At two o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, Paul Walsh, Angelo Ortiz, and Mort Shelley gathered in Jeff MacKingsley’s office to review their findings in what the media was now calling the “Little Lizzie Homicides.” They had all brought paper bags with sandwiches and coffee or a soft drink.
At Jeff’s request, Ortiz started with his report. He gave them a quick rundown of his interview with Lena Santini, Charley Hatch’s ex-wife, and what she had told him about Robin Carpenter’s relationship with Charley.
“You mean Carpenter’s story yesterday was a bold-faced lie?” Jeff asked. “How stupid does she think we are?”
“I saw Carpenter this morning,” Mort Shelley said. “She sticks by her statement that she hasn’t spoken to Charley in three months. She explained away the so-called birthday date by saying it was his idea and she left a message for him that it wouldn’t happen. She absolutely denies being in Patsy’s that night.”
“Let’s get pictures of Robin Carpenter and Charley Hatch and show them to the maître d’, the bartender, and all the waiters at Patsy’s,” Jeff said. “I think we have enough to get a judge to let us access her phone records. We’ll subpoena her credit card charges, and her E-ZPass statement. We’ve already got the judge’s order to get Charley Hatch’s phone records. We should be receiving them later today. We’d better take a look at his credit cards and E-ZPass as well. Either Carpenter or the ex-wife is lying. Let’s find out which it is.”
“I don’t see Lena Santini as a liar,” Ortiz objected. “She was quoting what Charley told her about Robin Carpenter. By the way, she even asked if she could put a couple of those carved figures of his in the coffin. I told her we couldn’t release them.”
“Too bad she didn’t ask for that skull and crossbones Charley carved in the Nolans’ front door,” Mort Shelley observed dryly. “That was good craftsmanship. I was surprised to see that it was still there yesterday.”
“Yes, we had plenty of time to stare at those doors when Celia Nolan wouldn’t let us in,” Paul Walsh said mildly. “I understand that you’re planning to see her today, Jeff.”
“I’m not seeing her today,” Jeff said shortly. “When I called her she referred me to her lawyer, Benjamin Fletcher.”
“Benjamin Fletcher!” Mort Shelley exclaimed. “He was Little Lizzie’s lawyer! Why on earth would Celia Nolan go to him?”
“He got her off once before, didn’t he?” Walsh asked quietly.
“Got who off?”
“Liza Barton, who else?” Walsh asked.
Jeff, Mort, and Angelo stared at him. Enjoying the astonishment on their faces, Paul Walsh smiled. “I lay odds with you that the deranged ten-year-old who shot her mother and stepfather has now resurfaced as Celia Nolan, a woman who flipped when she found herself back in home sweet home.”
“You’re absolutely crazy,” Jeff snapped. “And you’re the reason she ran to get a lawyer. She’d have cooperated with us if you hadn’t been in her face about the time it took her to drive home from Holland Road.”
“I have taken the time to look up Celia Nolan’s background. She is adopted. She is thirty-four years old, exactly Liza Barton’s present age. We all felt the impact of seeing her in those riding clothes yesterday, and I’ll tell you why. I’ll admit she’s taller than Audrey Barton. And her hair is darker than Audrey Barton’s, but I suggest that is because of her visits to the salon—I happened to notice that her roots are growing in blond. So I’m making a flat statement: Audrey Barton was Celia Nolan’s mother.”
Jeff sat silently for a minute, not wanting to believe what he was beginning to believe—that perhaps Paul Walsh was on to something.
“After I saw Celia Nolan in riding clothes, I made a few inquiries. She’s taking lessons at the Washington Valley Riding Club. Her teacher is Zach Willet, who happens to be the teacher who was giving Will Barton riding lessons at the time of his death, the result of a fall with his horse,” Walsh continued, barely able to conceal his satisfaction at the impact he was making on his colleagues.
“If Celia Nolan is Liza Barton, do you think she holds Zach Willet responsible for her father’s death?” Mort asked quietly.
“Let me put it this way: if I were Zach Willet, I wouldn’t want to be alone with that lady for long,” Walsh answered.
“Your theory, Paul—and it is still a theory—completely overlooks the fact that the house was vandalized by Charley Hatch,” Jeff told him. “Are you suggesting that Celia Nolan knew Charley Hatch?”
“No, I am not, and I accept the fact that she never met Georgette before a week ago Tuesday when she moved into the house. I do say that she became unbalanced when she saw the writing on the lawn and the doll with the gun and the skull and crossbones and the splattered paint. She wanted revenge on the people who put her in that position. She was the one who found Georgette’s body. If she is Liza Barton, there’s an explanation for why she knew her way home. Her grandmother lived only a few streets away from Holland Road. She admits that she was driving past the house where Hatch was working in the exact time frame when he was killed. Even those pictures we found are a way of begging us to recognize her.”
“That still doesn’t fly so far as blaming Celia Nolan for killing Hatch. How would she have found out that he was the one who vandalized the house?” Ortiz asked Walsh.
“The garbageman was talking about Clyde Earley taking Hatch’s sneakers and jeans and carvings out of the trash bag,” Walsh responded.
Jeff began to feel solid ground for his instinctive reaction to Walsh’s theory. “Are you suggesting that Celia Nolan, even if she is Liza Barton, happened to hear the gossip of a garbageman, figured out where Charley Hatch, whom she’d never met, was working, somehow got him to be standing at the break of the hedge in the road, shot him and then went off to have a riding lesson?”
“She put herself on that road at the right time,” Walsh insisted stubbornly.
“Yes, she did. And if you hadn’t pushed her against the wall she might be talking to me right now and telling me something that would be helpful to us about seeing another car on the road or a person on foot. Paul, you want to pin everything on Celia Nolan, and I agree that it will make a great story: ‘Little Lizzie Strikes Again.’ I’m telling you that someone else hired Charley Hatch. I don’t for a minute believe Earley’s story. It’s too pat, too convenient. I bet Clyde went through that garbage when it was on Hatch’s property. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took it and Hatch knew it was gone. Then Earley could come back and put it in the trash barrel again and wait to have a convenient witness see him open it after it’s been abandoned. If Hatch panicked, whoever hired him may have panicked as well. And my guess is that Georgette Grove learned who ordered the vandalism and paid for it with her life.”
“Jeff, you’d have made a great defense lawyer for Celia Nolan. She is very attractive, isn’t she? I’ve noticed the way you look at her.”
When he saw the prosecutor’s icy stare, Walsh realized he had gone too far. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “But I stand by my theory.”
“When this case is over, I am sure you’ll be happier reassigned to another division in the office,” Jeff said. “You’re a smart man, Paul, and you could be a good detective, except for one thing—you get a theory, and you’re like a dog with a bone. You don’t keep an open mind and never have, and frankly, I’m sick and tired of it and of you. Here is what we’re going to do now.
“We should be getting Charley Hatch’s phone records later today. Mort, you prepare an affidavit for the judge to get the phone records of not only Robin Carpenter, but also of Henry Paley and Ted Cartwright—both their personal and business phones. I want to know about all incoming and outgoing calls any of them made or received over the past two months. I think we have sufficient grounds to ask for them. I also want Carpenter’s and Hatch’s credit card bills and E-ZPass statements. And I am going to petition the Family Court to allow us to unseal the adoption records of Liza Barton.”
Jeff looked at Paul Walsh. “I will lay you odds that even if Celia Nolan is Liza Barton, she is a victim of what is going on. I have always believed that as a child, Liza was the victim of Ted Cartwright’s misdeeds, and I believe that now, for whatever reason, someone is trying to trap Celia Nolan into being accused of committing these murders.”