St. Patrick's Day Murder (21 page)

“I don’t know. I’m just trying to put things together.” I took a sip of coffee. “When Donner was killed, did your husband say anything? I mean, did he mention he’d known him or heard of him?”

“I told you. He never said a word. If he knew Donner, that was his secret.”

“I know this isn’t easy, but can you think back to that summer before Gavin died? Did he change at all? Was he nervous, worried, a looking-over-his-shoulder kind of thing?”

She said, “Yeah,” so quickly that she surprised me. “I thought it was just the pressure of the job. He had a lot of vacation coming and he said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of New York. Let’s really get away.’ We drove out West, all of us. It was expensive, but he really wanted to do it. And since you
brought it up, it wasn’t like him to do that. He was pretty careful what we spent. You think he was afraid of something after Donner was killed?”

“I think it’s possible,” I said carefully.

“How do you know Gavin talked to Donner?”

“Donner told someone.”

She looked at me hard. “You’re telling me you found someone a police investigation missed?”

“I think I did. But remember, after Harry Donner was killed, no one was looking for a connection between him and Gavin.”

“Right. I see that.”

“The pie is great.”

“I cooked a lot for Gavin.” She put her fork down and looked away from me. “Gavin Moore was the sweetest man that ever walked the face of this earth. All he lived for was his family and his job. I knew what kind of work he was doing, but he didn’t talk to me about it much because he didn’t want me to worry. You can imagine I worried anyway, but he kept most of it to himself. That’s the way he wanted it. I stayed home with the kids, I kept a nice house, I worked for the church. He came home and the kids jumped all over him and he just ate it up. I don’t know how a guy like that ever became a cop. He should have been a kindergarten teacher.” Tears were rolling down her cheeks now. “He was such an innocent. He trusted everybody.” She wiped her face.

“He must have been tough, Sharon,” I said. “The kind of work he was doing …”

“He carried a gun. That’s where the toughness was. He never believed anything could happen to him. I’ll tell you, I’d give everything I have to have him back, but I never want another one like him for the rest of my life.”

Jack met me for lunch, an infrequent pleasure in our lives. He had one of his famous folded sheets of paper in his jacket pocket, and when we had ordered, he took it out, did some refolding, and smoothed it out in front of him.

“I can’t put Donner and Moore together anywhere, Chris. I’ve made phone calls and talked to people who knew one or the other of them and I’m pretty sure they never worked together. It’s almost impossible to find out if they were ever in a hall in a courthouse on the same day and had a conversation. It’s possible, but it’s hard for me to believe that something like that could have led Moore to seek out Donner for advice or help if there was the kind of problem your Sister Benedicta talked about.”

“She wasn’t dreaming, Jack.”

“I know. I came up with something and I think this could be it.”

“You really found something?” I felt my spirits lifting.

“Guys like Donner, real pros with a specialty, often get tapped for the CIC, Criminal Investigation Courses. They give these courses to new detectives, and I found someone who’s sure Donner did it every year for a long time. His specialty was drug investigations and Gavin Moore was on a special drug task force.”

“How does it work?” I asked.

“It’s a couple of hours four nights a week down at the Academy. The way it works, the detective gets a note in the mail one day telling him this is the week to do it.”

“And it wouldn’t be unheard of for a member of the class to go out for a beer with the instructor when the class was over.”

“Having a beer after anything has never been unheard of in this job.”

“OK. I really like that,” I said. “What I’m thinking about now is Scotty. Would Scotty have been likely to take the same course?”

“Couldn’t have happened, Chris. Scotty was never out of uniform and those courses are just for detectives. And while guys like Donner sometimes also teach rookies, I can tell you Scotty didn’t know him. We went through the Academy together and we talked all the time when we were rookies.”

“Then I guess we still can’t tie Scotty to the other police homicides.”

“Chris, Gavin Moore was killed by a group of guys in a park. There is absolutely nothing to indicate his death was part of anything else.”

“Jack, who arrested those guys last Friday night?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Can you find out?”

“Sure.” He made a note. “Something cooking that you haven’t told me about?”

“I’m just thinking of the coincidence angle.”

“Fine.” He wrote something else down on the folded sheet.

“I talked to Joseph about the case when she stayed over and she said something before she left that I haven’t really followed up on. She said to keep my eye on Jean. Jean left us the afternoon of St. Patrick’s Day to take her kids to her mother’s. I think I should ask her what happened during that time.”

“You haven’t told me about your talk with her about the letter.”

I hadn’t told him because I hadn’t wanted to. I had wanted to forget the whole thing. “She said it happened once. That’s it. She went into more detail than Ray did.”

“While he was still with Betsy?”

“Yes.”

“Shit.”

“Yes.”

“How the hell did the IAD get onto it? You think Betsy knew?”

“She could have put two and two together.” I told him how it happened. “It must have added at least half an hour to his trip that night.”

“Half an hour,” he echoed. “What a dumb thing to do.”

“You know what? I think I should talk to her. She’s the only person in the whole group we haven’t considered.”

Betsy Hansen lived in the house in Brooklyn she had shared with her husband until a little after Christmas. The ornate H on the front door had been painted by Betsy, and there were other touches of her talented hand on and around the house. It was several months since we had last met, but she recognized me and invited me in. She seemed to know that I was looking into Scotty’s murder and sounded a little surprised that I had not been to see her earlier.

“I guess when you’re separated you’re out of the loop,” she said.

“It isn’t about who lives with whom. I just want to talk to people who may know something that will help me.”

“You’re trying to clear Ray?” She was a pretty, young woman with soft hair that was naturally blond and bright blue eyes that today lacked their usual luster.

“I just want to know who killed Scotty. And why. I’m not convinced Ray did it, and I don’t know why he would.”

“I feel a lot of hurt,” she said. “Anger. What-have-I-done-to-deserve-this kind of thing. But I don’t think Ray killed one of his best friends.”

“I don’t, either.”

“What’s she like? The girl he’s living with. I hear he picked her up in a bar.”

It wasn’t the kind of conversation I wanted to get involved in, but there wasn’t any easy way out. “I don’t think they live together.” It wasn’t the answer she was looking for.

“Have you met her?”

“Yes.” I knew I had to do better. “She’s single, from Germany. She works for some decorator.”

“Husky voice and very sexy, I suppose.”

It was pretty accurate. “She’s nice-looking,” I said. “I think she’s a nice person. I was very sorry when you two split up, Betsy. I thought you were a good couple.”

“So did I.” She fiddled around with the beads she was wearing. “Ray had a roving eye.” She pushed her hair back. “And some cooperation.”

“From whom?”

Her lips pursed and relaxed. Her eyes had filled. The wound was still very new and very painful. “Jean McVeigh, for one.”

“I see.”

“Not that I think there’s any connection. I just can’t forgive Jean. She had a husband of her own, a really nice guy. What did she need mine for?”

“Did something happen?”

“They used to look at each other as if they wanted to rip each other’s clothes off. So eventually they did.” She swallowed and her mouth trembled. “It wasn’t anything; it was just sex. They had the opportunity and the means, they really didn’t need a motive.”

“I’m sorry, Betsy.”

“It happened at a party last summer. Labor Day,” she corrected herself.

“What?”

“A party. One of the older guys was retiring. His wife gave him a big party at their house on Long Island.”

I didn’t want to cause her any more pain, but I couldn’t just drop it. “How do you know something happened?”

“I went looking for him. It was getting late and it was time to go. I couldn’t find him outside near the barbecue, so I went inside. I remember it was very cool. The whole house was air-conditioned. There were a couple of people in the kitchen and a couple in the living room, but Ray wasn’t there. I thought maybe he’d gone upstairs to the bathroom. I went halfway up and called him. All the doors were closed up there except the bathroom door, but I heard a woman’s voice, you know, just a sound, and then Ray said he was coming right down. Then a door opened and some man I didn’t know came out of one of the bedrooms and down the stairs. I went back down and Ray came down a minute later.”

“With Jean?”

“By himself. When we got outside, we ran into Scotty. He
asked us if we’d seen Jean, and Ray said she was in the bathroom.”

But of course she hadn’t been, at least not the one upstairs. “Was Jerry McMahon at that party?” I asked.

“The one whose body they just found?”

“Yes.”

“He may have been. There were a lot of people from different precincts, people the man who was retiring had known at one time or another.”

“Betsy, is that the only time Ray and Jean may have gotten together?”

She shook her head. “It was the first that I saw myself. There was another time that I’m pretty sure of.”

“When was that?”

“Last November.” She drew in a deep breath. “Our babysitter pulled out at the last minute and we had tickets to go somewhere. I couldn’t get anyone so I called Jean. I thought it was safe. She’d drive over and drive back and that would be it. But she got Scotty to drive her, so Ray had to drive her home. I can tell you how long it took him if you really want to know.”

I didn’t. She was hurting so much I wished I had a painkiller to give her. “I’m really sorry,” I said.

“You think Ray killed Scotty over Jean?” She smiled. “Do men still do that?”

“I don’t think so, but I’m sorry it all happened.”

“It’s awful for the kids. Their friends in school know he’s been arrested. I wish I could take them away till it’s all over.” She reached over to the coffee table in front of her and picked up a folded newspaper. When she unfolded it, there was a familiar picture of Ray Hansen, in uniform, shadowed and unsmiling, the kind of ID photo that makes you look old and weary. “I have to throw the paper out before they come home.” She folded it again, so the picture of her children’s father was hidden.

“Betsy, did you ever talk to Ray about what happened with Jean?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t really see anything. I heard a voice behind a closed door. I heard Ray lie about Jean being in the bathroom. I clocked how long it took him to take
her home that night she baby-sat. Maybe I should have said something, but I couldn’t. I thought it would work out. I thought if I was just patient, he’d come back to me and we’d be the way we were before. Instead, he got more distant. And after Christmas he walked out.” Her voice choked on the last sentence.

I didn’t stay much longer. I asked her if Ray talked much about his work and she said he didn’t. Before I left she showed me the St. Patrick’s Day decorations the kids had made in school. I knew she’d rather be showing them to Ray, but I didn’t mind being a substitute. She asked about Jack and me, and I said we were happy together, and she said she thought we made a good couple. Then she said she was going to work full-time soon, and I told her I thought that was a good idea. At the door, she gave me a hug. I wished I had stopped by sooner.

The street where Jean McVeigh lived was clear of all but a few cars that probably belonged to the houses they were parked in front of. Maybe the reporters had given up when they found out they couldn’t bully Jean or wear her down into talking to them.

I pulled into the empty driveway and got out of the car. A little boy walked over from the front lawn of the next-door house.

“Who ya lookin’ for?” he asked, licking a candy bar.

“Mrs. McVeigh.”

“That’s where she lives.”

I smiled. “Thank you.” I went to the front door and rang the bell. There was no answer. I hadn’t called in advance because I assumed she wasn’t answering her phone. I rang the bell again, but the house was perfectly quiet. I walked around to the back, the little boy following me.

“You from the TV?” he asked.

“No. I’m Mrs. McVeigh’s friend.”

“Oh.” He seemed disappointed. Who could be interested in a friend when there was the possibility of getting your chocolaty face on the six o’clock news?

The back door was locked and two attempts on the bell brought nothing but silence.

“She went out,” my little friend said. I wasn’t sure whether his statement was the result of logic or if he had seen Jean leave.

“Did you see her go?”

He shrugged.

I went back to the car and sat behind the wheel. The boy stood in the driveway watching me as though there were something interesting about the way I sat. Once or twice he came right up to the car and pressed his face against the window, leaving chocolaty marks on the glass.

Suddenly there was a sharp rap on the opposite window, frightening me. I turned to see an old man with a cane peering in at me angrily.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“I’m waiting for Mrs. McVeigh.”

“She doesn’t want to see you and
we
don’t want to see you. So how about leaving us alone?”

Enough, I thought. For all I knew she was gone for the weekend. I started the motor and backed out of the driveway, watched on each side. When I got to the curb, the little boy waved, but the old man stood holding his cane aloft like a weapon. The neighborhood had had its fill of unwelcome visitors.