I ended up back at Father Grimes’s rectory. He gave me his living room and promised no one would bother me. Then he went upstairs.
I took out my notebook and looked over what I had just learned from Marilyn Belvedere. No one else had even hinted at the relationships in the Farragut family. If the Farraguts had moved to 211 Hawthorne Street with a ready-made family of one son and one daughter, it was easy to see why no one would suspect that the children were born of two marriages. And since there seemed no limit to the lengths Walter would go to protect his son, one could only wonder whether that included harming his daughter as well.
Backward and forward, backward and forward. I flipped back to where I had copied Sister Mary Teresa’s long number onto a line on my page. Someone had written it for her, someone who wanted to make sure it would not be easily identified because it gave access to something. Not a locker or a post office box, not any credit card that I had been able to dig up, not a phone number, because it was too long and the first three numbers were not an area code and the dashes were in all the wrong places.
What happened next was like standing in a museum looking at a painting that was only pieces of color, and then seeing it again from a certain distance or in a certain light and the pieces come together and take on a form. My mind was still thinking about backward and forward and I started to read the number from the right instead of the left. It ended with -50. If you started with the zero, you had 05-1837-. And suddenly there it was. The dashes were meant to confuse, not to aid: 518 was the area code for Albany and the upper Hudson Valley! I stood up and ran to the kitchen, where the housekeeper was putting the finishing touches on Father Grimes’s dinner.
“May I use your phone?” I asked breathlessly.
“Right over there, dear. Is something wrong?”
“No. I’ve just never seen a phone number this long or one that starts with a zero.”
“You dial the zero first if you need the operator.”
“Why would she need the operator?”
“Who?”
“The person making the call.”
“My grandchildren call home with a special number that makes it collect. My son told me about it. They can call from anywhere in the country, any phone at all, and they don’t have to pay for it.”
No one had called Mary Teresa two nights ago. She had made the call herself and it would never appear on the convent’s bill. I dialed the long number and heard a ring. I had no idea what I would say if someone answered.
After the third ring, I heard a pickup. Then a strange, genderless, robotic sounding voice said, “Leave your name and number. I’ll get back to you.”
I hung up, then dialed St. Stephen’s. They found Joseph for me and I told her what had happened.
“You mean Mary Teresa could have telephoned this person every day and we’d never see it on our bill?”
“That’s right. Something in this number must tell the telephone company it’s collect. And since she could dial it without going through an operator, whoever was on the switchboard wouldn’t even know she made a call.”
“And you have no idea who the person is?”
“I don’t even know whether it’s a man or a woman. It sounds like one of those computer voices and it doesn’t identify itself.”
“We’ll have to find out who that number belongs to.”
I looked at my watch. “It’s too late for me to get Jack. He’s on his way home now. But this has to be our killer.”
“It’s hard to believe that a prison inmate could have a telephone and answering machine in his cell.”
“Which means we’re back to Walter. Or old Mrs. Farragut. Maybe she took the messages.”
“Let’s give it some thought, Chris.”
“I’ll see you later. I still have some things to clear up in Riverview.”
The housekeeper got a hug from me and I accepted a cookie from her to tide me over till I had time for dinner. Then Father Grimes came down and I had to rebuff his invitation to stay for dinner. I was too keyed up to eat and I wanted to get back to the Farragut house to see if I could figure out what it was that I almost knew.
I retrieved my coat from the living room and put my notebook back in my bag. As Father Grimes helped me on with my coat, I heard the furnace kick on under the floor I was standing on. The whole downstairs was pleasantly overheated and I couldn’t quite see why more was needed.
“Is that the furnace?” I asked him.
“Probably not to heat the rectory. The rectory and the church are one building with one furnace and several heating zones. We have to make sure the pipes don’t freeze in the church basement, so we’ve got a zone down there that we keep warmer than the rest of the church overnight.”
“I see,” I said. “Thank you, Father.” I buttoned my coat as I ran.
This time I didn’t park on the street. I drove up the driveway and shut my lights off as soon as I had a good look at where the garage was. Then I inched my way forward, past the side door where the drive was canopied and on to the back of the house. There I turned off the motor and got out of the car as quietly as possible. The house to the left was some distance away, but I didn’t want to alert those people any more than I wanted Warren Belvedere after me.
This would be the side of the house where Mrs. Cornelius Farragut’s private apartment had been. I pointed my flashlight through each window along the back section of the driveway but saw little. Shades were drawn over some and curtains over others. I turned the light off and continued cautiously to the back of the house.
The garage, when I reached it, looked more like a small barn than a place to keep a car, but this house had been built before the days of automobiles and the little barn made a perfect home for two cars. I looked through a window on the left side and saw one car and space enough for more than one more.
I turned the light off and made my way carefully along the back of the house, circling a small shed built off the end of the kitchen, to the wooden staircase where Warren Belvedere had caught me earlier, keeping an eye on the side of the Belvedere house. With luck they were still having dinner and the dining room had no windows facing this direction.
Holding the railing tightly, I climbed the stairs. It was miserably cold and a light wind made it worse. When I reached the landing at the top, I cupped my hands around my flashlight and pointed it through the window on the upper half of the door. I couldn’t see much beyond the wide painted boards of the floor. Turning off the light, I turned the door handle just on a whim. Incredibly, the door opened.
I let myself in and closed the door behind me, my heart pounding crazily. I was standing on the old softwood floor of a bedroom, surrounded by cartons and old furniture. The Corcorans obviously used this little apartment as an attic. I felt my way to the open door.
The only direction to go from there was to the right. Feeling safe, I turned on my flashlight. On the left was a staircase going down to a closed door. I had probably walked right by it on my visit with Marilyn. I went down the stairs and tried it, but it was locked and I went back up. On my right was a small bathroom, then another room. I pointed the flashlight inside.
A mattress was stretched across the floor and near it was the residue of a meal, a square pizza box and two paper cups. One of the cups was empty, but the other still had a spoonful of light coffee in the bottom. A couple of feet away from the mattress was an old chair. I ran the light over it, finding a couple of coins. Someone had sat here and coins had fallen from his pocket.
I went out into the hall and ran my light along it. There were no other doors. I called, “Hudson?” but there was no answer, no sound of movement. But he had been here; I was sure of that. I remembered the bang of the shutter when Marilyn and I were in Julia’s room. Had it been a shutter or had Hudson heard voices and tried to signal us?
I went back to the room with the mattress and ran the light along the wall. Near the door was a thermostat. Tonight it was set at fifty. But yesterday it had been set at a livable temperature. Someone had taken Hudson out of here last night and turned the heat down.
What had they done with him? I went back to the first bedroom and let myself out. In the dark, I went down to the ground. I had looked in the garage and no one was there. I walked along the back of the house to the potting shed that seemed stuck onto it. There was a window on each side and a padlocked door on the side facing the backyard. I held my flashlight against the window on the Belvederes’ side and looked in. I could see a worktable with garden tools and ceramic pots, a pair of heavy gloves, a watering can. I moved the light, straining to see. The floor, a dirt floor, seemed so far away, but there was something there, something that looked like a blue-jeaned leg.
I tapped on the window. “Hudson,” I called. “Hudson, it’s Chris. Are you all right?”
There was no movement, not a twitch. I could feel tears welling. I wasn’t even certain it was Hudson, but everything inside me told me it had to be. I tapped again, holding the flashlight on what I was fairly sure was a denim-clad leg. It didn’t move.
I ran across the snow to the Belvederes’. On the front porch I pressed the doorbell twice in my agitation. The musical chimes began a concert that was interrupted when Marilyn Belvedere opened the door.
“Miss Bennett,” she said, clearly surprised.
“Please call the police,” I said breathlessly. “There’s a man—a body—in the Corcorans’ potting shed behind the house.”
“A what?”
“Please!” I said, stepping inside, stamping the snow off my feet on her little mat.
“Warren?” she called. “Warren?” She went toward the living room and met him about halfway. “I think we have to call the police.” The tone of her voice implied she did not want the decision to be hers.
He saw me and his face turned furious.
“Call the police,” I said more calmly than I felt. “Right now. Right this minute.”
“I’ll do it,” his wife said.