The Christening Day Murder (22 page)

“Maybe it was just the change of scene. And looking at you.”

“That, too. You going to check out Ms. Beadles Knox this morning?”

“First thing.”

“Why don’t I call and offer her a carpet-cleaning service to see if she’s home.”

“That would be good, Jack.”

He opened his Manhattan phone book and dialed the number. After a generous wait, he hung up. “Sorry. The lady must work or walk the dog.”

“I’ll drop in on Arnold then. He probably has work I can do.”

“I’ll drive you to the station.”

Jack’s apartment is in Brooklyn Heights, which is just across the river from downtown Manhattan, where Arnold Gold’s office is. The trip didn’t take long, and I enjoyed the walk on the Manhattan side. Arnold’s law office is in an old building with an elevator that has seen better days. When I walked into the reception area, I got a warm welcome. Yes, there was work, and no, Arnold hadn’t gotten a temp for today. I took my coat off and got to work.

Arnold was off in court during the morning, but he returned after eleven, happy to see me. “So how about I take you to lunch, Chrissie?”

“Everybody’s feeding me lately,” I said. “Do I really look that bad?”

“You look terrific. I just don’t feel like sharing my table with a member of the noble profession today. So if we get a table for two, my honorable colleagues will have to look elsewhere for scintillating conversation, of which, as you know, I am frequently a source. Also it’s nice to be seen occasionally with a good-looking woman who isn’t my wife.”

“I accept.”

Arnold’s lunches are not anything that Hollywood or Wall Street would covet. But they’re better than a sandwich and coffee at my desk, and the conversation is never disappointing.

“Well, you’ve been at it a couple of weeks now. Got a murderer yet?” he said when he had ordered.

“A lot of facts, a few conclusions, some suspects, but nothing I can pin on anyone. Opportunity but no real motive.”

“I think you’re damned good to learn anything after so long.”

“In this case I had to find out who the victim was first. And although I haven’t proved it conclusively yet with a dental X ray, I know who she was.”

“OK. I’m waiting.”

I told him about Candy, all the smiles caught by the Thurstons’ camera, how she had come as a dreaded tenant and left as a member of the family. I told him how I could feel the exuberance of her spirit, her dedication as a teacher, her kindness as a friend, how the stories about her had made her live again for me.

I embellished my tale with the reminiscences of Mrs. Thurston and her daughter, Monica, and the warm recollections of Amy Broderick and her brother, Jerry Mulholland. “ ‘The delectable Miss Phillips,’ he said,” and I found my eyes misting.

“I see as usual you’re taking this very personally.”

“I started out wanting to give her a name so she could get a decent burial. But it’s become more than that for me, Arnold. And it’s not just that there were people, nice people, who loved her. Not just that there was some kind of hanky-panky going on in that town that everyone I’ve talked to would be happy to rebury. Not just that there are people who, for their own selfish reasons, have chosen to see her as unworthy.”

Arnold’s eyes pierced mine as they always do when he’s
interested or concerned. “Then what is it?” he asked in a low voice.

“Candy was twenty-four years old when she died. Thirty years ago, when I was born, my mother was twenty-four. If they were alive today, they might have twenty-five or thirty-five years of life ahead of them. My mother’s life was cut short by a disease for which there was no cure, and hard as that was for me, I came to accept it. But Candy’s life was ended by someone who hated or feared her, and while there’s no cure for that either, I want him exposed. Disease is fairly arbitrary. My mother had the bad luck to be stricken. But Candy was singled out for death. She died because of malice, and malice is hateful. I don’t care if he’s tried for his crime, but I want people to know he did it. I want people to know he isn’t the wonderful person they think he is.”

“Sounds like you know who did it.”

“Well, of course I have my suspicions. But I can’t for the life of me think why he would have done it. She was leaving the area. She already had a teaching job in another state. If they’d been having an affair, it was over.”

“Maybe she was pregnant.”

“She wasn’t.” I didn’t explain, but he seemed to accept the forcefulness of my decree.

“Maybe he didn’t do it.”

I’m sure I heard myself sigh. “Then who did?” I asked, not rhetorically as it may have sounded but as a real question that cried for an answer.

“You’ve gone this far, you’ll go all the way. Just eat hearty. You need to keep your strength up.”

   A few minutes after I got back to the office, Jack called. “She’s there,” he said. “I did my carpet-cleaning routine and got hung up on.”

“You deserved it.”

“I don’t know why,” he said with mock innocence. “I started out the way they all do: ‘Hi, Mrs. Knox. How’re you doing today?’ ”

“On my telephone, anyone who asks how I’m doing today is selling something.”

“Well, maybe you’ve got a smoother approach than mine.”

“I’ll give it a try.”

The subway took me uptown. I knew the area from recent visits to an old apartment house where a friend died. Joanne Beadles Knox lived in a prewar building between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. Like all the buildings of its vintage, it presented a monolithic facade flush with the sidewalk. I wonder sometimes why builders and planners totally excluded trees and greenery from their image of the city. One of the most refreshing things about going home is the smell of the air in Oakwood.

Once inside the outer lobby, I found her name on the panel and pressed her bell. There was no doorman, just a locked door between me and the inside lobby, and I needed someone to buzz me in.

“Yes?” a woman’s voice called on the intercom.

“It’s Christine Bennett,” I called back. “Can I come up?” I said it because I couldn’t think of anything else that would give me a greater chance of entry.

“Who?” she called back.

“Chris Bennett. Can I come in?”

There was a pause and then the buzzer sounded. I ran to the door and pushed it, feeling a surge of triumph. I had successfully negotiated the hardest part of my visit.

The Knoxes lived on the sixth floor, and the elevator took me up so smoothly, I was surprised. No one was looking out for me, so I found the apartment and pressed the bell.

“Who is it?” she said, opening a peephole in the door.

I was standing squarely in front of it so she could size me up. It’s my firm conviction that I look unthreatening, “Christine Bennett.”

She unbolted and opened the door a crack, and I saw the protective chain. “Do I know you?”

She was only a sliver of a woman, an eye and a nose, some hair colored a rather frightful red. “It’s about your mother,” I said.

I know that there are families torn apart by a hate so great that they engender murderous feelings, but I had met Joanne’s mother, and I didn’t think that hatred was the problem; I thought it was more likely misunderstanding. Whatever it was, I apparently said the right thing.

“My mother? Just a minute.” She closed and reopened the door, this time wide enough for me to pass through. As I entered, I smelled a dinner cooking, and through the doorway to the kitchen, saw the implements of cooking on a counter.

Joanne Beadles Knox was a carbon copy of her mother except for the color of her hair. The daughter was a little taller, but she had the thin, almost bony build of her mother. I could have picked her out of a crowd without a picture. Even their voices were the same.

“Come on in,” she said. “The kitchen’s a little messy, but we can sit at the table.” She was wearing a black wool skirt and a black sweater tucked inside it. Around her waist was a wide belt with a handsome buckle. Her stockinged feet were shod with heavy sneakers, as though she had kicked off her heels when she came home to cook and be comfortable.

The table in the dinette was round and clear except for a used coffee mug. She pushed it aside.

“You wanna give me your coat?”

“That’s OK.” I took it off and draped it on a chair.

“So what’s this about my mother?”

“I saw her last week and she talked about you.”

“You saw her?” She smiled as though she recognized the joke. “My mother is still alive?”

“She’s been married to Mike Carpenter for a long time, and they live in a little house about twenty minutes from where she used to live.”

“I don’t know any Mike Carpenter.”

“Mrs. Knox, I think your mother would like very much to see you again. I have her address here, and if you give me your permission, I’ll give her yours.”

“I don’t know,” she said. Her forehead had wrinkled. “Boy, would I like a cigarette right now, but I gave them up again two weeks ago and I’ve really been good.”

That was all I needed, a little more guilt laid on me. “I really came to ask you about J.J. Eberling.”

She put her hands on the edge of the table as though she were about to push herself away. Her nails were painted a deep red and looked well manicured. “Is he still alive?”

“No, he isn’t, so you can talk freely.”

“Who the hell are you, lady? You investigating me or something?”

“A body was found in the basement of the church in Studsburg,” I said, feeling as though I’d said it so many times that the whole world ought to know about it by now. “Maybe you saw something on television.”

“I did. A couple of weeks ago.”

“I’ve been trying to find out who she is and who killed her. For a little while, I thought the body might be you.”

She nodded and said, “Yeah. I’m glad it wasn’t.”

“One of the people I talked to was Darlene Jackson.”

“Darlene,” she said with a little smile. “I remember Darlene.”

“She worked for the Eberlings before you did.”

“Yeah. She told me about him. She warned me.”

“I know that something happened. Can you tell me about it?”

“What does this have to do with the body?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to find out. Everyone I talk to from Studsburg just shuts up when I mention Mr. Eberling. Somehow I think you know something that no one else will tell me.”

“I know something,” she said.

I had thought she might volunteer, but instead she just sat and looked at me.

“Could you tell me about it? About Mr. Eberling?”

“He was rich and powerful and he got away with murder.”

“Murder?”

“Well, I don’t mean that for real. I mean he did what he wanted, and nobody stopped him.”

“Like what?” I prompted.

“Like what he did to Darlene. He tried it with me, too, but I made him stop.”

“How?”

“I just told him I wouldn’t stand for it.”

I was starting to feel the Studsburg runaround had extended to include her. I decided to be more direct. “Mr. Eberling gave you a lot of money.”

“Who, me? He never gave me money.”

“Your mother said—”

“My mother doesn’t know. She never met him. She didn’t know what was going on.”

“What
was
going on?”

“I worked for them; he tried to … you know.”

“Please, Mrs. Knox. A young woman was murdered. Something was going on in that town that no one will talk about. J.J. Eberling’s dead now. He can’t hurt you. J.J. Eberling gave you a lot of money. I need to know why.”

“He didn’t give me a cent that I didn’t earn. That’s it.”

I felt weary and at the end of my patience. This was the person I had counted on to break the silence, to tell me something no one else would, to give me the scrap of information I needed to put everything I knew together and come up with
an answer. Now she was stonewalling, too. “Mrs. Knox, you gave your mother ten hundred-dollar bills,” I said, watching her face. “She put that money away for years because she thought you would come back and she wanted to give it to you, she wanted you to have it.”

Her eyes were riveted on me, and as I watched, they formed tears. “She called me a whore,” she said, her voice breaking and the tears spilling. “You know what it feels like when your own mother calls you that?”

I could only think how different were the recollections of the two parties to that terrible conversation. “She told me she loved you,” I said. “She tried very hard to find you. If she said anything like that, she’s paid for it a hundred times over. She saved the money for you. She didn’t touch it till she and Mike bought the house. The money was her down payment. Please tell me why he gave it to you.”

“The bitch,” she said, reaching for a tissue. “She never told me in her whole life she loved me.”

“She would tell you now.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she screamed. “When I needed it, it wasn’t there. When I was a young kid and I wanted a mother, what did I have? You know what I said to her that last day? I said come with me. We’ll go to New York together. We’ll go anywhere together. I had enough to keep us going a long time.”

“She’s sorry now.”

“Sure she’s sorry. I thought she was dead till you came to the door. I tried to call her a long time ago—my husband said I should. She wasn’t even listed. How did I know she got married?”

We sat quietly for a minute or two. I didn’t know how to ask her again what I wanted to know. My question—my presence—had reopened the sorest wounds of her life, and it wasn’t within my province to heal them. I felt terrible about what I’d done to her, and I’d lost my last good prospect for a lead to Candy’s killer. I stood up and took my coat off the chair.

“You sure Eberling’s dead?” she asked in a throaty voice.

“There’s a death certificate in the county files.”

“I heard something one night.”

I sat down, my coat over my lap, my heart thumping.

“He had company for dinner, two men. It was a little after I started working there. She said she needed me till after dinner and could I stay. Someone would drive me home. It meant a couple of dollars more, so I stayed. The three of them went into his study after dinner. I brought them coffee and cigars. They were Cuban cigars, and you couldn’t get them in those days because of Castro. But he had them. I could smell them when I went into the room.