The Christmas Night Murder (13 page)

Everything was now different. Instead of one suspect, there were two. If Foster Farragut had been freed on Christmas Eve, early in the morning on Christmas Eve, he would have had time to track Hudson on Christmas Day, perhaps by driving to Buffalo and waiting outside Hudson's church until he left in his very visible vehicle. A car wouldn't be hard to obtain if his father gave him one, which wouldn't surprise me. It's pretty easy to make a case for needing one; almost anywhere Foster might want to work would require a car if he lived outside a big city. The question of where Hudson was now was still not answered, but Foster would know the Riverview area, and how the trains worked, as well as his father. There was even the possibility that the two men had been in it together. And if they had, the problem of retrieving the second car was neatly solved.

But I had no proof, no evidence, no witnesses, and I didn't know where to find Foster. It was likely, guilty or innocent, that his whereabouts would be known by his father and his grandmother, but I didn't think I had much chance of getting either one to tell me what I wanted to know. Mrs. Farragut had gone further in discussing the events of seven years ago than she had meant to; next time I saw her, she would be on guard. And I had a feeling Walter would throw me out if I turned up at his doorstep again.

I called Mrs. Belvedere to ask her for the name and phone number of Miranda Gallagher's mother, but there was no answer, so I turned to Sister Mary Teresa's Bible. The remembrance cards led me nowhere. They were just dozens of roughly two-and-a-quarter-by-four-inch cards with a picture of Jesus or Mary on one side and the name of the deceased followed by a prayer on the other. The oldest
ones intrigued me. The quality of the paper was different, the pictures in black and white or shades of brown instead of in color, the edges occasionally scalloped. Age had given them a delicate fineness; they seemed more than paper cards. Some had a silky finish; some were almost translucent. In the course of forty or fifty years they had become artifacts.

But they were not leads. I turned to the several scraps of paper on which notes were written. Some had names, perhaps the names of new nieces and nephews: Ethan, Erin, Ann-Marie, a name here, a name there. One slip had the name George and an address in New York, but no last name or indication who George might be or when the notation had been made. I set it aside with little hope of figuring out what it meant.

On a page in the Book of John, where the story of Mary Magdalene returning to the tomb occurs, there was a slip of pink paper with a long number written on it, too long for a Social Security number. It looked more like a credit-card number, but that would be impossible for a nun, except perhaps for a superior who might have to charge things for the convent. I didn't think Sister Mary Teresa had ever been in the position of buying in quantity.

I flipped to the pages that are reserved for family entries. Sister Mary Teresa had listed her parents with their birth and death dates, her sisters and brothers, her own name and birth date, and a string of other names that I took to be children of her siblings. There was a page folded into the book with additional entries, several marriages and more names and birth dates. None of them meant anything to me except the names of her Syracuse family. Everything was lettered carefully and, I thought, lovingly.

Finally I closed the book and sat staring at the windows of Joseph's office. There was nothing about Hudson in the Bible, nothing about Julia except for the remembrance card, nothing about Foster or Walter Farragut or about old Mrs. Farragut.

I was sitting there trying to think what to do next when Joseph tapped on the door and came in. I told her about Foster Farragut.

“That does change things,” she said. “It gives him the
one thing we thought he didn't have, the opportunity to follow Hudson.”

“I'm sure his father and grandmother know where he is.”

“And won't tell us.” She walked to the window behind her desk and looked out into the dark sky. “I've learned something, Chris. When you've come to me in the past and asked for my help, even though I sympathized with the victims and their families, I was able to look at the facts you brought me with enough detachment that I could ask the right questions and see how pieces of information fit into the puzzle. But now I am utterly unable to look
at
the case because I'm inside it; I'm part of it. Hudson is my brother and my friend, and I feel a sense of panic at what may have happened to him, what may be happening right now. I realize at this moment how much I admire you for the work you've done. You become part of every case you investigate and yet you're able to see facts, to distinguish between important and trivial, and eventually to dig out or uncover or produce the essential piece of evidence that leads to a solution.”

I felt embarrassed by her tribute. “We'll do it this time, too, Joseph. And don't forget that when I've done it in the past, it's always been with your help. You've steered me in the right direction and made me see things that were often right in front of me but that were invisible because there's more to vision than a good pair of eyes and a willingness to look.”

“We've been friends for a long time, haven't we?” She said it with a half smile.

“We've known each other sixteen years.”

“And became friends somewhere along the way in that rather circumscribed manner that nuns have friendships.”

“I think we've known each other very well but differently from the way I've come to know some women that I've met over the last year and a half.”

“You must talk to them about a whole universe of different things.”

“I do. And sometimes I'm surprised at the candidness of what they say—and what they expect me to say. In a way friendship with other nuns was about shared ideas, while
friendship with my neighbors is often about shared experiences.”

“But it must include ideas, too,” Joseph said.

“It does, but the ideas seem to come as an extension of the experiences. The talk about food or gardens or the school system, where to buy a child a certain piece of clothing or what a pediatrician has said, somehow that leads to a discussion of ideas, of styles or medicine or educational philosophy.”

“I see what you mean. Our discussions of ideas often led to shared experiences, not the other way around.”

“Exactly. And while I know more about some of the women in Oakwood, more, in fact, than I'd like to know,” I admitted, “it doesn't mean that I know
them
; I just know about them, a lot of facts that don't always add up to knowing a person. And although there are many things I don't know about you, and never will, I know that we're friends. I trust you the way I trust Jack.”

“Yes.”

I wondered if she were thinking, as I was now, of Julia Farragut. She was still a stranger to me, a collection of memories and vignettes, of conflicting perceptions, of carefully filtered reports. I needed to know her better. There had to be some essential facts about her that were missing or hidden in the diary, facts crucial to her suicide, facts that would lead us to Hudson McCormick's kidnapper.

“But you've made close friends, Chris. I met one of them.”

“Melanie Gross. And it started with a chance meeting during our early-morning walks.”

“And led to cooking,” Joseph said with a smile.

“And a lot of other things. Gardening. When Jack and I went away on our wedding trip, she watered my vegetable garden.” Like Mrs. Belvedere and her next-door neighbor. “She's the first Jewish woman I've ever known well. Her children are really the first ones I've played with as an adult. I've even baby-sat for them when Melanie couldn't find anyone else in an emergency.”

“Shared experiences.”

“That led to shared ideas.”

“Chris, do we know anyone who was a friend of Julia Farragut?”

“I know of one who still lives in Riverview. I think I can get to her tomorrow.”

“Perhaps that's what we need, someone who shared experiences with Julia, someone Julia may have confided in or who may have some ideas of her own about what was going on in that house.”

“I'll find her,” I promised. “First thing tomorrow morning.”

I thought a lot that night about our conversation on friendship. I had been a very young fifteen when I came to St. Stephen's, surely much younger than any fifteen-year-old I might run into at the supermarket in Oakwood today, and Joseph had been twice my age or more, a self-possessed young woman who had seemed generations older than I. I had been orphaned and then separated from the only family I knew through circumstances completely beyond their control, and although I had wanted to enter St. Stephen's as a novice, it had all happened in an untimely and unhappy way, with no preparation to speak of, no time to say good-bye to school friends and teachers, to neighbors' dogs, or favorite thinking places. What had eased me into my new life had been Joseph's unfailing gift of herself, her being there, her listening and caring. I attributed my wholeness and well-being, my very sanity, my evolution into the well-adjusted person I believe I am, to her. At some point she had become my spiritual director. Had our friendship preceded or followed that? I wasn't sure, but I knew the watchword as well as anyone else:
Be careful of particular friendships
.

In the secular world there was nothing to worry about. If Melanie Gross and I spent hours together talking or sewing or cooking or shopping or gardening, there would be no eyebrows raised in Oakwood, no talk, no concern that our relationship was anything but “normal.” At night Mel would go back to her husband, and I, until a few months ago, to my own house, to a phone call from Jack or a shared weekend. But at a convent such “particular friendships” could not be tolerated. A nun was expected to spread
her friendships around lest intimacy take on a dreadful new meaning.

Still, I always considered Joseph to be my best friend, my dearest and closest friend. As I had said to her this evening, there was so much I didn't know about her, the facts of her birth and youth and family, her exact age, the names and addresses of her next of kin, but what did it matter? Our friendship flowed in both directions, although she knew so much more about me than I did about her.

And Jack, my husband of four months. Was he now my new best friend? I sat on the narrow bed, my knees drawn up, a flannel nightgown of a kind I no longer wore at home keeping me warm. I missed him so much I could feel it in my skin and my chest and in that place I had kept quiescent for so many years and that now formed such an essential part of my life, my relationship with my husband.

But were we friends? I wasn't sure. I had heard several women say their husbands were their best friends and I had wondered.

There had to have been someone for Julia. She had been young, a student in the town high school, a child growing into a woman. But she had lived with something unspeakable, and had drawn Hudson into it.

Hudson—was he still alive? The odds were long, the chances slim. I wanted my husband to wrap his arms around me, to make love to me. I wanted Hudson to walk into the Mother House with a smile and a good story.

But I was the only one who could make it happen.

My night was far from restful. It was full of images that I sensed were directing me but that dissolved as I reached for them. One that kept coming back was the page in Sister Mary Teresa's Bible where I had found the slip of paper with the string of numbers. What was the significance of the numbers and was there any significance to where I had found them? And most important, did they tie in to the disappearance of Hudson McCormick or the suicide of Julia Farragut?

I woke when I heard the nuns stirring, readying themselves for morning prayers. It was Monday the thirtieth of December. Jack and I had been invited out for New Year's Eve, but the chances of my partying tomorrow night looked rather dim at this moment. I joined the nuns for prayers and then went to mass with them. Afterward Father Kramer stopped me.

“I gather there's no news,” he said.

“Nothing to lead us to Father McCormick. Or to Sister Mary Teresa's killer.”

“I talked to Detective Lake yesterday. They seem certain she was the victim of an intruder. They said there are several homeless men in the area and that one of them may be deranged.”

“What do you think?”

“I think they're grasping at straws.” He pulled open the door of the Mother House and followed me inside. “We feed four homeless young men at the church almost every day, and they're about as deranged as you or me.”

“I assume the police have questioned them by now. If there'd been an arrest, Sister Joseph would know.”

“Well, you'll keep me posted, Chris?” It was a question.

“Of course.”

I called Mrs. Belvedere at nine, the earliest I felt was decent. She was out, leaving me without a means to find Julia's friend Miranda.

There had to be some other way. Riverside was a small town and many people would know each other. But I couldn't just walk up to someone on the street and ask what Miranda Gallagher's married name was.

It came to me as I finished my breakfast. The woman in the real-estate office. She had given me Mrs. Farragut's address with relative ease. People in real estate knew everyone in town, as I had learned from someone in Oakwood who remembered with great clarity people long gone, people newly arrived, and the color and design of all their houses.

“Eileen usually takes Monday off.” The woman in the real-estate office was tall, with dark hair combed into a chignon. “Weekends are usually busy and Tuesday is our open-house day when we get to view the new listings.”

“I'm trying to locate a Riverview woman named Gallagher,” I said.

“Gallagher. There are a few Gallaghers in town. I don't really know them.”

“She has a daughter named Miranda who's married and has just given birth.”

“I haven't lived in town as long as Eileen. I'm afraid the names don't mean anything to me.”

“May I have Eileen's home number?” The woman in Oakwood handed out her card with home and office numbers to anyone she met.

“I'll call her for you.”

She thinks I'm nuts, I thought. When a police officer shows his badge and asks questions, people generally cooperate unless they have something to hide. When a civilian does the same thing, people think she's nuts.

“I'm afraid she's out. I left a message on her machine. Would you like to give me your name and number?”

I wrote it down, impatient and disgusted. If I'd lied and said I was looking for a house, I would now be in possession of Eileen's last name, her home phone number, and
probably a cup of coffee and a Danish. “May I leave a note for her?” I said, sitting down at the empty desk as though I had already been given permission.

“Of course. She'll be in first thing in the morning.”

I opened a desk drawer. “She should have paper in here,” I said, rummaging.

“I can get you—”

“I've got it, thanks.” I took out a memo pad with all of Eileen's personal information printed right on it. I wrote a note, tore off two sheets, and left one on top of the desk. Folded in my hand was all the information I needed.

But Eileen wasn't home. I started back to the convent and made a small detour to Mrs. Farragut's community. When I stopped the car at a curb, I didn't know why I was there. What I wanted from Mrs. Farragut—Julia's diary—I wasn't going to get, not today and not ever. It was even possible that it didn't exist anymore, that she had burned it or shredded it or just tossed it out with the garbage to make sure no one would ever read it, but I had my doubts about that. Julia had been very precious to her grandmother. Diaries and letters probably had great value for the older woman. What, after all, does a person leave behind besides memories? There are photos and snapshots, videos nowadays in some cases, personal belongings like clothes and books. But for many of us, the most cherished items are the writings and drawings and handmade articles, and I could imagine that even if Julia's writings were incriminating of her father, her grandmother might have saved them just because they had been created by Julia.

But there was no way to get access to them. Judges don't issue warrants on the basis of faint possibility, and I am not a second-story man. If the diaries were in the Farragut apartment, they would remain there, unknown to the police and untouchable.

So what was I doing here? Hudson wasn't being hidden here in Mrs. Farragut's apartment and she had said about all she ever would to me. A sudden knock on my window startled me.

A man was standing next to the car. “You can't park here,” he called.

I wound the window down. “Sorry. I'm just trying to decide where I'm going.”

“Well, you'd better decide somewheres else. This is our main drive and we get deliveries along here.”

“OK.” I moved forward, toward the visitors' parking area, but I stopped before I got there. Mrs. Farragut was just leaving the front door of her section of the building. It probably didn't matter, but it would be nice to know if she owned and drove a car. I backed up so she wouldn't notice me and bent over. Wherever she was going, I could pick her up in a few seconds. I counted to five with slow determination, then raised my head. She had turned away from my car and was walking toward one of the resident parking lots that were discreetly placed behind the buildings.

And she wasn't alone. A man was walking beside her, not an elderly fellow resident and not her son, someone younger. All I could see were their backs as they turned the corner of the building, but I was willing to bet on his identity. Grandson Foster, newly released from prison, had come home to live with Grandma.

There was only one direction they could turn from the parking lot as this curved section of the drive was one-way. I stayed where I was, waiting tensely. A huge Cadillac pulled into the drive but too soon for it to be Mrs. Farragut's. I took a good look at the driver anyway as he went around the small grassy circle across from where I was sitting. He was gray and full-faced, no one I had ever seen before. It was a minute or two before another car appeared and I knew at first glance that it was the right one. The car was white and medium-sized, the driver a man about my age with a distinct resemblance to Walter Farragut. And sitting beside him was his grandmother.

I waited till they had completed the circle before taking off after them. As I followed at a distance a woman stepped off the curb and I braked to a stop for her just as the Farragut car reached the stop sign at the end of the drive. A right flashing light let me know where they were heading, but the woman crossing in front of me took a long time and I began to fear I would lose them. Prominent signs
pegged the speed at ten miles an hour, but I did twice that the second I was able.

At the stop sign I barely slowed, then turned right onto the forty-mile-an-hour black-topped road that led away from the senior community and toward the heart of town. There was a car that might be the Farraguts' down the road and I speeded up to overtake it, hoping to see the license plate so I could identify it accurately. I got close enough to read it and reassure myself that the Farraguts were indeed in the front seat. Then I took my foot off the accelerator and let some space accumulate between us.

There were attractive houses, placed well back from the road, on both sides and a sign pointing to a school. Just as the area began to look more commercial than residential, Foster put his right turn signal on. I slowed down, waited a few seconds, and followed his turn. To my surprise I ended up in a small suburban shopping mall.

At the near end there was a giant supermarket. The Farragut car turned toward it while I hung back. There were a number of other stores there, but on this Monday morning it wasn't particularly busy. I watched the white car circle around a row of parked cars and then disappear. They had found an empty space. I drove to where I could see the entrance and sat watching it until grandmother and grandson went inside. Mrs. Farragut was dressed, as usual, as though she were attending a ladies' tea, in a black coat with a black fur collar around her neck, but her grandson looked appropriately casual. When they were inside, I found their car and parked far enough away that they would not see me. Then I sat and waited.

It seemed like a long time before they came out, Foster pushing a market basket with many bags of groceries, his grandmother walking beside him. They opened the trunk and stashed the bags in there, then got into the car. When they started driving, I managed to put a car between us. The exit they took was on a side road at the far end of the shopping center and Foster took a right toward the rear of the stores. At the road that ran along the back of the mall, he turned right again. He was now heading back toward the apartment on a road parallel to the one he had come on. The trouble was the car in front of me, which was driven
by an elderly man who was afraid to turn into the road at the back of the shopping center, or else he was undecided. Several cars passed in both directions as he sat at the corner without moving, and I felt myself becoming increasingly agitated. Please move, I urged him.

Finally he crept forward, looking left and right, trying to get up his nerve to make the plunge. When he did, I was right behind him, slipping into the road ahead of several cars coming from my left. But stretching before me was a long line of cars, and with only one lane in each direction I was unable to pass the slowpoke in front of me. He braked for no reason at the intersection where the supermarket was, then continued on at beginner's speed. He was in no hurry and I was desperate to keep the Farraguts in sight. For all I knew, they were taking provisions to some place where they had Hudson tied up, where they were holding him until he told them the “truth” they wanted to hear. It might seem preposterous to an outsider, but she was a tough old woman whose family came first, and with her grandson to help her, maybe what she was doing was resolving the great tragedy of her life, finding a meaning in the death of her granddaughter.

But at this moment my situation was hopeless. The car ahead of me eventually turned off the road, leaving a half-mile gap of empty blacktop. I tried to make up the distance, but I knew it was futile. The white car was either so far away I would never catch up or it had made a turn somewhere and I couldn't guess at which intersection.

I made my way back to the retirement community and scouted the parking lot behind Mrs. Farragut's building, but the car wasn't there. Had they gone to see Hudson? Or were they filling a refrigerator in Foster's new apartment, somewhere near his grandmother?

Whatever it was, I wasn't going to find out this morning.

I drove back to the shopping mall. The supermarket had a couple of pay phones and I tried Mrs. Belvedere again without reaching her, then dialed the real-estate woman, Eileen Wharton. This time I got a response.

“Of course I remember you. You're looking for that missing priest. Is there any word?”

“Unfortunately not. But I met Mrs. Farragut.”

“Isn't she wonderful? If you have to age, that's the way to do it. She's a great lady.”

“Eileen, I'm trying to track down a friend of Julia Farragut, a girl she went to school with. I think her maiden name was Miranda Gallagher.”

“Oh, the Gallaghers, yes. They live farther up the hill than the Farraguts in a newer house. They're a nice family. I think they have a daughter who got married not too long ago.”

“That's the one. Do you know her married name?”

“Oh gosh. Let me think. I should know; they bought a house in town when they got married, or the Gallaghers bought it for them. Who did Miranda marry?” She was asking herself and I hoped her memory was good. “Tony Santiago,” she said. “A good-looking boy—I really shouldn't say boy, should I? He's a father now. I just heard that Sunny Gallagher became a grandmother.”

“Sunny, that's the name.” I could hear the voice on the answering machine delivering her happy news. “Are they listed? The Santiagos?”

“Hold on, I'll get the number.” She came back and read off the address and phone number while I struggled to jot it down one-handed. “What does the Gallagher family have to do with your missing priest?”

“I need to know more about Julia. I think Julia may have said things about Father McCormick that she didn't mean because she was protecting someone. If I can talk to a friend of hers, she might know.”

“I wish you luck.”

“I thank you for your help.”

I called the Santiagos' number and a young female voice answered. Although I hate when it's done to me, I hung up without saying anything. Miranda was home and I didn't want to be discouraged from visiting. It couldn't be an easy time for her, a day or two out of the hospital, but I had to do it. It was for Hudson.