Lurleen remained quiet on the other end of the phone as I told her what happened on the walk and what Lucie had suggested. “Lucie is right about the break in,” Lurleen said. “Why would someone break into Stephanie’s house at the crack of dawn when she could be awake and stirring. And as for a motive in Nicole’s murder, Lucie is right about that too. Most murders are about revenge, love or money. Nicole’s murder might be linked to something that happened years ago and it could very well involve money or revenge. I can’t see love playing a part in any of this.”
“Except perhaps for the love of Luke, the poor boy who died in the hospital,” I said.
“You’re still wondering who Luke’s parents really were, aren’t you?” Lurleen asked.
“Yes,” I said. “They could be who everyone says they are, Mr. and Mrs. Strout, but Mrs. Strout was so sick the last years of her life.”
“Luke was five years old when Mrs. Strout died of scleroderma,” Lurleen said, “so someone else raised him. Who would that have been?”
“Jonathan made it sound as if the whole family pitched in,” I said.
“Did that include Josephine Strout?” Lurleen asked. “Or was it Stephanie or Nicole who stepped in as a second mother?”
“What you’re really asking is whether or not one of those women gave birth to Luke and then handed him over for the senior Strouts to raise. People didn’t describe Nicole as the motherly type, so wouldn’t she have gotten an abortion if the child didn’t belong to Don Junior? And if he was the father, wouldn’t she have raised him as the heir apparent to Mr. Strout’s millions?”
“Sounds right to me,” Lurleen said. “And as to Stephanie, how could she possibly pull that off with Jonathan in the picture?”
“Jonathan was out of the country for months before Luke was born,” I said. “He was doing some prolonged study in Canada, so I wonder if Stephanie could have disguised her pregnancy from him. That still sounds like a long shot.”
“That leaves Josephine,” Lurleen said. “She never married, and she was a lot younger than her brother. She would have been in her late thirties or early forties when Luke was born. She could have had Luke and left him to be raised by her brother and sister-in-law.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t she have raised him on her own? She had money, so she could have gotten the help she needed. I suppose there might have been some social stigma about being a single mother, but even fifteen years ago women were choosing to have children on their own. Can you find out where Josephine was for several months before Luke’s birth?”
“I can try,” Lurleen said.
“It’s pure speculation, of course,” I said, “and it might be Mrs. Strout really was his mother.”
“In that case, Nicole could have seen Luke as an interloper,” Lurleen said, “someone likely to get the bulk of Mr. Strout’s estate when he died. She probably knew he was setting up a trust for the boy.”
“The family thought Nicole was a gold digger,” I said, “and maybe they were right.”
“Stephanie called her a manipulator,” Lurleen said, “intent on getting what she wanted. They said she was very good at misdirection by making people see what she wanted them to see.”
“I suppose all that could have motivated Nicole to act,” I said, “but murder a child? That’s unthinkable.”
“It’s unthinkable to you and me, but to a person like Nicole, maybe it wasn’t,” Lurleen said. “You know that’s what royalty did all the time. They killed family members if they thought those people might usurp their power or money.”
“Hopefully not all the time,” I said.
“You know what I mean. You know what Catherine the Great did to maintain power, and there are plenty of other examples.”
“Right,” I said, “although I still can’t imagine how Nicole could have harmed Luke even if she wanted to. The boy died of a ruptured appendix and sepsis according to the autopsy. Still, I suppose if someone thought she’d killed Luke—someone who cared about him and wanted revenge—they could have murdered her. But none of this fits very neatly. Why wait six years to kill her and why wasn’t she murdered on October 26th if her murder was to avenge Luke’s death?”
“You’re right,” Lurleen said. “Things still don’t add up.”
We both stopped talking for a minute.
“Can you come over, Lurleen? I don’t have to be at the clinic until one, and we think better when we’re side by side.”
“I’m on my way, and I’ll bring my laptop.”
She arrived ten minutes later, and we settled around my kitchen island, laptop open in front of Lurleen.
I poured us coffee and brought out some rugalach. Now that I knew how delicious that pastry was from my wedding, I usually had some on hand.
We sat munching and talking.
“This doesn’t make sense the way we’re thinking about it,” Lurleen said.
“Maybe we have more than one thread as Mason suggested, more than one story. He couldn’t see how Adeline Morgan fit into Nicole’s death since her fight was with Jonathan.
“My head is spinning. We have entirely too many threads at the moment. Let’s try to separate them. Nicole might have had something to do with Luke’s death or maybe someone thought she did—someone who couldn’t bear the thought of Luke’s dying.”
“Someone who then wanted revenge for his death,” Lurleen said.
“Yes,” I said, “but Nicole wasn’t attacked or killed on October 26th like Mr. Strout and Jonathan.”
“Maybe the murderer couldn’t make that death happen on schedule,” Lurleen said.
“Perhaps,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I believed that.
“We have three potential mothers for Luke, assuming Mrs. Strout was not the mother,” I said. “Stephanie, Josephine and Nicole, but if Stephanie was Luke’s mother and wanted revenge for Luke’s death, that would mean she was the one who tried to run Jonathan off the road. Can you believe that, Lurleen?”
“I can’t,” Lurleen said. “She seems to love Jonathan and be desperate for his attention, and if she was Luke’s mother, why wouldn’t she raise him as her own?’
“A lover,” we both said together.
“A lover Jonathan knew nothing about,” Lurleen said.
That’s a twisty road,” I said, “so let’s assume for a moment that Josephine Strout was Luke’s mother. She might well have been out for revenge. She was the one who decided who would be in the book club. She might have been the person who tried to scare Nicole to death with the mask of Luke, if that’s what Nicole saw.”
“But the neighbor saw someone with a brown ponytail,” Lurleen said.
“It would be as easy to wear a wig as a mask,” I said. “And wearing a wig would put the suspicion onto Adeline Morgan. Everyone else was inside the house when Nicole saw whatever she saw. Perhaps Josephine didn’t know who to blame for Luke’s death. That’s the only reason to gather all these players together as far as I can see. They weren’t friends, so maybe she wanted to decide who looked most guilty, and Nicole was the winner.”
“That would put a lot of pieces of the puzzle together,” Lurleen said.
“And it would mean she was considering other people as possibly involved with Luke’s death—people like Crystal or Adeline or even the neighbor, Dawn.”
“We might be able to rule out Dawn,” Lurleen said. “I think she moved into the neighborhood only a few years ago.”
“Okay,” I said, “one person off the list. I guess the first question we need to answer is whether or not Josephine could have been Luke’s mother.”
“Give me a minute,” Lurleen said, “Let me see if I can find out what Josephine was up to a few months before his birth.”
My cell rang and I answered it without looking at the number. I worried Vic might have decided she needed my help after all.
But it wasn’t Vic.
“Hi, Dr. Brown, this is Stephanie. I wanted to follow up on this morning. I think I was rude to you.”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m sure you were upset, so it was a bad time for me to show up. I’m here with Lurleen, looking into a few things.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
I paused for a second.
“You’re still working on the case?” she asked. She sounded annoyed. “I know you talked to Jonathan. He spoke with me right after he talked to you. I think it helped a lot, and I wanted to thank you. As far as I’m concerned, your work is done. Now Jonathan doesn’t have to keep secrets from me.”
“And vice versa,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
“I only meant that marriages require a lot of honesty and sometimes it’s difficult. Mason and I are still figuring out the ground rules, what we need to say and what we can let slide.”
“Jonathan and I don’t lie to each other, never have, except for this one thing he was so ashamed of.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “Anyway, you don’t need to apologize for this morning. I know you must have been frightened.”
“Yes,” she said. “Why were you walking your dog in my neighborhood?”
“I had the morning off, which meant I could take a long walk with my dog, and a long walk is something Hermione loves.”
Stephanie was quiet for a moment. “Did you see anything strange?”
“No. I saw the lights on and the police car; that’s why I stopped. Do the police have a way to protect you?”
“Not really. They’re going to monitor the house more closely. They got here as fast as they did because I was on some kind of surveillance list.”
“Did they figure out anything about who broke in?” I asked.
“No. I’m urging Jonathan to take a break from work, at least as he convalesces. We could go somewhere, stay secluded until all this is settled. Frankly, I’d love that. It would give us a chance to rekindle our relationship. But why are you taking so much interest in us? It makes it sounds as if you are still investigating things.”
“Not really. It’s just that Jonathan seemed very worried about you. He said he’d never actually gotten any threats himself.”
“He’s probably forgotten them, what with the accident and his worries about me. All the recent threats have come on my cell, but he’s the one who got run off the road and could have been killed.”
“Does he have any idea who wants to harm either of you?”
“If he does, he isn’t telling me,” Stephanie said.
So much for no secrets between Stephanie and Jonathan.
I decided to clear the air. “I wasn’t entirely honest with you when I said Lurleen and I weren’t investigating. You know Lurleen, she always has to find the answers, and if a friend is in trouble, she’s all over it.”
“Lurleen is calling me her friend?” Stephanie asked. “That’s kind of her. What is it she’s found?”
Here things got complicated. Should I ask the questions we had? Would that be interfering in Kevin Delaney’s investigation?
“You’ve gone quiet, Ditie. What is it the two of you think you know?”
“I guess we’re trying to understand a little more about your brother Luke and his death,’ I said. “His death must have been devastating for you.”
“It was devastating for all of us, but what could it possibly have to do with what’s going on now?”
“Maybe nothing, but Nicole was working in the hospital when Luke died and a year later when your father died.”
Now Stephanie was silent. I counted to five and was about to speak when she did instead.
“Nicole was a student nurse at the time Luke was hospitalized. We felt relieved to have her with him. I mean the family was with Luke every minute we could be, but it was nice to know she was there 24/7.” Again, Stephanie paused. “You seem to be saying she might have been involved with his death.”
“Maybe it’s far fetched, but it could suggest a reason she was murdered, if someone thought she was involved and wanted revenge for his death.”
“After six years?” Stephanie asked. “I told you I’ve known Nicole for a long time and I’ve run hot and cold with her. I was the one who introduced her to my brother and then regretted it, but I’ve never thought of her as a possible murderer.”
“That marriage broke up shortly after Luke’s death, didn’t it?” I asked.
“You have been snooping,” Stephanie said. “It wasn’t because my brother thought she killed Luke, I can tell you that. Don Junior discovered Nicole was involved with other men. He was drowning in grief and she was off having affairs. One was with her current husband, Ben Ash. He couldn’t hold a candle to my brother, so in a way she got what she deserved. She gave up a good man for a lousy one. She told me you noticed the bruises on her body. Those were from Ben even though Nicole didn’t tell you that.”
“When did you talk to her?”
Once more Stephanie was quiet.
“I spoke to her that evening after the book club broke up. I wanted to see if she was okay, and I wanted to find out what had frightened her, but she wouldn’t tell me.”
“What time was that?”
“I didn’t look at my watch, maybe 10:30 or 11:00.”
“You went to see her?” I asked.
“I spoke to her on the phone.”
“You’ve told the police about your call?”
“No. They never asked me about a phone call. They asked when was the last time I saw her alive, and I told them it was at the book club. Look, Dr. Brown, I called to apologize for not being more polite to you when you stopped by, and now you seem to be grilling me as if I’m a suspect in Nicole’s murder. I didn’t like her much, but I certainly didn’t kill her. Do you have more questions for me? If not, I’m hanging up.”
I had a million more questions for her, but I didn’t ask them. Instead I said goodbye and turned to Lurleen.
Lurleen spoke before I could. “I heard most of that. You’re a persona non grata with Stephanie at the moment, but maybe I’m not. She seemed pleased when you said I thought of her as a friend. I think I might visit her as a friend, see how she’s doing and commiserate with her.”