Murder on Lexington Avenue (13 page)

“Something shocked you,” Frank reminded him. “What was it?”

“I think I’ve already answered all the questions I’m going to answer,” Leander said, starting to push himself to his feet.

“It’s just that I was thinking,” Frank mused, or pretended to. “If this Terry Young was taking advantage of your mother, he certainly had a good reason to want your father dead.”

As Frank had suspected, this got Leander’s attention. “Do you think he killed my father?”

“He was at the office on Saturday. He has a key, or at least he has access to his father’s key, so he could have come back after everyone left and let himself in. If your father had found out about his . . . his
interest
in your mother, he would have been very angry. Maybe he threatened him somehow.”

“What do you mean?” Leander asked with some concern. “How would Father have threatened him?”

“I don’t know, but he would’ve wanted to punish him somehow. Would Terry’s father have been upset by this news? Would he have been worried about the scandal if word got out? Would he have cut off his son’s inheritance or something?”

Leander thought about this. “I don’t know what Uncle Terrance would do. What do you do to a son who seduced your partner’s wife?” he asked bitterly.

Frank doubted there was much seduction involved. Mrs. Wooten didn’t seem like the type of woman who would be wooed into adultery by silly romantic gestures or even “thoughtful” gifts. He didn’t think it would be a good idea to mention this to Leander, though. “Maybe we’re thinking about this all wrong,” he said instead. “Maybe your father didn’t know anything about it. Maybe Terry just decided he was tired of sneaking around to see his lady love and it was time to take some action. With your father out of the way . . .” Frank let that sink in for a moment.

“He didn’t waste any time either,” Leander recalled angrily. “We haven’t even buried my father, and he was in my mother’s room today!”

“He must have been feeling desperate,” Frank said, watching Leander’s face as the idea of Terry Young as his father’s killer took root. “With the baby coming soon, he must have known . . . Well, maybe not.”

“He must have known what?” Leander demanded, jumping to his feet. “What must he have known?”

“I was thinking that with the baby coming soon, your father would know . . . but of course, he might have thought the baby was his. And we don’t really know if he knew about it or not—”

“He didn’t know,” Leander said with certainty.

“How can you be sure?”

“Because . . .” He stopped, hating telling all this to someone like Frank.

“Terry Young might have killed your father,” Frank reminded him. “He definitely seduced your mother.”

Leander ran a hand over his face again. “Mother was expecting a child when they found out Electra is deaf. It was a boy. He was stillborn. Father said . . .” He swallowed down the pain of the memories. “Father said there would never be any more babies. He didn’t want to take the chance of bringing any more damaged children into the world.”

“What do you think he meant by that?”

Leander gave him a disdainful glare, as if he thought Frank wasn’t quite bright. “It meant that he and Mother never slept in the same room again. It meant that they could hardly stand to be in the same room together. Aunt Betty says that Father . . .”

“What does she say about your father?” Frank asked when Leander hesitated.

He sighed in disgust. “She says he changed after that. I don’t remember him being any other way except the way he was, but she says he was kinder and happier before that. The news about Electra turned him into a different man, someone who was angry and bitter.”

“Maybe Terry Young thought he was doing your mother a favor by killing her angry, bitter husband,” Frank suggested.

Leander leaped to his feet. “How dare he—?”

Frank laid a hand on Leander’s shoulder and collapsed him back into his chair again. “Easy now, son,” he said. “We don’t know for sure that he had anything to do with it.”

“But you just said—”

“I said he might have. I can’t arrest a man for that, because there’s other people who might’ve wanted your father dead, too.”

“Like who?” Leander scoffed, thoroughly angry now.

“Like Adam Oldham.”

Leander’s eyes widened in surprise. “Electra’s teacher? Why would he want to kill Father?”

“Because your father didn’t want Electra to marry a deaf man.”

“Marry? What are you talking about? Electra isn’t going to marry anyone. She’s too young!”

“She’s almost as old as your mother was when she married your father,” Frank said.

“What does that have to do with anything? Electra’s still a child!”

“Adam Oldham doesn’t think so.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he asked her to marry him.”

Leander lunged to his feet again, ready to do battle. “That son of a—”

Frank pushed him back down into his chair again. For someone so large, he was surprisingly easy to push around. “What did you think would happen when your sister started sneaking out to meet him?”

“He was supposed to teach her to sign!” Leander insisted. “And he’s old enough to be her father!”

“He’s not
that
old,” Frank said.

“Well, he’s a lot older than
she
is, old enough to know better than to . . . Oh, my God, did he seduce her? If he did, I’ll—”

“You’d better wait until you know for sure,” Frank cautioned him, and this time Leander sank back down of his own accord.

“How did all of this happen?” he asked of no one in particular, putting both hands to his head as if afraid it might fly into pieces if he didn’t hold it together.

“So it seems that Mr. Oldham wanted to marry your sister, and your father didn’t approve,” Frank said.

“Of course he didn’t. He would have been furious!” Leander assured him. “He would have sent this Oldham packing and made sure he never got another teaching job anywhere in the country.”

“Could he really have done that?” Frank asked curiously.

“Of course he could. My father is a very powerful man. If he told the faculty at the deaf schools not to hire him, they wouldn’t have.”

Which made a very good motive for murder, Frank thought. “How did you find out your sister was meeting with Oldham?”

Leander winced. “I . . . I helped her.”

“How did you help her?”

“I found him for her. When she told me . . . You have no idea what it’s like for her,” he said, his young face twisting with the pain he felt over his sister’s plight.

“My son is deaf,” Frank said.

Leander’s face registered his surprise. At least he didn’t think Frank was lying about it. “He is? Does he go to the Lexington Avenue School?”

“No, he goes to the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.”

This surprised him even more. “That’s where Oldham teaches.”

“I know. So why did you get Oldham to teach your sister?”

Leander sighed. “She told me how miserable she was, how hard it was for her to read lips and figure out what people were saying. She was always on guard, always watching in case someone spoke to her. And sometimes she couldn’t make herself understood. She speaks really well, for being deaf, but sometimes she can’t say a word clearly, and we don’t know what she means. She gets so angry and frustrated . . .” He shook his head.

“So you decided to help her.”

“Yes, after she asked me to. She knew that some deaf people learn to sign. She’d seen someone doing it somewhere, I guess. She wanted to be able to do it, too. She thought it would be easier to talk to other deaf people.”

“How did you find Oldham?”

“I went to the school, the one where your son goes. I met one of the teachers there, a Mr. Rossiter. He’s not deaf, so I was able to explain to him about Electra. I offered to hire him to teach her, but he suggested Oldham. He said it would be better for a deaf person to teach her.”

“Who was going to pay him?”

Leander shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “He didn’t charge very much. I paid him out of my allowance. I wanted to help my sister,” he added defensively.

So it was Rossiter who had put Oldham and Electra together. Surely he’d known what would happen when a handsome young teacher was alone with a beautiful young girl. She’d certainly fall in love with him, the man who was going to open a whole new world of communication for her. And what about Oldham? Even if he hadn’t developed real feelings for her, how could he resist the temptation to marry the daughter of a wealthy man? He’d never have to struggle to get by on the meager salary a deaf teacher earned. And from what Frank had seen of Oldham, he really did have feelings for the girl, young as she was.

Had Electra known her father’s determination that she not marry a deaf man before she met Oldham? Had Oldham known? Frank would have to find that out.

“Did you know that your father found out about Electra learning to sign?”

“I was away at school,” he hedged. “I go to Princeton University.”

“Where’s that?” Frank asked.

“In New Jersey. It used to be the College of New Jersey. They changed the name last year.”

Frank either hadn’t heard or had forgotten. It didn’t matter. “So you were away at school. Does that mean you didn’t know your father found out?”

“I didn’t know until Father . . . Until I got home on Sunday,” he admitted reluctantly. “They telephoned to tell me about Father and said that I had to come home right away. When I got here, Electra told me her teacher had caught her signing.”

“Electra said the teacher had caught her with Oldham.”

“She saw Electra practicing, and she confronted her. Electra admitted she was learning, but she said she was doing it on her own. Miss Dunham didn’t believe her, so she followed Electra when she left school and caught her meeting Oldham.”

“Where did they meet?” Frank asked, wondering just how compromising the situation was.

“Different places, I understand, but that day they were at the Astor Library.”

Frank frowned. Not exactly the location a young man would choose for a seduction. Maybe Electra’s virtue was safe, at least for the time being. “Electra said Miss Dunham told your father.”

“Yes. She didn’t really have any choice. Electra was secretly meeting a strange man, which was bad enough, but he was teaching her to sign, and that was unforgivable.”

“Why was it unforgivable?”

“Because it went against everything Father believed. He wanted Electra to be able to talk to people and understand what they were saying. Hearing people, that is. She didn’t need to use signs with people who can hear. They wouldn’t know what she was saying with signs anyway. They’re only good for talking to other deaf people, and Father never wanted her to associate with other deaf people.”

“But she went to school with them,” Frank pointed out.

“That couldn’t be helped, but she’d never associate with them again after she left the school.”

Frank considered what he’d learned so far from Leander Wooten. The young man was amazingly forthcoming. Frank figured he’d regret this conversation later, but that was too bad. Frank was going to find out as much as he could before Leander realized he shouldn’t be talking to Frank at all. “What do you know about eugenics?”

“Who told you about that?” Leander wanted to know. He didn’t look happy.

“Mr. Higginbotham.”

“My father . . . He was totally unreasonable. After he heard Mr. Bell lecture on the subject, he made up his mind, and nothing would change it.”

“Does Electra know your father didn’t want her to marry a deaf man?”

Leander opened his mouth to reply but caught himself. He seemed to suddenly have realized that Frank’s questions might have a purpose, and he wasn’t sure he liked that idea. “I don’t know what she knows,” he hedged. “I’ve been away at school.”

He would have been away only a few weeks, Frank thought. Not long enough to really lose track of what was going on with his sister. “If she told Oldham that your father wouldn’t ever allow them to marry, Oldham had a good reason for getting rid of him.”

Leander rubbed a hand over his handsome face. “I told you, I don’t know what she might have told him. Haven’t you asked enough questions? You’re really wasting your time here. None of us knows anything about who killed my father.”

Frank had already proved him wrong about that, but he said, “Thank you for your help, Mr. Wooten. If you think of anything else that might identify your father’s killer, please let me know.” He handed Leander his card, and Leander took it automatically.

“I’m sure I won’t,” he said.

Frank figured he wouldn’t either, and even if he did, he wasn’t likely to tell Frank.

 

 

M
RS. WOOTEN HAD BEEN RIGHT. HER LABOR WAS PROgressing rapidly. Sarah and the maid had helped her into bed, where she now sat, propped up with pillows. The contractions were coming closer together, and she was feeling the urge to push.

Sarah had delivered hundreds of babies, and this was the time when the mother’s true feelings always made themselves known. She’d heard women scream and curse their husbands. She’d had women beg her to make it stop, to cut the infant from their bodies and leave them to die. Or beg her to crush the infant and take it away where they’d never have to see it again. She’d heard just about everything possible. The younger the mother, the more vocal she usually was, and since Mrs. Wooten was much older than her usual patient and much more refined, Sarah really wasn’t expecting much in the way of swearing or screaming.

Still, she hoped for some indiscreet utterances, but the most she heard was the occasional
damn
, uttered on a gasp as a contraction came on. Mrs. Wooten labored doggedly, her face growing red with the effort of expelling her child, the sweat soaking through her nightdress and darkening the sheets. The maid made a valiant effort to keep her mistress comfortable, sponging her face and limbs with cool water in between contractions, but nothing could cool the room as the heat of the early autumn day turned it into an oven.