The Christening Day Murder Read online

  In a separate, briefer clip, the sheriff, in full regalia, announced that a thorough search had begun to learn the identity of the body, starting with dental records. And, I thought sadly, probably ending with them.

  I taught my class on Poetry and the Contemporary American Woman on Tuesday morning and then drove home, thinking about the woman. What if she had a perfect set of teeth and had never seen a dentist? What if the records were gone? How could a young woman so anger someone that he would kill her?

  Besides the possibility of identification through dental records, there was one other thing in favor of discovering the woman’s identity. If anyone in the area remembered a young woman missing thirty years ago, all the publicity would surely awaken those memories. Perhaps it was best to wait and see what happened.

  Jack called Tuesday evening when he got home. “Not bad,” he said when I asked him about the test. “Just a hell of a lot of work studying for it. I really needed yesterday. You get that upstate murder solved yet?”

  “I have not yet begun to investigate,” I paraphrased, “and I probably won’t.”

  “If I know you, you’re champing at the bit to dig into some old files.”

  “I wouldn’t even know what files to look for, Jack. The sheriff’s office is sending X rays of the woman’s teeth to local dentists, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a dead end after so many years. And Maddie’s parents are sure no one from Studsburg was missing after Maddie’s baptism. So if it wasn’t a Studsburger, how are we ever going to put a name on her?”

  “You’ll think of a way,” he said lightly.

  “The truth is, I’m troubled that the coroner and the sheriff are using this to promote themselves. I keep imagining this poor dead girl as a person, someone who had something to do with Studsburg and met her death there, a violent, planned death.”

  “That’s the way sheriffs and coroners act, honey. They don’t live exciting lives like mine, so they—” My laughter stopped him. “You making fun of my exciting life?”

  “Just enjoying the image. Listen to me, Jack. Suppose the day I left St. Stephen’s, someone had stopped my car and killed me and hidden the body. No one in Oakwood would miss me, because no one knew me and no one knew I was coming.”

  “Your friend Sister Joseph would call, and eventually, when she couldn’t find you, she’d report you missing.”

  “Suppose I left the convent in anger.”

  “OK. I get your point.”

  “And thirty years later some kids pull a rock away from a cave along the Hudson, and there are my bones. I had no family to worry about me. Maybe I had no job to go to. There are people like that, Jack!”

  “I get the drift. There are some holes—like the fact that you own a house and have to pay taxes on it—but yes, it could be that kind of person. So what was she doing in the basement of that church with a killer?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “And your friend’s parents said no one was missing.”

  “Either they’re wrong or the woman wasn’t a Studsburger.”

  “I knew you weren’t going to let this alone,” he said.

  “She deserves a decent burial, Jack. I think I’ll just go over that list Mrs. Stifler has.”

  “Can you squeeze me in this weekend?”

  “You bet.”

  If the body was still news upstate, it certainly wasn’t in New York. It had been good for about ninety seconds of TV notoriety, and now it was gone. I went out for an early walk on Wednesday morning, hoping to think the situation through, but I met my neighbor Melanie Gross, and we walked and talked together.

  “Any chance Hal and I can meet the boyfriend?” she asked. I had told her about Jack a couple of weeks earlier. “Or are you keeping him all to yourself?”

  “I’d love you to meet him.”

  “How about dinner at our place some weekend?”

  “Fine. I’ll talk to him when I see him Saturday, and we’ll get together on a date.”

  We speeded up a bit—Mel is a runner and I’m a walker, so a little cooperation and compromise are necessary in our friendship—and talked about town politics, an almost endless source of conversation and not a little sniping. When we got back to Pine Brook Road, Mel left me at my driveway and continued on to her own. I went inside and made myself breakfast. If I called Deputy Drago, he would have every right to be annoyed. But I knew I wasn’t going to get a call from him unless he had specific information that would identify the victim. I sat with my coffee, trying to justify my involvement in a case that was none of my business. She wasn’t a friend or a relative of the Stiflers. In all probability, she wasn’t even a Studsburger. There was a good likelihood she wasn’t a Catholic. The killer had just chosen the church because it was the only building that wouldn’t be destroyed by the Army Corps of Engineers, and everyone who lived in the town knew that.

  She was nothing to me, just an unfortunate person who had met her death in the basement of St. Mary Immaculate thirty years ago. My only connection to her was a coincidence, that I had meandered through the church at the same time that her killer had returned to view his handiwork.

  I finished my coffee and went to the phone. The county coroner was too busy or too unimpressed with my name and lack of credentials to answer my call. Someone else spoke to me, a woman with a gentle manner and an upstate edge to her speech. She assured me the coroner was doing everything he could to find the killer of the young lady. When I pressed her on what everything amounted to, I got what was apparently the party line: There had been an autopsy, and the coroner had “gone public” to see if anyone “out there” had some knowledge of the deceased.

  In other words, he’d done the minimum required of his job, and he’d had a little free publicity besides. That put him in the same corner as the sheriff. Ordinarily I try not to be judgmental, but it looked as though both departments had pretty much given up. If something dropped in their laps, they might act on it, but there wasn’t going to be any aggressive investigation. No one had reported her missing thirty years ago. No one cared then, no one cared now. She was a pile of bones that had been dumped in a basement wall.

  When I got off the phone, I went back to the kitchen table. I sat facing the window to the backyard. Today it was a bleak wintry gray. That girl might have been my mother’s age. Were she alive today, she might have a large family, including grandchildren. We had talked about John Donne yesterday in my poetry class, and a line flitted through my head: “Every man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind.”

  What other connection did I need?

  * * *

  “This was our house,” Carol Stifler said, the photo album half on her lap, half on mine. “Really my in-laws’ house, but we had nowhere else to live when we were married, and Harry was afraid to commit himself until we could afford it. We were very careful with money in those days.”

  “It’s a pretty house,” I said.

  “It was built around the turn of the century. I guess it’d be about a hundred years old now. Seems a pity, doesn’t it?”

  I said something in agreement. She had been pleased to get my phone call this morning, and I had driven over for lunch and a session with the album. The pictures were moving slowly, because each one evoked memories and conversation. “The Degenkamps said they lived just down the street.”

  “Yes, they did. I have a picture of their house somewhere. Oh, here it is.”

  “That must be the tree they told me about.”

  “Studsburg had beautiful old trees. What a shame to lose all that.”

  “Do you have any pictures of downtown?”

  “Lots.” She flipped several pages. “Here’s Main Street from the bridge. And here are all the shops. Oh, look at that. I’d forgotten Marilou’s Fabric Shop. Just a little hole in the wall, but she had all the most wonderful patterns, and thread to match all the fabrics. And if you couldn’t put a zipper in, she’d do it for you for practically nothing. I wonder what happene
d to her.”

  “Wasn’t she on your Christmas card list?”

  “Yes, she was, but she and her husband moved to Florida, and we lost touch after a few years. Anyway, she isn’t your mysterious body. I’m sure Marilou was forty or more when I knew her.”

  I turned the pages quietly for a while. The church was there, and the rectory beside it. There was a little redbrick schoolhouse and a general store with the words POST OFFICE in the window. There were vintage houses of interesting de sign and old frame houses that looked as though they were on the verge of falling down. There were fields planted with vegetables and even a shot or two of an old farmer plowing with a horse-drawn plow. I had difficulty believing some of the pictures had been taken in the twentieth century.

  Then there were people. Several pictures showed Father Hartman shaking hands with parishioners in front of the church. There were women at meetings, men at dinner, young men in football uniforms.

  “They didn’t have a high school in Studsburg, so all the kids went to the one in Denham. That’s where I’m from. Harry and I met in the Denham high school.”

  “Carol, do you have a list of names and addresses?”

  “I even have the original,” she said. “But it’s all faded. Harry made me a new one. I’ll go get it.”

  She came back quickly with several sheets of paper. The original list was a very faded pink or purple, and the new one looked as though it had been typed.

  I looked at the newer version. Many names had handwritten notes beside them: died 3/7/66; moved to St. Andrew’s Home; moved in with daughter, see Violet Hawkins.

  The Degenkamps, too, had a note beside their name. “Moved in with son, Eric.” Eric’s address preceded Henry and Ellie’s and had been changed twice. It was a very organic list. Hardly any entry remained unchanged from the original.

  “I can get you a copy,” Carol offered.

  “I would appreciate that.”

  “Harry can do it tomorrow. I’ll drop it in your mailbox Friday morning.”

  I handed the pages back to her. “Carol, you must have been in your twenties the year you lived in Studsburg.”

  “I was. Just twenty when we were married.”

  “Did you know most of the girls in Studsburg who were your age?”

  “I knew some of them. I had my own friends in Denham, but I knew a few in Studsburg.”

  “And none of them disappeared after Maddie’s christening?”

  She shook her head. “I wish I could help you.”

  “Maybe your husband can. He grew up in Studsburg. He should remember all the girls in town. He said last weekend he knew everyone. Can I call him tonight?”

  “Of course you can.” She closed the album and took the address lists back. “I’m glad you’re looking into this. Burying a body in a church like that is a desecration.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  7

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait till Friday for the list. Carol Stifler had run out after I left and had it duplicated. That evening she and Harry knocked on my door about eight o’clock, carrying a cake and a fresh copy of the list. I made coffee and we talked.

  “Well, you’re right,” Harry said. “I did know everyone in town, and I remember all the people I grew up with.” He took the list he had just brought for me, pulled a pen out of his breast pocket, and slid it down the first column of names. “The Bakers had a girl named Linda. She got married about a year after I did.” He pointed to an inserted address. “Linda Eastman was a little older and left Studsburg before I did. Doesn’t she live somewhere around here, Carol? I think we ran into her last year.”

  “New Rochelle,” his wife said. “She had an envelope full of pictures of her granddaughter. I thought we’d never getaway.”

  He went down the alphabetical list, accounting for every child of every parent. Even if the coroner’s estimate of the victim’s age was off by ten years, there was no one in Studsburg who could have been buried in the basement of St. Mary Immaculate.

  “So that’s it,” he said, slipping his pen back into his pocket as he came to the last name on the list, Walter Zanders.

  “What about people who worked in Studsburg and lived somewhere else?”

  “Like Mrs. Castro in the rectory? There were some like that. Jackie Peters, who helped out in the gas station sometimes. A few boys from the high school used to get summer work with the farm families. Let’s see.” He looked down at his empty coffee cup for a full minute. “If there was anyone else, it’s gone.”

  There had to be someone else. I asked him about young men who might have had a girlfriend from another town, as he himself had, but that question seemed to press his memory further than he could handle. “It’s a long time, Kix. I can remember who they married, but it’s a stretch to remember who they went out with. Some of those fellows had a lot of girlfriends.”

  I thanked them both and saw them to the door. Sitting at the dining room table, I went over the list, marking the names of people who now lived in the Studsburg area or anywhere else that I considered accessible. The Degenkamps were in Ithaca living with their son, who was a professor at the Cornell College of Agriculture. The mayor, Fred Larkin, had first moved near Owego, and then, in the late sixties, moved again, this time to a town I found on my map not far from Studsburg. I wondered why the Stiflers hadn’t invited the Larkins to the baptism. Father Hartman was listed, too. After a brief stint of about a year at the chancery in Rochester, he had obviously been assigned a new parish in another small town in the diocese. He would be relatively easy to reach by car or phone if I had any questions.

  But the important question, the one that would start me on my way, was still far from being answered. I did the dishes from our coffee hour, pressing my imagination to come up with something. Then I went upstairs, showered, and got ready for bed. But I sat propped on my bed for a long time, mentally reviewing the photos I had seen that afternoon in the photo album, the questions I had asked the Stiflers. Harry’s example of Mrs. Castro, the rectory housekeeper, was exactly the kind of person I was looking for, a woman who came to town in the morning and left in the evening. I knew without asking that Mrs. Castro would be too old to fit the description of the victim. Rectories didn’t hire twenty-five-year-old women as housekeepers. But maybe somebody had had a maid.

  As the thought hit me, I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and put my slippers on. Then I got up and started walking. There had to have been a couple of rich families in Studsburg, and they would very likely have hired someone to clean and maybe even cook for them. It didn’t take a red-hot imagination to figure out the kind of scenario that could lead to murder: a rich young man, a pretty young girl from the wrong kind of family, a love affair, perhaps with the complications that seem almost inevitably to ensue.

  I rubbed my hands on my arms to warm myself, having put the heat down for the night when I came upstairs. Suddenly my blood was circulating overtime. The clock on my night table said 10:10. Too late to call the Stiflers. I got back in bed and turned off the light, certain that I had it. Some family in the area had missed their daughter but had not reported it, perhaps because they mistakenly thought she had run away with a forbidden young man. Being a maid, she wouldn’t be included in the Stiflers’ guest list, but if she was seen around the church on the Fourth of July, no one would be surprised. She belonged there even if she didn’t really belong.

  A little while later, reaching unsuccessfully for sleep, I felt the excitement of the chase translate itself into sexual excitement. I wished Jack were there. Things would be so much simpler—and more gratifying—if we lived together, but we were nowhere near that. He was a confirmed New Yorker, and I was dedicated to life in Oakwood. I stretched and turned. We would work everything out. I was on my way.

  Fifteen of my thirty years were spent at St. Stephen’s Convent. Having left after much soul-searching and for none of the popular reasons of today—a man or a crisis of faith—I have m
any friends there. The best of them is the General Superior, Sister Joseph, whom I met the moment I stepped into the Mother House of the convent when my aunt delivered me on what I always think of as the worst night of my life. Joseph is a good fifteen years older than I, which was a great help during my early years at the convent but has never proved a hindrance to our friendship. On Thursday morning I called her.

  “Chris, it’s good to hear from you. How’s the law work going?”

  “It’s on and off, hectic, and very satisfying. How are you?”

  She was fine and had tidbits of news for me, which I listened to eagerly. “But I imagine you have news to tell us,” she said finally.

  “More like a request.” I gave her as brief a description of the Studsburg murder as I could manage and then came to my point. “I think I may be onto a way to identify the victim, but I’ll need to question people in the Studsburg area, and I can’t drive there every day.”

  “Of course not. You’ll have to stay overnight.”

  “Which I can’t afford.”

  “But if you had a place to stay, like a convent …” She left it hanging tantalizingly.

  “It would be wonderful,” I said.

  “I can’t get you into a Franciscan convent; there aren’t any in the area. But that won’t bother you, will it?”

  “Any place that takes me is fine.”

  “Give me some time to work on it.”

  Arnold Gold had some work for me, so I took the train into the city and put in several hours. He was defending a homeless man who had been accused of assaulting a tourist, falsely accused as far as Arnold was concerned. As I looked over the documents, I found that I agreed with him.