New Year's Eve Murder (8 page)

I could drive up there with Eddie and knock on doors along the road the farmhouse was on. Perhaps one of those families was the one Susan or the victim had known. And if not, perhaps they had met her in the last six months. Maybe there had been nights when she was cold or lonesome and craved the warmth of a fire or of neighbors. She might have spoken to them about who she was and why she was there. If I took Eddie with me, I could find a place to nurse him when he woke up hungry during the afternoon. It seemed a good idea.

I made myself a tuna fish salad sandwich, my old standby, and filled a thermos with skim milk. A few diapers, and I was ready. The car would be warm enough and Eddie would be in his snowsuit. If I had to, I could keep the motor and heater running while I nursed him.

I made a quick call to Brooklyn to tell Jack what I was going to do but he was out, so I gathered up my baby and his paraphernalia and went out to the car.

The day was nice but still very cold, colder up the Hudson than where we lived near Long Island Sound. It must have snowed a lot more up there, because the snow was still high and along the fields completely undisturbed, as white a blanket as I had ever seen. The glare
was almost enough to require sunglasses but I had left them home.

I drove to the house nearest the Donaldson farm and pulled into the drive. Eddie was sleeping in his little seat and it seemed a good way to carry him. If they let me inside, I could put it on the floor, open his snowsuit, and not move him. He gave a few sighs as I lifted him out of the car, but that was all. The cold air didn't affect him. I walked up to the front door, thinking that a woman with a baby had to be the most disarming person in the world, and I rang the bell.

A small child opened the door and looked up at me. She had long blond hair and very blue eyes. She said, “Hi,” and smiled shyly.

“Is your mommy home?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. Is that your baby?”

“Yes it is.”

“She's pretty.”

“It's a boy,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Could you call your mommy?”

“Uh-huh.” She turned and ran, disappearing around a corner.

A minute later a young woman with exactly the coloring of the child appeared, holding a cloth that could have been a diaper or a dish towel. “Hi,” she said, stopping before she reached me.

“Hi. I'm Chris Bennett. I wondered if I could talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Are you selling something? Because if you are—”

“I'm not selling anything. I need some information.”

“Come on in. I'm just feeding the baby.”

“Thanks.” I closed the door and followed her. “Can I leave mine here?”

“Sure. He's a little one, isn't he?”

“Six weeks old. My first. He should sleep soundly for a while and I'm not staying long.” I pulled open the snaps on the snowsuit and eased Eddie's head out of the hood. A pull here and there and his little arms were out of the sleeves. Then I made my way to the kitchen where a small boy in a high chair was being fed and the little girl was helping herself to lunch at the table.

“I'm Dawn D'Agati,” my hostess said, scooping up a spoonful of stuff in ajar and aiming it for the open mouth of the little boy. “What's this about?”

“About the incident next door,” I said, not wanting to be too specific in front of the little girl.

“Uh, we better wait a while,” Dawn said, glancing at her daughter. “Patti? How are you doing there, hon?”

“I'm done.”

“You didn't finish your milk.”

“I want a cookie to go with it.”

“Drink your milk and then you can take a cookie upstairs. OK?”

Patti lifted the glass and drank with noisy gulps, her bright blue eyes looking at me above the rim. She was breathless when she put the glass down. “Can I have the cookie now?”

“Wait a minute.” Dawn went to a box too high for her child to reach and pulled out a giant chocolate chip cookie. “Take it upstairs, OK?”

“OK.”

I waited till Patti had scampered away before I explained what I was doing there.

“That whole thing is so creepy,” Dawn said. “I'm scared to be alone here at night.”

“It may not have been random violence,” I said, hoping to ease her fears.

“God, I hope not. Fred wasn't supposed to rent out that house in the first place.”

“I heard that.”

“But he wanted the money, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“So he rents it out to this girl and now she's dead.”

I didn't correct her impression that the victim had rented the house. “Did you ever meet the girl that was living there?”

“Yeah, a couple of times. She came over one night and asked if we had any candles. There was no electricity there, you know that?”

“I gathered as much.”

“And we talked. It was cold and she said the only room she had with heat was the kitchen. You know, the thermostat doesn't work without electricity, so it wasn't any use having a furnace.”

“Do you remember her name?”

“Uh, uh—”

“Was it Susan?”

“Susan? No, it was something else.”

I gave her a minute to remember while she wiped her son's face. “If you think of it—”

“It was like an abbreviation, D.D., I think. Yeah, that was it.”

“You think it was the letters D-D, not DI-DI or DEE-DEE?”

“She said it was short for—I don't remember. Something fancy. But that's what it was.”

“Did she tell you her last name?”

“If she did I don't remember.”

“Have the police been by to ask you questions?”

“They came when I was out. My husband talked to them.”

“Did this D.D. tell you what she was doing up here living in that old house?”

“She said she was working on a book.”

“Did she tell you about the book?”

“No. She didn't seem to want to talk about it.”

“Did she ever mention anyone named Susan?”

“She didn't talk about anybody that I can remember.” She wiped the little boy's face again. “There you go, Snuggums. How 'bout a nap?”

He shook his head vigorously but reached his arms up to be lifted out of the high chair, and when Dawn had him in her arms, he laid his head on her shoulder and stuck his thumb in his mouth. I didn't think he'd last very long.

Dawn turned to face me and motioned that she was putting him to bed, as though saying it aloud would jinx the prospects.

I followed her out of the kitchen and went to look at my own little one. He was still fast asleep, and I waited quietly for Dawn to come downstairs.

“All quiet,” she said with triumph, when she returned. “Let's sit in the kitchen. Looks like we've got a baby in every other room.”

We sat at the kitchen table after Dawn cleared away her daughter's dishes and wiped down the high chair.

“Do you know what kind of car she drove?” I asked.

“I'm not sure she had one.”

“How did she get here?”

“No idea. Someone must've dropped her off. I drove by there a lot and I never saw a car.”

“Not even on New Year's Eve?”

She thought about it. “I don't think I drove by there on New Year's. Why? Should there have been a car?”

“Someone may have visited her.”

“And killed her, right?”

“Maybe. Do you know how she happened to find Fred Donaldson? How she knew the house was empty?”

“She didn't say. It wasn't that kind of conversation.
She needed candles, and I told her to sit down while I looked for them. I had a coupla boxes of them—the electricity goes off here a lot in bad weather—so I gave her a whole box. Then we got to talking, and she told us about writing the book and then she said she hadda go. She wasn't here all that long.”

“How did she get here?”

“She must've walked. Yeah, she walked. Because Jeff drove her home. My husband. He's real good that way.”

“Isn't that a long walk?” I asked.

“Not so long. Down the other way it's, like, a mile till the next house but not here. It wouldn't take more than ten minutes.”

“I wonder how she got her food,” I said, “if she didn't have a car. It's a trip into town.”

“Especially coming back,” Dawn agreed. “It's uphill.”

“So she must have known someone with a car,” I suggested.

“I guess so. But she didn't say and I didn't ask.”

“Did you get the impression that she lived here or that she came up from time to time?”

“I think she lived here, but don't hold me to it.”

“What did she look like?”

“About your age. Lighter hair than yours, OK-looking but nothing special. She looked a little scruffy, if you know what I mean. Like a writer, right? Aren't they always living in an unheated attic somewhere?” She smiled.

“She hadn't made her first million yet,” I said.

“I don't think she'd made her first dollar. She never paid us back for the candles. Not that I'm complaining,” she added quickly. “I don't mean to speak ill of the dead. I'll tell you, we're thinking of putting an alarm system in the house now. You never know who's lurking around
here at night, and sometimes Jeff doesn't come home till late.”

“Why don't you wait a while, Dawn?” I said. “It might cost thousands, and the sheriffs department will probably find the killer pretty soon. A lot of murders are personal, you know, committed by someone who knew the victim.”

“You think someone hated her?”

“I don't know. I don't even know who she was.”

“Maybe she was writing one of those tell-all books and someone got mad.”

“It could be.” I took a piece of paper out of my notebook and wrote my name, address, and phone number on it. “If you think of anything, please give me a call. Was that the only time you ever saw her?”

“I waved to her sometimes when I drove by and she was outside. In the warm weather she would sit on the porch and read. And once I saw her in the store in town.”

“Was she with anyone?”

“I couldn't tell you. Maybe. Oh, I see, you mean because she didn't have a car.”

“I just wonder how she could have lugged a bunch of groceries back up here without a car.”

“I don't know. Maybe the person who was with her was in another aisle.”

“That's probably it,” I said.

“And even after she saw me, she didn't remember the candles.”

I drove back down the road away from the Donaldson farm to the next house with little hope that anyone there would have met either D.D. or Susan. Without a car there wasn't much chance either one of them would have hiked all this way to borrow something or have a chat. It didn't make much difference because no one was home.

I thought I would ask in the little restaurant in town and maybe the grocery store if I could find it. But first it was time for my tuna sandwich. I turned onto the main street of Bladesville about a quarter mile before the block that represented “downtown” and took out my lunch. Although my two and a half years of secular life had introduced me to finer culinary fare, I still found tuna fish salad to be especially satisfying in the way that foods from childhood often are. My mother had packed such sandwiches for my lunch, and Aunt Meg, with whom I lived for the next year, had followed suit, hoping to keep me not too unhappy after the loss of my mother.

By the time I had downed the skim milk and put my trash back in the bag, Eddie was making little whimpers I could not ignore. “I bet you're getting hungry,” I said, taking him on my lap and beginning to change him. It wasn't easy but when he was in a dry diaper, I opened my clothes and began to nurse him. He seemed utterly oblivous to where we were, his interest being in filling his stomach. When he finished at the first breast, I put him on my shoulder and burped him, then rearranged myself so he could nurse on the other side.

He had hardly started when I heard a loud rap on the window. Startled and a little confused, I pulled my coat over Eddie and my somewhat bare breast, and turned to look at the intruder. It was a man in a tan uniform.

I wound the window down slightly. “Yes?” I said, thinking I must have parked illegally, although I was off the road and there were no signs.

“You can't do that here,” he said, looking angry.

“I'm sorry?”

“You can't nurse that baby here. You have to go indoors. It's not allowed.”

“I can't go indoors, Officer. I live fifty miles from here.”

“Well, you should've thought of that before you drove to Bladesville. You better stop that right now or you're going to have to come with me.”

I am not a confrontational person. In fact, I usually try to avoid confrontations, whatever the cost. But suddenly I was angry. “Have I violated a law?” I asked as calmly as I could.

“You're exposing yourself in public. There are laws against that.”

“I'm sure nursing mothers aren't included in laws on public exposure,” I said.

“Ma'am, I've asked you to stop. I want you to stop what you're doing and cover yourself up.”

“I'll cover myself up when my baby has finished nursing.” I said it with a false calm but I could feel the beginnings of panic.

“I'm gonna have to take you in.” He said this with resignation, as though he knew he had pushed this too far.

“Do you intend to handcuff me?” I asked with more starch in my voice than I had intended.

“No ma'am, I do not. I would like some identification from you right now.”

I braced Eddie with one arm and leaned over him to reach my handbag. With difficulty I pulled out my wallet and gave the officer my driver's license.

He looked at it and copied down information. Then he went back to his car and I saw in the rearview mirror that he was talking on the radio. It occurred to me that he was checking to see if I was driving a stolen car or was wanted for some crime even greater than nursing my baby in public.