The Silver Anniversary Murder Read online

  “Good work,” Jack said.

  “What kind of work did you do, Mommy?” Eddie asked. The two of them were preparing vegetables for our dinner. Jack takes over the cooking on weekends, mostly because he enjoys it but also, I’m sure, because the quality of what he cooks is so far superior to what I cook.

  “It wasn’t really work, honey. I was looking for someone and I found her. Can I have a carrot stick?”

  He handed me one and I crunched it. “Mm. This is sweet.”

  “Daddy is going to play baseball with me after lunch.”

  “I guess it’s that season. Don’t break any windows, you guys.”

  Eddie laughed. I wasn’t sure what was so funny.

  Jack called Joe Fox after lunch, and when he was sure Joe didn’t mind being bothered on a Saturday, he gave me the phone.

  “I found the manicurist,” I said.

  “Well, you’re one giant step ahead of my cops. They reported that they’ve covered all the ones in Oakwood and have branched out to neighboring towns.”

  I told him I had started with neighboring towns and why.

  “Good thinking. What do you have?”

  I gave it to him quickly, ending with the phone number.

  “So the victim lived there. And she must have had a husband or significant other because the building manager had his name and probably his signature on the lease. But who knows what name they kept their money under. And where’s the husband?”

  “I had to leave a few things for you, Joe,” I said.

  “Right. If you show us up, there’ll be hell to pay. Well, the ME was able to lift fingerprints from the body. We’ll be able to compare them with those we found in the apartment. I guess we’d better look for an account for Rosette Parker in the local banks, not that we have any reason to believe she stopped with two names. Anyway, it’s too late today. We’ll have to wait for Monday. But you’ve made a good start, Mrs. Brooks. If you’re looking for a job, I’ll be glad to recommend you to the county.”

  I admit to feeling flattered. I filled in what I had left out initially, that Ronda thought Rosette might have worked in White Plains, that she said nothing about her family but wore a diamond ring that could have been a wedding band.

  “Sounds like Holly/Rosette was a careful person. When we have the prints, we’ll see if she has a record.”

  “And a name she was born with.”

  “That, too. I’d especially like to know if there’s a family, either on her side or her husband’s. And it would be nice to know where he disappeared to.”

  “A lot of things we don’t know,” I said. “I’ll follow my intuition, Joe, and try to keep from getting underfoot.”

  “So far that’s not a problem. I have to say, though, I didn’t expect you to lose that dollar quite so fast.”

  “Nor did I.” It still rankled a bit. “Any labels in her clothes, Joe?”

  “Brand names but no store labels. I’m told the labels are in the more-than-moderate range. Someone in that family must have made money—and they must have kept it somewhere. Tell me again about the last appointment with the manicurist. You said that was the day before the woman called you?”

  “Yes. Rosette had a morning appointment. The woman called me the next day in the afternoon, a little after lunch, I think. Palermo should have that in the file.”

  “He should. You’re right.” I wasn’t sure whether he was being sarcastic or merely stating a fact. “Finding them through the bank isn’t going to be easy. With ATMs, people can withdraw and deposit money without personal contact except for the first time, when they open the account. And who’ll remember them from years ago?”

  “But don’t you think they’d have had to use Mitchell as their name? The statements had to be sent to their apartment, and it was rented under that name.”

  “Could’ve used a box number.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “And we still don’t know if she’s the woman who called you, Mrs. Brooks. Just because she lived in that apartment doesn’t mean she made the call.”

  “Well, I guess there should be blood work coming in soon. That may answer some questions.”

  “There will, and I will share it with you. Don’t give up while you’re getting results.”

  I left it there for the weekend but I didn’t stop thinking about it. I’ve found that even when I’m not actively involved, my mind keeps working and tosses me ideas when I least expect them. We now knew that Holly Mitchell and Rosette Parker were the same person, but that would only be useful if we could find other places where those names had been used. It certainly sounded as though Holly/Rosette was keeping a low profile, but I couldn’t imagine why. What I thought of was the complications of collecting insurance and eventually Social Security without a consistent name. If Holly worked for ten years and Rosette worked for another ten, that didn’t add up to twenty years of benefits. And if she had a job and wore fairly expensive clothes, a lot of people had to know her under one name. She had to have picture ID to fly to business meetings, although I assumed an old driver’s license would suffice. It had for me before I acquired my first passport last year to take the trip to Israel when Jack got a two-week assignment in Jerusalem.

  Joe Fox had mentioned that the victim might have a record, which they would discover when her fingerprints were run. That could account for her not wanting employers and landlords to know her real name. Of course, it might have been her husband who had been incarcerated, and we knew nothing about him. It was dizzying.

  But other explanations could account for her use of several personas. Topping my list was the possibility that she was hiding from someone, running away from someone who was hunting for her. One hears frequently about the government giving mobsters and their families new identities and homes in locations distant from their original homes. Were Rosette and her husband in that situation? Again, the fingerprints should provide an answer, unless the files were sealed even to the police.

  I was starting to think she could not possibly have children. I couldn’t imagine raising a child who went to school with one name and took piano lessons with another. Thinking about this became exhausting, and I was glad I would have Sunday off to think about other, pleasanter things.

  My cousin Gene, who is mentally retarded, lives in a home for adults. When my aunt was alive, she had to get herself to the neighboring town to visit him, a difficult task after my uncle died, as she never learned to drive. But when I moved into her house a few months after her death, Greenwillow, the residence, also moved to Oakwood. I am a frequent visitor there, often with Eddie, who plays with Gene as though they are equals. Gene is very gentle with Eddie and I know they love each other. The day may come when Gene is in Eddie’s care, and I want their relationship to remain solid and close.

  On that Sunday, all four of us attended mass together and then Gene came home with us for Sunday dinner. In the afternoon we all played baseball in the backyard. I’m never very clear on the rules of the game or how many teams we are, so I let Jack take care of that part. Then we drove Gene back to Greenwillow.

  It was a tiring day, and Eddie went to bed early, keeping the baseball mitt on his night table the way I used to keep a favorite doll near me when I slept. Gender really seems to mean something, even early in life.

  “Joe Fox thinks this woman, the victim, might have a record,” I said to Jack when we were alone in the family room.

  “Sounds like you don’t.”

  “I don’t rule it out, but I think she could have been hiding from someone, someone who wanted to kill her.”

  “You could both be right. Someone did kill her, after all.”

  “What I mean is, she may not have been hiding her past, just trying to hide herself from someone who had a grudge or who wanted something from her.”

  “It’s as good a theory as any. Either you or Joe will have to find out more about her so as to trace back to whatever she was hiding from. The fresh manicure was a
good lead. It would be nice if you could find a friend.”

  “Or an employer. She might have given her high school or college credentials to get the job, or the names of other companies she worked for.”

  “I hate to tell you that employers don’t do much checking.”

  “There has to be something, Jack. We live in such a technologically sophisticated age that I can’t believe a person can shop and take care of a car and yet live so easily with an assumed identity even if she paid for everything in cash.”

  “Which is a good assumption.”

  “But what about the pharmacy? Even if you’re healthy, as I am, my dentist occasionally prescribes an antibiotic for me.”

  “And a prescription presupposes a dentist or a doctor.”

  “Who will know you by whatever name you give him the first day you go. I’m trying to remember if the dentist required my Social Security number.”

  “Suppose you gave it to him. If this Holly/Rosette woman wrote down nine digits, what are the chances the doctor, the dentist, the pharmacist, or even a surgeon checked them out, especially if she said she had no medical insurance and would pay her bill in cash?”

  “No chance,” I agreed. “So here we are in a society that tracks you in and out of stores, offices, hospitals, and whatever, and we can get away with using a fraudulent name and ID number and no one knows. It seems paradoxical.”

  “It may be, but it works—that is, until a cop hauls you over for speeding and finds a bunch of inconsistencies.”

  “I’m going to have a go at pharmacies tomorrow. Hopefully, someone will recognize Holly/Rosette’s picture and tell me she took an unusual medication for a rare condition.”

  “And everything about her life is documented including the names of her parents, her children, and all her siblings.”

  “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

  “Dream on, honey. And good luck. I’m sure Joe Fox will give you double flowers if you pull that off.”

  5

  I daydreamed that Holly/Rosette Whatever might use a different name everywhere she went. After canvassing pharmacies and banks, hair salons and department stores, I might accumulate twenty or thirty names attached to her picture. But I decided not to worry about that unlikely situation. I got Eddie off to school, nearly his last week, and put my notebook in my bag. As I was getting ready to leave, the phone rang.

  “Hope I haven’t bothered you, Mrs. Brooks.” It was Joe Fox.

  “Not at all. Have you something to tell me?”

  “You know they’ve been doing DNA analysis on the blood in the apartment and the tissue of the body.”

  “Yes.”

  “So far we haven’t gotten a match on the body’s prints or on the blood.”

  “Which means no records.”

  “Right. Not so far. My people are out there visiting banks and stores near where she lived.”

  “She didn’t bank where she lived and she didn’t shop where she lived.” It seemed such a waste of time to me. “This is a woman who’s trying to keep a low profile. She’s not going to walk into supermarkets where a neighbor who knows her as Holly or Mrs. Mitchell might run into her and make small talk that could compromise her.”

  “You could be right—you’ve been right before—but this is the way we generally do it. Dare I ask what you’re up to this bright Monday morning?”

  “I’m checking pharmacies,” I admitted.

  “And none of them will be near the apartment complex.”

  “Not unless I fail farther away.”

  “I’d put my money on your not failing, but please keep me in your loop.”

  “My loop,” I repeated, smiling. “My very little loop. You and me, Joe. Without you in it, it’s a straight line going nowhere.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  There is nothing more boring than basic detective work. Ask the same questions to fifty different faces and hope one lights up. And then ask more questions. I did this the way I’d done the manicurists on Saturday, checking the yellow pages, sketching a map, driving to the most distant location first. Once again, I thought she might do her drug and cosmetic shopping where she worked, but since that wasn’t confirmed, this was all I had to go on.

  It would be nice to say that I dropped into the right drugstore first, but it didn’t happen that way. I dragged myself from one to another, often showing the picture to several people, as some of the chain pharmacies have many pharmacists working for them—and there was always the chance that the one I wanted was off on Mondays. I presented the picture and gave everyone the two names I had. Some looked at the face intently, which I appreciated; others gave it a cursory glance and turned away with a bored expression. No one recognized her.

  I had drawn a semicircle several miles deep for my canvassing area. It was a semicircle and not a full circle because Oakwood is on the Long Island Sound, not that this made my task any easier; I just increased the distance from the center to the farthest drugstore. A lot of heads shook; no one identified her.

  I stopped for lunch at a restaurant I sometimes take Eddie to, looking at my list as I ate, counting the places that didn’t have check marks next to them. The cops, I thought, had probably found the right one in the first ten minutes of their search, a hundred yards outside the garden apartments, all my theories shot. I sipped iced coffee and thought about what to do. Maybe it wasn’t too late to retrieve the dollar I’d bet.

  I finally decided to check out a privately owned drugstore in the same little strip mall where I’d eaten, even though it was one of the last pharmacies on my list. It was in Oakwood, but it was more than a mile from the Mitchell residence. I went to the counter at the back of the store and asked the young man if he knew the woman in the pictures.

  “The cops were here this morning with the same picture,” he said.

  “And?”

  “And I told them I didn’t know her.”

  “Did they ask anyone else who works in the store?”

  “Mr. Greeves was out when they came in.”

  “Is he here now?” It felt like pulling teeth.

  “Yeah. Wait a minute.”

  I knew Mr. Greeves slightly. When we married, Jack insisted we open an account here. I always resist such ideas, wanting to pay as I go, but he pointed out that medication could be expensive. I found out how right he was the first time Eddie got sick as a baby—and I didn’t have enough in my purse to pay for medicine that I needed right away.

  “Mrs. Brooks, how are you?” Mr. Greeves is a big, graying, friendly man and a lifelong pharmacist. I’m told his father owned this business before him.

  “In good health,” I responded. “I wonder if you recognize this woman.”

  I handed him the sketch of her face. His forehead tightened as he pored over it. He jutted his lower lip out. “I don’t know,” he said.

  I gave him the full-length sketch and watched a slow smile appear. “You know her?”

  “She came in maybe a month ago. No one was at the counter so I waited on her myself. It’s the fingernails that made me remember. They were so bright and fresh and such a pretty pink. I said something about it and she kind of blushed.”

  I felt hope rise within me. “Did she have an account with you?”

  “I’m not sure she was ever in here before that day or after.”

  “Did she ask you to fill a prescription?” I asked, almost crossing my fingers.

  “No, nothing like that. She took a couple of items off the shelf and paid cash. That’s when I noticed her nails. And she was dressed like that, in a suit, very business-like.”

  “I don’t suppose she gave you her name.”

  “No reason to. It was a cash transaction. But that’s her. I’d bet on it.”

  That was as far as it went. She had simply been a woman off the street picking up a few necessities. Well, I thought, at least I had gone one small step beyond the police.

  I went back to my list, determined now to show both pictures t
o everybody. You never know what will trigger a memory.

  Elsie was picking up Eddie at school so I didn’t have a deadline. It’s amazing how many pharmacies were in this group of towns. It made me wonder how people picked only one for themselves. Mr. Greeves’s store delivers, and that had been our main criterion—that and the charge account.

  I grew weary and bleary-eyed, not to mention tired of hearing people say no. It occurred to me as I walked into what would surely be the last drugstore I would visit today that I should buy some Band-Aids for the bathroom upstairs that Eddie uses. I took a good-size box off the shelf and walked up to the counter, waiting behind an old woman with a cane. The cashier handed her two prescriptions in a paper bag, and the woman gave her name for them to charge the purchase.

  I put my box on the counter.

  “Anything else?” The cashier was a middle-aged woman who looked vaguely familiar. I thought she might live in Oakwood.

  “I wonder if you recognize this woman.” I laid the pictures on the counter and took out my wallet to pay.

  “She comes in a lot.”

  “She does?”

  “Yes. I haven’t seen her for a while, but I was away on vacation, so I might have missed her.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “I don’t think she has an account with us. She pays in cash. I always have to make change from a fifty.”

  “Does she bring in prescriptions?”

  “I don’t know. Let me ask the pharmacist.” She went behind the high counter where the pharmacists worked and showed the pictures around.

  Before she came back, a woman’s voice behind me said, “I know her. You looking for her?”

  I turned to see the old woman with the cane. “I’m looking for people who know her.”

  “That’s Rosette Parker. She picks me up sometimes in the morning and takes me to the bus stop. It’s very nice of her but it’s so much trouble getting into that SUV of hers, sometimes I wish she’d just go by and let me walk.”