The Mother's Day Murder Read online

  “That’s quite an accusation,” she said.

  “I want you to know, before you say anything else, I have not discussed this with the police. Neither has Jack.”

  “Thank you. When is this birth supposed to have happened?”

  “She said she was twenty.”

  “Twenty years ago. Yes, that’s very convenient. I wasn’t at St. Stephen’s twenty years ago.”

  “I see.” I didn’t know where to go from there. Of course, I wanted answers because in the answers might be something that would lead us to the killer of the girl who was still nameless. But I didn’t want Joseph to feel that she owed me an explanation of where she was and what she was doing twenty years ago. “If you don’t want to talk about it,” I said, “I’ll—”

  “I think we must talk about it. There’s a dead girl in the hospital morgue, a girl who came to you and might still be alive if she hadn’t. She’s not likely to have fingerprints on record anywhere. I don’t suppose at her age she joined the army or the FBI. So finding out who she is and why she’s dead and who might have killed her aren’t going to be easy.”

  “But your life is your business. When she told me this wild tale, I thought it was just that, a wild tale. I was hesitant about letting her stay here because I thought she might be psychotic, but she acted fairly normal. Until this morning. It appears that she took our ax out of the garage and chopped down a tree down the block and across the street, a tree that’s been the subject of a lot of neighborhood dissension.”

  “Yes, my life is my business. As yours is yours. I don’t look forward to seeing it displayed publicly and talked about by strangers. Where did this girl say she was born?”

  I turned a page in my notebook. “At Good Samaritan Hospital in some town in Ohio. I have it here somewhere.”

  “I know the hospital,” Joseph said. “I was a patient there once.”

  I felt a cold shudder. “She said—” I swallowed. “She said she was adopted through God’s Love adoption agency.”

  “But what we don’t know is whether this girl was speaking for Tina or speaking for her real self. And that’s crucial.”

  “I agree. It would be easy enough to find out if Tina was adopted.”

  “And what agency handled the adoption. Shall we start there?”

  “Let’s.”

  Joseph went to the kitchen and made the call. While she was talking, I heard Eddie talking to himself upstairs. I went up, got him out of his crib, and brought him down. I got a glass of milk and a couple of pretzels and took him to the family room to eat and drink. Joseph got off the phone just as he was getting started.

  They made some conversation and Eddie offered her one of his pretzels, an act of generosity that surprised me. She assured him she wasn’t hungry and he went back to his snack.

  When he was finished, we went outside, taking two summer chairs to the sandbox so we could continue our conversation.

  “Tina is their natural child,” Joseph said, “the third of five children. She was born in New Jersey.”

  “Then our nameless stranger was talking about herself, not about Tina.”

  “Tina?” Eddie said.

  “Tina’s gone home, Eddie.”

  “OK,” he said. “Bye-bye.”

  Joseph smiled as she watched him. “You do have to be careful, don’t you?”

  “Very.”

  “Well, why don’t we refer to your mysterious visitor as Anita? That’s the other name spelled backwards with an extra a.”

  “Good idea.” I moved my chair a little distance away from the sandbox. “Joseph, what would motivate this stranger to concoct a story like the one she told me?”

  “I can’t imagine. It’s hard to blackmail a nun who doesn’t have a great deal of money to pay. And what could she have wanted from you? You and Jack would never pay her.”

  “None of that is clear. She said she lived in fear of you, that you had realized the relationship between you and that you might do something terrible to her.”

  “That’s preposterous, don’t you think? I never met her. And if what she said was true, would she think I might hurt my own child?”

  “If your position was threatened.”

  “She certainly doesn’t sound very stable.”

  “Joseph, I told the police that Anita had a problem but I refused to tell them what it was. Now that I have your denial, if they come back and ask again, I’ll tell them I have nothing to say.”

  “I certainly appreciate that, but I don’t want you spending a night in jail on my behalf.”

  “It would complicate my life, no doubt about it,” I said lightly. “Do you want me to continue to look into this?”

  “I think we have a duty to try to find Anita’s killer. Whoever she is, whatever stories she’s told, she didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

  10

  Jack came home a little while later and told us in no uncertain terms that he was busy in the kitchen and not to be disturbed. He carried in two bags of groceries from our fancier supermarket, more food than I could imagine all of us eating twice over. Eddie wanted to see what Daddy was doing so I took him inside for a minute to watch Jack putting things in the refrigerator—and hiding them from me as he did so.

  “No fair opening this,” he ordered.

  “Yes, sir. I think we’ll take a walk and keep out of your way.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  The rest of us set off for the nearby beach. Oakwood is on the Long Island Sound and a group of homeowners, including us, own a private beach on a quiet cove. It was still too cool to consider a dip, but it was always a nice place to walk and Eddie loved the sand.

  The sun was shining when we got there and the air was warm and breezy. Eddie sat down in the sand and started to pull off his shoes.

  “He certainly knows what he wants,” Joseph said.

  “He sure does.” I took the shoes and socks and let him frolic.

  “I think I should fill you in on some of my life, Chris, so that you can see the connections and lack of connections between me and the story this young woman told.”

  “Joseph, I don’t want you to tell me anything that you would prefer to keep to yourself.”

  “There have been many things in my life that I wanted to keep to myself when I was younger and some that I still wish to keep private. But it’s not a secret that I grew up in a wonderful family with parents who loved me, two sisters that I am close to, and a brother that I haven’t seen for some time. We lived outside of Cincinnati and I went to school not far from my home. I came to St. Stephen’s through the college when I was eighteen and looking for an education that I could afford and that my family would accept. I never left St. Stephen’s after I registered as a freshman.”

  “So your life was divided between Ohio and New York.”

  “That’s right. At this point, I’m much more of a New Yorker than an Ohioan. About twenty or twenty-one years ago, I asked for leave to go home. There were problems in my family that I thought I might be able to help solve. I was given indefinite leave and I went back. I thought I would be there a few months, but it worked out to be much longer than that. Since I’m not a person who can sit and twiddle her thumbs, I got a job as soon as I could and started working several days a week.”

  “Did you wear your habit?”

  “Interesting that you ask. I had intended to, but the office manager said it might make some of the employees uncomfortable. I received permission from St. Stephen’s to wear street clothes. I must tell you,” she smiled at the recollection, “it was a time of miniskirts and shorts and I had a terrible time finding skirts and dresses that I considered appropriate. One of my sisters, who is a talented seamstress, quickly ran up a few dark skirts and I bought several blouses to go with them. I didn’t want to rush around with my knees showing.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t imagine Joseph in a short skirt. I find I myself can hardly wear anything comfortably if it doesn’t cover my knees. “So
you were able to keep your job.”

  “Oh, yes, and I enjoyed it. I was used to turning in my paycheck to the convent, so I just turned it in to my family instead. It was an interesting year—I must have been there close to a year—and when I felt I had done what I set out to do, I went back to St. Stephen’s. I remember that I laid all those nice skirts and blouses on my bed for whoever wanted them and I put my habit back on. I felt like a different person. I was very grateful for the opportunity to hold a secular job, have secular friends, live fairly independently, enjoy myself, and really want to get back to my calling.”

  “Did you have anything to do with God’s Love adoption agency?”

  “Not that I remember. I worked for an insurance agency doing mostly clerical work, although later they had me do more demanding things like make inquiries and conduct interviews. If that adoption agency had business that crossed my desk, it was just one of many hundreds and I don’t recall the name specifically.”

  “You said you were once a patient at the same Good Samaritan Hospital that Anita claimed to have been born in. Was it during that year?”

  “No, it wasn’t. I broke my arm when I was a child and I was taken there to have it set. There were some complications, I think, and they kept me overnight. But I must tell you, I visited someone at that hospital during the year I spent in Ohio.”

  “But there would be no record of that.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Anita said that the adoption was handled by a woman named Mrs. DelBello. Does that name ring a bell?”

  “I can’t say it does. I’ve met a lot of people in my life and one of them may have been named DelBello, but as far as that particular year, I don’t think so.”

  “You said you visited someone in Good Samaritan Hospital the year of your leave.”

  “That’s right. It was a cousin I was fond of.”

  “Was it one visit or several?”

  She seemed to wait a moment before answering. “It was a number of times, Chris, many, many times. He was a man I cared a great deal for and he was very ill. He died during that year.” She looked away, at the sand, at Eddie, at the water washing the beach. “At that time, the hospice movement wasn’t as developed as it is now. He was too sick to be cared for at home but there was nowhere else for him to go except a hospital.”

  “Did he have family?” I asked.

  “A child, a son. He was quite young.”

  She didn’t mention a wife and I didn’t pursue it. “He must have been a fairly young man,” I said, thinking that twenty years ago she herself was not yet thirty.

  “He was, yes. He lived a greatly shortened life. It’s one of those tragedies for which we can never know the reason, one that tested my faith.”

  It was clear that this death still affected her and I was sorry I had asked her the initial question, sorry I had caused the pain she was obviously suffering.

  “On those visits,” I said, “could you have talked to someone in a waiting room and disclosed who you were, someone who might have somehow used your identity to hurt you?”

  “I don’t remember waiting rooms, Chris. I generally went to the hospital after work or on weekends and I went directly to my cousin’s room. I don’t talk much about myself and I have no recollection of unburdening myself to any strangers that I met in the hospital. My cousin, of course, knew all about me, but that’s not what you’re after.”

  “Joseph, I think the first thing we have to do is find out who Anita was, where she really comes from, what her connection to St. Stephen’s was, and then maybe we’ll know why she told me this monstrous story. I’m going to ask the Oakwood police to get me a picture of her. I hate the idea of showing a picture of a dead girl around, but someone around the convent must have seen her if she had a novice’s habit. Perhaps the real Tina will know who she is. Maybe they shared a class and became friends. Somehow or other Anita learned about me.”

  “We do talk about you, you know,” Joseph said with a smile. “You’re one of our favorite people.”

  “Is my name and address in a file somewhere?”

  “I’m sure it’s in Angela’s file. Angela keeps records of everyone. It’s the most comprehensive one we have. And of course, you’re in my personal file, too, along with Jack’s name and Eddie’s. Once I learn them, they’re with me forever but when I first hear them, I write them down to be sure I don’t make a mistake. But my file is in my office and it’s off-limits to anyone except me.”

  I looked at my watch. We had been talking for quite some time and standing on the beach long enough that I was getting anxious to be on the move. Suddenly, there was a cry of agony from Eddie. I looked around and saw him crying and spitting.

  “Eddie, what’s the matter?”

  “No good,” he said. “No good.” He had put a handful of sand in his mouth and now was trying to rid himself of it.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” I said consolingly. I reached into my pocket and found a tissue. “Here, let me see if I can get it off your tongue.”

  He stood obediently still, tears lining his face, as I cleaned away the grains of sand. “Is that better?”

  “Pooey,” he said, and Joseph laughed.

  “Pooey it is,” I said. “Why don’t we walk home and we’ll get some water?”

  He pointed to the sound. “Water.”

  “I’m afraid that’s salty water, Eddie. You can’t drink it.”

  “I want water.”

  “You’ll get water, but not that water.”

  He started to cry again as we left the beach.

  “There’s something new to learn every day, isn’t there?” Joseph said. “For you as well as for him.”

  “And some of them are hard lessons. For me, too. I should have watched him more closely.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. You’re a fine mother, Chris. I really mean that.”

  We talked less on the way back to the house, partly because I was thinking about all the things I would have to explore to come up with answers, partly because Eddie was still unhappy that there were grains of sand left in his mouth. Jack was cooking up a storm in the kitchen so we took a detour and went in through the front door, to avoid going through his domain. After a good rinse, Eddie eventually got back to his normally happy outlook and before he showed signs of evening hunger and fatigue, Jack fired up the barbecue.

  It turned out to be an extraordinary dinner. He had bought a filet mignon, the kind of expense I could never have justified to myself—as he well knew—and he served it with an array of unusual mushrooms that he had cooked in a cast-iron pan. There were fresh vegetables as well, and a wonderful crusty bread with olives that he warmed up before serving.

  Dessert was a died-and-gone-to-heaven cake from a bakery I try to stay away from. Before we ate it, I got Eddie off to bed. He would get a small piece tomorrow.

  Joseph was generous in her praise. “I can’t remember the last time I ate filet mignon, Jack. That is truly a gift.”

  “Nor I,” I said.

  “That’s why I made it. Chris would never order it in a restaurant because it’s the most expensive thing on the menu, and I wanted her to have it and enjoy it.”

  “Well, although it’s hard to say on a day like this, it’s my good fortune to be able to share it.”

  A little while later I drove to the motel, with Joseph following in her car.

  I had a few more questions I wanted to ask Joseph before I left but we were hardly in her room when the phone rang. She answered and I heard her address Detective Fox.

  “Yes, if you come right away,” she said. “That’s fine. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  “He’s coming to question you again?” I said when she hung up.

  “It looks that way. Let me just freshen up and we’ll go downstairs and wait for him.”

  I knew she would not care to be questioned by him alone in her room and it was doubtful whether he would allow me to be present. Five minutes later we had found in
the lobby a sofa and chairs with a table in front of them, and as we sat down Detective Fox came in the front door, spotted us, and joined us.

  I went as far from them as I could manage and sat on a chair with my back to them. I’m one of those people who never learned to sit quietly and do nothing. If only I had brought a book with me, I thought, but I had expected to talk to Joseph for a little while and then drive home. So I pulled out my notebook and tried to make sense of what had happened since I opened the door on Thursday and saw on my doorstep a young woman wearing the habit of a Franciscan novice.

  But there was no sense. There were apparent coincidences that were explainable. If Joseph hadn’t been in Ohio twenty years ago, there would be no case for her being the natural mother of a girl born in that part of the state. But I was satisfied with Joseph’s explanation. She was there but she had not given birth to anyone then or ever. How this girl that we called Anita had come upon her name was the mystery we had to solve.

  But even that wouldn’t tell us why Anita had been murdered or by whom. Perhaps it was simply what it appeared to be, an act of violence against a tree that irrationally provoked a killing. Why on earth would Anita take our ax out of our garage and chop down that tree? And if she hadn’t, who had? Jack’s fingerprints would be all over it but I didn’t think anyone would come and arrest him for either killing the tree or killing Anita.

  I shut my notebook and twisted around to see how they were doing. Joseph was talking, her head bent. I hated having to intrude on her life with my questions, but where would I be without her answers?

  A woman with a small dog sat down in the chair next to me and started a conversation. I participated halfheartedly until Detective Fox appeared in front of me.

  “Want to change places, Mrs. Brooks?”

  I was tempted to say “gladly,” but I didn’t. I excused myself from the lady and the dog, and sat down with Detective Fox.

  “Sister Joseph will be waiting for you in her room,” he began. “She told me what the girl who called herself Tina Richmond told you, that she was the sister’s illegitimate child.”