The Christening Day Murder Read online

  I followed her to the phone in the foyer.

  “Miss Bennett?” a man’s voice said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “This is Ken Parker at Steuben Press. I’ve done some calling around about J.J. Eberling.”

  “Yes,” I said eagerly.

  “I can’t give you specifics and I probably shouldn’t say anything at all, but I heard a couple of things. It’s all rumor and speculation, you understand, and I can’t say too much because I don’t want to get my pants sued off me, but the word is, there was a payoff.”

  “J.J. Eberling paid someone off?”

  “That’s about all I can tell you. You were right when you said people were beholden. That’s the absolutely right-on-the-target word for it. I don’t know how you’ll crack it, but keep me out of it, OK? Good night, Miss Bennett.”

  He hung up before I could return his farewell. A payoff. To whom? And why? The only money I knew about was the thousand dollars J.J. had given to Joanne Beadles, and Joanne had given to her mother. Was that the payoff he was talking about? What could a nineteen-year-old girl have known or done to warrant a payoff? Had there been more—paid to other people? I hoped Jack would be able to find her—if she was still alive.

  And for yet another time I wondered if I was chasing the wrong man.

  21

  Carol Stifler’s list reflected her penchant for organization. Next to each death there was a date, or an approximate date. And next to each new address was the date of the move. So I knew where Fred Larkin had lived and when he had moved to each new address. He had lived in his current house for twenty years, and I guessed that he had lived there with his current wife. That left two addresses that covered ten years, and both of them were in the central part of the state. That gave me the start of my Monday morning itinerary. I would start west and work my way east, eventually getting home by evening. Tuesday morning I had a class to teach.

  By nine A.M. I was in the county building of the nearer address. It was the second one Larkin had lived in, but it made sense to start close. Since I had a time frame, my search was limited to the years he had lived there. I found a sympathetic young woman who got me started. I went through all the recorded divorces in the eight-year period Fred Larkin had lived in the county. There was no mention of his name.

  Then I tried the deaths. Plenty of people had died in those eight years, but none of them was Gwendolyn Larkin. I got in my car and drove east.

  At my second stop, the county seat in the Larkins’ first post-Studsburg home, I had only two years of records to scan. There was no divorce here either, and I moved on to the deaths. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. Less than a year after leaving Studsburg, Mrs. Gwendolyn Larkin had died an accidental death. I wrote down the date and then found the sheriff’s office.

  It wasn’t the first time I had tried to get hold of old police records, and it wasn’t the first time I was given a runaround. No one wants to go looking in dusty old files, and I couldn’t hang around all day waiting for someone to find time to do me a favor. I finally persuaded someone that Mrs. Larkin was a very important person to me and I needed to know how she had died. He looked at his watch meaningfully before he agreed to go down to the basement to look up the file on her death.

  I was getting hungry myself at that point, but I didn’t want to give up if there was a chance I could learn something. I knew that in a pinch Jack could get me the information, but it might take time, and although all the important events had happened decades ago, I felt pressed to learn as much as I could as fast as I could, as though I were working against some deadline that was rapidly closing in on me.

  The officer was gone quite a while, and I sat part of the time and walked around part of the time, hoping he hadn’t ducked out on me.

  He hadn’t. He finally came through the door with a file folder in his hand. I stood up and walked to the counter while he took his place behind it.

  “Gwendolyn Larkin, husband Fred?” he said.

  “That’s it.”

  “Car accident.”

  “Was anyone else hurt?”

  “Only one vehicle involved. No one else in her car.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “It was winter, icy stretch, car went off the road, hit a tree.”

  “And they’re sure no one else was in the car with her?”

  “Ma’am,” he said with unctuous politeness, “in an accidental death there’s an investigation. Also an autopsy. Mrs. Larkin was at the wheel. It was twenty-nine years ago and she wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Given the details in the accident report—road conditions, auto damage, speed—I’d estimate it didn’t take her more than a couple of seconds to die after the car made contact.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I have my lunch now?”

  I got a sandwich near the courthouse and then drove east. I wasn’t sure where I was going. I knew I had to confront Fred Larkin with Candy Phillips, and there was enough time today to do that. Eventually I would have to drive into Pennsylvania and see if I could find the place that Candy’s letters were forwarded to, but it was much too late to think about that today. Then I remembered Amy Broderick’s brother, Jerry Mulholland.

  I had sort of been waiting to call him from home. Now I decided to try his office number instead of waiting for tonight. I pulled into a gas station, filled the tank, and used their pay phone.

  “Mulholland,” a voice answered.

  I told him who I was.

  “Oh yeah. Amy said you’d be calling. Want to stir up old memories, I hear.”

  “I hope they’re still good and sharp. I’m interested in what you remember about your eighth grade teacher.”

  “You mean the delectable Miss Phillips.”

  I smiled. He sounded like a nice guy and he didn’t mind being called. “Tell me what you remember.”

  “God, she was something. She got hormones flowing I didn’t even know I had. I was thirteen or fourteen and she had to be ten years older, but I was willing to do anything to make it work. But I had a lot of competition from the other guys in my class. Everyone was in love with her. She was really cute. And a good teacher, by the way.”

  “Any competition from adult males?”

  “Yeah, there was that, too.”

  “You remember seeing her with anyone special?”

  “You looking for a scandal? Could be. She was parked one night with Mayor Larkin. I really didn’t get it. He must’ve been forty, and he didn’t have half my personality.”

  I could believe it. “You saw them together in a car?” I hoped I didn’t sound as elated as I felt.

  “Yeah. His car. Down by the athletic field one night when there wasn’t any game on.”

  “Were they … I mean …?”

  “Necking? Not when I saw them. They were just talking, planning her life without me. Boy, did I have the hots for her.”

  “You sound like a very honest man, Mr. Mulholland. Did you tell your parents about it?”

  “Nah. I was nuts about her. I didn’t want to get her in trouble. I was with a couple of friends that night. We decided to keep it to ourselves. Call me Jerry, OK?”

  “Was that the only time it happened?”

  “Other guys saw her with him other times. It was always in his car. She had this old VW he probably couldn’t fit in.”

  “Any possibility that someone in your parents’ generation saw them together?”

  “Every possibility. It was a small town. Anywhere you went, someone could drive by or walk by with his dog. One of my friends saw them once at the top of the hill. Not where the farm was, the other side of town. Near those people—what the hell was their name? Funny name, German-sounding.”

  “Could it have been Degenkamp?”

  “Degenkamp, right. My friend lived near the Degenkamps. He saw them drive by.”

  “You’ve really been very helpful, Jerry.”

  “Call any time. You want to tell me why you’re as
king? Amy didn’t say.”

  I had a pang of guilt. Even after so long, he wouldn’t take my message with equanimity, and I hated to be the one to tell him. “Can I pass until I’m sure?”

  “If you promise to call.”

  “I will.” It wouldn’t be the best day of my life.

  * * *

  Fred Larkin wasn’t waiting at the door for me this time. In fact, he wasn’t at home, but his wife was. She recognized me and invited me in. Her husband had gone into town a little while ago and should be back soon, she told me. In the meantime, how would I like a cup of coffee? I said I’d like that very much.

  We sat in her large kitchen outfitted with handsome cabinets and good-looking appliances. I remarked that she must enjoy cooking, and she said she did. As if to prove her skills, she brought out some home-baked cookies and put them on the table.

  “I was going to ask you about Studsburg,” I said after complimenting her on the cookies, “but I realized just this morning that you hadn’t lived there.”

  She studied me before answering. She was an extremely attractive woman, even younger than I had first judged. She was quite tall and graceful, her hands well manicured, her hair thick and cut short, falling in place naturally. I didn’t think she spent much time at the hairdresser, and probably looked better than most of the women who did. At home in her own kitchen, she was wearing a suede vest over a silk blouse, and dark brown wool pants over glossy brown boots.

  “I met Fred after his first wife died in a tragic accident,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  “She lost control of her car one night. When the police found the car, she was already dead. Fred was devastated. They’d known each other since they were children.”

  I was about to say something when the front door opened and Fred Larkin called a cheery hello to his wife.

  “In the kitchen, dear. We have company.”

  He would know that, of course. My car was parked outside. In the country you can’t hide by parking around the corner.

  “Well, Miss Bennett. What brings you here?”

  “A couple of questions. I won’t trouble you for long. I have to be getting back.”

  “Where is it you get back to?”

  “I live near New York.”

  “Long trip to ask a few questions.”

  “I had some other business in the area.” I got up from the table and thanked his wife for the coffee.

  “I’m kind of busy myself, so let’s see if we can make it pretty quick.” His expansive charm of last Thursday had been replaced with a petulance I found intimidating. He walked into the family room with its trophies and photos, and I followed.

  “I wonder if you would tell me about Candida Phillips,” I said.

  He was smart enough not to dodge. On Thursday he had spun a fable for me, a pretty story told by an all-knowing adult to a wide-eyed child. It had had all the elements of a fairy tale: good people grew up together and lived happy lives; everyone was friendly, and the rich helped the poor; men and women met as children, grew up, and married each other, living happily ever after; the mayor attended baptisms and weddings and gave presents on all occasions, and they kept Mr. Dietrich on even though the classes shrank down to almost nothing. But the name Candida Phillips told him I hadn’t bought it, and what was worse, someone may have cracked and told me things that had been buried for thirty years.

  He gave me a tight little smile. “Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard since I left Studsburg. Yes, there was a Miss Phillips that last year. She taught in the school. Came from nowhere, and went back to nowhere.”

  “I believe you interviewed her for the job.”

  He knit his heavy white eyebrows together. Was he wondering if Henry Degenkamp was the source? “I suppose I did. As mayor, I had a lot of diverse duties. It fell to me to notify a family when a mishap occurred to their son and to administer punishment when a Halloween prank got out of hand. Yes, I interviewed Miss Phillips, as I interviewed the janitor who came in and cleaned the school twice a week.”

  “Do you know where she went at the end of the school year?”

  “I suppose to another school somewhere. She was a teacher, after all. Teachers teach in schools.” His voice had gotten a hard edge, a derisive nastiness that good people like the Stiflers and Mulhollands had surely never heard.

  “If you interviewed her, you must have written her a reference.” I had seen it in the file along with one written by Scofield.

  “I might have. These aren’t the things I can pull out of my memory. What I remember is the town, how it felt, how people treated each other.” He glanced at the aerial photograph, the proof that heaven had once existed on earth.

  “I’m a little surprised you didn’t remember her when we spoke a couple of days ago. She spent a whole year in Studsburg, and a number of people saw you with her. In the evening,” I added.

  He kept himself in check, but I sensed the anger below the good-old-boy surface. “You are now getting personal and you are putting me in the awkward position of having to say things about someone who is not here to defend herself. Miss Phillips was a new, young teacher—Studsburg may have been her first assignment, I don’t recall—and young people in every profession need guidance. That was another task that fell to me that year, helping out a young teacher.”

  “Can you tell me what her problem was, Mr. Larkin?”

  “It isn’t any of your business, Miss Bennett, but young women sometimes become involved with the wrong men. Whether it’s their fault or not makes no difference. Families are sacred. Studsburg was an old-fashioned, family-centered town. I saw to it that it remained that way right to the end.”

  It was interesting that he had glided from professional assistance to family guidance. “Do you always give guidance to young women in your car?”

  “Young woman, you are very close to being thrown out of this house. I shouldn’t honor that snide question with an answer, but I’ll tell you this much: My office was in my home. I had something personal and delicate to discuss with Miss Phillips, and I considered it better to meet her where no one would be aware that she was being chastised. If someone saw us together and chose to draw a foolish conclusion, well, I can’t be responsible for people’s stupidity or malicious intentions. I had her best interests at heart, you may believe me.”

  “Did you ever see Candy Phillips after the last day of school?” I asked.

  He looked me in the eye. “I never did,” he said. “And now I think it’s time for you to go.”

  I went out to my car feeling high as a kite. He had never once asked why I was interested in Candy Phillips. He didn’t have to. He knew.

  22

  It was still reasonably early when I saw the towers of Cornell rising above Cayuga Lake. It’s all uphill to the campus and the little villages adjacent to it. I needed only one stop to inquire for directions to reach the Degenkamps’ house. This time a man opened the front door. He was Eric Degenkamp, a middle-aged version of his father, dressed in dark corduroy pants, a sporty shirt, and a sweater that may have been cashmere.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked when I told him who I was.

  “I don’t know what you mean. I want to talk to your father and mother.”

  “My father isn’t here and—”

  “Who’s there, Eric?” Ellie Degenkamp called from inside in a shrill voice. “Is your dad back yet?”

  “Not yet, Mom.”

  “Did he get a phone call?” I asked.

  “About an hour ago. Did you call him?”

  “No, but I think I know who did.”

  Ellie was standing behind her son, looking frightened to death. “You,” she said accusingly. “You better tell me what’s going on and where Henry is.”

  “I left Fred Larkin an hour ago, Mrs. Degenkamp. I was talking to him about Candy Phillips. That’s all I know.”

  “Candy Phillips,” she said angrily. “Can’t you leave well enough alone?”

/>   “Maybe you can tell me about her,” I said gently.

  “Tell you what? She was a little slut that they brought in to teach the last year of Studsburg. God knows what damage she did to those children.”

  “The children loved her.”

  “You’ve talked to the children?”

  “Some of them.”

  “What do twelve-year-olds know?”

  “I think they’re a pretty good judge of character.”

  “She didn’t have any character to judge.” Ellie was angry and forthright, the superficial sweetness that she normally turned on the world dissolved in anger and worry and a touch of bitterness. “What did Fred tell you?”

  “That she taught in Studsburg one year. That she came from nowhere and went to nowhere. Not much else.”

  “Well, you won’t get anything out of me, because there isn’t anything else. But I want to know where Henry is. It looks like snow out there and he shouldn’t be driving.”

  “Why don’t you call Fred Larkin?” I said.

  We had all been standing just inside the front door. Now Ellie went into the kitchen to make her phone call while Eric and I went to the living room.

  A few minutes later she joined us, flopping into a chair, her short white hair lifting and falling as she sat. Her son went and knelt beside her. “Dad isn’t there,” she said, her voice cracking. “Fred called just after Miss Bennett left. He didn’t ask him to come, he just said Miss Bennett might be on her way.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to talk to her, Mom,” Eric said. “Maybe he just went out to have a cup of coffee.”

  “That’s not like Henry.” She shook her head. Then she looked up at me. “Why are you doing this?” she wailed.

  “Mrs. Degenkamp, were Fred Larkin and Candy Phillips lovers that year?”

  “I don’t know,” she said weakly. “I don’t know anything anymore. He said they weren’t.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  She thought about it. “I thought he and … he and his wife were happy.”

  “Why did you call her a slut?”