The return of the car explained why there was none found at the farmhouse. If the killer had come in a separate car, there would have been one car too many at the murder scene. Now that was explained. Either he accompanied Susan from Brooklyn or she picked him up along the way—perhaps the person who had told her about the farmhouse five or six months ago?—and after he killed her he simply took her car and returned it to its parking place. As Jack had said, who would notice him in the middle of the night?
“So, Eddie,” I said as I wrapped him in his tiny snowsuit on Tuesday morning, “we’ve solved a small mystery, but we have no answers for the big one.”
His sleepy eyes looked at me for a moment, then closed. He had just finished nursing and was too sleepy to listen to my rambling. When I carried him out to the car, he never opened his eyes.
“Oh Chris, he’s just so beautiful,” Elsie Rivers said as she took my bundle out of my arms and nestled it in hers. “And look how much he’s grown. What a blessing he is.”
Elsie was my mother’s closest friend and confidante during my childhood and was one of those remarkable women for whom each baby is a brand-new experience, no matter how many she has seen and fallen in love with. For me, of course, Eddie was truly a first. I had almost nothing to do with babies for the first thirty-two years of my life, but Elsie had practically been born a grandmother, a woman who was drawn to babies the way I am to sweets. When she said how much he had grown, I had to smile. She could probably tell you to the ounce how much a baby would grow in a day, a week, or a month. For me it was a constant amazement at how he filled out his clothes a little more every few days without the benefit of steak and potatoes.
We spent only a few minutes talking since I had to get to my obstetrician on time, but I knew as I walked back to my car that Eddie was in the best of hands. With luck, I would return before he woke up but if he did, Elsie would charm him, I was sure.
This was my six-week checkup, the one that would give me a clean bill of health, a return to all the things I had become accustomed to in my life, including sex. I wondered, as I left the doctor’s office, if I would ever feel wide-awake enough to engage in sex between feedings. But physically I was fine, and Dr. Campbell shook my hand and wished me a happy motherhood as I left. A nice woman, I thought as I put my coat on. A nice profession, too, treating women who were essentially healthy and doing something we all look forward to.
I took the opportunity to do some shopping before returning to Elsie’s, where Eddie hadn’t the least idea he’d been left with a sitter. She said he hadn’t opened his eyes since I’d dropped him off!
Jack called in the afternoon to check up on my checkup. When I’d reported that all was well, he said, “I think there’s an ID on Susan’s body. I talked to the detective in charge and he said he was expecting the prints back momentarily.”
“Has there been an autopsy yet?”
“I doubt it. That body’s got to thaw before they can start. They’re handling it locally. The Brooklyn detective should hear as soon as there’s something. How’s my son?”
“He’s fine. Elsie was bitterly disappointed—he didn’t even open his eyes.”
“Kid takes after his old man.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“Gotta go. See you later.” There were background noises that indicated something was up.
It was Arnold who finally called with the news. “It’s not Susan,” he said.
“What?”
“They’ve checked the prints and they’re not hers.”
My mind was whirling. “Arnold, could Kevin have given the police prints he knew weren’t Susan’s?”
“He could have but he didn’t. Ada gave the cops a few things that were Susan’s, and some of those prints are the same as the prints from Kevin. Pretty compelling, and nothing matching the prints on the body.”
“Who is she, then?”
“No one seems to know. She doesn’t have an arrest record. A woman about Susan’s age and build, similar hair color, wearing the same kind of clothes Susan wears—but doesn’t everybody nowadays? Oh, and there were dental records. I forgot about those. Ada got some X rays from Susan’s dentist and there’s no comparison.”
“This is wild.”
“It’s a lot worse than wild. The police are pretty sure Susan went up there. She seems to have been the one who rented the house last summer. And while they haven’t said so, I get the feeling they think she could be the killer.”
“That’s terrible. We don’t even know she was there. Are there any prints in the house that seem to be hers?”
“We’ll find that out. Did you and Sister Joseph leave prints?”
“I don’t know. Possibly. We had gloves on because it was so cold inside, but I went upstairs and looked through the only occupied bedroom—well, it had probably been occupied in warmer weather. It looked as though Susan—or the victim—had moved into the kitchen and was living there. Maybe I took my gloves off then. Is there a problem with having left prints?”
“No problem at all. The police know you were in the house.”
“Arnold, Susan may not even have gone to that house on New Year’s Eve.”
“You and I know that. But she seems to have a connection to it; she rented it from the Donaldsons, she borrowed a car and said she was driving about fifty miles from Brooklyn, and she hasn’t been seen since. All very circumstantial, not convincing to those of us with a brain, but you know how New York’s Finest think.” Arnold has never been known for flattering comments about police, Jack excluded.
“How on earth are they going to find out who that poor woman is? I didn’t find a purse anywhere, or anything that looked like identification.”
“They’ll search their computers for reports of missing women. Eventually, they may have to use DNA, although they have prints from the body now and that may do the trick.”
“This is just crazy. We have an unidentified body, a missing but presumably still alive Susan, no motive, and no connection.”
“And an uncooperative boyfriend who probably knows more than he’s letting on.”
“Keep me posted, Arnold. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Nor I. How’s the baby?”
“Doing fine. He smiles a lot.”
“With a mother like you, how can he help it?”
That’s why I love him.
Jack had heard the news by the time he came home from his classes but he’d been too busy to call.
“Puts everything in a new light, doesn’t it?” he said.
“Puts everything in the dark as far as I’m concerned. Who is this woman? Who was the house rented by anyway, Susan or the victim? And why? Was it Susan’s friend or the other woman’s friend who suggested the farmhouse?”
“All good questions. Maybe Susan rented the house for herself and the victim came to visit her.”
“And where’s Susan?”
“You know, you have to consider she could be the killer.”
“Oh, Jack.”
“You going to eliminate a suspect because she’s the daughter of a friend of your friend?”
“I have to figure out what’s going on there—what went on there,” I said, not answering his question. “Blackmail? How does a woman in her twenties get involved in blackmail? Something else?”
“There are certain relationships between women you may not want to think about,” Jack said quietly.
I took a breath. “Hate the sin, love the sinner,” I said. “But she had a boyfriend, Jack. She lived with a man.”
“She lived with a man recently. What did she do two years ago? Three?”
Four, five, and six.
“You still want to keep on with this?”
“A woman has been murdered,” I said firmly. “Nothing is worse than murder. I talked to Mel yesterday, and she came up with some good ideas for finding the person who led Susan to the farmhouse. I may look into that. Susan’s friend Rachel might also be able to help.”
“She might also have a handle on Susan’s sexual preference.”
“She might.”
“And speaking of sexual preference, I have a very strong one for my wife.”
I felt the cloud of fatigue lift. “That does something very nice to me.”
“It was meant to. It’s been a long time.”
“Yes.” I leaned over and kissed him, feeling the stirrings of lovely desires that had not been satisfied since late in my pregnancy.
“Think that guy upstairs is good till morning?”
“Count on it.”
He put his arms around me and the rest, as they say, is sweet history.