“You weren’t a police officer for very long,” I say.
It’s a dry cold Saturday morning. Emelina and I are sitting on Timothy Sweet’s living room couch. His raised ranch is in the newer section of Milford. A farmer’s family sold off a large parcel in the 1980s and a big city developer carved it up into a hundred or so quarter-acre plots.
“I could make more money with my side-job than working as a cop,” Sweet says. “The hours were better, and I got to still be outside.”
His answer seems rehearsed. There is more to his story. Sweet is referring to his landscaping and tree removal business. His kids have taken over the business now, and he splits time between here and a home in Florida. We are lucky we caught him up North.
“What was it like being a policeman back in the late Sixties?”
“It was busier than nowadays with the protests and all. Milford wasn’t growing. A lot of the good jobs moved out of town. We ran three shifts, had a detective, a juvenile officer, and a jailer.”
“Who else worked with you back then?” I know some of the names and can test his memory.
“There was the chief, Herman Kenrick, and three sergeants, Bill O’Hara, Sam Roman, Hubie Carroll. The detective was Jack Dougherty, and the juvie officer was Sandra Egan.”
I nod as he rattles off nine patrolmen. “That’s some memory.”
“I’ve lived in town my whole life and would see them all the time. I even hired some of them to work for me part-time. Kenrick’s brother did plumbing and heating and hired some of the guys too. I was the youngest guy on the force. The tax base was shrinking. Some of the guys were Vietnam vets, so they had preference for any promotions. I was gonna get stuck working midnights, weekends, and holidays for a long time.”
“Okay.” There is more, so I let him roll.
“So, over the years when a guy would quit, they wouldn’t replace him. When Kenrick retired, the senior sergeant served as acting chief, and it went that way until all the sergeants retired or quit. Now what do you have? Two full-timers and two part-timers with State Police coverage overnight? Won’t be long before it is just the Stateys responding to all the calls.”
I sense he wants to say more, so I ask, “What else about back then?”
He looks over at Emelina. “You knew what it was like back then, Ms. Bidwell. There were two sets of rules. One for the big-shots and one for the little people. I got into it a few times with Kenrick. I talked to him man-to-man outside of Borough Hall once at three in the morning after I arrested one of Milford’s finer citizens for beating his wife. I asked the chief none too politely to give me a list of who I could arrest and who I couldn’t. He didn’t like that. I told him it would make my job much easier. The straw that broke the camel’s back is when he un-arrested a peeping Tom I caught outside of a no-tell motel.”
“Why did he do that?” Emelina asked.
“The guy was a Catholic priest. He was wearing his clerical collar under a windbreaker and no, he didn’t have permission to be looking in the ground floor window of the couple going at it. The Archbishop got the chief out of bed. Kenrick came down to Borough Hall with a coat over his pajamas before the pervert’s fingerprints were even dry. I’ve never seen him that angry. I thought he was gonna bust a blood vessel or something.”
We sit quietly as he stews over events from a very long time ago.
“Kenrick wasn’t as squeaky clean as he acted,” Sweet continues. “He had his hand in a lot of things. He must have had something on the mayor. Do you wonder why he was the last Chief of Police in this town?”
Emelina interrupts his train of thought with, “Do you remember taking the missing person report of my niece, Antoinette Bidwell?
“A missing person’s report?”
“It was Christmas Eve, 1969.”
He screws his face up in thought. “I’m sorry, Ma’am.” Sweet shakes his head. “I quit the force a few months later. Spring season is always big for landscaping, and I decided I had enough of Kenrick, so I took the leap.”
“Tell us about Johnny Murphy,” I say.
“Who?”
“He lived next to Emelina’s niece and nephew that year on Elm Street,” I say.
“I went to school with his older sister, Megan, if it’s the same Murphy family. Didn’t he get in trouble somewhere down South?”
We nod to him. “Rape and murder.”
“That’s right, I remember now.”
“He came home after serving in the Army in Germany. Do you know what he did after he was discharged?” I ask.
“Not a clue,” Sweet says.
We ask him about which cops are still around and who have gone to the big roll call in the sky. He tells us that policing is not good for one’s health and none of the roster from back then are still alive.
“It took me a long time to get it out of my system,” he says. “When I see the cruisers flying by with the lights and sirens on, I miss it. I wake up from dreams of being in uniform, only problem is I am not wearing any pants. In those dreams it is kinda difficult to stand up at roll call.”
We all laugh and get up at the same time. He walks us to the door and promises to tell us if he remembers anything that can help us find out what happened to Andrew and Antoinette.
We get outside and remember how cold it is as we cinch up our scarves and pull our hand-knit wool hats down over our ears. Emelina’s Mercury doesn’t warm up on our drive to the Senior Center.
We save Joan Kane for last. The others recall who from their graduating class went to the fiftieth high school reunion, but everyone just assumed that Antoinette went to Broadway or Hollywood. A couple of the retirees had been to the funeral service and were shocked to hear how she died.
Joan was not Antoinette’s maid of honor but was one of her closest friends, we find out.
“I was devastated when I never heard from her,” Joan says. “I was angry at her for years thinking that she disappeared without saying goodbye.”
“Did you ever think something bad happened to her?” I ask.
“No, I thought she deserted Andrew and was too ashamed to tell anybody about it.”
“Why did you think that?”
“When she didn’t give him children, he became cold and aloof. I don’t think it was her fault that they didn’t have kids, but all the same he blamed it on her.”
I can see Emelina getting uncomfortable with that opinion, but she is wise enough to know that family are sometimes the last people to find something out.
“Before she left, I mean disappeared, she told me that Andrew had become withdrawn, and she couldn’t reach him. She asked me for advice. I told her that they should get counseling. Neither of them had health insurance and it would have to come out of their pocket.”
“Do you know where they worked?” I ask.
“Andrew was a quality assurance manager at Milford Specialty Steel—they are out of business now—and she worked as a bookkeeper at Milford Coal & Ice.” Joan giggles with a distant memory.
“What?”
“I remember before everybody got refrigerators, they would come around and deliver ice blocks in the spring and summer and then coal in the fall and winter. They are out of business too.”
“They used horse drawn carriages through the Depression and kept using the horses during World War II because of the gas rationing,” Emelina says.
“That’s right.” Joan smiles at the memory. “I was really young, but I remember the Milford Coal & Ice carriage being pulled by two black horses.”
I make a mental note about them delivering coal. There may be something at the library about them. Photocopies of old photos may help jog people’s memories. We have Antoinette and Andrew’s high school photos as well.
I change the subject. “Joan, you know Antoinette never left Milford. She was strangled and stuffed in a steamer trunk hidden behind a fake wall. Can you think of anybody who could have done something like that?
“No, that’s the thing. The last couple of times I talked to her before Christmas, she seemed really happy. She was looking forward to the holidays. Whatever was bad between Andrew and her seemed to be fixed, but she didn’t tell me what it was. I just assumed they patched things up.” Joan pauses and thinks carefully about what she says next. “But after she disappeared, I thought her happiness came from finally making a decision to leave Andrew and to leave Milford.”
“I guess you were wrong,” Emelina says sternly.
Before I let that sink in, I try to rescue the interview. “Did you know Johnny Murphy?”
“There was talk about him getting in serious trouble down South.”
“Did you know he was Antoinette’s neighbor?”
My question stuns Joan. Her eyes get big behind her glasses. “Oh dear.” She looks away from both of us and stands up from her rocker. Emelina and I watch her pace between the TV stand and the living room window facing the oval driveway and parking area in front of the center.
Her distress is palpable. I am wondering if she was a victim of an unreported attack. Did I just open an old wound?
She sits back down and her hands tremble as she lifts her teacup of tepid milky liquid to her lips. I can see her debating if she is going to say anything. She sets the tea down and looks at Emelina. “Antoinette said her neighbor was having a hard time finding a job after he came back from the service, and she got him a job at Milford Coal & Ice as a delivery man. She never said his name, but now I realize who she was talking about.”