Pushing Murder (11 page)

“Dammit—
you're
stunned? How do you think
we
feel finding out the creep killed her? And we just assumed you knew she'd married him.”

Our blank faces spoke for us, and Loretta jerked on her coat. “Look, there's nothing else we can tell you and no way we can help. Besides”—she moved to the door—“I can't keep Liza waiting down in that lobby indefinitely. If you can think of anything we can do, give a call. Right now I'm going home to oblivion. Come along, Father.”

“I'll be down in five minutes.” It was said gently but firmly, and he stayed in his chair.

Loretta shrugged and started out. Sadd said, “I'll go down with you,” and they left.

I looked at the priest gratefully but had qualms as to how all this was affecting him. I had no doubt he was a strong and saintly man, but when, at his age, an abyss opens before one … I needn't have worried. His hands, unlike Loretta's flailing ones, lay quietly in his lap, and he said, “You see, I always felt so badly because I'd married them. And I'd advised against it.”

Henry said, “Did you suspect he was up to something?”

“No, not at all.” Father Bob shook his head decidedly. “I just didn't think they were suited. And I sensed he was dragging his feet. But Janet was infatuated and pressing for marriage.”

Oh, poor Janet, poor Janet …

Dan said, “How long after they were married did he split?”

“Did he what?” The dear man touched his hearing aid distrustfully.

“Leave—take off.”

“Oh. Er—a few months, I think. I can't recall exactly. But he must have been planning it for some time because he took everything. It was quite a clean sweep.”

He stood up and looked around for his coat. Henry got it from the closet and helped him into it, starting to zip it as Father Bob said, “You asked about that poor girl's child. Yes, it was born, and I baptized it.”

Henry stopped zipping, and Dan and Kit were out of their chairs. Dan said, “When?” and Kit said, “Where?”

“Oh, dear, I wish I could be more helpful.” Father finished the zipping himself and stood concentrating. “Well, I can answer the ‘where.' The little Catholic church in Bryantville. The ‘when' I'm hazy on. Let me think … We'd all gone out to the closing of St. Elizabeth's Home. It must have been summer because Janet held a big picnic for the children—they were dispersing to other homes—and the girl we're speaking of called me in Hartford where I was stationed”—he began to look pleased as recollection dawned—“and she asked me if I was coming to the picnic.” Now he was beaming. “We can almost assume, then, that she worked at the home, can't we? Well, I said I was, and she asked if I would baptize the baby that afternoon. So it must have been a Sunday—in those days baptisms were always on Sunday afternoons”—continued beaming—“and I told her to take the baby to the church and I'd slip away from the picnic. I said nothing to Janet—why distress her?”

Kit and I said together, “Was it a boy or a girl?”

The poor dear's face fell again. “Now that, I don't remember at all.”

Oh, blast. “Perhaps you recall the name the child was given.” A sad shrug. “The date—do you remember the date?”

He struggled. “It must have been summer—I mentioned that—and a Sunday … but you want the year…”

Dan said, “That should be easy, Father. What year did St. Elizabeth's Home close?”

Easy? No way. “Some time in the late sixties, I think.” We were silent. “I'm not helping much, am I?”

I said, rather desperately, “If we had even an approximate date, we might trace the birth record, assuming the child was born in Bryantville.”

“It wasn't.” He spoke with sudden assurance. “She told me she'd gone away to a relative somewhere.”

There goes the ballgame, I thought.

Then Henry said, while moving around the room, “Do you remember anything at all about that picnic, Father? Who was there? Who might—”

“Mrs. Vaughan!” said Kit. “She might…”

Father's bleak smile put an end to that. “At this point Retta's memory is worse than mine. I'm not even sure…” Then he stopped and took two steps toward my bed, and I was afraid the poor thing was going to pitch across my knees.

“The picnic! I'm so glad you mentioned that. I have a distinct recollection that everybody there was talking about the assassination of Robert Kennedy. What year was that?”

“June sixth, 1968,” said Henry, who had been a youthful admirer. “And I think it was a Thursday, so the following Sunday … Would the record of the baptism still be at the church?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But you don't remember the name of the mother or the sex of the child?” said Kit.

“I'm afraid not.”

I said with both hope and dread, “Was it the only baby baptized that day?”

“No, I seem to recall … several others.”

Strike three. He looked exhausted and apologetic, and I was ashamed of us. I said, “Father Bob, you've been wonderful, and we won't keep you another minute. Thanks ever so much.”

He looked down at his hands, one holding the prayer book and the other the scapular. “Do you want me to have these?”

“Of course.”

“Well … thank you.” He put the prayer book in his pocket. “But I think Janet would have wanted you to have this.” He laid the scapular on the table beside me. What could I do but return his thanks and ask Henry to take Father to the elevator?

Dan and Kit and I sat in depressed silence. Then Kit said, “Even if we had everything—right down to the person's phone number—would it necessarily do us any good?”

“No, not necessarily.” I reached for the card propped against the poinsettia. “Because first, this person may have no idea who his or her father is, or second, may know but be fond of him and anxious to protect him—”

“—but third,” said Dan, “this person may know Papa and hate his guts and be willing to rat.”

“One of which,” said Kit, “we're supposed to find out—beginning with the zinger of whether the person is living or dead, male or female—all in forty-eight hours.”

“Not worth it,” I said, taking the card from its little envelope. “Let's drop it.” I read the card aloud in a voice that ended in a screech. “‘Take good care of yourself. Dwight.'”

Dan and Kit said some inelegant things, and I tore the card to pieces. “
Worth it?
I take back everything I said—worth it! Even if we make fools of ourselves trying!”

Dan said, “When do we leave for Bryantville?”

“Right now.” They leaped up. “But first take this plant to the chapel and may the poor lovely thing not die of shame to think who bought it. Get any scrap of information you can—if we can't use it, maybe Captain Redmond can someday—but be back tomorrow because I have just made a knockout decision!”

Henry and Sadd walked back into the room as I practically shouted the last words. They stopped dead, and Sadd said, “Let me guess: you're going to Pushing Murder on Christmas Eve as
Mrs.
Santa Claus.”

“You're darned close.”

They looked at me aghast, and I added, “We're
all
going to Pushing Murder on Christmas Eve, but I'm going as Clara Gamadge!”

13

Let down. Impatience. Anxiety.

All are inevitable feelings after one has ridden the crest of excitement, endeavor, and expectation. Now comes that dreary stretch of enforced inactivity and suspension. If only life were an old, pat, ninety-minute, black-and-white movie; no waits, months and years telescoped into a dreamy montage, happy ending always promised, always delivered.

I voiced this sentiment to Sadd as he and I sat the next afternoon in the little waiting room at the end of my hall. He was reading—what else?—and I was staring morosely at the Christmas tree. We were the only ones availing ourselves of the festive nook, and I commented that I supposed hospitals sent as many people home for Christmas as possible. Sadd grunted.

I reached for my newly issued walker, hauled myself from the wheelchair, and stumped to the window. The beginning of snow—from one flake to ten million in two minutes.

“It's the blasted waiting.” I stumped back to the wheelchair and sank into it. “I wonder if it's snowing in Bryantville.”

“Sounds like an old song.” Sadd turned a page. “I wonder if it's snowing in Bryantville, dear,/The way it used to at this time of year,/When our love was young—”

“They're probably digging out somewhere around Peekskill, and Dan's cast isn't helping.”

“Peekskill is in New York. You go nowhere near it to get to Connecticut.”

“It just sounds like the kind of place one might get stranded.” My entire attention was fixed on the elevator door.

“Clara”—Sadd closed his book—“what exactly do you expect them to come back with?”

“With the names of the babies who were baptized in—what's the name of that church?”

“St. Camillus, according to the Catholic Directory down in the office.”

“So—in St. Camillus Church on Sunday, June ninth, 1968.”

“Suppose there were ten or fifteen?”

“Father Folsom said ‘several others.' That doesn't sound like ten or fifteen.”

“No. In fact, the whole thing sounds much more like the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

My face must have told him to quit it, for he opened his book again and said, “Speaking of St. Camillus, he just might be your man. It seems he is a patron of the sick.”

“I'm not sick,” I said crossly, then looked at the worn volume he held. “Is that the book you took from the chapel library?”

“Yes. Butler's
Lives of the Saints.
Classic devotional work. I was hoping it was an eighteenth-century edition, and I was going to ask the hospital if they'd like me to sell it for them. Unhappily, it's an
updated
—appalling word—edition from 1956. Would you like to hear about St. Camillus?”

“Not especially.” I looked longingly down the hall. “Henry and Tina and Hen are coming. They're doing last-minute shopping.”

Sadd read: “‘Camillus De Lellis was born in 1550 at Bocchianico. He grew to be a young man of uncertain temper, quarrelsome and addicted to gambling. Camillus was converted to a life of unstinting care of the sick after entering a hospital in Rome with a diseased
leg.
' What did I tell you? Your patron to a T.”

“I hardly have a diseased leg.”

“Picky, picky, picky.”

He was smiling at me, and I felt suddenly ashamed. I said, “Sadd, I'm sorry—I'm lousy company. Here you are trying to cheer me up and being more of a saint than anybody in that book, and here I am being a rotten sport.” I held out my hand, and he squeezed it. “Read me some more about St. Camillus and—hey, here's the gang!”

The elevator had discharged Henry, Tina, and Hen, followed, I then saw, by Dr. Cullen. I waved, they saw me, then stood in a conspiratorial little knot.

“You've been informed on,” Sadd said.

As they advanced, Henry and Tina avoided my eyes, but Dr. Cullen fixed me with hers and Hen came and kissed me.

I said, “Doctor, what a terrific suit. Blue is definitely your color. I love—”

“Mrs. Gamadge, it's insane of you to think of going anywhere tomorrow except straight home.”

“But look!” I hoisted myself to the walker and took five steps. “And I'm a pro in that wheelchair. In fact, I'll stay in it if you think it would be better.”

“I think it would be better to go directly to your son's house. I said you could go
home
tomorrow, not to a crowded little shop where the man who has already tried to kill you—”

“—might try again? Decked out as Santa Claus? Ridiculous.”

“Mom,” said Henry, “Dunlop has helpful pals, as you very well know.”

“And you would be his dream hostage,” said Tina, “as you also very well know.”

I said grimly, “Hen, run down to Gran's room and get that big box of chocolates.”

He ran, and I glared at my son and his wife. “Snitchers!”

Sadd said, “Clara, you're being childish.” He stood up. “Excuse me, I must return a book to the library.”

It sounded so ludicrous that nobody believed it and everyone laughed at his drolly inventive exit line. Dr. Cullen sat down in Sadd's chair and said patiently, “Mrs. Gamadge, what exactly do you expect to accomplish by this excursion to your friend's store?”

“This!” I had gotten back into the wheelchair, and now I backed it up and drove it toward them. They automatically started away, and I cried gleefully, “See! I create a diversion! ‘I need air' or some such, Santa Dunlop is trapped in a circle of children, one of you grabs Sal—bingo!—she's out of there and safely ours till we can have Dunlop arrested.”

I smiled at them triumphantly, but my smile was not returned.

Tina said, “Clara, every one of us, at some point, has paid a visit to Pushing Murder. We've all seen a guy, big, young, goony—our descriptions tally—who's always there, quote ‘helping.' He's a quote ‘acquaintance' of Mr. Dunlop's, and he's good for carrying stock, et cetera, but not, according to himself, quote ‘into books.'”

“More into muggings,” said Henry. “So no need to tell you, Mom, that Dunlop is well covered.”

I sat fuming, and Hen returned with the box of candy. His father told him to pass it, and everybody declined except Dr. Cullen who politely took a chocolate. Hen sat down with the box on his lap, and Tina said, “Take two,” and confiscated it.

“Delicious—a brandied cherry.” Dr. Cullen took a tissue from her pocket and wiped her fingers. “I understand your young friends have gone to Connecticut to do some tracking.”