“Glad you made it,” Jack said as I came inside the house. “I was starting to worry.”
“We found her dead,” I said, taking my coat off quickly. There was a lot to do.
“We?”
“I called Joseph when I found the door open.”
“So the worst happened.” He took my coat and hung it in the closet as I ran to find Eddie. He was crying in the family room, hungry, tired, ready for his evening attention.
I had very little free time for the next hour, but Jack called the precinct and asked that no one notify Susan’s parents and boyfriend until we had made the first call. Whoever he spoke to wasn’t sorry to give up that most unpleasant part of his duties.
Jack had something in the oven when I came home, and when I finally put Eddie to bed about an hour and a half after walking into the house, we sat down to one of his great meals, roast beef with real Yorkshire pudding. I was so hungry I gobbled it up, hardly uttering a word till I was through.
“I’m glad Sister Joseph came to help. You could have called the police, you know.”
“I kept thinking there’d be nothing in the house, I’d get Farmer Donaldson in trouble for illegally renting the house—which I did—and they’d think I was nuts. Joseph drove over and we went inside together.”
“It must have looked pretty terrible.”
“It did, but there wasn’t any smell. There was no heat and the body was frozen.”
“So there wasn’t much deterioration.”
“I couldn’t really tell. She was lying face-down so all I saw was one bluish-black hand, her jeans, her sweater, and her hair. Someone bashed her head in. I hope there’s enough of a face left for identification.”
“There are other means,” Jack said. “By the way, Melanie brought over some cookies.”
“Bless her heart. Where does she get the time now that she’s teaching?”
“She said she just got going this afternoon and never stopped. We should have them over one of these evenings, Chris. I think you two miss each other, and I always enjoy talking to Hal.”
“She’ll need a sitter,” I reminded him.
“You’re right. I forgot.”
We had usually gone over to the Grosses’. It was so easy, just lock the front door and walk down the street. “I’ll talk to her. You’re right, I really miss her. I haven’t been walking in the morning since Eddie came.” Mel and I had met during our morning outings over two years ago.
“You’ll walk in the spring.”
“I’ve got to call Arnold, Jack. I think he’s the best person to talk to the Starks. The cookies’ll have to wait.”
“You think walking in on the body is the hard part,” he said solemnly. “Then you start making the phone calls and find out what’s really tough.”
He was right. I went to the phone with a heavy heart.
“You found her body?” Arnold said, full of disbelief.
“Yes. I’m sorry. It was in a farmhouse up the Hudson.”
“This is terrible. I don’t know how this could have happened. How did you come to this place, Chris?”
“I had a conversation with Susan’s old schoolteacher. Susan told her things, private things, that she doesn’t seem to have told anyone else. What she told me fitted right in with what the owner of the car Susan borrowed said, that wherever Susan was going, it was about fifty miles from Brooklyn. I followed up on it and found the farmhouse. Sister Joseph drove over to go inside the house with me. I couldn’t do it alone.” Arnold knew Joseph, having met her—and talked to her with great pleasure and admiration—at our wedding.
“Have the Starks been notified?”
“Jack asked the police to hold off. Would you like me to do it?”
“I’d like anyone in the world to do it, but I think it’s my duty as a friend.”
“I’m so sorry, Arnold.”
“Did you find the car up there?”
“I didn’t see it on the property. There’s a chance it’s in one of the farm buildings.”
“Thanks, Chris. We’ll talk.”
I didn’t envy him the next ten minutes of his life.
We talked about it as we ate Melanie’s wonderful cookies.
“She had a secret life, Chris,” Jack said. “She may have been involved in something sordid or illegal, and whatever it was she handled it from that house upstate.”
“You’re thinking drugs?”
“Could be. Doesn’t have to be. Maybe it was a relationship. How did she find that place anyhow?”
“The farmer said someone she knew up there told her the house was empty.”
“That’s a lot of doors to knock on,” he said, thinking like a cop. “Everyone in Bladesville and all the surrounding towns.”
“You mean someone she knows steers her to a lonely farmhouse and then kills her?”
“It’s an idea. If you hadn’t hit on that schoolteacher, no one would have found her till the farmer started showing prospective buyers the house. It could have been a long time.”
That was true. The better portion of the property had been sold; the farmhouse was certified unlivable. “And by the time they found her, no one would even associate her body with a missing Brooklyn girl.”
“That’s probably how he looked at it. Not a perfect crime, but damn close.”
“But it didn’t happen that way, Jack. He didn’t count on my talking to Mrs. Halliday and finding the body three days after the murder. I think the police have a pretty good chance at this one.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Arnold called about nine o’clock. “This has to be one of the worst days of my life,” he said, sounding far from his usual chipper self. “They’ve typed the blood and it’s Susan’s. Ada and Ernie are looking around for things in the house that might have Susan’s prints on them.”
“Kevin’s apartment might be a better place to look. Has he been notified?”
“Yes. I called him myself. He’s as broken up as Ada and Ernie.”
Or a good actor, I thought uncharitably. “Arnold, does anyone have any idea what Susan wanted a lonely farmhouse for? She rented it five months ago and paid for six months in cash.”
“Well, I certainly don’t know. Maybe Kevin does but he’s not talking, and I can’t get anything out of Ada and Ernie now, I’m sure you understand why. And I think they’re finding this as mysterious and unexplainable as lam.”
“She has some connection up there, Arnold, a friend who lives around there and knew about the empty farmhouse. Now that’s not just a person who drives down that road. It’s someone who knows the area.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Chrissie, but my brain won’t take any more of this today. And believe it or not, I have to be in court first thing tomorrow morning.”
“OK. We’ll talk another day. Let me know if anything turns up.”
Monday was back-to-work day. Jack was off to Brooklyn to the Six Five and Mel was off to the town school where she had a one-year appointment. I was going back to teaching at a local college, but happily, I didn’t have to think about that for a couple of weeks. My teaching consisted of one course that met on Tuesday mornings, and my mother’s old friend Elsie Rivers had promised long ago to baby-sit. It was an ideal arrangement. She was trustworthy and grandmotherly and close by. Tomorrow, when I went to my obstetrician for my six-week checkup, I would drop Eddie off for the first time and see how everything worked out. I was sure it would go well.
But today it was just the two of us, with perhaps a late afternoon visit from Mel. Jack wouldn’t be home for dinner because his evening law school classes were resuming, and that meant returning to the late nights we had grown accustomed to since shortly after we had met. I got the house in shape, checked with Elsie about tomorrow, took Eddie out for a walk in the cold winter air, and, after his two o’clock feeding, lay down for a well-needed nap. I was awakened after three by the telephone. It was Arnold.
“The coroner upstate decided not to ask the Starks to identify the body,” he said. “There isn’t much of a face left.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“So they’ll try for prints. Kevin had a bunch of things he was sure she had held, so they’re using those to find a match.”
“What about DNA?”
“Takes a long time but they may do it anyway. If they can match prints, that’s good enough. They’ve already got the right blood type. Ada doesn’t have the faintest idea who Susan might have known up in that part of New York State. Neither does Kevin.”
“Arnold, Kevin knows that something was bothering Susan and he won’t talk about it. But he might know more than he lets on.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
“Do the police have any leads?” I asked.
“Not that I’ve heard. I’m afraid you and the deputies up there did a great job of obliterating any tire tracks.”
“I thought of that when it was too late.”
“Well, don’t worry about it.”
“Do you want me to keep working on this, Arnold? I can leave Eddie for several hours at a time.”
“Let’s wait and see what the sheriff comes up with.”
For the moment that seemed the best way to go. I had a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, which would keep me in the area but wouldn’t stop me from thinking. Very little stops me from thinking besides fatigue. I wanted to come up with a lead to the person who had told Susan about the Donaldson farmhouse. If she had a relative in the Bladesville area, her parents would know. If there were a friend that she talked about, Kevin would know. Unless Kevin himself were the friend.
Mel and her kids dropped over after four, and we all sat in the family room while the adults talked and the two school-aged children played. I had picked up some toys recently so they wouldn’t be bored to tears when they visited, and their newness seemed to keep them happily occupied. I was learning pretty quickly that there was more to being a mother than caring for a baby.
“The cookies are great,” I told Mel.
“I made a million of them, but there’s only half a million left twenty-four hours later. I really love being back in the classroom, but I hate the idea of living out of the microwave.”
“I can understand that. Especially since your home-cooked food is super-good.”
“But you know, I’ve lost some weight since I started to teach. There aren’t as many sweets in the house to nibble on. All those years of running and what finally took the pounds off was going back to work!”
“I just hope not taking my morning walk won’t affect me the other way.”
“You were born thin, Chris,” Mel said, with a sigh. “And I wasn’t. Tell me about your trip upstate.”
I had told her the essence of it over the phone, which was half the reason she was here. Now I told her the rest and finished by saying how much I would like to figure out who had suggested the farmhouse to Susan.
“Maybe a retired teacher,” Mel said. “She had a good relationship with one. Maybe she had a good relationship with another.”
“OK, that’s something to think about. Keep talking. You’ve already got one idea more than I have.”
“There’s always an old boyfriend. Her mother might remember a name for you.”
“Why would a young person want to live in a village of five hundred or so up the Hudson, away from the big city and all his friends?”
“Maybe there’s a commune up there. And you know, a lot of young families have turned to farming to get away from the big city and return to the earth.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Or maybe he’s artistic, a writer or a painter, and he wants peace and quiet and can’t afford the city. New York’s pretty expensive.”
“You’re right, it is. Go on, Mel. You’re really doing well. I should turn this case over to you.”
“Hardly. When would I work on it? From midnight to six A.M.?”
The plight of the working mother. We talked for a while, and then it was time for both of us to look after our children. Mel held Eddie and talked to him before she left, and he clearly loved it. I walked Mel and her kids to the front door and watched them skip down Pine Brook Road. Then I went back to Eddie and started our evening hour.
When he was happily asleep, I ate some leftovers from the weekend. When Jack came home later, I would sit with him while he ate. It amused me that there were now three family members, all of whom had different schedules. During the fifteen years I had been a nun at St. Stephen’s, I had lived by the general schedule of the convent. We awoke at the same time, had morning prayers at the same time, performed our charges, taught our classes, came and went in the most efficient way possible. My life had now turned topsy-turvy.
I read a book as I ate, then took care of the dishes and grabbed the Times. The new family room was set up so that it was in a separate heating zone. I could keep Eddie warm upstairs and myself warm in the family room while leaving the kitchen, dining and living rooms cool. It even made sense now for Jack to have his late dinner in the family room so as not to have to heat the kitchen and the rest of the downstairs. I am a born penny-pincher, and doing things like this gives me, if not pleasure, at least satisfaction.
I sat back with the paper and started to read. The door was closed to save the heat and it took a moment before I realized the phone was ringing in the kitchen. I tossed the paper aside and dashed.
“Hello?”
“Chris? This is Jill Brady. We heard about Susan at work today.”
“Yes. I found her body yesterday, upstate, about fifty miles from Brooklyn.”
“The police came and interviewed us. I’ll have to call them but I thought you’d like to hear first.”
“Hear what?” I couldn’t imagine what she had to tell me.
“I walked by my garage this evening on my way home. The car’s been brought back.”
“The car you lent to Susan?”
“Yes. I looked at the speedometer but I really can’t remember how many miles were on it before, so I can’t say how far it was driven. Are you sure she’s dead?”
“As sure as I can be. Her face was beaten badly so we can’t identify her that way, but the blood type’s the same and so is the hair color. She was wearing jeans and a sweater from what I could see.”
“Sounds like Susan. Well, I’ll call that detective now and let him know. Maybe someone else drove the car back and they’ll find fingerprints on the steering wheel. I didn’t touch anything. I just opened the door and stuck my head in.”
“Thank you for calling me first, Jill. This is a real shocker. It’s possible the killer knew she had borrowed the car and where it was garaged.”
“How would he know that?”
“She was very badly beaten. Maybe he got her to tell him things before he killed her.”
“What a gruesome thought. By the way, I rang the bell of the people I rent the garage from. They didn’t see anyone return the car, so for all we know, it’s been there since last night.”
“That’s possible. We’re not even sure when she was killed. There’s no heat in the house and the body was frozen.”
“This is a terrible conversation,” Jill said. “I think I’ll call the police now.”
“Sounds like she went up to the farmhouse with her killer,” Jack said when we talked about it later. “It does, doesn’t it?”
“Otherwise you’ve got the problem of an extra car if the killer drove his own.”
“I hope he left some prints,” I said.
“Don’t count on it. He could have dumped the car somewhere it might not be found for weeks, but he didn’t. This guy is smart. He knows enough about Susan that he knows she’s borrowing a car, and when he comes back with it, he drops it off in the middle of the night so no one will see him. He’s wearing gloves for warmth so there are no prints on the car and he walks to the nearest subway. Assuming he lives alone, he walks into his apartment like a guy coming home from a late date. Were the keys in the ignition?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“There’s so damn much we don’t know. When’s your doctor’s appointment?”
“Tomorrow before noon. I’m taking Eddie to Elsie’s house after I nurse him.”
“Kid’s really getting around, New York for New Year’s Eve, Elsie’s tomorrow morning. Think any of this makes an impression on him?”
“I wish I knew.”