checked my compass and decided to turn east. If Darby had drifted to his right, this is where he would have gone. Ahead of me were more woods, and as I was about to enter them I heard girlish laughter from somewhere behind me. I turned to see a teenage girl and boy running toward the pond.

  “Hey, miss!” the boy called.

  “Hi!” I called back.

  “Did you see a white scarf anywhere around here?”

  “It’s over there by the pond!” I pointed toward the west.

  The girl started laughing loudly. “Thank you!” she called to me. “Race you,” she said to the boy, and they took off, the boy charging ahead of her.

  I watched as they rounded the pond, saw the scarf, and ran toward it. As they reached it, they collapsed on the ground, the boy kissing her hungrily. I turned back to the woods, pretty sure I knew how the scarf had been lost in the first place.

  I decided to spend another fifteen minutes walking through the woods on the north. I didn’t know which way Darby’s friend had led him through the woods, which way he began to walk when he found himself alone. Had he drifted right or left? Had he come to the pond? I was feeling pretty cold by then, my toes especially, even though I was wearing warm socks and leather boots. Poor Darby had been dressed in shorts on that warm day twelve years ago. Every step I took reminded me how alone he must have felt, how terribly cold at night.

  I was just ready to turn back when I thought I saw a house through the trees. I kept going and then I saw it clearly. It was the back of the Pasternaks’ house.

  —

  “You had to come out somewhere,” Jack said when I finished my story. “You couldn’t keep walking through the woods and not hit a house eventually.”

  “Unless I walked in circles.”

  “But you were carrying a compass. You knew where you were going.”

  “Even with the compass I didn’t walk straight lines.” I told him how I had somehow moved east as I walked south. “I keep thinking how Darby must have felt. If he was lost in the woods, he would try to get back to where he started. But he got turned around and instead of going south, he bore east.”

  “Or north or west,” Jack put in.

  “OK, OK. But my point is, he keeps going, trying to get back to this house where he knows his mother is waiting for him. Finally, after a very long walk, he sees a house and assumes it’s the one he’s looking for. Maybe he doesn’t even remember what the original house looked like. I don’t know how familiar he was with it. He sees a house, knocks on a door, and asks for his mother.”

  “And somebody takes him in.”

  “Somebody takes him in,” I echoed, trying to think this through.

  “And now you’ve interviewed all or most of the players. Which one was most likely to have done that?”

  “Many of them would have taken him in, Jack. Many of the men in the families I’ve talked to helped in the search. I had a sense of a lot of good people trying to do the right thing.”

  “But your theory is that the person who took him in did the wrong thing.”

  “And the question is why.” I looked down at the map I had spread out in front of us. The houses on the east, the ones Betty and I had visited together on Monday, were the closest houses to the house Darby had been visiting, which is why we went there first. That didn’t necessarily mean he would have
found them first. If he had circled left instead of right, west instead of east, he could have come out at the ones I had canvassed today. It would have taken him longer to get there, but as Jack had said, he had to reach a house eventually unless he kept going in circles forever. And if he had been going in circles, the search party might have found him.

  “But the answer is obvious,” I said. “Because that person who took him in had Larry Filmore in the house and he saw an opportunity to use both those people to his advantage.”

  “I disagree with you. Darby was lost on a weekday. Filmore left home early on Sunday. I think things happened in reverse. It’s even possible Darby came out on a road that Sunday morning and Filmore picked him up.”

  One of my theories. “And took him wherever he was going, intending to call the police when he got there.”

  “Sure. Wouldn’t you do the same thing?”

  “That would mean he walked north to the highway and missed the houses altogether.”

  “Don’t give up your original idea. You haven’t disproved anything yet.”

  “You know what, Jack? Maybe the fact that Larry Filmore and Darby Maxwell came together wasn’t a coincidence.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Listen.” I was feeling excited, as though something reasonable had finally emerged from the morass. “Darby gets lost in the woods. He ends up at somebody’s house. The somebody takes him in, maybe because he doesn’t have much choice. Here’s this young fellow, cold and hungry and dirty, at his doorstep. He gives Darby something to eat and finds out who his mother is and what happened. This person then locks Darby up in the house—”

  “Or barn or caretaker’s cottage,” Jack said.

  “Right. Because he thinks he can play this for money. He hears something on the radio or TV and goes into town, where he finds flyers on all the poles. He calls Betty Linton and asks if there’s a reward for Darby’s return. She says there isn’t, or whatever she said. The guy thinks, ‘Maybe if I hang on to him, the mother’ll pay to get him back.’ But there’s never any mention of a reward and he doesn’t want to get involved in asking for a ransom.”

  “Because he knows he’s likely to be caught picking up the money.”

  “Exactly. And then it occurs to him. Maybe if he calls Larry Filmore, about whom he knows something threatening, maybe if Filmore comes out, he can work a deal. Filmore is a philanthropist. He has a reputation for good works. Maybe he’ll come across with more money in return for Darby’s life.”

  “I like it,” Jack said. “Let me get this straight. Darby may have found this house the first night he’s lost. The guy who takes him in sees an opportunity to make a quick buck and calls Darby’s mother. It doesn’t work. So he thinks he’ll call Filmore, who may have paid off some blackmail once, and maybe he’ll get Filmore to cough up some more money to save Darby’s life.”

  “That’s it,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a great theory. That would account for why Darby disappeared for such a long time. It was about a week, wasn’t it?”

  “About that,” I said. “And he lets them go separately so no one will put them together.”

  “You said ‘lets them go.’ You think he let Larry Filmore go and he killed himself because he didn’t manage to save Darby? That doesn’t figure.”

  “No, it doesn’t. He would have gone right to the police.”

  “And let the kidnapper spill the beans on his secret?”

  “I don’t know. This is a tough one.”

  “They’re all tough till you figure them out. I think you’ve really got a good scenario there.”

  “Either Larry was so torn up because saving Darby meant giving up his secret that he felt he had to kill himself or—”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Or the kidnapper drove to Oakwood with him, killed him in the car, and made it look like suicide.”

  “Why’d he go all the way to Oakwood? Why not kill him and dump the body somewhere that wasn’t Oakwood and wasn’t Connecticut?”

  “Larry Filmore’s wallet was almost empty when it was returned to Laura. The kidnapper took whatever big bills Larry had, probably a few hundred dollars. Laura said he always had that much money with him. It wasn’t enough. He wanted much more. Larry said he had more at home, maybe in a safe.”

  “So the guy drove to Oakwood with Larry to pick up what he could.”

  “And there wasn’t any money and the guy got mad and killed him.” I said it quickly, feeling it was what had happened.

  “Where did they look for money in the middle of the night? Don’t you think Laura would have woken up if she heard someone come into her bedroom? And didn’t she tell you her sister-in-law was in the house with her?”

  “Maybe they went into the basement,” I suggested.

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound very certain. “They go into the house together, down to the basement where there’s supposed to be a safe or something, and then they go back out to the garage and the guy gets Filmore to sit behind the wheel again?”

  It didn’t sound very smooth. “Well, I don’t have all the details worked out.”

  Jack gave me a grin and leaned over and kissed me. “You’re doing better than anyone else. And you’re right. It explains why the guy in Connecticut suddenly called Filmore.”

  “And then called again in the middle of the night. He was anxious, Jack. He wanted to get this done. Filmore rebuffed him when he called during the birthday party. That got him mad. He didn’t want to wait another day, so he called in the middle of the night. He wanted to worry Filmore, make him act. I really like this.”

  “I can see you do. And you’re right. It explains the two calls. It explains why Filmore and Darby were in the same place for a while. And the reason why he may have waited a couple of days to finish off Filmore is that he was hoping a reward would be posted for Darby. Then he could return Darby, collect his money, and decide what to do with Filmore.”

  “He couldn’t let him go,” I said sadly. “He couldn’t be sure Filmore would be quiet about Darby. Filmore was a dead man when that call came in to the church during the party. From that moment, he had only a few days to live.”

  16

  I called Betty Linton first. I asked her to find out what she could about the Pasternaks. I knew it was very tenuous, but Betty recalled that the people living on both sides of the Pasternaks responded guardedly when I asked about them. I know that children make up stories about people in “haunted houses” and maybe this was the same kind of thing, but sometimes the children were right, and maybe these were people who were not being judged unfairly. I remembered how Eddie had held my hand tightly as we stood in the foyer talking to Mrs. Pasternak on Tuesday. I also reminded myself that she had smiled and been nice to him just as we were leaving.

  Then I called Laura.

  “I’m glad you called,” she said. She sounded a little tired.

  “Is something up?”

  “Tell me why you called.”

  “A couple of questions. Do you know where Charlie Calhoun lives?”

  “Charlie the night watchman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give me a minute. I’m sure it’s on Larry’s Rolodex.” She moved from wherever she was and I could hear her put the phone down and flip through something. “Here it is, Calhoun. He lives in Connecticut.”

  “Connecticut! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Chris, I’m sure it was in the back of my mind, but it doesn’t matter. Charlie is a good man. He was working the night of the party. Not everyone who lives in Connecticut is under suspicion. He lives nowhere near where Betty Linton lives, believe me.”

  “Give me the address anyway. I think I’ll check it out.” I wrote down what she dictated, aware that she was right. It was a long drive from that part of Connecticut to where Darby had been lost. “OK. Second, did your husband keep money hidden in the house?”

  There was no answer for several seconds. “I
don’t think so,” she said. “We once talked about the danger of leaving cash around. It’s the thing that gets stolen first if you have a break-in. Not that we ever did.”

  “What I had in mind was a safe,” I said.

  “We never had one. I have some special pieces of jewelry that I keep in the bank vault until I want to wear them. Then I take them out and return them the first day afterward that the bank is open.”

  A thought struck me. “Did you take one of those pieces out for the birthday party?”

  “I did. A diamond necklace. I notified the insurance company before I took it out, as I always do. They charge insurance for the days it’s out of the box.”

  That was a new one on me, but I don’t think I own anything worth more than three figures. She was obviously talking about a lot of zeros in her number. “Was it still in your house after your husband’s death?”

  “Yes, it was. I didn’t get it back for quite some time and I remember getting a huge bill from the insurance company after I returned it and called them to say it was back in the bank.”

  “OK,” I said. “No home safe, no money lying around, one piece of expensive jewelry intact.”

  “Where are you going with this?” Laura asked.

  “I have a theory. It’s not exactly destroyed now, but it’s a little harder to believe. You said you had something to tell me.”

  “I found Larry’s gun.”

  “You did? Where?”

  She let her breath out. “I took the whole day today to look for it. I went through every one of Larry’s drawers. There isn’t much in them anymore, because I gave away most of his clothing many years ago, and I didn’t expect a gun to turn up there. I went through his closet, which is also pretty empty of his things, but there were boxes of papers on the floor and on a couple of shelves. I went through places I couldn’t imagine him ever hiding a gun or anything else, like the hutch cabinet in the dining room where I keep dishes and crystal. I even went down to the basement.”

  That interested me, because I had suggested Larry Filmore might keep a safe down there. “And you found it,” I said.