The Christmas Night Murder (19 page)

“Please tell me.”

“I've been thinking about it all day.” Her voice had none of the strength and energy of this morning. “There's something I didn't tell you.” Another pause and then it came. “There was a third letter.”

She ushered me into the house with a face that belied her name.

“It came in December of that year. Serena Farragut died around Thanksgiving and Miranda went back to school that Sunday. The funeral was the day after, I think, and the Farraguts let it be known that it would be private. I sent a basket of flowers, but I didn't visit the family. Julia came home when her mother died and she never went back to the convent. She wrote to Miranda after she came home and addressed the letter here. I can't really explain why I opened it. It's not the sort of thing I do, but I think I wanted to protect my daughter from the pain her friend was suffering.”

We had walked into the family room where I had gone through the carton early this afternoon. A fire was burning in the fireplace and I sat near it. Sunny sat in a chair across from me so that we shared the warmth.

“I have some conditions you will have to agree to,” she said.

“What kind of conditions?”

“I will read the letter to you. I will not give it to you. I do not want my daughter to know this letter ever arrived and I want you to promise you won't tell her.”

“I promise.”

“This is a personal letter. It's not evidence and I won't turn it over to the police. I can't explain why I've kept it all these years, but I have. Maybe there really is such a thing as destiny and this letter has been waiting all this time for someone to come along and look into what happened in that family. If so, then I'm glad I kept it. You seem the right person to be doing it. I think you genuinely care about
what happened to Julia and you don't seem to have an ax to grind. But my daughter must never know of the existence of this letter.”

“She will never know it from me.”

Sunny pulled the letter out of the envelope. “ ‘Dear Miranda,' ” she read. “ ‘I'm sure you have heard that my mother is gone. Of all the people I have ever known, I have loved her the most. I don't know how to live with her loss, but I know that I have to. I know she only wanted the best for me and I will accomplish that best in her memory.

“ ‘I wanted so much to see you while you were home, but it was impossible. Daddy wanted as little display as possible, so we kept to ourselves and mourned together.

“ ‘I will not be returning to St. Stephen's. My life there was the best I have ever had but I've been confused—maybe even a little mad—and I've done some awful things. If I write them down, perhaps they will make sense to me. You've been such a good friend for so long, maybe you'll know what I should do to right my wrongs.

“ ‘I'm sure I wrote you about the priest I call Hudson River McCormick. He is a truly wonderful person and he's helped me more than I can describe. But I had bad dreams and I made accusations—I don't even remember what they were—that weren't true. Well, maybe I do remember. Maybe it was confusion. The accusations were true, but they were made against the wrong person.' ” Sunny looked up. “This is very painful,” she said.

“I know it is.”

She looked back at the page. “ ‘I have a brother who really isn't my brother—well, maybe he is. He is a sad, confused person and we have all tried our best to make him happy. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, but I know that I have been happiest when he was away. I think that's true of my mother, too. He has hurt me on many occasions, Miranda. I have not wanted to complain. Sometimes I've thought it might have been my fault, that something I was doing was wrong, that I was encouraging him. My mother, who was the only person I could talk to, said that wasn't true. She said I shouldn't blame myself. Now that she's gone, I feel I have no one to turn to, no one to take her place and keep me going. I want to live a happy and productive
life, but how can I do it in this house? But I know I must. It's what my mother wanted for me, what Hudson River wants for me, and what I want for myself.' Her handwriting becomes hard to read here,” Sunny said. “As if she's disintegrating as she writes.”

“It happened in the second letter, too.”

“ ‘I have decided to write a long letter to my mother, a diary letter, to tell her everything I have been unable to say out loud. Maybe that will help me. I know my mother will read what I write and forgive me. She always did.

“ ‘And then, of course, there is my Sweet Doubter. In the end, it looks as though he was right. I could not finish my novitiate. I have not seen him for some time, but I still have deep feelings for him. He will come back, I'm sure of it. We will see each other at Christmas and that will be a happy time but also a sad one, without my mother. I'll see you, too, then, Miranda. This is a terrible burden I have shared with you, but I know you won't let me down.

“ ‘I have somehow mislaid your college address, the box number and all that, so I'll mail this to your house and have your mother forward it. Do well in your exams. I hope to go away to college myself when things get straightened out, maybe even the spring semester if we can arrange it.

“ ‘See you at Christmas. Lots of love, Julia.' ” Sunny folded the sheets and put them back in the envelope.

“It doesn't sound like a girl who's giving up on life,” I said.

“No.” She took her glasses off and laid them on the table next to her chair, but she held on to the letter as though I might grab it and run with it. “Once I read it, I couldn't send it on to Miranda,” she explained, her guilt spilling over. “Miranda was only eighteen herself. She was much too young to involve herself in such a terrible situation. I felt for Julia, I really did. I called her after the letter came and asked her how things were going. She said she missed her mother, but she was looking ahead. She asked if the letter had arrived and I said it had and that I would give it to Miranda when she came home for Christmas. Maybe I thought I would at that point. Maybe I thought Miranda and I would try to do something together for Julia.”

“You opened it when it came,” I said.

“Almost immediately. I had that sense of foreboding when I saw it. I told myself I would just read it and then tell Miranda I had opened it by mistake. I was making excuses from the first moment, but after I read it, I knew I couldn't let my daughter get involved in this. I couldn't let her go to that house with that monster. I know I should have gone to the police or to Father Grimes or—”

“I'm not judging you, Sunny. I'm very grateful that you read the letter to me.”

“What do you think? Do you think Foster kidnapped the priest?”

“It certainly looks that way. We found Father McCormick a couple of hours ago in a shed behind the Corcoran house.”

“Is he alive?”

“Yes, he is. I'm hoping—we're all hoping—he'll be able to identify the person that left him there to die.”

“I hope so, too. I mean that.”

I knew she did. I understood that in protecting her child she did not mean to harm Julia, but I could not help wondering how different things might be if the Gallaghers had invited Julia to go away for Christmas, to have a good time with her friend. But realistically, it might not have worked. Julia was a religious girl who might have chosen to be home for the holiday, to go to her own church, see her own priest, be with her father and grandmother.

Sometimes you dream about things you can't change, but tonight I had no time for dreams. I had to catch a killer.

This time I found an open pharmacy for my phone call. I'm not sure why I didn't want to go back to the diner, but something about it made me feel creepy. The pharmacy had a pay phone in a less open place and I didn't have the feeling that everyone around me was listening to my conversation. Angela must have closed the switchboard because Joseph answered on the first ring. When the switchboard is closed, all incoming calls go directly to her room.

I told her about Sunny Gallagher's letter.

“I guess that answers our questions,” she said.

“Only some of them. There are still a lot of things that aren't clear to me, things that aren't consistent.”

“Maybe our numbers are wrong, Chris.”

I waited for her to amplify, but she didn't. “You're being a sphinx again,” I said with a laugh.

“You know those jokes about how many people it takes to change a lightbulb?”

“Most of the answers are insensitive or politically incorrect.”

“True, but I've been thinking, perhaps we should be asking how many people it takes to change two lightbulbs. That may simplify the problem for us.”

“Joseph,” I said, feeling a sense of excitement building, “you may have it. A couple of things happened tonight—I don't have time to tell you about them. I wish I could remember what page of the Bible Sister Mary Teresa left that scrap of paper in.”

“It will come to you. And I'm right here. All night.”

“I'll talk to you again soon.”

I tried Mrs. Farragut again, and this time she answered.

“It's Christine Bennett,” I said. “I thought you'd like to know that Father McCormick has been found alive.”

“That's certainly good news. You've been successful.”

“Yes. We're all very relieved, not just that he's all right, but that he'll be able to name his kidnapper.”

“Then that should put an end to your little investigation.”

“I think so. Everything seems to be falling into place. By the way, he was left in the shed behind 211 Hawthorne Street.”

There was a pause. “How unfortunate for the new family.”

“But fortunate for the investigation. It links his kidnapper to your granddaughter's death.”

“Whatever pleases you, Miss Bennett. If you'll excuse me, I'll say good night.”

“Good night, Mrs. Farragut.”

Had she been a little anxious to get off the phone?

As I drove back to Hawthorne Street all kinds of things started to make sense. Little bits of conversation with people I had interviewed came back to me, this time with new meaning. Things I had seen and ignored because they struck me as irrelevant now took on great import. Even the
mistletoe I had stood under earlier in the evening had a message for me.

The scent I had detected as I stood in the foyer had not come from Christmas greenery; it had been Mrs. Farragut's own fragrance. That was why I had not been invited in; she had been there, discussing who knew what with the Belvederes, who had told me they hadn't kept in touch with her. They had done more than keep in touch. They had been part of a conspiracy. I wasn't sure exactly how it worked, but I sensed I was about to find out.

I turned into Hawthorne Street and parked the car on the opposite side from number 211 and before I reached it so that the Belvedere house was farther down the block. A lone police car stood in front of the Corcorans', which meant the crime-scene people had done their job and gone on their way. I got out of my car and crossed over, then walked up the driveway to the back of the house. As expected, one policeman was standing near the shed, just outside the yellow-and-black crime-scene tape, which was stiff from the cold. This was a routine procedure, guarding the crime scene to make certain nothing was disturbed in case the crime-scene people needed to come back for further evidence.

I called, “Hello,” and he came to attention.

“Who's there?”

“I'm Chris Bennett. I found Father McCormick in the shed.”

“Right. I recognize your name.”

He looked young enough that he might not have been on the Riverview police force seven years ago, might feel no obligation to the Farragut family.

“How long have you been on the police force here?”

“Three years. Three and a half. Spend most of my time riding around in my car. On patrol, you know?”

“I was so shaken up when I talked to the police before, I forgot to mention something. Whoever kidnapped Father McCormick kept him in that third-floor apartment for a while.” I pointed to the stairs.

“How'd you get in there?”

“The door was open. The kidnapper probably forgot to lock it when he took Father McCormick down the stairs
last night. There's a mattress up there and some coffee cups. Your crime-scene people will want to look it over.”

“Can I ask you how you came to try that door?”

“I think someone who had access to this house, maybe when the Farraguts lived here, had a key.”

“I'll call it in,” he said. “Have a good night.”

I wished him the same and went back to my car. Then I waited. I turned on the radio to help stay awake. Two men and a woman were talking about some topic that I never quite got straight. It had something to do with Christmas and something to do with women. I didn't really listen; I thought about Hudson, Sister Mary Teresa, and Julia. I put together what I knew and what I thought was likely and I kept my eyes open. If I had laid a trap, someone might take the bait.

It took half an hour. The woman on the radio was talking about the portrayal of women in the New Testament. “After all,” she said, “it was Mary Magdalene who carried the word to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord; and these things He said to me.' ”

The page in Sister Mary Teresa's New Testament! I almost started the car to find a telephone when I saw headlights, a car coming toward me, slowing as it approached. As I watched, it turned into the driveway. The trap had sprung.

A second police car pulled up in front of 211, then turned into the driveway. That would be in response to the first officer's call about the third floor. I crossed the street and joined both men behind the house.

“Someone may try to get into that third-floor area,” I said. “To clean it up.”

“We'll look out for him.”

“He may try the front door. I think he has a key.”

“Why don't you go around front, Bud?” the one who had just arrived said. “I'll go look at the upstairs.”

I walked back down the driveway with Bud.

“Someone's at the front door now,” he said in a low voice, reaching for his gun. “Stand back.”

I watched him step carefully through the snow as the person at the door fumbled with a key. The crunch of the surface ice seemed very loud. As he went forward he moved into a crouch.

“Police,” Bud called in a loud voice. “Don't move.” The order was loud and direct. And ignored.

I watched as the figure turned, as the frightened face was revealed by the porch light. It was Warren Belvedere.

There was a light on at Mike's Auto Body Shop. I tapped the dirty glass in the door and went inside.

“Help you?” he said. It was the man I had seen at the diner. He was sitting at a lighted table, papers spread out from end to end.

“I need to make a phone call. I wondered if I could use yours.”

“Sure thing. There's a pay phone in the work area. Turn left.”

I dialed the convent and Joseph answered on the first ring.

“It's Chris. The page in the Bible is where Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb after the resurrection.”

“That story is in all the Gospels. Do you remember which one?”

“John, I'm sure of it. It was near the middle of the book. John ends around the middle.”

“Let me find it.” She was gone a short time and I looked around the body shop. A crushed and mangled car was about ten feet from me, minus a lot of necessary parts, not that it would ever ride the road again. I wondered if the occupants had survived the crash. “Here it is. Shall I read it to you?”

“Tell me what follows. I don't think the Mary Magdalene story is what matters.”

“The next thing is that Jesus comes and speaks to the disciples.”

“OK. And then what?”

“And then there's the discussion of the disciple Thomas.”

“Thomas,” I repeated. “Doubting Thomas.”

“The very same.”

“I think we've got him, Joseph.”

“Got whom?”

“Sister Mary Teresa's killer.”

“Be careful, Chris.”

“I will.”

I hung up and went back to where Mike was sitting at a table working with papers. “You're Tom Belvedere's friend, aren't you?” I asked.

“Yeah, that's right. We've been friends since kindergarten.”

“He borrowed your car last week, didn't he? When he had car trouble.”

“How'd you know about that?”

“I saw you working on his car the other day,” I said, not exactly answering his question. “Thanks very much for the telephone. I'd better be going now.”

“Good night.”

I waved and left him at his table, looking a little puzzled.

I was pretty sure you couldn't use a private tow truck on the thruway, but I've seen cars pulling a second car as if it were a trailer. It wouldn't have taken much to prepare for that kind of tow if Tom Belvedere, Julia's Sweet Doubter, had intended to follow Hudson and waylay him at a rest stop. It's a pretty sure thing that on a trip of that length, about three hundred miles, you'll make at least one stop. All Tom Belvedere had to do was ask his friend for the use of the car I had seen in the Belvederes' driveway. It had
MIKE'S AUTO BODY SHOP
on the side, but it was a regular sedan, not a forbidden tow truck.

When I had left the Corcoran house a little while ago, Warren Belvedere was trying to explain to Bud that he was just going inside to water the plants, as his wife had forgotten to do it for several days, something I knew firsthand was a lie. As I saw it, Tom, after hearing my Mary Teresa impersonation, had come home to clean up the third floor before the police nailed him for kidnapping Hudson. He must have told his parents about it and his father decided he would enter through the front, where he might avoid being seen by the police guard in the rear. Fortunately, we had caught him.

And with Mike of the auto body shop, I now knew how Tom's car had been retrieved from the rest stop. All Tom had to do after securing Hudson in the third-floor apartment was drive back, attach one car to another, and continue home. If the toll collector complained that his ticket didn't mention a trailer, he could easily say it hadn't been noticed when he got on in Buffalo and simply pay the difference.

I drove back for what I hoped would be my last visit to Hawthorne Street. There was still one police car in front of 211 and one in the driveway. I walked to the back of the house, where I ran into the second officer.

“Bud's next door with the guy who was trying to get in the front way,” he said in answer to my question. “There was a lot of screaming and yelling. We'll have to see if he left any prints on the third floor, where it looks like he kept the priest for a while.”

“It's his son,” I said. “The father was just coming over to clean up for his son.”

“You know what he did it for?”

“Love. What else?”

Bud let me in the Belvedere house. Marilyn Belvedere was crying; Warren was trying to explain that he had nothing to do with Father McCormick's kidnapping, that all he wanted to do was water some plants and he wouldn't say anything else till his lawyer came.

“He didn't do it, Bud,” I said. “It was his son.”

“You folks have a son?” Bud said, turning to them.

They looked at each other as though they weren't sure.

“He's probably upstairs. He came home about half an hour ago, just before you found Mr. Belvedere at the front door.”

“You want to call him down, ma'am?”

Marilyn got up, dabbing at her eyes, and went to the foot of the stairs as her husband watched speechlessly. She looked up for a long moment before she called, “Tom? You want to come down, Tom?”

There was a muffled answer and a door closed. I looked at him closely as he came down the stairs, a tall, handsome man in his late twenties or early thirties, four or five years older than Julia. He stopped when he saw the uniform.

“Is something wrong, Officer?” he asked politely.

“I just have a few questions to ask you,” Bud answered, equally politely.

“Don't say anything, Tom,” Warren called. “Don't say a word.”

“Can you tell me what this is about?”

“This lady thinks you were responsible for kidnapping Father McCormick.”

“I don't even know who he is,” Tom said quietly.

“He was Julia Farragut's friend and confessor at St. Stephen's Convent,” I said.

“I hardly knew Julia. That was a long time ago.”

“You not only knew her, you were in love with her. She gave you the key to the third-floor apartment and you used to go over there to see her and let yourself in.”

“Where did you get this crazy story from?”

“She talked about you to friends. She wrote letters. I
read some of them this afternoon.” I didn't elaborate. It was enough that he knew I knew the truth.

He looked a little less sanguine. Bud had taken out a small notebook and flipped it open.

“Tom, you shouldn't be saying anything,” Marilyn said.

“I haven't said anything, Mother. This woman is doing all the talking.”

And Bud was writing. I wanted to give him enough that he could get a search warrant to look for the key to the third-floor apartment. I was pretty sure Tom hadn't used the downstairs key because the door at the bottom of the third-floor stairs had been locked. He had come and gone through the door on the third floor.

“You must have met Sister Mary Teresa when Julia died,” I went on. “And you gave her that collect number to your apartment so you could keep in touch with her. You wanted information on Father McCormick and she could give it to you. You found out from Mary Teresa that he was coming east for Christmas and she also told you where he would be the night before. You followed him on the thruway till he stopped to change his clothes and you kidnapped him.”

“This is ridiculous,” he said.

“Your friend Mike at Mike's Auto Body Shop lent you his car so you could retrieve your own car at the rest stop because you drove Father McCormick's ATV to Riverview.”

“Where he left it at the curb,” Bud said, “so we'd think the priest was giving us some kind of message.”

“But he didn't leave it on the street till the night after Christmas. Maybe he thought he'd let Father McCormick go if he cooperated. Maybe he just hadn't thought the whole plan through to the end. But the first night he must have parked the vehicle in the garage, where no one could see it. He knew how much time he had to work with because his parents were friends of the Corcorans and knew when they were returning from their vacation.”

“Who is this Sister Mary Teresa?” Bud asked.

“She was an older nun at St. Stephen's Convent. She was murdered between Saturday night and Sunday morning. She must have realized that the man she talked to on
the telephone from time to time, the man she had given all that information about Father McCormick, was the one who made him disappear. So she called and left a message.” I turned to Tom. “Did you have the call forwarded to this number or did you check your answering machine?”

“This is all a fabrication,” Tom said, but he had lost his cool. “You can't prove any of this.”

“The telephone company will have a record of every collect call from the St. Stephen's number to yours. She was such a lovely, caring old woman. I don't know why you had to kill her.” I said it with the full force of my grief.

“I didn't kill her,” he said, his voice breaking. “I was just trying to keep her quiet. She started shouting and screaming and I covered her face to shut her up and suddenly she slumped. She just fell through my hands.”

“Tom,” his mother wailed.

“Tom,” I echoed. “How long have you been talking to Mary Teresa?”

“I met her at the funeral. I told her I was Julia's cousin. I let her in on some details so she would trust me and we wrote to each other sometimes. A few years ago I gave her the free number to the phone in my apartment. She would call me every couple of weeks and we'd talk. She liked to talk to me and she would tell me little things about Father McCormick when she heard them. I told her I wanted to meet him if he came back to visit, and finally it paid off. A couple of months ago she called and said he was coming for Christmas.”

“But you didn't just want to have a conversation with him,” I said.

“I knew about the charges against him and I wanted him to tell me if they were true. I wanted to know what the hell had gone on between him and Julia, if he was hurting her because he had control over her. I wanted to know if she'd told him about Foster and, if she did, why the hell he didn't do anything about it. I hated him for that, that he knew and didn't do anything.”

“I think he was trying very hard to help her,” I said. “It wasn't his decision to send her away from St. Stephen's. It was someone else's. And he couldn't disclose to you or anyone else what she told him in the privacy of the confessional.
Even her death doesn't change that. I think it's yourself you're angry at, Tom. You're the one who could have helped her. You're the one who could have blown the whistle. Instead you took it all out on a priest who really tried and a nun who loved her selflessly. Why did you meet her that night?”

“She called and said she had to see me,” he said, his voice low now, resigned. “She didn't exactly threaten me, but I knew if I didn't show up, there'd be trouble. She'd put together the priest's disappearance and her telling me when he was coming. Then she just went crazy. She started accusing me of killing Julia. She said she would go to the police and tell them it was me. I was scared. She was a sweet old nun, she was believable. Who was I? I was already in trouble with the priest, who wouldn't tell me a damn thing, and if this nun went to the police, the Farraguts would—”

“
Tom!
” Marilyn was on her feet.

“What would the Farraguts do?” I asked, addressing all of them. “You told me you'd lost contact with them, but Mrs. Farragut was here tonight, just an hour or so ago.” I looked at my watch, surprised at how late it had become. “She was here when I was here.”

There was a lot of silence, but I could almost hear the deafening roar underneath it. Something had gone on between the Belvederes and the Farraguts, and these three people knew what it was and were all part of it.

Tom broke the silence, a silence that was seven years old. “I'm not going to jail for something I didn't do. I don't care what that old woman says.”

“I think I should advise you of your rights,” Bud said, and I wondered whether, in this small, quiet town, it was the first time in his three years in the police department that he had said it.

“Hang my rights,” Tom retorted. “Foster Farragut killed his sister seven years ago and those people have been protecting him since it happened.”

“Tom,” Marilyn said, “I beg you.”

“If we'd spoken up then, we'd all be better off.”

I wasn't sure he was right, but at least he was finally accepting responsibility. “Did you see him do it?” I asked.

“I saw them through the window of her bedroom. I was coming up the stairs to see her. He had the rope in his hand, behind his back, and he was shouting at her. He was a crazy son of a bitch and he'd been jealous of her all her life. I ran up to the third floor and got my key out to open the door, but it was so damn cold, I dropped it and it went through the boards down into the snow. I ran down and found it and raced back up, got inside, and went down to her room on the second floor. She was hanging from the rope.” He stopped, his face contorted as the pain the memory had brought to the surface hit him. “I grabbed her and tried to lift her, to get the pressure off her throat, but I could see it was too late. It was too late. I was too late to save her.” He wept into his hands.