Dead Wrong (38 page)

“Then he discarded you because you were pregnant—with his child.

“At this point, as sorry as your situation was, you could have returned to confession and Communion.

“And, at this point, I asked myself, why not?

“Okay, your hatred of him is so great that you can’t see yourself reconciled with God. But years pass—thirty-three of them—and you’re still that angry? We Catholics have remedies for lingering anger. Given time, we can take measures—praying for those who have wronged us, at least trying to forgive. But none of these measures can coexist with deliberate, premeditated, and unresolved revenge.

“That, Maureen, was why you couldn’t bring yourself to confession. The revenge you planned was as fresh and rampant as when you first laid your careful plans.

“But I wasn’t certain how such a complicated scheme of revenge could involve Mary Lou. Granted, if she was Charlie’s daughter, she could make a lot of trouble for him. And then it hit me: but not nearly the misery that would befall him if it turned out that
Brenda
was his daughter.”

He looked at Maureen, who returned his gaze unflinchingly. “That’s it, isn’t it?” he said. “Brenda is Charlie’s daughter. Brenda is my cousin, not my ‘niece.’”

They sat looking at each other. It seemed that each was trying to think of something to say.

“Uncle Bob …” Brenda said finally. But she immediately corrected herself. “Actually it’s
Cousin
Bob.” She smiled, a real smile this time. “At least now I can address you as a relative and mean it.”

“Brenda!” There was warning in Maureen’s tone.

“It’s all right, Mother. It’s over now. At least as far as Father Bob is concerned.” Brenda turned her full gaze on Koesler. “The break-in was Ted’s idea,” she said resolutely. “He told me about the Ford Park land development. I told McGraw. I also told Ted about the microfilm copies of parish records. When Ted decided to go for those records, the development plans became the perfect smoke screen. Any vandalism in the archives would seem to be aimed at those plans. Ted chose Chardon with the understanding that he would do only what was ordered, as long as one was specific.”

“Then,” Koesler said, “it was Chardon who killed Agnes Ventimiglia?”

“Yes. Charlie—” She stopped. “I can’t think of him as ‘Father.’” After a moment, she continued. “Charlie told him only that he wanted his name off my birth record and that no one should know that it had been altered. By Chardon’s lights, he was simply doing his job efficiently. Ted didn’t know any of this until a few days ago when Mother issued her threat—a veiled threat, but enough to start the ball rolling.”

“And the security guard on the third floor?”

“I told the cleaning people about the important papers being kept in the archives. I suggested it would be a dangerous situation until the matter was resolved. Which is probably true for that matter. But actually, I knew of no plan—besides Ted’s—to do anything about the vault.

“When it comes to that,” she added reflectively, “I really doubt that anyone would actually try to break into the vault—not just for those plans.”

“And the killing?”

Brenda’s lip trembled. “That was tragic. Chardon was explicitly told,
no
violence. For all I cared, he could get caught or, when he spotted the guard, he could have aborted the job.

“But even if the cleaning crew hadn’t forced the issue, none of it would have mattered. You see,” she explained, “I had already made a copy of the microfilm that contained my baptismal record.” She shook her head. “It wouldn’t have mattered …” Her voice trailed off. After a moment, she continued. “But once I learned that they had arranged to put guards on that night, I knew it wasn’t necessary for me to do anything.

“Either way it would have forced the Nashes into something more desperate.” She shook her head again. “He wasn’t supposed to get violent. He wasn’t supposed to kill. That was tragic,” she repeated. “But it was entirely his own decision.”

With Brenda near tears, Koesler turned to Maureen. “How did you ever do it, Mo? Juggling two infants in foster homes and, when you were ready, taking them home with you?”

Maureen didn’t reply. She seemed to be weighing whether or not to open up, even now. Finally she sighed. “It’s been a long, hard time. What would you both say to some coffee and cake?”

Koesler wasn’t sure whether “long, hard time” referred to the past thirty-some years or the past few hours. But he suddenly realized that the thought of coffee and cake was indeed appealing. He nodded to Maureen, who rose and went toward the kitchen, followed immediately by Brenda.

As the age-old homey sounds and aromas of coffee-making emanated from the kitchen, Koesler leaned back in the chair and, arms above his head, stretched his muscles.
I wonder
, he thought, what the inspector is doing?

I
T HAD BEEN
a long and exhausting Saturday, but a satisfying and rewarding one.

Inspector Koznicki walked slowly along a series of Spartan holding cells on the ninth floor of police headquarters. When he reached the last cell, he stopped and stood looking in. The occupant was aware immediately of the officer’s presence. Both men evaluated each other silently. The occupant rose from his cot and walked to the bars where he stood only inches from the inspector. Still neither man spoke.

Koznicki rubbed his cheek and chin, scratching a now more than five o’clock shadow. “Rick Chardon,” he said.

There was no change in Chardon’s expression; only his eyes seemed to react.

“You have been busy,” Koznicki said. “Wanted in five states to face murder charges. And detained here on a charge of murder in the first degree.”

There was no response from Chardon.

“I have ascertained that none of these states including our own has the death penalty. I wonder if you considered that when you accepted the contracts.”

A slight smile appeared on Chardon’s face. It remained there, a sort of mocking expression.

“But,” Koznicki said, “my greatest pleasure in this day harkens back to 1960. I had not been long out of the academy. We got a call about a suspicious article in the river. I pulled the bag from the river. The bag you threw in the river.”

Chardon’s eyes registered surprise, but only for an instant. Then the slightly mocking expression returned. But now it seemed forced.

Koznicki took some pleasure from that. “I do not have to tell you what was in the sack. You know all too well. There are, perhaps, only a few details you did not know.

“If Agnes Ventimiglia did not tell you, it will be interesting for you to know that she had a ‘best friend’ at work. She confided in this friend especially regarding the romance of her life. Although you were careful to keep your identity hidden from those who worked with Agnes, she gave a fairly detailed description of you to her friend—who in turn gave it to me. I have kept it fresh in my mind ever since. I have a rather good memory. And within that memory I have kept a special place for my first homicide investigation.

“So, when I saw your picture, a part of the jigsaw puzzle came together.

“Oh, it was not just the photo. Any number of men could fit the description that we had of you. Important is the fact that your fitting that description keeps you in the picture for the rest of the puzzle.

“What moved me to look more closely into the connection between you and the Ventimiglia murder was the weapon you used this morning.” Koznicki paused in thought. “It seems as if that happened days ago.”

“In any case, when I saw the photo of the fatal blow you gave the security guard, the first piece of the puzzle fell into place. As I looked at that photo, I saw in my mind’s eye the head wound of the Ventimiglia girl. To my eye they were identical. Our M.E. said that the similarities were so close it could hardly be a coincidence. As I say, seeing your mug shots made part of the puzzle come together.

“There is a third piece that just fell. You may or may not remember which restaurant you took Agnes to for her last supper. It was the Pontchartrain Wine Cellars. Agnes told her friend that she had asked you to take her there. And you didn’t want to upset her for her last supper, did you?”

The mocking look remained in Chardon’s eyes, but they flickered.

“This afternoon I took some mug shots to the home of Joseph and Mollie Beyer, the owners of the late restaurant. Joe could not identify you. Neither could his wife—until just a few minutes ago. She just called me and without any coaching whatsoever, she picked you out. She remembered you. It was the eyes. She was frightened by your eyes. Once she remembered you, she recalled your companion for that evening: a very happy young lady. She remembers seeing Agnes’s picture in the papers after her body was discovered and identified. She did not recognize the girl in the picture as the happy young woman who had been in their restaurant a few weeks before. Agnes, plain innocent young lady that she was, was not particularly memorable. You were. Mollie put the two of you together at that dinner.

“So you see, Mr. Chardon, the pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fit rather snugly. We are in touch with those states that have warrants out for you. I suspect you understand why we are following all these leads when we have you dead to rights in this morning’s murder. There is always the possibility some present or future governor will be moved to pardon you. He or she might be able to do that without an enormous backlash of public opinion if you have been convicted of only one murder. That is not likely to occur if your record shows a history of multiple murders.

“And of course there is a very special reason. I have a personal need to close the case of the murder of Agnes Ventimiglia. I feel I owe it to her, to her memory. And now, you see, I am very close to doing so.

“Now, Mr. Chardon, you may think you were very clever in never committing a capital offense in a state that had the death penalty. But of course”—Koznicki spread his arms wide—“if you were clever you would not spend the rest of your life in a cage.”

Koznicki walked away. He was, of course, aware that Chardon had said nothing. It didn’t matter. The inspector had enjoyed his monologue.

H
E WAS SURPRISED
that he’d had that much of an appetite. As he finished brushing off his black clericals the crumbs that were the remnants of several slices of coffee cake, he looked up to see Maureen and Brenda watching him with some amusement. “I didn’t get a chance to finish my breakfast,” he explained in a non sequitur. Then, realizing that his breakfast was not the only thing left unfinished, he said to Maureen, “Do you think you could fill me in on the rest now?”

Maureen pressed her lips together. Then she took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “Making the decision was the hard part. Once that was done, the mechanics of the thing weren’t all that difficult. I don’t mean the first decision. As you said, that was a financial necessity. I couldn’t be a working mother, I couldn’t afford to pay somebody to take care of Brenda, and I couldn’t keep her with me and depend on the dole or charity. I just couldn’t do that.

“It was deciding to involve two children in my plans: That was brutally tough.”

“But Mo, what if you’d had a boy instead of a girl?”

“Things would’ve changed. I would’ve planned differently.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That, Bob, is because you’re a man. Men make plans and if something goes wrong, they have to start all over again, usually from the beginning. Women don’t usually make such elaborate plans, so they can bounce off unexpected obstacles, change course and keep going.

“The only thing in my mind was to make him pay for what he’d done to me … and to our child. And, in the process, make an example of him that other people could learn from.

“That driving urge is what got me through those months of exile—and a delivery you wouldn’t believe. The compulsive desire for revenge just intensified with each rotten trick he’d play on me.

“Leaving me twisting in the wind was bad enough. Then I found out about his wife and son. But when he had his name removed from his own daughter’s birth record, that was the last straw! No ordinary revenge would be sufficient.

“That’s when I decided to bring two girls home and confuse the matter.”

“You certainly succeeded in that!”

“After I had Brenda baptized, I let her become a ward of the court. Then I found another baby, also a ward of the court. I tracked down their foster homes, visited them, contributed all I could afford regularly to support them.

“Back then, foster care was intended to be temporary. So it wasn’t difficult to get them into St. Vincent’s Orphanage. And later, it was simple, after my record of interest in their young lives, to take them home with me permanently. From that time on, it was a tricky business to train them for vastly different destinies.”

Brenda stood and began pacing behind the couch. “When I was old enough, Mother confided in me, and me alone. Together we planned everything. We were of one mind. My goal was to insinuate myself into Ted’s life. He was super-Catholic, so I got a job at the chancery—the local hub of Catholicism.

“That was it in a nutshell, Uncle Bob. Our plan was to bring down both father and son—and their baby, Nash Enterprises. And …”—her face telegraphed satisfaction—“that’s what we’re about to do.”

“But you’ve been … uh, living with Ted Nash!”

Brenda, without emotion, nodded. “We were pretty sure that with a father like Charlie Nash, the son would develop into a male chauvinist pig and worse.”

“And Ted did not disappoint us,” Maureen said.

“I went to lots of places where I knew Ted would be. I always dressed modestly in black and white. We knew that’s what Ted wanted in a woman. Then one night at a gathering honoring Ted, it clicked.”

“But Ted claims you had your tubes tied. Is that—?”

“That part’s true.”

“But—”

“Father Bob”—Brenda looked at him unflinchingly—“this was an incestuous relationship. I wasn’t going to have a child we produced, even by accident.”

It was Koesler who flinched. “Oh, my God! I was so busy trying to figure all this out that I lost track … Ted is your half brother,” he said in a strangled voice. “And he doesn’t know it! Brenda, how could you …?”